Jun 24 2009
I just finished the opening weekend of “Yeomen of the Guard”, complete with the ultimate Fan Club… that Howard clan!
My parents, grandparents, grandmother, sister, brother, and brother’s girlfriend arrived around 4:30 on Friday evening. I was in the process of preparing spaghetti and meatballs for 10 when they knocked on the door! I had already made a batch of my Granny’s homemade rolls, with two more pans ready to go in the oven. I had about 4 trays of meatballs, and two pots for the spaghetti. For appetizers, I had made an Olive Salad and Caesar salad, so my starving family started munching immediately. My family was pretty impressed with my cooking skills, so it looks like the Thanksgiving and Christmas practice paid off! We finished up dinner with a Kentucky Derby Pie and coffee. The adults headed to their hotel, I headed to Praise Team practice at BVC, and the kids watched some TV while their food was digesting. By special request from my brother and sister, the kids decided to head to Sky High after my rehearsal. Our jump time started at 10:30 pm… and it was interesting! Matt perfected his back flip (courtesy of Jay’s… we’ll call it coaching, but I use that term VERY loosely), Erin and Brianna raced in and out of the foam pit, and tried to teach Brianna my special seat drop/turn around combination. After a tiring hour of bouncing off the walls (literally), we decided to get some Dippin’ Dots from the concession stand. Matt kicked my butt at DDR before we headed home for the night. Of course, by this time, we were all riled up, with no bed time in sight. We decided to teach Erin how to play poker, and she ended up coming in 2nd place! To be fair, you know it’s bed time when I start pushing ALL IN on EVERY hand I’m dealt…. 
On Saturday, we headed to downtown San Francisco for the traditional tourist day! We had lunch had Crab House, which was AMAZING. Matt, Brianna and I split a whole crab, filet mignon, and shrimp. We’ll post pictures in the gallery with our lovely crab bibs We meandered around Pier 39, drove down Lombard Street, and made a quick crossing of the Golden Gate Bridge. After the San Francisco adventure, we all decided to take naps before show time. My family ate at Il Fornaio in downtown San Jose, and I checked in at the theatre to prepare for the show. The curtain was at 8 for opening night of “Yeomen of the Guard”! We had a full house with a live crowd, and the energy was high. Apparently, in the middle of intermission, someone in the orchestra had a medical emergency. The paramedics had to come and take them away, but they are doing better now. After holding the curtain for about 10 minutes, we finished Act II with a bang! My family loved the show, and we took several pictures with me in costume.
On Sunday, my family attended Berryessa Valley Church with us. I had to head out early for the matinee show, so the men played a round of glof at Shorelinks Golf Course, while the women shopped at Santana Row. We had everyone over for dinner after the girl time/guy time. I had homemade guacamole, chips and salsa, and leftover rolls and olive salad for appetizers. Matt did an outstanding job grilling burgers, two kinds of chicken and a pork loin! It was a great meal with good conversation, followed by a rousing (if random) performance by the Howard kids of favorites from Wicked, Josh Groban, The Secret Garden and Idol winner Kris Allen.
My family left for Texas on Monday morning, and I prepared for an audition that evening. It was GREAT to have my family in town for my California debut, and I can’t wait for this weekend’s “Yeomen” performances!
Jun 10 2009
Matt and I just returned from Dallas, where we spent a lot of family time celebrating high school graduation for my cousin and my sister! Brianna graduated from Hebron, and Joni graduated from Valley View. Bri has been accepted into the Occupational Therapy program at Belmont University, in Nashville, TN. Joni will be attending Clarendon College, doing her basics and preparing to transfer to major in Animal Science. I’m so proud of both of them… they have grown up to be AWESOME girls! It was great to see both sides of the family as well. We also took Matt’s parents out for his dad’s birthday… Happy 50th Bryan! We went to Mastergrill, a Brazilian-style steakhouse in Frisco.
Matt and I spent the entire trip running around to parties and outings with friends and family. I’m always so proud of my friends when we get to catch up, as they all continue to make great strides in their lives. I even headed down to Austin to catch up with a friend for the day, and it was great to see her! Matt should be posting a map of our trip, as we also took a day trip down to Mt. Pleasant, TX. Matt proposed to me in Mt. Pleasant a little over a year and a half ago, so we made the trip to celebrate our one year anniversary. We took the top of our wedding cake (yes, it was a year old), and Matt proposed with a fork! Of course, I accepted, and we had a slice of the traditional one-year wedding cake. Surprisingly, the cake tasted really good, and wasn’t terribly stale or disgusting. We took some pictures and headed home, glad to be traveling down memory lane once more!
