Four Weeks Worth of Updates and Pictures

The past month has been kind of crazy. My friend Tonne went on an adventure with me to knock off two of my life goals: photograph Antelope Canyon (near Page, AZ) and Bryce National Park (Utah). It was my first time apart from Jake since he moved in. Although about five years of our relationship was spent in distance, it was hard to be away from him now that we're together. The following week led us to Seattle. The week back was spent hurriedly preparing for an Easter celebration. We got a dog, and then the same day I left on a plane to Los Angeles with my friend Stacey N. After missing our initial flight home we're finally back. :)

These are all taken in the Upper Antelope Canyon.






Our next stop was Bryce Canyon. Unfortunately Bryce's iconic Rainbow Point was closed due to weather conditions but many of the other viewpoints were open.

On our way home we stopped at a gas station that had an attached petting zoo...with a baby zebra!

My dad was in Vietnam for the past couple months. It was his first time traveling since he left the country. My family and I went to the airport to pick him up. His flight was the last one in that night and we waited anxiously as passengers started to exit through the security checkpoint. We assumed he'd be wheeled out among the first few passengers. Instead, we stood waiting, confused as the airport emptied out and crew members started to depart.

An elderly gentleman approached us.

"Are you waiting for an older man in a wheelchair from 'China'?" he asked. We nodded our heads.

"I want you to know he's safe, but he's not going to be on this flight." He explained that my dad was standing in front of him during boarding when he fell to the ground in what appeared to be a seizure. After confirming this with an agent near baggage claim and receiving a call from the hospital soon after, we learned that he had fainted due to a diabetic episode (his blood sugar was at 900), which was new to us because he didn't leave the country with diabetes. The attending doctor explained that diabetes can spring up randomly in the elderly.

Jake, my brother, his son Cameron, my mom, and I left for Seattle the next day. My brother was worried my dad wouldn't make it but thankfully he checked out, is home, and is a lot better now.

During some of our down time, relatives took us to some of the more touristy sights of Seattle such as the International District, Pike's Place, the aquarium on the waterfront, and for brunch at the Space Needle.





We came home and had less than a week to prepare for Easter. We planned an Easter party for a family I met while interning for a refugee resettlement agency last year. I really, really had my heart set on baking meringue cupcakes and a hummingbird cake from scratch but time was not permitting. Nonetheless, everything turned out perfect and we didn't even need to bake from scratch. We had a picnic lunch, dyed Easter eggs, made Easter themed crafts, and held an Easter egg hunt. My niece Kimberly participated as well. (The top egg was meant for me) :)




We had so many veggies left over from Easter, we made stew. It was my first time making a stew, and I didn't really know what I was doing, but it turned out great! The recipe is as follows:

64 oz. chicken broth
6 cups of vegetables of your choice (we used broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, a small onion, celery, cherry tomatoes, sweet corn, peas, and mushrooms)
4 C of pasta (we used orzo and piccolini)
6 oz of tomato paste
12 oz of tomato sauce
1.5 C of heavy cream
1.5 C of milk
2 Tbsp siricha sauce
1 Tbsp cayenne pepper
2 C prepared meat of your choice if you like

1. Simmer vegetables in chicken broth in a large pot for about an hour or until tender.
2. Stir in the pasta.
3. Simmer until most of the chicken broth is absorbed
4. We added in 6 oz of tomato paste at this point. It was too thin but we were out of tomato paste and added in the 12 oz of tomato sauce. We replicated this recipe eliminating the sauce and only using the paste but it didn't turn out as good. The sauce in addition to the paste adds a nice consistency it wouldn't have otherwise. Add meat at this time if you wish. Simmer about 10 more minutes.
   
5. Add the heavy cream and milk (we used both simply because we ran out of cream).
6. Remove from heat and add spices.

This is Kira the akbash with Frasier. We first saw Kira a couple weeks ago and planned to adopt her a couple days later. When I came back to the pound to see if she was still there, a volunteer told me she was adopted. I didn't think she'd get adopted so soon so I told Wendy, a girl I have the opportunity to work with, that I'd have a dog by the next time I saw her. When I told her the dog was adopted, she was upset and focused her attention on finding a time we could go to the pound together to search for "another white dog just like her". A couple weeks passed.

When I arrived at her house last Tuesday her mom informed me we had plans to go to the pound. "Haha, okay," I thought sweetly. I wasn't sure what we were going to do once we got to the pound and couldn't find a dog remotely close to Kira's description. Wendy stopped at every kennel with a dog that had white on it at all so when Wendy stopped at our last kennel of the day, I thought it would be another white terrier with brown spots that she had shown me earlier. Remarkably it was not only an akbash, it was the same one Jake and I fell in love with weeks earlier. It turns out she was never adopted but was in quarantine because she was sick. We returned the next day to purchase her although we didn't bring her home until the day after.

Wendy is pretty much 100% responsible to why we have Kira today.




We put Kira on hold because we already had reservations to see Water for Elephants (which was amazing) and a date day planned since Jake and I wouldn't see each other until after I got back from LA. We cut our date short and picked Kira up right after the movie...which turned out being the best day ever! Jake dropped me off at the airport soon after we got her.

After taking a light rail from the air port shuttle, Stacey N. and I took a bus to our hotel. The bus took us through south LA. That's an experience I am not anticipating having again! We were in LA for a conference to see Zimbardo speak. Zimbardo is the guy that did the Stanford prison experiments and is known for the Lucifer Effect. However, we spent most of our time outside the conference doing touristy things such as going to Hollywood, Chinatown (which is where I found those tiny turtles), and exploring downtown LA.

These are our shots from Hollywood. We navigated the city with ease using buses and the light rail system. Everything went smoothly until we missed our flight home, and unfortunately it was the last flight departing to Boise from LAX that day. Thankfully our airline was willing to put us on a flight to Salt Lake where flights to Boise were still open on other airlines.