cape cod, take 2!

WARNING: Picture overload coming. (We somehow managed to take over 200 pictures in a mere 3 days, I weeded pictures out the best I could.) :)

Well, we are back from our anniversary cape cod vacation! We had a great time, even in just a few days. This time around, since we had been to cape cod before (though a different part) we had a better idea of things we wanted to do/see, so we were able to better plan out our trip and maximize our time there.

Because there are so many pictures, I will try and keep the words more to a minimum. We'll see how this all goes. :)

I was able to leave work at noon last Friday, so we were able to get a little bit of an early start on our ride down. In theory, it should only take us about 1 1/2 hours to get to cape cod. But especially in the summer time, A LOT of people head to cape cod for the weekends. We saw many license plates from all over, made us not feel like such weirdos with our Washington plates! :) Traffic was not so great, but we survived and were happy to make it in about 3 hours. :)

Having a good attitude despite the traffic.

Daniel, keeping himself entertained.

The sagamore bridge, connecting cape cod with the rest of Massachusetts. :)

We went to a little Mediterranean restaurant for dinner on Friday night in the Truro. Truro is very awkward to say, we asked the waitress and she made it sound easy, but I think it is awkward.

Mmmm. Our yummy dinners. Daniel (well, really we both shared each others) roasted lamb and I had a roasted pear salad. The restaurant was a little pricey, so we were trying to be cost effective in our ordering.

After dinner in Truro, we made the 15 minute drive all the way to the tip of the cape, Provincetown. Last time we came to cape cod we had wanted to try and visit Provincetown, despite it's reputation, but it was about an hour away from our hotel last year. This year, it was only about 25 minutes away, so we knew it was somewhere we definitely wanted to go.

We parked in the outskirts of town, at possibly one of the most scenic places on the cape. What luck! :)


So pretty....

This also happened to be the first landing place of the pilgrims. Now, I am a little confused because I have been to plymouth rock, which I though was their landing place. I will ask Daniel and maybe he can reconcile this for all of us [ME].

We will not include pictures of Provincetown on a friday night as we did not take any as taking pictures would have been inappropriate and most of them would be inappropriate. This little town is incredibly quaint and beautiful, and is normally around 3,000 people. During the summer, the pop. swells tremendously, and largely from the gay community. Walking down main street as a couple on a friday night was disturbing and saddening, as the downtown area was jammed full of hundreds of men of all kinds mingling and jingling with other men. I don't think I saw more than 20 woman there total. We knew this of course going into our visit of course, and we do live in MA, but we were not prepared for the intensity of our P-town D-town experience. To put it mildly, it was quite a shock to the system and further demonstrated what natural law already reveals--that homosexual behavior is not, has never been, and never will be normal. It is an aberration, and to use a coined term, it is queer.

With all of this being said, and to end this difficult section on a positive note, we have never really seen such a beautiful and quintessential-cape-codian-type-of-town, where every building was picturesque to the t. It is mind blowing that humans as divine image bearers can do creative and beautiful things that reflect their status as divine image bearers so wonderfully, yet also do things that are completely sub-human (all sin is) and which completely violate the status and the one whose image they were made in and reveals that something has gone terribly wrong, and desperately needs to be set right. The Good News is that God has done so [see Jesus Act 1: Incarnation, Inauguration of the Kingdom (D-Day), Defeat of the Power of Sin on the Cross, and Defeat of the Power of Death on Easter morning] and that God will do so ultimately and fully on that last day[see Jesus Act 2: The Return of the King, V-Day, Judgment, and the fulfillment of the Kingdom (what is called heaven) for the People of God who have born his image faithfully to their glorification as perpetually perfect and full image bearers (naturally the opposite of the this is the realm of darkness (what is called hell) where the Divine Image has been completely removed and where the wicked become perpetually less human; as to be human is to be made in the divine image)].

And in case you couldn't tell, Daniel wrote those last two paragraphs. Back to Jenny!

I had done a little research, and found out the Race Point Beach in Provincetown is the only beach on cape cod where you can see the sun set into the water! Now all you west coasters may forget, we don't get beautiful sunsets into the water out east, the sun always sets into land over here! But this lovely beach was a little taste of home and the beautiful sunsets we used to enjoy. :)

Scoping out a spot.

