The Muse Concert

This past Monday (April 5th) Shaun and I went to the Muse concert at the E-Center. Back in January I won tickets to the show from 101.9 The End. I am really glad we got to go to the show. It was awesome. Silversun Pickup were the opening band, but by the time we got there we had missed most of them(*). The Muse part of the show was awesome though. The light show was really cool and the music was great.

Shaun  tells me after the concert that the whole concert he was trying to figure out how the screens they had work. They had three screens that they projected images onto, but sometime they were see through, so it intreged Shaun. It would be my hubby that would be thinking about how it all worked.

Anyhow... Here are some pictures from that show... Not all of them are the best pictures, but it will give you an idea of what the stage/light show was like.

Shaun and I before the show started

The stage before the show stared

The start of the show (guys walking up stairs...)

This is a bad picture, but this shows how the stage was setup.

Three screens with movable podiums under them

The drummer kept turning and would face those that were behind the stage

Cool lights

Before the show started Shaun pointed these out to me up in the rafters... Giant eyeballs....

I kept looking up there because I wants to know what they were for....

...and at the end of the show (at least the end we stayed for) we found out.

They had confetti inside...

* Shaun and I thought that we had left plenty early for the show, but we turned out being completely wrong. We ended up being about 30 minutes late to the show, due to traffic and the crappy setup of the E-Center. In addition to this it started to snow on our way to the show, so we grabbed an umbrella to try shielding us from some of the snow. Well we get to the doors and they are telling everyone that they have to leave the umbrellas outside, so Shaun decided to take ours back to the car so that we didn't take the chance of not getting it back. Needless to say we are not impressed with the E-Center. Shaun doesn't want to another concert there until the trax line is complete.

Last Saturday's Drive

Last Saturday Shaun and I were invited out to Grantsville to a surprise party for my Aunt Shirlynn's 50th birthday. When we have gone our friends, Tammy and Andy's house in Stansbury Park we have thought about taking the long way, but the weather hasn't always been the greatest and/or we haven't left ourselves enough time to take the long way. It was different this day though. It was a gorgeous day outside and we had the time to take the drive. I am so glad we did! It was really nice drive and the scenery was beautiful! Googlemaps told said that would take us just under 2 hours, but we were able to do it in and hour and a half (and no we weren't speeding the whole way!). We even were able to make a stop along the way! Here is the route we took:

The stop we made was at the Steptoe's military camp. Nothing big, but I was able to take a picture of the gorgeous mountains and Rush "lake"!

After the party Shaun and I decided to head Downtown to walk around Temple Square. I had completely forgotten that it was the General Young Women Meeting that night (seeing as I am not in YW's and that I don't have a teenage daughter..), so needless to say things were a little crazy when we got down there! We were able to find a parking spot though and were able to walk around until it got too cold. All in all it was a GREAT day! I love days that I get to spend the whole day with Shaun! Our night ended with a Foursquare "run", which I will let Shaun tell you about!

A set of Sister Missionaries stopped to talk to us and want to take our picture....

Meatball Souvlaki Recipe

Meatball Souvlaki

By Donna Meadow (Woman’s Day Magazine-Feb 17^th, 2010)

Yogurt Sauce

1 cup plain Greek yogurt                       1/3 cup chopped fresh mint

¼ cup water                                         ¼ tsp ground cumin

¼ tsp garlic powder                              ¼ tsp salt

Meatballs

To cut down on prep time, buy prepared turkey meatballs. Just roast for the last 10 minutes or use the follow:

1/3 cup plain dry bread crumbs             1 large egg

1/3 cup water                                       1 tbsp dried minced onion

1 tsp ground cumin                               ¼ tsp garlic powder

¼ tsp salt                                              ¼ tsp pepper

1 lb lean ground beef                            1 lb medium zucchini cut into ½ in rounds

2 tsp olive oil                                        1 medium red onion, cut into ½ in thick wedges

3 plum tomatoes, cut into 4 wedges       Warmed pocketless pitas

Lettuce (optional)

1. Position racks to divide oven in thirds. Heat oven to 500ºF. You’ll need 2 rimmed baking pans lined with nonstick foil.

