30

We had dinner at our favorite place in town, the Black Sparrow, last night for my birthday with Connie and Patrick! Wyatt surprised me with this yummy cake from Sweet Revolution Bake Shop. Chocolate and orange are such a great combination! The cake was delicious! My 30s are going to be the best decade yet.

Life Lately

Our favorite recipe that I make at home. Sausage and gnocchi soup.

Wow! February really flew by in a hurry.  I can't believe it's March already.  Today, I'm sharing just a few things we have been up to lately.  Besides our little getaway to Charleston, things have been pretty low key to start the new year.  Quite frankly, most of our activities have revolved around food and going out for meals with friends and family or staying in and making our favorites. 

We tried to go on a date to the restaurant I had planned on getting takeout from as part of our Valentine's Day date night in but we found, much to our dismay, that the restaurant has closed its doors.  Since we still wanted a date, we ended up trying dinner at East End Grill, a restaurant on Main Street that we had tried for lunch a couple of times. We got the chicken and adouille meatballs to start with and then Wyatt got the braised pork shank and I got the East End pastrami cobb salad.  That salad is amazing! It has roasted corn, tomato, egg, the best pastrami, avocado, red pepper and blue cheese crumbles.

It decided to snow a little bit that weekend.  It is still winter even though our temperatures had been more along the lines of spring.  Our favorite restaurant/bar in town has brunch the last Sunday of the month.  Since they only have it once a month, there is always a line to get in and if you don't get seated in the first wave, you may as well just wait until about 12:30.  We met up with a couple we're friends with for February's brunch because the menu looked great. Everyone at the table ordered the lemon curd pancakes with blueberries.  There were a couple of other items ordered and lots of leftovers.  After a weekend full of eating, I took it easy the rest of the afternoon that Sunday.  After cleaning a little bit, I snuggled up in bed with movies on netflix the rest of the afternoon.  I put on a bunch of old favorites, 10 Things I Hate About You, Elizabethtown, and Bridget Jones.  I made our favorite soup that night.  I had some pretty flowers leftover from my birthday, we enjoyed some rosé (that was leftover from our botched Valentine's date in) and it was a cozy night in at our house.

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Happy Birthday, Wyatt!

Wyatt's birthday was the 30th.  It actually fell on a Friday this year.  I took him out to his favorite place for dinner that night, the Black Sparrow, and we had a little celebration at home after.  We had plans to go to our friends' house to celebrate New Year's Eve the next night.  I made salted caramel cupcakes to take per his request.  We enjoyed a relaxing evening in with some of our closest friends to ring in the new year with and loved it.  Now we're looking forward to what lies ahead for us in 2017.

Parents Visit

It's hard to pin down where my parents are at any given time because they're enjoying retirement by taking many adventures.  Between their trips and our busy schedule it has meant that we haven't had the chance to visit much this summer.  We worked out a day during a week that I could take off work and spend with them in Lafayette.  We took them to our favorite restaurant, the Black Sparrow, first so they could try the fish and chips!  They are my favorite fish and chips.  So much so that it was over a year after I first tried them before I tried anything else off the menu.  I'm glad that I finally did because I love everything on their menu!  After lunch we drove over to Purdue's campus so my mom could stop at the bookstore for a new t-shirt (I scored a deal on a Lilly Pulitzer tumbler too!).  We decided to walk around on campus for a while after that as campus has certainly changed a lot since my parents lived up here.

After our tour of campus, we went back to my apartment to have dessert and celebrate dad for a late Father's Day since he was in Colorado on Father's Day and we were unable to celebrate with him then.  For dinner we took them to La Scala, the restaurant that Wyatt and I had our first date at four years ago.