Jordan's 25th Birthday Weekend

We have had a really nice weekend celebrating Jordan's birthday; he is officially a quarter of a century. Jordan woke up to a home-cooked breakfast of pancakes, eggs and canadian bacon before heading off to the dental clinic for the day.  When he returned from school we did just what he loves to do most-read.  We both have our noses buried in books, and have been spending a lot of time reading. Jordan is reading the Game of Thrones series, and I am reading The Girl You Left Behind (both highly recommended).

I took Jordan out for a special birthday dinner to a restaurant that we had never tried, let me tell you it was one that we LOVED.  The restaurant was called Animal.  It was bare-bones and trendy, with no sign in front. This modern meatery served a whole bestiary, devoting its energies to beef, pork, lamb, veal, various birds and even some game animals.  Hey, a man's gotta have meat on his birthday, so we gave it a try and had quite a variety of protein... here's what we tried:  

• Chicken liver toast with caramelized onions

• Barbecued pork belly sandwiches with slaw (these were Jordan's favorite)

• Fried pig ear with chili, lime and a fried egg 

• Shrimp and rabbit sausage spring rolls with wild herbs and green curry

• Grilled quail with plum char-siu, pear, apple, yogurt and pomegranate

The dinner was great and the dessert was very good too- we tried a bacon chocolate crunch bar with salt and pepper ice cream. We finished off the Jordan's birthday evening with opening presents, eating Crumbs cupcakes and watching an episode of Nashville. 

We finished off our celebration's on Sunday at the Nitro Circus LIVE tour where we saw Jordan's mission companion Josh Roberts preform some pretty amazing tricks on bikes and trikes; it was pretty awesome. We had a great weekend, and Jordan had a great start to 25.

Love,
The Hatchs

Welcome to our blog

So this is where it starts, our first blog post.  We have been married just over six months and time has gone by fast.  Being married feels surreal to both of us, and we are lucky to have such great support from our families, and most importantly from each other.  It is so nice to be each others confidants, and we are happy to be partners-in-crime.

We are excited to start documenting our adventures and experiences together and to share them with the people we love.  Hopefully all of you will find our posts to be fun enough to read about, with not too many grammatical errors since mastery of the English language is something we are both lacking.

We have put together a bucket-list of 25 things we hope to accomplish sometime in our lives.  We are looking forward to crossing things off our list and by getting this out into the blogosphere we hope it helps motivate us to live out our dreams (and give us something to write about).  Enjoy...

1. Ride an elephant
2. Read one book a month for an entire year
3. Go on a hot air balloon ride
4. Sucessfully grow a veggie garden; maybe some fruit trees too.
5. Zipline
6. Go to the Masters tournament
7. Stay in a hut over the water in Bora Bora
8. Do a triathlon together (COMPLETED September 2014)
9. Put a prayer in the Wailing Wall (COMPLETED March 2016)
10. See the Rockefeller Christmas Tree lighting in NY
11. Have a 50th wedding anniversary party
12. Safari in Africa
13. Take a couples cooking class (COMPLETED June 2015)
14. Visit 10 countries together (COMPLETED: Mexico, Bahamas, Italy, UK, Germany, Czech Republic, France, Austria, Hungary, Portugal, Israel, Jordan, Netherlands...)
15. Have a flat stomach...as Jordan would say, killer abs
16. Swim with dolphins
17. Vespa scooter in Italy (COMPLETED June 2015)
18. Eat at Sukiyabashi Jiro in the Ginza Metro Station in Toyko
19. Go snow cat skiing
20. Learn to play piano
21. Join the Love Locks bridge in Paris
22. Travel to every continent
23. Go on an extended sailing trip
24. Run a marathon, or half marathon (COMPLETED April 2015)
25. Learn to say ‘no’ to the good and ‘yes’ to the best.

With love,
Jordan and Morgan Hatch