Dallas was fast and furious, but I got my Chic-fil-a fix, my Garcia Brother’s fix, my girl time fix, and my family time fix… so it was well worth it! Again, congrats to the class of 2009… we’re proud of you!
Jun 02 2009
Matt and I have been married for one year! We have enjoyed married life, and highly recommend it to anyone that’s found the person they are meant to be with!
We started the weekend with an ice cream date and reminiscing about our dating relationship. On Saturday, I kicked Matt out of the house for a few hours to prepare a feast from scratch. He really likes lasagna, but I never make it for him. I found an amazing recipe for Ultimate Lasagna, completed with beef, sausage, ricotta and parmesan cheese, carrots, celery, tomatoes and several kinds of spices. I cut the recipe in half, and it was still overflowing the 9 x 13 inch pan! I also decided to make some brownies layered with cream cheese from scratch. I stumbled onto the site bakeorbreak.com recently, and let me tell you, I think I’m going to get addicted. The brownie recipe is listed on the site, and it is AMAZING. To be fair, anything with four baker’s squares of chocolate, two sticks of butter, two cups of sugar, and 16 oz. of cream cheese is sure to taste good. Also, to be fair, normal kitchens are NOT set up to make entire meals from scratch! I used all of our mixing bowls and mixing spoons, and I had to rinse them off in the process… and my wimpy hand-mixer almost stopped when I tried to whip the cream cheese! But, fear not, I did eventually get all the components into their respective pots and pans to complete the cooking process. As a side dish, I made fried mozzarella from scratch, which was really tasty. Top that off with ceasar salad and two kinds of bread, and we had a feast! Matt LOVED the meal, which made me very happy. It was a great second day of anniversary weekend
On Sunday, we were up early to enjoy Matt’s anniversary gift. He surprised me with “Man of La Mancha” tickets. The tickets were special, as the musical was to be performed at an amphitheater on top of Mt. Tamalpais. We had breakfast at a cute diner in San Francisco, and caught the 9:00 am shuttle up the mountain. It was foggy all the way up the mountain, but just before we reached our destination the sun burst through the clouds! We later determined that WE had actually burst through the clouds, and that we were above the fog! Matt had packed blankets and a cooler for the day, complete with garlic stuffed olives for me We set up on the stone seats, and headed out for a hike. We hiked to West Point Inn before the show, which was 1.5 miles each way! The show was EXCELLENT, and we enjoyed the view of the bay behind the scenery. We ended up going to bed ridiculously early… it had been a long weekend!
We thoroughly enjoyed celebrating our first year of marriage, and I can’t wait for the next 50 or 60 years with Matt!
May 30 2009
I finally got around to posting some videos on our website! Ashley and I generally take videos whenever we take pictures, but as of yet, they have not made it onto the website. Today, all that has changed. The videos will be embedded into the blog posts, but to quickly gain access to an index of them, you can click the Video Post category link on the left navigation bar. Enjoy!
May 30 2009
For the summer, Ashley and I have decided to train for one of the San Francisco marathons. Our sites are set on San Francisco Marathon at the end of July, but there is also one at the end of October, called the Silicon Valley Marathon. The one in July is coming up pretty fast, so we’re going to have to train pretty hardcore if we want to make it through. We are planning to parallelize the race such that we both run half of the marathon simultaneously, and then add the two lengths together for a full marathon distance at the end.
It wil be tough, but I think we can do it and it will be a really cool accomplishment to have together! Well, I’m off to run my 4 miles for today!
May 30 2009
I have updated the website to the latest version of WordPress. I have been putting this off for a while because I figured it would be a lot of work, but it wound up only taking an hour or so. The admin interface is pretty cool, but I have not noticed any cool new features yet. I really wanted to get video working on the site within WordPress, but I think we’ll have to create a YouTube channel to do that.
May 30 2009
Well, I know I am pretty late in this, but better late than never, eh? I’m going to try to be more diligent in my blogging…
I just wanted to say “Thank You!” to everyone who sent me cards and Facebook messages for my birthday! It truly made my day to see that so many people remembered me on my birthday!
