Fifty Seven

Sorry I've been MIA for a while! We are home on leave and about to head up to Colorado. Once we get there and can get a break, I'll update more! Lots to talk about :)
Xoxo,
Hannah

Mini Ice Cream Sundaes

This was our dessert for our mean on Thursday! They were SO yummy and I got tons of compliments on them!
Mini-cookie icecream sundaes.
1 pkg pillsbury Ready to Bake sugar cookies (24 pack-break and bake)
1/3 cup chopped walnuts (I used a shaker of sprinkles instead)
1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup seedless red raspberry jam (I didn't use this either)
1 1/2 cups vanilla bean ice cream
24 fresh raspberries (I used cherries instead)
1 can whipped cream

Grease mini-muffin/mini-cupcake pan. Place one cookie dough round in each muffin cup. Bake 12-14 minutes on 350F
In a small bowl, microwave choco chips uncovered for 80 seconds stopping and stirring every 20 seconds until smooth.
Let cookies cool in muffin pan about 20 minutes or so before removing. To remove-run knife around edges or cookie (I didn't do this because with the pan greased, they came out very easily)
Dip the rim of each cup into the melted chocolate and then sprinkle sprinkles around the edges. (If you were using walnuts, at this stage you would dip the cup into the chocolate and then dip it into the chopped walnuts)
In another microwaveable bowl, microwave jame uncoverd for about 15 seconds until melted. Spoon half a tsp into each cup. (I did not to this step)
Freeze on cookie sheet for about 5 minutes or until chocolate is set.
Spoon small scoops of ice cream into each cup. When ready to serve top with whipped cream and a cherry (or raspberry) on top.
I got this recipe from Pillsbury on the back of their cookie package and it was so very great. I changed it up a bit as the original recipe didn't even call for whipped cream, but seriously, how can I not have that?! I'm sorry I don't have a link for it! I do have a picture though!

Fifty Six

....wow. It's been exactly a MONTH since I last wrote. Holy macaroni. Things have been beyond busy. I leave here in exactly one week from today to head back home before our big move to Colorado. Joshua has finally started the 'clearing' process of making sure that everything here on post is settled and ready for us to leave! I have started slowly packing and our movers will be here on Sept 14th to pick up all our junk to move it to Fort Carson.

We are ready but I have to say it's bitter sweet. Sweet to go home, see family, start on our new adventure in CO, but so bitter to leave these sweet friends of mine and this easy-going way of life. We are happy to get home to the land of dollar aisles but sad to leave this place we call home and these people we call friends. I'm intrigued to see how our Colorado adventure turns out!

When I say this past week has been busy, I mean- it's been BUSY! Let's start at the beginning.

Last Wednesday (Aug 31), Joshua's battalion took a trip to the DMZ in Seoul. We had a BLAST! I love history so when we got to the DMZ and actually saw the North Korean soldiers first hand, I was in awe. We got a look at Propaganda Village and the buildings where the presidents of each country meet to sign paperwork and to have peace talks. We saw numerous monuments and saw the bridge of no return. Amazing. Truly amazing.

The DMZ. North Korea is in front of us. The three soldiers farthest from us are North Korean soldiers. The 3 soldiers closest to us are South Korean soldiers.

South Korean soldier guarding the door to North Korea...as if any of us actually want to go there :P

Propaganda Village

Then Friday, we went with Joshua's unit to Everland theme park in Suwon. Suwon is a city about an hour or so train ride south of Seoul. We went to the theme park and then went to the water park. Was a lot of fun!

The water park

Me in one of the picture places

Joshua and his friends on a ride

Joshua and some of the guys.