Daniel hurrying to touch the water. :)

It feels like the west coast. :)

Saturday we were looking forward to spending the day at the beach!

Our hotel this year was in Eastham, MA, which is right on the start of the cape cod national seashore. The cape cod national seashore is really just like a national park. It is a lot of preserved land, containing ponds, marshes, sand dunes, beaches, etc. It is all quite beautiful, we were happy to get some time to explore and enjoy it!

Eating lunch on the beach...you HAVE to eat cape cod potato chips when you are in cape cod!

Coast Guard Beach


Nauset Light, just down the road from coast guard beach. I have a bit of a lighthouse obsession. :) PS! I just noticed, this lighthouse looks a lot like the one on the cape cod potato chips bag! Even cooler!


Here I am, following Daniel's lead with the side mirror self portrait. It should be noted that my sun burnt lips match my shirt and my earrings! I totally planned that.


A cute little cape cod BOA (we forgot basically everything on cape cod is cash only. we had to make a quick ATM run). Daniel is excited about the cute little cape cod BOA. :)

And Daniel, just being cute.


Oh, and Daniel thought this church was pretty cute. :)

So for dinner on Saturday we went to this fabulous place called Arnolds. It is like the trifecta of cape cod summer time activities. It is a restaurant, featuring what else but deep fried seafood. It has an ice cream stand attached to it. AND it has it's own mini golf course attached too! We obviously partook in all these activities. :)

A very old, very giant lobster. 22 pounds :)

Yum, yum, yum. Our fried food feast. :)

Stuffed (not sick, I promise) after our feast.

Daniel, imitating his picture from our last cape cod vacation.

Sigh...the pictures from last year are making me miss Daniel's short hair. :(

It was getting a little chilly when we were done with dinner, so Daniel grabbed a blanket from our car to keep warm during mini golf. :)

Daniel, being a hipster and using the blanket as a hipster scarf. Isn't he soooo cool? :) We tied in mini golf by the way, for the curious.

And, no pictures of ice cream [surprisingly, we managed to get pictures of everything else!) but we got some and it was good. :)

Exploring the salt pond visitors center on the cape cod national seashore. We had originally planned to spend another day at the beach, but we both got a little (well, Daniel a lot) sunburned, so we thought it best to lay low and avoid the sun. Plus it was overcast. So it all worked out!

Daniel admiring the flora.

And more pictures from our 1.5 mile "hike"...



Daniel trying to resist touching the poison ivy.

And more poison ivy.

Daniel in search of more poison ivy? :) Just kidding.

You can see the ocean in the distance!

admiring the view.

The end of our vacation! :( We actually stopped in Hyannis on our way out (where we stayed last time) and wandered around the downtown for a little while. But the sun came out and Daniel turned into a vampire and couldn't bare to be in direct sunlight. :) We high-tailed it to the car and headed home. Fortunately, the traffic wasn't too bad this time around and we made it home with plently of time to unpack and relax before Monday morning arrived.

Daniel has been enjoying this week off from classes so far, though it is not really a break as he is finishing up other classes. Hebrew II starts next Monday, and the day that ends we fly home to Seattle! The summer is just flying by!

happy 4th of july!

We had a great time celebrating the 4th of July this year. We had originally planned to go down to downtown boston, they have a big thing that they do every year. But with rain originally predicted for the 4th, we made back up plans, just in case. It ended up being a beautiful day, but we went with the back up plan instead. It was a little more low key, and I don't know if all of us were up spending the day in the city. Next year I hope to make it down though!

Side note, I saw this little turtle on the side of the road on the 3rd. Isn't he cute?


I have never seen a turtle just walking along the road before! He hid in his shell when I came by, but after I left he was just mosey-ing along and thankfully went into the grass. Bye Mr. Slowsky!

Our friends Nick and Beck are house-sitting for a family in Byfield, which is about 30 minutes away from the seminary. We had decided to take advantage of the gas grill and big house for our festivities. Daniel and I headed over in the afternoon and Nick began cooking up some hot dogs. We enjoyed a tasty dinner, and even experimented with making some corn on the cob on the grill. It wasn't bad, but I don't know if any of us were crazy about it. :)

Daniel looking especially festive in his shirt. :)

Posing for a picture!

