The Mighty Redhead

Thursday, June 24, 2010

My dad went to Stanford....

June 10, 2010 will go down as a miraculous day in history for our family. It is the day that my Uncle Chris donated his kidney to my dad. After over a decade of living with diabetes and doing dialysis for the last two years, my dad received a new kidney. It has been an extremely emotional journey that has taught our family about charity and what it means to be a true friend.

Thank you to the doctors at Stanford Medical Center, especially Dr. Busque, the surgeon.

Thank you to the nurses who put up with all the twins' shenanigans!

And a huge THANK YOU to my mom for being such a rock! She has been an example of patience, faith and love throughout this whole experience.

I am so grateful I was able to be in California for the transplant. It was wonderful to spend that time with my parents. The surgery went really well and both donor and recipient are doing well. Dad is feeling great and gets to go home to Modesto soon! We are all looking forward to many more healthy years with him!

ps For Father's Day my dad gave all the kids Stanford t shirts. If someone asks why we are wearing them we can respond, "My dad went to Stanford....Medical Center."

#22 Buy a cruiser bicycle - DONE

My birthday present to myself was this bicycle. It makes me happy!

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

30 before 30

I have officially entered the last year of my 20's and have decided I must leave this decade with a BANG!

The "30 before 30" list is one way to make this year an unforgettable one. On the side I have listed the 30 goals that I will meet before I enter the third decade of my life. As part of my motivation I will try to blog about my goals as I work to accomplish them. (I realize that I am not the best blogger out there, but I will try to be better this year.)

So here is to a FANTASTIC year full of adventure!

xo Melissa

Chelsea's beautiful cake with my 29 candles blazing atop!

Friday, March 21, 2008

Girls Just Wanna Have FUN!

80's punk

Ready for a trip to the mall!

Saved by the Bell - KellyKapowski, Zack Morris, Lisa Turtle and AC Slater

Monday, February 25, 2008

Prize Winning Chili

Saturday night was the Northern Virginia Regional Young Single Adult "Chili Cook Off". My roommates and I had decided it would be fun to enter, so the week before I searched for some good recipes and my friend Kayla suggested making this one, a white bean chili. I was excited to try it out since I have never made chili before (other than opening a can of Stagg chili and heating it up in the microwave!)
Friday night was spent purchasing ingredients and it turned out to be kind of a wild goose chase. The 'chipotle in adobo' (yes, that was one of the ingredients) proved hard to find, luckily our local Chevron had it in stock. Who knew Chevron was such a jackpot for mexican/latin food? After putting the beans in water to soak I went to sleep and dreamt of dancing chipotle and jalapeno peppers.
The next day I donned my apron and the cooking began. Chili takes a long time to cook! But it was really fun to see all the different spices and ingredients that went into it. After 5+ hours of boiling and simmering the "white bean chipotle chili" was ready. It had a really delicious, spicy, smokey flavor that I was very happy with.
Sarah was the mastermind behind the presentation which included a red tablecloth, cowboy hat, bandanna and cowboy boot with sunflowers in it. Genius! My mom has taught her well. We got everything set up in the room at the church and then the tasting began. It was so fun to interact with everyone and serve them my chili. And a huge thanks goes out to my team and their grass roots campaign. Chili #24 was well represented and the voters were well informed/educated when it came time to cast their ballots.
The moment arrived and the winners were announced and to our "surprise" we won first place and a $100 gift card to the Cheesecake Factory! We were all really excited to say the least. You'll find us at the Cheesecake Factory this Saturday celebrating the sweet victory!