Year of Firsts....May

Fifth month into my New Year's Resolution to try one new thing a month.  Once again, talking about this resolution with friends helped me come up with ideas.  I was visiting with my friends Nick and Suzie and we decided to take a cooking class.  The class we chose was "pastas."  As a carbohydrate lover myself, you can imagine my excitement for this class.

We started the class bright eyed and bushy tailed.  How hard could it possibly be?

A little harder than we thought.  Making the homemade pasta proved to be a challenge, and our first attempts were unsuccessful.  Determined to conquer our dough, we put it back through the ringers.  Practice makes perfect, and after about 4 tries, I finally made homemade pasta!

We made Marinara, Alfredo, noodles, ravioli, butter sauce, and a couple other things I can't remember, and I can't find my recipe paper to trigger my memory.  It was all delicious, except the marinara, but I'm not really a marinara kind of girl...

While visiting with Nick and Susie, Nick starting talking about his new gun and target shooting.  While I had shot guns with my brother-in-law in New Mexico, I had never shot a shotgun and I had never shot clay pigeons!  Suzie chose to stay home, but she let me borrow her husband to go skeet shooting.  It was surprisingly more fun that I anticipated.  I started out rough....I didn't even know where the bullets were ending up once I aimed at the pigeon.  I think I was closing my eyes...not the best technique for doing anything while holding a gun.  Round 2 proved to be much more successful!  I hit around 8 out of 20, which I thought was fantastic!  The next couple days, my shoulder was killing me!  It felt like a thousand needles constantly pricking at it, but it was well worth the adventure!

Year of Firsts....April

Most people have already given up on their New Year's resolutions by April, but I was just getting started.  The end of April was approaching and I still hadn't come up with an idea of what to do.  I had a moment of doubt that I would be able to think of something for each month for the end of the year, especially if after only 3 months I was struggling with ideas.  I decided to talk to people at social gatherings and allow other's creativity to help.




















I was sitting at a bonfire and brought up my resolution as small talk.  A girl there said I should try curling.  My first response, "Curling?  Like the Olympic sport on ice that's super boring to watch?"
"Yep!  I compete in a league every week and this month is the last month the oval will be open."
I guess her enthusiasm

convinced me that this curling thing might be kinda fun to try.  Even though this girl backed out last minute on our plans to go curling, my friend Stacey came with me.
I quickly learned that it was much more fun to play than to watch....kinda like baseball.  It's a sport of precision and accuracy.  And I'm not gonna lie, "sweeping" can be kind of tiring.

Our technique is really sloppy but we never fell over, which apparently can happen to people. The purpose of the game is to throw the "rock" down the ice to the target on the other end.  Your teammates "sweep" a path down the ice for the "rock" to follow.  You get points for landing in the target. Pretty simple...but not really. LOL

The purpose of this new year's resolution is to expose me to more potential hobbies.  Do I think curling will become a hobby of mine?  Absolutely not.  Do I think I would have ever gotten out of my comfort zone enough to ever pursue trying such a unique sport before this resolution?  Sure don't.  Needless to say, I'm happy I can say I have tried curling!  Not many people can say that.