Joe and Steph's Blog

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Christmas Eats

We stayed home for our first Christmas as a married couple. Since there were no kids or other family we decided to focus on our next favorite part of the holidays, the FOOD!

This year I wanted to also start some traditions, mostly food related.

Christmas Eve traditions included crab bisque (Klatt family recipe) and bread bowls. My family always has a pot of crab bisque on the stove on Christmas Day.

Christmas morning we had homemade cinnamon rolls (Alton Brown's recipe) and Portuguese eggs. Christmas night we had grilled asparagus and tomato salad (recipe from my bridal shower), scalloped potatoes (my new favorite food blogger) and cowboy cut rib eye steak.

Cowboy Cut Rib eye from Costco

Joe found an authentic sausage shop in Phoenix. We had so much food on Christmas day that we never ended up making them. They are still in the freezer!

Bread bowls rising

Cinnamon roll prep

Thanks for the awesome baking pan, Kennedy's!

Oh yeah, and Dan came to visit! We went on a bike ride Christmas Eve night to an AMAZING display near our place.

Complete with fake snow!

Crab bisque bread bowl

Christmas morning

Colorado shirt from Cadence!

Dinner!

I'm hoping to keep the crab bisque and cinnamon roll traditions. Even though we didn't eat the sausage, we'll definitely keep that tradition as well. Now we have something from my family (the crab bisque) something from Joe's family (the garlic sausage) and something new (the cinnamon rolls)!

We sure missed you all, but after hosting two holidays in a row on our own we are totally ready for a big old fashion family Christmas!!

Friday, January 1, 2016

Piestewa Peak

We tried to take Dan to Camelback but the lot was full so I looked a the map and saw this mountain nearby. About a 30 minute drive from our house. Trail was busy, everyone wanted to hike on Christmas Eve!

http://alltrails.com/trail/us/arizona/squaw-peak-nature-trail

great city views

Merry Christmas!

X-Mas Lights in Mesa

Sort of a date night, we checked out this exhibit then went to a x-mas beer special at a nearby bar :)

The LDS Church does a huge exhibit every year, there were tons of people, nightly concerts.

Big deal in Mesa! haha

http://www.mesachristmaslights.com/

Christmas Cookies

I can be creative!

so many pecans!

my fav xmas decoration, steph not so much

random - stuffed peppers stuffed with mozz :)

Camelback - Cholla Trail

Another hike! This one is right in town / visible from the airport. We went up the Cholla side for the first time. Still steep but a little more gradual compared to the Echo Canyon trail.

60's maybe? We were both sweating a lot!

mtn shadow

near the top, beautiful skies

the jewish christmas tree

I wanted to bring my hat, didn't know there would be a tree!

selfie!

on the way down

Another great workout!

Lost Dutchman State Park

I took Steph to Lost Dutchman State Park for her first time early December. It is close to the "ole" trailer park I used to live at. We got a early start, nice to have a mostly empty trail!

She was freezing, maybe 40's out?

the layers start coming off as we gain elevation

super steep

bagel reward :)

Top of the basin

where do i go?

sun!

She loved it, def want to go back to do the another hike. They also have camping and mtn bike trails, pretty cool park!

Sunday, December 27, 2015

Thanksgiving in AZ

The Klatts joined us for Thanksgiving, we were eager to use all the new kitchen goodies from the wedding. We had a great day snacking and watching football.