Small Update

Ok - just a couple things to throw out here as I want to have them to look back on.

This past Saturday, Steve and I had a housewarming party!  It was a great day weather wise for it (not too sunny, not raining, mild temps)... so we were able to sit outside pretty much all day until the mosquitoes came out :(
We made Kalua Pork (which is Hawaiian/Luau style pork), and homemade meatballs served in homemade BBQ sauce with kielbasa (which was not homemade).  Then we had an array of chips and some snacky stuff.  There were many people who brought food to share many people who brought gifts (which I wasn't expecting) and many people who just came to hang out - it was a pretty perfect day.  Nice to see so much family, nice to have friends over, and nice to have our first joint entertaining experience.  Steve was an amazing help getting stuff prepared for the party - and if any of you know me, you'll know that I had a great deal of things cleaned up before I went to bed that night and the stuff that waited until the morning was cleaned up by noon (including the mopping of our kitchen floor - yuck, people are MESSY!!)
Our party was slotted to begin anytime after 2pm and 'end' at 9pm (which basically meant please don't arrive after 9pm, but feel free to stay later than 9) - so we had our first arrival at about 2:10pm and the last few people trickled out somewhere between 11:00-11:30pm.
Steve and I were beat - but we opened our gifts before calling it a night!  Obviously!  Maybe once I get a handle on things, I'll post some pics of a few things we got.
If you were invited and missed it, you missed one good time - some of you had legit reasons for not being there... others... not so much!

The last bit of info I want to share here is that Steve and I went to the State Fair last night - here is a list of what we ate (we ordered one of each of these things and shared them all):

1. Deep fried pickles - we ordered the sampler pack, which came with Cajun style, Original, and one that was 2 pickle slices with cream cheese in the middle then battered and deep fried.  They were all pretty darn good - although I didn't feel like I could taste the cream cheese too much in the last kind.  
2. Scotch Egg - first of all, I've only ever had a scotch egg once in my life and that was just ... a year or so ago.  A scotch egg is a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried.  The scotch egg at the fair was my favorite thing we ate last night.  It was absolutely delicious!
3. A foot long hotdog - covered in onions.  YUM is all I have to say.
4. Deep fried Apple Pie - as soon as Steve seen the sign "DEEP FRIED PIE" we made a mad dash for the stand who cares who steps in our way!  I wasn't completely excited about this because I just don't get super excited for a lot of sweets.  Well anyways, the pie came with your choice of cinnamon or vanilla ice cream (we got vanilla) and the pie looked kind of like a calzone from the outside.  Much to my surprise the outer shell was soft, much like ... well, a mini donut, I guess.  It was actually quite delicious.
5. Carnita (pork) Asian Taco - I had the State fair food finder on my phone and read about this new stand which served carnitas and fish tacos.   I knew we had to try it.  We were both pretty full by this point, and even though I wanted the fish taco and Steve wanted the carnita taco (and debated back and forth on whether or not to each get one) we opted to just order one taco and carnitas won.  This taco was pretty amazing - I love the Asian inspired flavor to it, much different than the Mexican carnitas we're used to.

So... all of those things were firsts for me at the fair - which I didn't realize until we left!  The last thing that I got (and didn't share except for one bite) was a roasted corn on the cob.  This is a absolute MUST for me at the fair and even though I debated skipping it, it was by far the right decision to buy one!  Corn on the cob is a summer staple as well as a fair staple.

I'm proud of myself for trying all new things and I think we made good decisions in them all!

So, that's it for today - I hope you all have amazing long holiday weekends - be safe and enjoy whatever you do (Steve and I will be painting trim, weather pending, all weekend!  yay.)

buh-bye now.