24 and 16

I just got up from sleeping 16 hours! That's way too long. I never like sleeping that much. But the reason is because before those 16 hours, I had been awake for 24 hours straight. I got home Sunday morning from overnight ER and then Terry-a, Steve, Seren (their 4 month old), Lauren, and Nick came over to the Island to hang out for a bit. It was great to see them! The food was great: Marcus made a risotto dish, Terry-a made a coffee cake, and Lauren made some yummy brownies. Terry-a told us that she got the recipe from the Barefoot Contessa cooking show, which reminded me of that great Valentine's Day chocolate ganache cake I made based on a recipe from the same cook (see my blog archives for Valentine's day for the recipe!). Terry-a, Steve, and Seren will be going to Northern Italia for a month so Steve can do some research there, Lauren is getting ready to start her new school year (she's an elementary school teacher), and Nick is hard at work rebuilding their house (he is a carpenter extraordinaire). Seren has gotten very big, and we made great progress---she's not crying when I hold her and she's away from her mom! So that was a big step...Steve was inquiring about our carved wooden ibex trophy and I located the website we got it from in case he wanted more information. I brought up the Manwich commercial that always gets stuck in my head, but no one knew what I was talking about. So I've attached the link here to prove this thing exists!