Grandparents With Trey

My parents made their first trip to see Trey this weekend, bringing along my brother and his girlfriend.  They arrived Thursday afternoon and were already visiting with Kim and Trey by the time I had made it home from work.  I took Friday off to fully enjoy their trip with them.  And just as I thought it was over, we may get the chance to see them again tonight, since their flight back was canceled and they can’t get another one until tomorrow.  Eventually when they are back in town, my mom will have a ton of pictures to share, but here are a few I stole from her for now.

Tim And Melissa With Trey

Last night I headed back to Dream Dinners for the second time.  Kim and I first visited before Trey was born so that we could stock up on easy to prepare meals that we could make once he was here.  This plan worked perfectly!  At the start of the week we take a few of the already prepared meals out of the freezer and then use them throughout the week.  This allows Kim to very easily prepare a delicious meal while staying home with our son.  She will be the first to admit that she can easily ruin a freezer to oven meal, but so far these recipes have been so easy to execute.

As an added bonus, everything that we’ve had has tasted wonderful, easily on par with restaurant foods and home cooking.  And since you actually put the meals together in the store, you know exactly what is going into them.  Mostly it is frozen meats as well as frozen or dried fruits and vegetables, along with spices and other condiments.  The quality of all the food products appears to be very good as well.  I would prefer to have some organic options, but they haven’t quite reached that level yet.  However their chicken meat is all antibiotic and hormone free!  I would highly recommend them to anyone who struggles preparing tasty, timely, and healthy meals at home.

The final standings of our work bowling league were finally sent out.  My team finished in second place, which was a little disappointing after leading the league for so many weeks.  We will have a chance to redeem ourselves, as they are talking about starting up another league in a couple of weeks.  I ended up having a combined average of 112 with a 108 handicap.  The league average was 108.625 so I am just slightly above average.  My highest scratch game score was 151, which at the time was a 271 with my handicap.  My highest scratch series was 406, or 766 with handicap.  Total I knocked down 3039 pins in 27 games.  I hope to continue to improve into the next season.

I combined a couple of video clips from Trey’s first few minutes of life.  He was very vocal at the beginning, but once he settled down his eyes were already wide open and taking in his new world.  I repeat, he was very vocal at the beginning, so you may want to adjust your speakers before playing.  You have been warned…

Last week my wife met me for lunch at Costa Vida, which is just across the highway from my office.  Neither of us had visited this small chain that appears to have originated in Utah, so we had no idea what to expect.  Upon arrival I was shocked at how crowded the counter service restaurant was.  Taking a quick glance at the menu, I quickly decided on a chicken burrito while my wife chose the sweet pork enchiladas inside of flour tortillas.  We each followed along the counter as our selections were prepared and we were able to pick the ingredients that we wanted to go into each.   

I opted for rice, black beans, chicken, cheese and what I think was Tomatillo Cilantro Sauce.  It was a little hard to understand  the offerings so I just went with what looked the best.  I also had my burrito smothered, which added more cheese and the selected sauce to the top.  From there the burrito is sent through a rolling oven similar to what you’d see at Quiznos.  And finally some lettuce and pico de gallo was added to the side of the big burrito.  The choices for my wife weren’t as difficult.  The enchiladas come with your choice of meat and cheese and then smothered with Red Enchilada Sauce and more cheese.  The rice and choice of beans (pinto or black) are served on the side and again this dish is garnished with lettuce and pico de gallo.   

Top: Burrito. Bottom: Enchiladas

My first taste of my burrito was filled with lots of sweetness.  This initially threw me off as I had never tasted Mexican food that was so sweet.  I soon realized that I may have been given their Raspberry Chipolte Chicken.  When I ordered I wasn’t given an option on the type of chicken, and I only saw one offering, so everyone must be getting the raspberry flavored chicken.  This isn’t completely strange to me as I often use lemonade when preparing chicken for tacos at home, but the sweetness was very overwhelming in this dish.  Once I found a bottle of Cholula I was able to spice the meal more to my liking.  I’m also thinking that the sauce I had selected may have been sweet as well, since the sweetness didn’t come out in my wifes enchiladas as much as my burrito, and she even ordered the sweet pork. 

We also ordered a side of chips and salsa to go with our meal, and were given an obscene amount of chips (a filled pan the same that our meals came in)  and some pretty good tasting salsa.  I was afraid that the salsa would be overly sweet as well, but it wasn’t.  So perhaps I somehow selected all the sweet ingredients for my burrito, and there are ways to create something that would more suit my taste.  I’m not sure, and I’m not sure I will ever find out.  I don’t go out for lunch very often at all, and I don’t think the restaurant competes with my favorite Chipotle burrito, even though they are quite different. 