2. Yogurt Sauce: Mix all sauce ingredients in medium bowl, cover and refrigerate until ready to serve with meatballs.

3. Meatballs: Stir bread crumbs, egg, water, minced onion, cumin, garlic powder, salt, and pepper until blended. Add beef; stir with fork until thoroughly blended. Roll rounded tbsps into balls; place on lined baking pan.

4. Put zucchini and red onions on other lined baking pan; toss with oil. Place vegetables on top rack, meatballs on bottom. Roast 20 minutes.

5. Remove pan from oven, turn browned vegetables over, then push to one side, and add tomatoes; turn meatballs. Roast meatballs and vegetables 5 minutes more or until tender; toss together.

6. Serve on pitas with lettuce if desired. Top with yogurt sauce

Per serving :363 cal, 31g protein, 17g carb, 3g fiber, 19 g fat (9 g sat fat), 132mg chol, 450mg sodium  

NOTES: We decided that next time we do this recipe that we are not going to add the water to the yogurt sauce. It was REALLY runny. 

Another thing we learned is that you really do need to oil the foil when you line you pans. Otherwise the meatballs just sticks and makes a huge mess out of them.. It also makes it hard to flip them over like the recipe calls for. 

Also, we didn't put in the tomatoes, since neither of us are huge tomato fans and because we couldn't find an tomatoes that looked good.

Meal Planning

Shaun and I have never been really good at planning what to have for dinner or for actually grocery shopping in general, but we have been trying to be better about plan our meals out and then going shopping for the things that we need to complete those meals. We started by making a list of foods we know that we like and then by going  through recipes of things we would like to try making. We plan two weeks at a time and thus far it has been a great things for us. We having been doing this about a month now and it is a lot easier when it comes to dinner time. It is also nice because we are eating out much less (there are those time that making a meal doesn't happen, like the night that my dad got admitted to the hospital and we went to see him) and it is in turn helping us spend way less money.

Each week we have to try at least one new recipe/things we have never personally made that we try. Some of the new things we have tried thus far are Dockside Mexican Hotpot, Meatball Souvlaki, Chicken Enchiladas, Poppy seed Chicken, Corn beef and Cabbage. (I am willing to post recipes if anyone want them) It has been fun to try new foods or things that our parents have made for us that we ourselves have never made. Hopefully we can keep up with this meal planning and that we will get better at it.

Here are a few pictures of the things that we have made:

Meatball Souvlaki

Pork Chop Salad

 Our version of a "Chubby" 

(We made these before we started the meal planning, I just hadn't posted them so I thought I would)

Navajo Tacos

Pi Day 2010

It is (well it was) that time of the year again... Pi Day! We, of course, had a party in celebration. This year Pi Day was on a Sunday so we decided we would celebrate the night before.

 We had a pretty good turn out this year. There were about 20 people that came (a third of those who came were kids). It was a lot of fun. We had The Pie and pie. Everyone who came brought something, which helped out a lot. We had 5 different types of pizza (The Pie's Greek pizza is REALLY good! I had never had it before, but I loved it!), plus yummy cheese stick and about 5 different types of pies (cheesecake, apple, pumpkin, banana cream, and chocolate cream). Everything was really tasty and it was great to be able to just spend time with our friends talking and getting to know each other better. Pi day is never anything really big, but it is still fun to be able to have the party, one that I would have never of had had I not married Shaun.

Another reason I like this time of year is it marks the anniversary of when Shaun and I first met. March 15th  2 years ago is the day that Shaun and I first met in person. I honestly cannot believe how quickly time has gone by. It has been the best two years of my life. I am so glad that things have happen the way that have, because I have never been happier! I look forward to may more Pi day celebrations with Shaun!