Getting the table all set.

Hi Miles the dog!

Mmm, corn. :)

Gotta love the grill marks. :)

After we finished eating, we went inside for a little while to play some dominoes and eat apple pie.

Daniel trying out a new hairstyle during dominoes. :)

Around 8:30 (well, really once we finished out last round of dominoes) we loaded up into Nick's car and headed out to Salisbury, MA (very northeastern MA, minutes from NH) for their 4th of July festivities. (I think fireworks are illegal in MA, I have yet to see a stand ANYWHERE since moving here. But instead basically every town puts on a fireworks show of some sort. Some on the 3rd and some on the 4th, just to spread out the fun)

We made it to Salisbury in good time but boy did we have a hard time finding parking! The first lot we passed when we came in was closed. The next lot we passed did not have a sign saying it was full, but it was. So we were stuck in the lot for about 15 minutes with a whole line of cars trying to get out back onto the road. Then we decided to try tuning down a different street, which started looking a little sketchy. We turned around but when saw a lot so we decided to check it out. Well, we followed one car and another car followed us, but the lot dead-ended! So we all had to reverse out. The car reversing behind us was quite nervous about going in reverse and was not going very fast. And the guy we followed in had a bad case of road rage of SOMETHING. He must have been in some kind of hurry because he was trying to reverse around us, but there was nowhere to go! Anyway, we thankfully all made it out safely. We finally found a lot with spots still, and it ended up being a great spot, because it was on the side of the road heading out of town, so we were able to leave slightly faster than others. :)

We parked and walked down to the beach where the fire works would be taking place. We walked through a cute little board walk type area, which food stands, arcades, etc. We found a spot on the beach, parked down our chairs and chatted until the fireworks started.

We fortunately sat far back from the water, becse during the fireworks show (and before it started actually) a few people were suprised some waves coming in and getting them wet. Not fun.

Anyway, the fireworks were nice (Beck and I were ooh-ing and aww-ing the whole time).

Ooohh

Aawww

We stopped at the arcade on our way out for a little skeeball fun! Daniel and I thought we did okay, but after spending $2 on games, we only earned enough tickets [combined] for one tootsie roll pop. :) Oh well.

Woo hoo, Joe's playland! I am sure it is cute during the day, but at night it is a little sketchy. :)

Daniel in action

We love skeeball!

We made it out of the parking lot in decent time and arrived back safely at Nick and Beck's house sitting house. From there Daniel and I headed home.

We had church on Sunday, and then a BBQ with our small group after church! It was a BBQ wwekend! :) We had a great time, though we had to leave a little early to pick up our friends Reed and Emily from the airport. We all headed back to the BBQ though in time for some games and dessert. :)

So now Daniel is studying away with his Hebrew (it is his last week of Hebrew I!) and I am going to read the afternoon away. :) We are so thankful for the beautiful weather these past 2 days!! Well, it has been sunny at least (we have had a lot of rain here lately, even some flooding!) but we still havent really hit above 80 yet. Boo - we want summer to get started!!

And, once Daniel finishes his Hebrew final on Friday we are taking off for a little cape cod vacation to celebrate our 3rd anniversary! Yay! We went to cape cod for our anniversary last summer and couldn't get enough, so we had to go back again. We have got to take advantage of cape cod while we are here, right? So anyway, we can't wait. Plus we are staying in a different area this year, so we are excited to explore more of the "lower cape", instead of spending all out time in "mid cape". We are so cool, we even know all the lingo. It is just a quick weekend trip this year, but we have Maui to look forward to in August, so we aren't feeling too jipped. :)

Hope everyone had a great 4th!

Daniel = Betty Crocker

So it is kind of a well known fact that I am the baker in the relationship. :) I love baking, I won't deny it and try to do it as often as I can. I should rephrase that, if I was really baking as often as I could Daniel and I would probably be obese right now. What I really do is look for an excuse to bake, for example; people coming over for dinner, or a gathering/function, or a party/cookout perhaps. Basically, very rarely do I cook when Daniel and I are probably going to be the only ones eating it.

