A recipe that you must try....

I am obsessed. This is a recipe that I got from Nickie a while ago. We had it for the 2nd time on Sunday and I have to share it with EVERYONE. It is semi-healthy and so yummy!
It is macadamia Nut Crusted Halibut. However, we used orange roughy fish because it is cheaper and just as good if you ask me!
Here is what you need:
2-4 fillets of Halibut or Orange Roughy
1 can of coconut milk
1 cup of macadamia nuts
1 cup of Panko Bread crumbs

Soak the fish in the coconut milk
Meanwhile, chop the macadamia nuts in s food processor
combine 1 cup of the chopped nuts with 1 cup of the Panko bread crumbs
Pat the mixture on the fish
Bake on a greased baking tray at 350 for 20-30 minutes.

Enjoy!

New job!

Most of the people that look at our blog probably already know this, but just incase you haven't heard the good news I am excited to announce that I have a new job! I start on Monday. I am very excited because it will be an opportunity to learn and grow more professionally, it is MUCH closer to home and the best part it is more money! I will be the senior accountant for another construction company, Interstate Construction. I am a little nervous to start a new job, but I decided that it is time for me to step out of the comfort zone that is Marques Pipeline, Inc. and move on and meet some new people. David and I (and Abby too) are very excited for this change. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Thanksgiving was nice, we went to my grandma's house for an early dinner and then to Julie & Derek's to hang out. It was a long day, but nice to visit with the family. It was especially to see Chrissie. She is too far away in LA and we miss having her around all of the time! Only three more weeks until we get her back. We played POP 5 - it is a game by the makers of Cranium and it is SO much fun. You must get it!

I will post some pictures from the long weekend as soon as I get them downloaded! Have a nice week!

The Fray

For those of you who don't know, Chrissie and I have an OBSESSION with The Fray. We have been waiting on pins and needles for their next album since the first one was so AMAZING. After a LOOOOONNNGGG wait it finally comes out on February 3rd! Check out "you found me" on their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/thefray .

Movie Reviews

We watched a few movies this weekend and I thought I would share my "reviews"...





The first movie is "The Strangers". This one has been on our Netflix Queue for a while, but I keep pushing it to the bottom because the previews scared me! I guess I was feeling adventurous this weekend so we finally watched it. I think it took years off of my life. Sara, Nickie and Kerry, you should NOT watch this one. The worst part is that it was based on a true story! It is about a couple who are staying at his families summer home in the middle of nowhere and they have some very scary visitors. The masks that the strangers wore are the CREEPIEST things I have ever seen! If you like scary movies you will probably like this one. David said that it wasn't that scary, but I saw him jump a few times. LOL! Here is the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1TBlPelvbE




The next movie was "What Happens in Vegas". This one was better than I thought it would be. Actually it was kind of cute! Much more light hearted and more up my alley! I am sure most people have seen the previews or seen the movie. It is predictable and silly, but we enjoyed it!

The last movie is called Bella. I actually watched this one on my own. But I actually think David might have enjoyed it. It is an independent film and a little slow in the beginning, but I think that it is touching and definatley worth viewing. It stars Eduardo Verastegui and Ali Landry. I want to watch it again with David. Here is the trailer for that one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ9AkTrbxgk.

So basically I would recommend all three movies if you haven't seen them. Just be careful with the Strangers. Don't wantch it if you don't want a heart attack!

Abby says VOTE!

I had to get Abby in on the action today since I am pretty excited about this election. Abby wore her "Vote for my better tomorrow" shirt to school today. I wish I could have gotten a better picture, but Abby had ants in her pants this morning!

Pumpkin Farm

As usual, I am a little behind on updating the blog. We went to the pumpkin farm two weeks ago and I am just now posting this! Anyways, if you haven't been to Bishop's pumpkin farm in Wheatland you should go! Abby had a blast. They have a little train and hay rides and pig races, horse rides, a petting zoo and food and a million little kids. We went on beautiful day and had a lot of fun. Abby really enjoyed watching the train, but once we got on she wanted off! I am sure next year she will be driving the train.