Kim’s parents and brother Nick flew into town last night and will be visiting for the weekend.  Their visit reminded me that I neglected to mention some sad news that happened the same day that our son was born.  Kim’s cousin Patrick lost his long battle with cystic fibrosis around the same time as Trey’s birth on Sunday, January 9.  You may recall our participation in the Run Like Hell races the last couple of years, a 5K race on Halloween that benefits the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.  With Patrick’s disease confining him to the hospital so often, these events were some of the few times that I got to spend with him.  Despite only knowing him for a few years, I will admit that he was one of the strongest people who I will ever know.

DIERSING Patrick T., Beloved son of Jay and Denise Ryan Diersing. Devoted brother of Brad (Jennifer Kroger) Teeters and Dennis Diersing. Loving uncle of Riley Teeters, Harley Kist and Emma Diersing. Dear grandson of the late Elmer & Lucille Diersing and Florence & Thomas Ryan. Passed away Sunday, January 9, 2011. Residence Harrison OH. Age 21. Visitation in the John C. Brater Funeral Home, 201 S. Vine St. Harrison OH 45030 Friday, January 14 from 9 AM until time of the funeral blessing at 11:30 AM. Memorials may be made to Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 4420 Carver Woods, Cincinnati OH 45242.

Even with our son being born, I’ve managed to continue to make my weekly hockey games.  Last week my team managed to break a two game losing stream by beating a team full of players I used to play with.  The final score in that game was 7-6 and I scored one of our team’s goals on a breakaway.  Our winning continued last night as we took on the fourth place team in the league.  I didn’t add another goal to my stats, but I did get at least one assist in our 7-3 win.  Prior to the game we were in tenth place out of twelve, but our win should help move us up a little closer to the middle of the standings.

In fantasy sports news, I managed to grab first place in a college football bowl pick’em game.  I predicted 20 of the 35 games correctly and scored 397 points.  This put me in the 77th percentile for all of Yahoo! users, one of my highest finished to date.

I was just flipping through these photos of riots in Tunisia, a country that Kim and I almost visited a couple of years ago.  Tunis, Tunisia was a scheduled stop on our honeymoon cruise, but when we arrived in Barcelona we were told that the stop had been replaced by Palermo, Sicily.  We later found out that the switched the stop due to previous passengers’ opinions of it being dangerous.  I guess they might have been more right than I originally thought.  Or maybe things have just heated up over the past few years.  Interesting to think that we almost went to this place that is pictured in so much turmoil.

Over the weekend I had my first dining experience at the Mellow Mushroom in downtown Denver. When I first heard of this restaurant I didn’t realize that it was actually a chain, and though my wife and I don’t often choose to eat at chain restaurants we decided to give it a try anyway when I found out it was a chain. I must say that I’m glad we did give it a try. It was a great dining experience. We arrived late in the afternoon on Sunday carrying our newly born son in his car seat. We were offered our choice of table or booth, and when I couldn’t get the car seat to fit in the booth we decided on a table. The hostess gladly dropped off a high chair to use to hold the car seat.

Pretzel Appetizer

Immediately upon entering the restaurant I noticed all the beer taps on display in the bar. Even after hearing from our server that Coors Light was on special, we couldn’t resist ordering tastier beers from the menu. I had a Dale’s Pale Ale (one of my favorite pales) and my wife had the Sam Adams Winter Lager. Since we hadn’t had lunch yet, we decided to order an appetizer, a half order of pretzels served with garlic butter and parmesan on top along with a side of marinara. The pretzels were very good and I would definitely order them again, though they appear to be the exact same as their pizza crusts.

Kosmic Karma Pizza

I decided to try the Kosmic Karma pizza with red sauce, mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, feta, Roma tomatoes and a pesto swirl. My wife opted for the Funky Q Chicken with BBQ chicken, mozzarella, cheddar, caramelized onions, applewood smoked bacon and a BBQ sauce swirl. Both of these pizzas were excellent! After splitting the 3 pretzel appetizer I could only manage to eat half of the 10″ pizza and my wife could only conquer one piece of pizza (equivalent to a quarter of the 10″). I was happy to take the leftovers home for lunches this week. We will definitely return to sample more of their great pizza selections and perhaps even the tempting list of hoagies.

Funky Q Chicken Pizza

The last week really flew by!  I can’t believe little Trey is already over a week old and that I am back to work and the daily grind.  Before I dig too far into the work week, I’d like to recap last week.  Trey has been a wonderful baby so far.  He sleeps a ton (though not through the entire night yet) and is a terrific eater.  He quickly gained back most of the weight he lost the first couple of days and should be back above his birth weight by now.  We haven’t got Trey into a solid routine yet, but that should change as the weeks continue to pass.   We made it out of the house three times last week, each time for lunch and an errand or two.  I’m hoping Kim can continue to get out of the house even with just her to get everything ready.  There are already a bunch of photos over on kimandedjr.com, so be sure to check those out if you haven’t already.  Here are just a few of my favorites.