Our friend Ross's birthday was coming up and we were all gathering for an evening of celebration. I took the opportunity to volunteer to bring (i.e. bake) something. Unfortunately, sometime between then and the date of the party I am managed to come down with a little cold or something. Daniel, being the sweetie that he is, offered to bake in my place!

I already had something picked out, so I informed him of the recipe and made sure we had the ingredients. Fortunately, I was already planning on making cookies, nothing too extravagant. I was planning on monitoring Daniel STEP-BY-STEP throughout the whole process, to ensure an edible end result.

Well the little stink tried to surprise me. I was minding my own business, reading on the futon/chaise, wondering what Daniel was doing in the kitchen for so long, when I realized he was starting without me! Baking, unsupervised! Anyway he tried to shoo me away, but I kept wandering in and out, monitoring the progress.

I don't know, maybe it's because I am the baker in the family, but it is just too adorable and funny to see Daniel working in the kitchen. I couldn't get enough of it and had to take a few pictures. Oh, and maybe a video too. :)

Daniel, in action.

Sifting the flour/cocoa power

Kitchen Aid in action

Chopping up the chocolate

Rolling into a log. :) (hmmm, this is starting to remind me of another post involving blueberries) :)

(Please note, the video is not uploading, will try again later)

Anyway, the cookies are wonderful. Loved them. They are basically chocolate cookies with chocolate chunks. But they are perfect, not overly sweet/chocolately! Thought I would include the recipe for the curious. I just googled it to find it online, but I really used Dorie Greenspan's cookbook, which I checked out from the library! I love checking out cookbooks from the library, except you eventaully have to return them. :( But it is a great way to preview cookbooks and try out some recipes at least!

PS - I am testing out "scheduling posts"...so we will see if my experiment works! (I am really writing this Friday evening)

famous folks

Well, I am totally behind the times in posting this. You know, since it happened almost 3 weeks ago. But better late then never I suppose. This is kind of a big deal after all. :)

Anyway, it was a regular Monday evening. Daniel and I had just come back from running and while he was in the shower I was cooking dinner. I hear my phone ring and see it is my friend Rebecca calling. But because my hands are covered in raw chicken, I decide to ignore her call. When she calls again right away, I decided to answer (I actually answered with my elbow, told her I was washing my hands, washed my hands, and then touched the phone. No raw chicken bacteria was spread, do not worry).

So basically, they are filming a movie right now about 2 miles from the seminary, starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, David Spade, Kevin James, and Rob Schneider. Nick and Beck hapened to be nearing the area of filming, saw signs with arrows that said "to the set" and decided to follow them to see what they could see. When they got as far as they could there were some people waiting there with signs who told them that they had heard Adam Sandler would be leaving the set in about 30 minutes.

Nick and Beck rushed home (to get movies for people to sign/camera) and Beck called me, because at first Nick wasn't going to go and she didn't want to go by herself. I was just putting dinner in the oven, hadn't showered from my run yet, but figured, sure! Why not? I kind of assumed there were going to be a ton of people there, I would never really see anyone close up, blah blah blah. Good blog material I figured. :) Daniel, the party pooper, stayed home. :(

Well, we made to the woodsy (mosquito infested) area where they were filming, and there were like 5 other people there. Haha, not exactly what I was expecting. Here are some of our movie star stalker friends. :)


Woo hoo, all set with the movies. Again, I was not expecting up close and personal interaction. All I had with my was my camera and cell phone. Thankfully Beck fetched a little mini notepad from her car, so that is now "our autograh book" that we are sharing. :)

Check out that truck. This is the real deal.

Getting a little excited!

Well, we waited and waited; cars started driving by and we were getting excited! We are pretty sure Salma Hayek drove by and ignored us. We won't hold it against her I suppose. David Spade did say hi to us as he drove by though! (see video, if it ever lets me upload it) And then...

Look! It's Chris Rock! (playing baseball...?!)

And Adam Sandler! (with Beck's hair)

I have videos too, but blogger is being a stink at the moment. Check back letter, hopefully I can get them up. :)

Yay - thanks Nick and Beck for including me! :)