Saturday, Joshua and I traveled down to Busan. We hung out at the beach a little and then went to the really big aquarium. It was a lot of fun and nice little getaway.
Sunday we took the train in and I got off a stop early and met some of my girlfriends for lunch and pedicures. We are all slowly departing Korea so we met to say goodbye to one of our girls. :( It was a nice day but sad for the reason we were meeting. Monday (Labor day), Joshua, me and a few friends met up at the pool on post, grilled out and swam. It was a lot of fun! Tuesday, we went to Woobang Theme park which is here in the Daegu area. It was mostly filled with rides suited best for the little ones, but it was a lot of fun nevertheless. We really enjoyed ourselves. Wednesday morning, I had coffee with the girls as the one last thing we could do before any of us left and then that evening, we ate at grill-your-own-steak night at the bowling alley. That was a lot of fun, as well.
Tonight, we are cooking for the guys. Broccoli, rice and cheese casserole as well as 'funeral potatoes' and a new dessert that I'm testing out.... will update with the recipe soon :)
Okay, I've spent so much time writing all this that now I've got to get started cooking in preparation for tonight!
Off I go! Hugs! We'll be home soon!
Xoxo,
Hannah

Fifty Five

One week down and only a couple more to go! Since we have officially received orders, we were able to get Joshua's flight. So exciting! One step closer to home :) We have a meeting to go to before we can figure out what day they will come and pick up our household goods that they will move to Colorado for us. This is all so exciting. I am leaving a little earlier than Joshua so I am about 5 weeks out from my date of my flight :) Woo!

In other (semi-less exciting) news, this past week, I cooked the ever-yummy broccoli, rice and cheese for the boys. This week is going to be a little different. This week, we have a birthday and someone who's leaving. We are doing two cooking nights. Tuesday, we're going to make homemade lasagna with homemade bread sticks (I'm going to try and make cheesy bread sticks) and we'll also have salad and pink stuff for dessert. Then, on Thursday, it's going to be a mix of a going-away party for one of the guys and a birthday party for another. We're going to have mexican food night. Tacos, taco salads and I'm going to try my hand at enchiladas. I'm sure they won't be so fabulous, but that's okay. These boys tend to be easy to impress. lol. For dessert, I'm going to make a flan. Yum! Flan is one of my most favorite dishes!

Anyways, I'll let you know how it turns out! It's sure to be fun no matter what.

This Friday, I went out with some girlfriends to say goodbye to one of the ladies. We ate dinner and chatted for a while. Afterwards, the group split in two. The two ladies I went with found a shoe store that had shoes that actually fit me (Heaven!!!!!) and went to the accessories store nearby. After we had our fill of shopping, we ran and got some Baskin Robbins ice cream. Yum! It was lots of fun and relaxing. These are the memories that I will cherish when I get back to the states and aren't with them any longer. Just silly little evenings, but meaningful none the less. Saturday, Joshua and I had a date night. We went to Daegu, ate dinner, stopped at a little cafe to have some cake (they had red velvet! Yum!!) and then walked around a bit. We ran into some of our friends from Waegwan and so we stopped to chat with them a little. It was a nice night out. I really enjoyed it.

Do I have pictures? Why yes, yes I do :)

The restaurant we ate at. Italy Italy. It's pretty good italian food.

Joshua enjoying his alfredo.

My heart-shaped pizza. I figured it was appropriate for our date night out :)

The red velvet cake we had for dessert!

I just thought this was interesting....I found a "Sex and the City" clothing store lol. It's not legitimate or actually have any sex and the city style clothing, but I thought it was cool that it had the name.

Okay, I'm off to go read some. I'm working on the Twilight series for a while just to get myself back into my 'reading zone'. Will write again when there is more to tell :)

xoxo,

Hannah

Fifty Four

Woo hoo! As of today, I am officially 45 days away from being back home (Joshua is officially 53 days away). We are excited and trying to get everything in order with the Army to make sure we are ready to leave this place when our date comes up and then we can head to our new home... Colorado!

I have been mapping out our route to take to get to Colorado Springs from Austin. Just over halfway in our trip up, we will pass through Amarillo. I, personally, have never been there, so we decided to stay overnight and do a little sight seeing. They have some really cool places that I'm excited about. First, Palo Duro Canyon. I've always heard of it but never seen it. I am beyond ecstatic to know it's just south of Amarillo. The next exciting place is The Big Texas Steak Ranch. It's a large (cheesy Texas) restaurant with a motel attached. I checked prices on the motel and they're pretty cheap, so that's where we'll stay overnight. I think we'll have fun doing the silly cliche Texas things that we've never done before.

Probably the best thing about Joshua is that he just goes along with the silly things I want. He's really flexible and as long as it's not awful, he'll do it. He's so much fun and I can't wait to experience these little things with him.

