soup & spiders

Before we got married my husband knew my lack of cooking skills but I was bound and determined to be the best possible wife and learn to cook for my husband. Well 7 months later, all I can say is i'm very thankful my husband is a better cook than myself! My husband is a great cook and he's a great teacher. Slowly my cooking skills are improving and one day when we have a kitchen thats big enough for more than one person to fit in, an oven that works and a dishwasher i'm sure i'll become a fabulous cook! I can however follow most recipes. I received a few cookbooks when we got married but there was one I bought after hearing about it from a friend that has become my favorite! Its called the 4 Ingredients Cookbook by Kim McCosker & Rachael Bermingham. I love it! How hard can cooking be if you can make a yummy meal with only 4 ingredients?! One of my new favorite recipes is Thai Pumpkin Soup. It is so yummy! I'll share the recipe with you, but I recommend you go buy the cookbook because it has over 300 recipes that are just as yummy and simple!

Thai Pumpkin Soup (serves 4)

Ingredients: 1kg butternut pumpkin peeled and diced (for my American friends, I believe butternut squash is the same as our butternut pumpkin...I think), 2 tbs red curry paste, 300 ml coconut cream, 1/4 cup coriander chopped

Steps:
1. Saute pumpkin and red curry paste until it starts to catch on the saucepan
2. Add coconut cream to deglaze the pan, top with enough water to level with the pumpkin and bring to a boil
3. Reduce heat simmering until the pumpkin becomes soft and mushy
4. Puree (I use a hand mixer), season with salt and pepper and fold in chopped coriander
5. Enjoy!!

It is a thai soup, but its not too hot/spicy for those who may be wondering.

Besides my cooking skills slightly improving this week, its been interesting around here...I was bitten by a spider. When I first moved to Australia I kept hearing stories about the wildlife here and how they have some of the most dangerous spiders, snakes etc. For those of you who don't know I hate, HATE spiders. Any kind of spider and especially the dangerous ones! I'm the girl who always has bug spray under my kitchen sink! So naturally I would be the one to get bitten by one of those dangerous spiders. We aren't 100 percent sure as I didn't see it, but the bite and all the symptoms I experienced match the red back spider. I got super sick on Tuesday with what I thought was a migraine as I had a bad headache, nausea, etc but later that night I woke up in tears with intense stomach pains. A few other crazy, random symptoms and 2 days later I was feeling more like myself. I didn't go to the hospital because silly me didn't tell my husband about this really sore bite I had on my ankle until the next day. I didn't think anything about it and just thought it was a mosquito bite, but once I showed him the bite he immediately started putting the pieces together and told me what it was and how all my crazy symptoms made sense now. We called his mum who was a nurse and she said I was in the clear. Afterwards once the shock wore off, I'm pretty sure I told him this goes on the cons list for us living in Australia! No...we don't really have a list, we joke every once in a while when certain things come up. And yes, I realize spiders are everywhere, even the dangerous ones. Lets just hope this was my only encounter with one!

 

Fancy that

They have an app for blogger??! Wow. What did we do before iPhones? I know I rely on mine for everything and I'm very glad we invested in the otter box case because my phone tends to dive off the sofa onto our tile floor frequently!

So here it goes, first blog post from my iPhone.

Yesterday was Valentines day. I love holidays, I especially loved being able to celebrate them with my kiddos when I was teaching. There are so many wonderful moments in teaching but being able to celebrate holidays and see them through a child's eyes is so wonderful. Kids often see things differently than we as adults do and so often they see it in a much simpler way and I love that. Although valentines day in Australia is not as big of a deal as in the USA my kiddos and I still had some fun talking about it and making valentines crafts.

Luckily my husband knows me well enough to know that even if they don't make a big deal out of something like valentines day here, that he married me and I love celebrating every little holiday! A few weeks ago we were watching 'Friends' where monika and chandler decided to make valentines gifts for each other. My adorable husband thought we should do that too. So one store bought gift and one homemade gift was the plan. He can be creative and crafty...me not so much. It was so much fun though! He was working away for two afternoons on my gift. When I came home from work last night he met me at the door and lead me around the house with my eyes closed to reveal my valentines surprises. Afterwards we went to a yummy dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant at Terrigal Beach. It was such a wonderful valentines day with my valentine.

My homemade...err...edible gift for him and his homemade gift for me :)