We are really enjoying our new house. I would post pictures, but I can't bring myself to do that until we paint the downstairs and get some new furniture! I need to figure out a way to organize all of Abby's toys. I found this cool coffee table with matching side tables in the Crate and Barel catalog that open up like trunks. I think they would be perfect to shove all of the toys into. First we have to figure out what kind of style we want! But here they are:

We'll figure it out eventually. It isn't like we are moving anytime soon!

I am very excited because I just made an appointment for us to have our pictures taken with Brenda Bisharat. She is local photographer that I met through Dawn and Jeremy. Mainly I want to get some nice pictures taken of Abby, but we are also in desperate need of some nice family pics. Abby is going to grow up and think that she lived by herself because most of our pictures are of her by herself. Here is Brenda's website: http://www.bisharatphotos.com/index2.php?v=v1

Happy Halloween to everyone. Abby is going to be a pumpkin. It was between that and piglet and she likes the pumpkin costume way better. I think because it is big and weird to walk in.

Loving Our New House!

Unbelievably next week will be our one month anniversary in our new house (Also Abby will be 15 months on the 2nd)! We really love our little house even though we still have a garage full of unpacked boxes. We have really learned that we actually don't NEED half of all of the stuff that we own since we have lived without it for 6 weeks now! As usual we have been keeping busy. We will be heading to the Walnut Creek this weekend for Angie's wedding. We are excited for Angie and her fiance Matt.

Abby loves her room! She seems really happy to have all of her toys and furniture back. She is really pretty easy going (like her dad), but she sure does love her home and her routine (like her mom)! Most people have probably already seen these pictures, but just in case here are some pics of the incredible job that David did painting Abby's room:

I need to take some new pictures of the house now that we are pretty much moved in.

We went to Abby's "Back to School Night" on Tuesday. I NEVER thought that I would be going to one of those until she was live 5 or 6, but it was cute. They gave us a folder with all of her "artwork" and showed us their curriculum for the school year. Abby still seem to love it there still.

I will post some pictures of the wedding next week. Have a great weekend!

House/Sea Ranch

Holy Moly! It has been over two months since I updated this thing. Obviously I am not a very good blogger. As most of you know, a lot has happened in two months. Our landlord had to sell our house so we got kicked out on the streets! LOL. Actually it was a good thing because it FINALLY forced us to buy a house. In the meantime we stayed with Julie and Derek. It was so sweet of them to let us and all of our stuff come and take over their house for three weeks! We got the keys last Tuesday, just in time for our trip to Sea Ranch for Natalie's wedding. Horrible timing, but the wedding was fun and now we are home for a while so we can get settled in. This week David has been painting Abby's room. He is such a good Dad, he stays up until really late every night, because of course we had to do stripes again. But this time the stripes are on the bottom under the chair rail. I will post pictures as soon as it is finished. Anyways we are so excited to have a house of our own just in time for fall. It is going to be so cozy!

A little bit about Sea Ranch...Have you ever been there? It is a beautiful place but it is HORRIBLE to get there. It takes 3.5 hours and the last hour and 20 minutes is on the crazy windy road on CLIFFS. I thought that we would die for sure. It is a neat town though. On saturday we went to breakfast and being the great parents that we are, left the diaper bag at the house! So we had to buy diapers and all they had were these natural hemp diapers that are huge and feel like paper. Poor Abby... But we have to use them up because it was $20 for the pack! That will teach us not to forget the diaper bag again!

Here are a few pictures from our weekend:

Abby's first time at the beach. The water was FREEZING!

Natalie was a beautiful bride!

Abby in her hemp diaper!

Fireworks!

