Sara Dyben Photography » nature

Venetian Pool

admin — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 01:38:23 +0000

I visited my parents in Coral Gables this weekend with the kids – we enjoyed a wonderful Saturday at the Venetian Pool - a beautiful new favorite place!

Yum, and other important things

admin — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:54:52 +0000

I made baked eggplant parmesan for dinner. Lordy, it was good. We [see: John] had planned on grilling it (we’ve had it this way a couple times before and LOVED it), but since he had praise band rehearsal tonight I decided to embark on a little adventure. Said adventure took me all the way from my computer upstairs to the printer downstairs, which was temporarily placed on the kitchen counter oh, about 6 months ago probably. It’s really not in the way, so I think I’ll keep it there until I find a better place for it. So, in going to the printer I ended up in the kitchen, to the destination of my journey. [Danielle, don't worry, you didn't miss out on anything during this journey.]

Before printing, I had looked over a few recipes that looked yummy, but they all involved frying the eggplant before baking it, and honestly I just didn’t want to make that big of a mess tonight. I finally landed gold. Fully oven baked eggplant parmesan. Eggplant baked, then added to a dish of yummy spaghetti sauce (thanks Granny and Grandpa) and loads of mozarella cheese, and then baked again. Speaking of cheese, WHY do recipes always call for half the amount of cheese that should be added to any given dish? I just don’t understand. Also, speaking of the spaghetti sauce, and why I thanked my grandparents, I should tell you – we are territorial about this sauce. It is good. It comes from an Italian restaurant in Tampa (where my grandparents live). Lordy, it is good. John and I can clean out over half a jar (yes, a normal sized spaghetti jar) in one meal. Tonight, we did just that. Wam bam, thank you mam, we love spaghetti sauce.

ANYWAY, all that (whew!) to say: IT. WAS. GOOD. A homerun. A slamdunk. A winner (not a winner winner chicken dinner). It was good. We didn’t even need to eat anything else, like a fruit or a vegetable (sorry mom). It was yummy.

That, my friends, is the greatest story ever told. Right?

Knock. Knock. This Thing on?

Just because posts are better with pictures (this one happens to be taken at one of my favorite places):

Here. Now.

admin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:07:29 +0000

United Methodist Capital of the World

admin — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 02:11:56 +0000

Lake J. Where there are more retired preachers per square inch than anywhere in the world…I’m guessing. It has to be true.

Many, many childhood memories of visiting here – playing games fireside, feeding the duckies, and figuring out that leaves change colors (we lived in Marco Island at the time, even further south than I live now, and the leaves most certainly did not/do not change colors).

A Postcard

admin — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 05:14:44 +0000

I would love to get this postcard. Of course, I edited a picture from earlier this month to look old(er). Chicago is a beautiful sight! I visited briefly for the Willow Creek Leadership Summit with our management team at work. We got to spend some of Saturday in the city-afternoon rain put a damper on other touristy/sight seeing plans. We did manage to catch a boat tour of the river/lake before it rained – what a sight to see. I look forward to future windy city visits (the nickname, by the way, came about for reasons having nothing to do with weather, but as a result of the fact that the people trying to develop the city never ran out of something to say).