Anniversary anyone?

Our 15th wedding anniversary was on Wednesday, June 20th.  Pretty significant huh?  Well, we had pack meeting.  We did go to lunch and to the temple to do sealings which we try to do every year, and Pack meeting was lots of fun.  It was a really good day, but not really the 15 years of marriage celebration I was looking for.  We figured we would spend the day in Vegas on Saturday to celebrate.  It just so happened that Kyle's sister Lauri who just moved to Henderson needed a few more pieces of furniture from her mom's house and Kyle's mom was flying into the Vegas airport and needed someone to pick her up so we thought we could make a celebration out of it.  By the time we dropped the kids off at Beckstrands, and got the seats out of our van and all of Lauri's stuff loaded in, we were pretty late into the day.  One of our favorite places to visit in Vegas (besides Thunder Down Under) is the International Marketplace.  So that was our first stop (well the bathroom in the marketplace was our first stop).

  We always buy our Asian supplies there and try to find some other crazy things we haven't tried before.  Kyle is a great cook, but when he cooks he doesn't just want to make spaghetti, he wants to iron chef something exotic.  The store is really unorganized and you just have to search the whole place every time, which is a fun adventure- especially the butcher block.....

We didn't buy these but I did eat one of these at the French Culinary Institute in New York last month and it was actually quite good.  It is the most adventurous thing I have ever tried, and liked. We didn't bring a cooler so we could only buy canned or packaged items.  Here is most of what we ended up with:

Coconut milk and rice noodles can be purchased in St. George but they are WAY cheaper here.  Masaman Curry is the stuff you pay 13 bucks for at Benja's Thai restaurant- so we stock up on that too. DOBROVA in the background was a ridiculously good version of Nutella-that bottle was half empty before I could get a picture of it!  It was a new discovery along with the honey.

Aren't these beautiful?  They are honey jars from Lebanon.  The one on the left is layers of all different kinds of nuts and then honey poured over them and sealed.  I am keeping that as a decoration for a few months, I love it so much.  The one on the right is "pulverized nuts with honey"
peanuts and coconut, and pistachios and walnuts and chickpeas and apricot stones.  To which George said, "are you sure those are edible?"  They taste good, hearty, earthy but good.  We are blessed with kids with adventurous taste buds.  They will try all of these things, and like most of them.  They never fight us on trying new things.

This was basically the only thing we got to do in Vegas for fun.  Our anniversary trip to Lebanon, with a layover in Bangkok.  We are hoping to take a real trip somewhere, sometime.... the details are a little foggy still. 

We went to Lauri's to drop her stuff and pick up Jillyn (Lauri had gotten her from the airport). Then we went and got some lunch at BDubs.  Now I don't know why we call it that, it is Buffalo Wild Wings. But the Kentucky brothers "dubbed" it that in Louisville where they were religious patrons.  This was my first real experience and it is certainly not worth a special trip to Vegas, (don't tell my nephew Drew) but salt and vinegar wings and Dr. Pepper is a great combination! Lucy thought everything tasted great, even the tabletop, that girl can eat!  After lunch we jumped back in the van and headed home to make it to the adult session of Stake Conference, and retrieve our kids.

Happy Anniversary Kyle.  I am grateful for every minute of every year, especially the minute this morning when you woke me up to tell me you caught the mouse that has paralyzed me this week.
You take such good care of me and the kids.  I am proud and grateful every day to call you mine.