Last weekend we went to a BBQ at our friends house down the street. It was so much fun. Abby loved to be around all of the other kids. In fact since she is so obsessed with the water and being outside, we just stripped her down to her diaper and she had a blast. After the BBQ we all went across the street to the park to watch the fireworks. Since we are up on a big hill we can see the Rocklin Jubilee fireworks. Abby was so good the whole day and tried her best to stay up and run around with the other kids, but she fell asleep approx. 45 seconds before they started. O-well I am sure that she will see plenty this weekend.

Today is Abby's 1st birthday. We are having a little party for her with the fam tonight. I got some yummy cupcakes from this cute little shop called Icing on the Cupcake. David wasn't too happy that we spent money on cupcakes when we could just make them, but Abby has never really had sugar before, so I wanted them to be REALLY good. Plus her b-day needs to be special! Also, since I am such a nerd I emailed her picture to "Good Day Sacramento" for their first birthday segment and her picture was on TV this morning! Don't worry, I saved it on the tivo!

Other than that we are all just excited for the long weekend. We have two parties to go to and then we have to rest up because Monday is a big day - She gets her 1 year shots and we start swim lessons!

Jordan and Maddy Dressing Abby up like a Princess

Waiting for the fireworks...

Showing Daddy how to mow the lawn.

Time Is Flying By!

As usual I have been very bad at keeping this blog up to date and now is has been a month since my last post! Since then we have been keeping pretty busy. We took a trip to the Sacramento Zoo. I have to say that it was really a very depressing place! I hadn't been since I was little and I was really excited to take abby to see the elephants and there we NO elephants! Very disapointing. We plan to take a trip to aunt Nickie's in SD and go to a real zoo.

Abby is almost a year old and since she started daycare the Sorenson Family has had every ailment possible. We had the flu multiple times, pink eye, she had a fever for a week, I had a really bad sore throat last week and now we all have this horrible cough. It really has been pretty funny. THANK GOODNESS for my mom and dad who were able to take time off of work to help out with watching abby, otherwise I might be unemployed :) However, the doctors say that it is actually good that she is getting sick now. Her immune system is up to snuff now. She is officially walking and in a few weeks she will be moving over to the next room in day care with the big kids (the 1 year olds). I am very excited for this because they get to go play outside 2 times a day and Abby lives to play outside.

Aunt Sissy was in town for a couple of weeks and we had a lot of fun with her and Jake. Poor Jake is tramatized by Abby, but he is very patient with her.

The Baptism and Fathers day BBQ were very nice. It was fun to see the O'keefe family as well as MOST of Abby's aunt's and uncles and cousins. We missed the Stewart's and Uncle Ed!

We are going up to Tahoe with some friends in a few weeks to hang out and take abby to the beach and have a little belated b-day party for her. We have so many things coming up this summer it will be nice to go up there and relax. There will be 11 of us going and it's a great group!

David is still loving his job. We have been looking at houses to buy again but we can't decide if we want to live in Sac or Roseville. We really like Roseville, but it is just SO far from most of our friends and familyBUT I really like the school that Abby is at in Roseville.

The Colgan family is still hard at work on developing a marketing strategy for MS. My dad and Chris met with a PR guy and he really liked the idea and gave us a lot of good feedback and ideas.

Other than that, I am working on the Blake's Purpose Comittee. This year's tournament will be on 10.17.08 at Catta Verdera again. Check out http://www.blakespurpose.org/ and let me know if you want to play in the golf tourney and/or come to the dinner and live and silent auctions. It was so much fun last year! We are still looking for auction items big and small so if you have any ideas let me know. Last year they raised 350K and were able to hire a full time researcher as well as some equipment.

Here are some recent photos:

I can't get this one any bigger!
It's the simple things...Abby really enjoys pushing this box all over the house!

Wild Woman!

Life is rough...

Abby and her Godparents

These Boots Were Made For Walkin'.....

David and I were so excited last night because Abby (who up until this point walks along the furniture) took 4 steps all by herself! She kept her arms streched out in front of her the whole time and I was SO mad that I didn't have my camera at the time. I don't even think that she knew what she was doing until she sat down and we started clapping!She looked like she was very proud of herself!Now I am sure it is only a matter of time before we are chasing after her.