Other than officially having our orders and trying to get things ready for the big move home, we haven't been up to much. Joshua was gone this past week to a field mission so last week was dead boring. This week, he is home so I am MUCH happier.
I finished the entire new collection of 5 books that I bought. I ordered some new ones to help take up some more time while I'm off work and Joshua is working. I got those in very quickly! So this is my list so far:

Hunger Games-finished
Catching Fire-finished

The Mocking Jay-finished

Sarah's Key-finished

The Help-finished

The Time of the Butterflies

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Vampire Diaries (1st book)

Room

I'm currently working on The Time of the Butterflies. So far, it isn't half bad! Hopefully these books will help hold me until I can get home to America and head to Half Price Books or at the very least, a Barnes and Nobles!

Well, that's all I have for now. Until next time :)

xoxo,

Hannah

Homemade Fresh Peach Jam

I have stolen a recipe. A delicious recipe. From: here. It's a recipe for homemade peach jam.
I made a white peach jam with this recipe and it turned out quite well.
Here are the steps in case you don't want to link over:
2lbs (or 8) peaches
2 tsp lemon zest (I didn't do this one)
2 TBSP lemon juice
2 cups sugar

-Blanch peaches.
[How to: put peaches in boiling water for exactly one minute, no more, no less. Remove and place peaches in cold water bath for one minute, no more, no less.]
-Peel peaches, cut out the seed and cut peaches in to slices
-Put peach slices, lemon zest and lemon juice in large pot on low/med heat.
-Cook for 15 minutes or so until the peaches are soft and juices have been released. Once peaches are soft, smash with a potato masher or spoon. (I used potato smasher)
-Once your fruit has been smashed into mush with small pieces, add your two cups of sugar and stir until dissolved.
-On Med-high heat, bring mix to a boil. Cook for 5 or so minutes, stirring constantly.
-After 5 minutes, reduce heat to low-med and allow to slow cook (not boil) for 40-60 minutes (I did 22 or so minutes).
-Remove from heat and allow to thicken.

Enjoy :)

All of it went as planned as said on the recipe except blanching didn't work on my peaches. Not sure if it was the fact that they were white peaches instead of yellow or if maybe my peaches weren't ripe enough (or overripe). The second thing that didn't go well was the last step: putting it on low heat and letting it stay warm, but not boil. I couldn't get my pot to stop boiling so after 20 minutes, I cut it off and it still turned out very well.. maybe a little more 'watery' than what they wanted it to be, but it's really tasty.

Now for the pictures!

First step, cutting and peeling the fruit.

My lovely chopped peaches!

Peaches in the pot

Slowly being smushed into submission :)

Just before I let it simmer over the stove....almost finished!!

Finished products. Just as delicious as it looks!

xoxo,
Hannah

Fifty Three

This past week and weekend have been so busy. Joshua was gone all week on a field mission and it seemed that no matter how positive or happy I tried to be, every day something worse would come along. By the end of the week, I was defeated so I was happy to have Joshua back home.
During the week while Josh was gone, I had dinner with a friend of mine (whose hubby was gone, too) and her little ones twice. First at our house and then the next night, we ate at her house. It was nice to have someone over to our house since that's such a rarity due to the fact that we live so far away from everyone.
Late Friday night, Joshua and I went to Daegu and saw Harry Potter.... *sigh* Loved it but was so sad that finally Harry was over. All those years of reading and it's finally done.
I have been reading a lot. I ordered 5 new books from Amazon about 2 months ago. When they finally came in two weeks ago, I picked them up and haven't been able to put my books down.
I have read The Help, Sarah's Key and am starting on The Hunger Game series.
This past weekend we went to the Boryeong Mud Festival. Now, THAT was interesting. It's basically just a bunch of people getting together getting really drunk and really dirty. I didn't do much of either. I sipped on my water bottle and got a little muddy. Joshua, however, drank a few beers and got VERY muddy. I didn't get in any of the pictures that we took because I knew how yucky I looked, BUT I'll post some anyways :)
The prison you climb into and get sloshed with mud every 2 seconds..
The aftermath of the prison

The aftermath of the mud wrestling pit

Joshua's face all calico looking from half of the mud drying and the other half being fresh! haha

That's all for now..
xoxo,
Hannah