To celebrate, Ashley and I went on an adventurous drive through the mountains to the East, and discovered a very cool little park a mere 20 minutes from where we live. We intend to spend plenty of time there this summer, and in fact, we headed there for Memorial Day. When we got home, we went to the store to pick up some filet mignon, salmon, and some cheese and bread. We also thawed a section of pork loin we had. I fired up our charcoal grill and got to cooking a feast! We ate the filet mignon bloody rare with baked potatoes and creamed corn, with a sampling of the salmon and pork. The rest we saved to eat through the week! It was a great birthday and an incredible dinner!
May 25 2009
Well, Matt and I have officially experienced a home invasion, less than a year into our marriage. Apparently, it’s a normal part of adulthood, a right of passage that lots of people have experienced… we had a mouse in our house! And, good news/bad news, we discovered that it was actually TWO mice 
YUCK. Fortunately, the mice have been gone for about one week, but it was NOT pleasant experience.
About two weeks ago, we were standing in the kitchen before bed, and we heard some weird noises coming from our walls. Matt mentioned that he thought we had something in the walls, but I said surely not. A day or two later, Matt mentioned that he hated to inform me, but we might need to put out some mouse traps, as he thought he’d seen something scurry across the floor the previous evening. Again, I said surely not (note that I was totally grossed out and we put our food away at night and clean the kitchen regularly, so I wasn’t willing to entertain the possibility). A day or two after that, I went to grab some bread from the top of the fridge. I’d just bought the bread, so it hadn’t even been opened… but it the wrapper was chewed through, and half a piece of bread had been eaten! By this point, I was finally ready to accept the obvious. My acceptance resulted in banning myself from the kitchen for two days.
While buying glue traps at Wal-Mart, another lady told me about her face-to-face encounter with mice in their home. She also told me not to worry, we’d get rid of them. I mentioned the issue to my Mom, and she laughed, and said that they used to get mice when she was little because there was a large field behind their house. This is where I draw the conclusion that mice are apparently a rather normal problem. However, I was sheltered from it as a child. I assume that if my Dad found a mouse, he was smart enough not to tell my Mom about it. And, if my Mom found a mouse, she was DEFINITELY smart enough not to mention it to us kids. Sadly, this time around, there was no one between me and the mice
Note to anyone who has mice in the future: GLUE TRAPS DON’T WORK. Buy the old-fashioned ones. I arrived home from the gym and peered into the kitchen leerily. I saw just enough to jet out of the house and call Matt! But when he arrived a half hour later… the mouse had escaped. In the end, we bought the snap traps and caught two mice. Unfortunately, Matt had to kill both of them, as the traps hadn’t actually killed them.
Well, I’m sorry you all had to read such a disturbing post, but I felt that if we had to brave it, then the least you could do was offer a sympathetic, “Ewww….. I hope that doesn’t happen to us!” I too hope that you never have to experience the terror that is home invasion. But, as several people with similar experiences have told me, “It doesn’t really matter if you clean or put away the food. Once they get in, you just have to get rid of them.”
May 08 2009
I’ve been pretty busy lately with rehearsals and job transitions, but I’ve got some time to blog about the recent activities!
I’ve been enjoying rehearsals for “Yeomen of the Gaurd”. The music is really fast and really wordy, but it’s been a fun challenge to work on. I’ve met some cool people, most who do music and theatre as a hobby. We started blocking rehearsals this week, so we’re starting to see how everything will come together. I think the show will be great, and I highly recommend it for anyone in the Bay Area in June!
I’m making a transition from Marketing Manager at Solar Designs, Inc., to a contractor position with UserTesting.com. UserTesting.com offers remote testing services for businesses and website owners. They use a unique recording software to allow audio and visual feedback from a user while browsing a site. They have not previously had an active marketing strategy, so I am excited to help out with this aspect of their business. I would also recommend that you apply to become a tester if you have some spare time! UserTesting.com pays each tester $10 per test, and you can do the jobs at your leisure. If you meet the requirements for the test (age, expertise, etc), you receive an e-mail notifying you about the job. You can choose to accept and complete the job, and pass on jobs that you do not wish to complete. It’s a great source for a little extra income when you have time to complete a test. It’s also a great option if you need quality testing, with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
I’m also preparing for Matt’s birthday and our anniversary! We’re coming up on 1 year as a married couple, so we’re excited to celebrate and reflect on the awesomeness that is life together!