Other than that exciting news, we are all doing well. We had such a fun Mother's Day. First we went to grammy Nan's for Brunch and then we went to "Aunt" Kerry's house to visit and then on to Grammy Julie's house for a BBQ. Abby had a lot of fun trying to keep up with TJ.

This weekend David and my mom are taking a sushi making class! Hopefully they will learn a lot and David and I can start saving a little money on our sushi obsession if we can make our own. I will also be going to a new yoga studio with my mom early saturday morning. Can't wait to see how it is

A New Friend

We met a family through my friend Meghan that have a little girl that is just a month younger than Abby. Her name is Collette. We saw them again at a BBQ at Meg's house yesterday. The girls are so much alike! It is really fun to watch them interact. Incase you can't tell from the pictures, Abby's new thing is giving kisses, although it's more like eating your face!We will be having a BBQ at our house next weekend with Colette and two other babies! I will take a lot of pictures!

Back to Life!

What a week! I thought that I would use this blog to update all of our friends and family to let you know that we are alive after a crazy week. Abby started school last Monday which is very exciting. She is a busy girl and loves the action and activities there.

Last Tuesday night she woke up at around 11 PM and had thrown up ALL OVER her crib. And then she threw up again and again. At that point I remembered that she had fallen earlier that night (she is getting really close to walking, but doesn't quite have the balance yet and falls a lot) and hit her head. We were worried that the vomiting could be due to that so we rushed to the emergency room where they did a CT scan and determined that she had a concussion. Well, either they were wrong or we got hit with a double whammy because the next day I took her to the pediatrician for a follow up and he determined that she had the flu! Abby was all better by Thursday night, just in time for David and I to get the flu! There is not a feeling worse than having to take care of a baby when you feel so sick and weak. Luckily aunt sissy was in town and she came and took her to Grammy and Grampy Colgan's so that David and I could lie on our deathbed! Thank God for Chrissie that day. I am not sure what we would have done since Gramma colgan got the flu too! Anyways, after missing three days of school and work we are back in action. I just wanted to let you know why we have been so out of touch for the last week!

In other news...David starts his job with the City of Sacramento next Monday! I couldn't be more excited for him! Also, MONEYSCHOOL has officially been launched! The press releases went out last week through a company called send2press. They will distribute it to over 600 newspapers nationwide. It is up to the individual papers if and when they print it. We are so hopeful. If you would like to see the official version go to: http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2008-04-0416-004.shtml

Also, check out the website if you haven't already: http://www.moneyschool.com/

I will keep you all posted on our progress!

Finally!

I have been wanting to create a blog for our family for almost 8 months now (since Abby was born). It's amazing how much free time I didn't know that I had before she was born! I wouldn't trade all of the relaxation in the world for her though! And I know that David wouldn't either! We have been lucky this winter because David has been able to stay home with "the pants" (as aunt sissy likes to call her) quite a bit! He worked such long hours during the summer that it is nice for them to spend some time together now and she LOVES being with her Daddy! So by the time I went back to work full time, David was off more. It worked out perfectly. However, this week David has been back to work (leaving the house at 5am) so we have had to get back into our crazy morning schedule. Abby and I leave by 6AM to get to gramma Julies by 6:30. I HATE waking her up when she loks so cozy, but she always gives me a smile in the morning no matter what. Really if it were up to Abby she would never sleep anyways. She has too much to do all of the time - or at least that is how she acts! She has been crawling, sitting up and pulling herself up since January 12th (gramma nan's b-day) and being the brave women that she is her new thing is to let go of whatever she is holding on to and try to balance on her own. She really wants to walk! Other than our days revolving around work and Abby I don't have too much to report. I finally found a gym that I like and I have been going either on my lunch or after Abby is in bed (or both). I feel so much better when I work out and I have finally figured out how to do it without missing any abby time! I better get back to work. I will try to keep this blog up to date!