our holiday and a little update

It's hard to believe we've been back from our holiday in the US for almost 6 weeks! And sadly i'm just now getting time to blog about it. Better late than never, right?! We left the first part of December for our big trip home (my home anyway) to the US. Last year when I went home for christmas my dad and I had devised a plan to surprise my mom, so this year I was bound and determined to surprise my dad! We originally told my dad we were going to arrive on Saturday, December 10th however really we booked our tickets to arrive on that Friday. I know, I know...not a huge surprise but he is a hard man to surprise. Overall all our trip there was ok, as ok as a 14 hour flight, 6 hour layover and another 4 hour flight can be. I think we counted, our total trip time door to door was 28 or 29 hours. But it was worth every minute! I guess the biggest challenge was not sleeping, neither of us could sleep on the long flight. I think I slept maybe 30 minutes to an hour, I think I was too excited to sleep! By the time we arrived in LA we were so tired, thankfully we slept most of the flight to Memphis. When we arrived in Memphis my mom and brother were there to get us. For those of you who have never been to the Memphis airport it is probably one of the ugliest airports with this terrible brown, shiny brick everywhere and it always seems to have the same smell...but it felt like HOME! We decided to have my dad meet us out for dinner with my auntie Amy and her boyfriend Pete who were also in town for the holidays. We of course chose Mexican food because you just can't get that here! My dad showed up after a few minutes and needless to say I think we surprised him! He said he thought something was up because I was suppose to email him before we left Sydney and I never sent him my itinerary...excuses, excuses!

As soon as we got to Memphis we hit the ground running! We got to attend my childhood church our first Sunday morning there. It was so wonderful to see so many familiar faces and get lots of hugs! I got to see my best friend Bethany and meet her adorable little girl, finally! During our first week we headed to east Texas to visit with some of Ben's friends from when he lived there 10 years ago. It was so good to finally meet them after hearing so much about them. We got to see all the sights of Nac and even saw the house where Ben lived. I was able to meet up with one of my friends from college that lives in Lufkin, it was really good to catch up with her and chat all about being newlyweds! I hated that it had to be such a short trip, but it was worth it! The day we returned from Texas was also when one of my best friends Marie and her husband Brad came into town from Colorado for wedding reception. Marie had come out to Australia for our wedding but she was only there for 4 days so it was good to finally be able to spend more time together catching up. We ran around town like crazy getting things ready for our reception and had a lot of family and friends arriving in town! The Saturday morning of the reception we had my family, my Texas family (you know who you are!) and my 3 best girl friends over for an amazing brunch cooked by Marie's husband Brad who is a chef. I have to say that was probably one of my favorite moments of the entire trip was having so many of my favorite people in the world all in one place. Later that evening we had our Memphis wedding reception or as I like to call it wedding extravaganza part 3 or as my father has named it the Ben and Lindsey world wedding tour, the last stop. My mother and her friends did an INCREDIBLE job transforming the lobby of my parents church into a rustic, winter wonderland. My mother had been "pinning" ideas for our reception on her pinterest board for months and no lie, our reception looked just like her board. I am blown away by all the little details and hard work and her friends did. It truly was my "other" dream wedding! Not many girls get to wear the wedding dress twice and have more than one wedding celebration, we are so blessed to have been able to share it with all of our loved ones. The evening was perfect, the food was delicious, and the time spent with friends and family was priceless. If you want to see pictures from the night you'll have to check out facebook.

The rest of our trip was spent visiting with friends and family, shopping...lots of shopping, sightseeing and of course Christmas! We did make a quick day trip to Little Rock, but it was nowhere near enough time to show Ben my "home" so i'm thinking we'll just have to make another trip one day soon! Our Christmas was wonderful. It was our first Christmas together and it was so special to be able to spend it with my family that we don't get to see very often.

Its hard to sum up our almost 3 week long holiday in just so many words. The trip for me was much needed, I was very ready to have a dose of home and to be able to show my hubby the life I had there before coming to Australia. When you live so far from home and your family you learn some big life lessons, and for me I think I took living so close to my family for so many years for granted, so now the times we do get to spend together mean so much. I love the life we have in Australia, but I miss home a lot.

We arrived back "home" in Australia right before New Years. We were able to spend some time with Ben's family, including his grandmother who went into the hospital while we were away and passed away a few days after we returned. I'm so thankful we were able to see her before she passed away. She was such an incredible woman of faith. I only had the privilege of knowing her for less than a year but I was deeply touched and encouraged by her strong faith and love for the Lord.

Since being back things have not slowed down thats for sure. We quickly settled back into our jobs and home routine. I celebrated 1 year of being at my job, our 6 months of being married and we celebrated Ben's 32nd birthday a few weeks ago! I have spoken with immigration a few times since being back. We will find out if our Partner Visa (which means I will be permanent resident) will be approved this year. There is a 9-12 month wait time. So the earliest we would hear would be May, and August at the latest. However we did find out yesterday that if our Partner visa is not approved by April 11th, that I will no longer be able to work at the school i've been working at. The reason behind that is, when I first came to Australia I came on a working holiday visa which has work restrictions that you could only work at 1 employer for 6 months, now that i'm on a bridging visa the same restrictions from my original visa still apply. I was able to work for a second lot of 6 months after we were married because the time started over when I moved to a bridging visa but unfortunately there is no way around it after this 6 months is up, unless my visa is approved. So, we're praying that it will be approved! Please keep us in your prayers that it will be approved closer to the 9 month mark than the 12 month mark! Also be praying for us as we have a few other big things going on, we'll share when the time is right. And no...we're not pregnant because i'm pretty sure thats what most people would think first. We are very blessed and know that God has a plan for us. We're excited to see what the next season in our life will be and where God will take us!