HOLIDAYS!! are coming.

So, I've been super busy lately. But I'm not dead. :) Here is some Christmasy cocoa in a sweet mug from the grandparents in Lakewood and a banana browned butter muffin. Mmm. :)

Thanksgiving

I don't actually have many pictures of our Thanksgiving, mostly of making gingerbread houses. But I'll still share.

Rhonda and Michelle got in on Tuesday. I taught class that night and Shannon when with them to buy some more food. Then we did some prepping for Wednesday and Thursday.


Wednesday evening everyone else came in. Jenette and Chris (with their new Kia Rondo) came down and we ate at Asahi. It's a sushi place that is close to our house and usually really great to eat at. Friendly service, good food, good prices. But it sucked on Wednesday night! They never took Chris' order. Then they came out about 5 minutes after we ordered and told us the kitchen was closed (it was just about 9:15 and they close at 10:00) so all we could order was sushi. Well, not everyone was eating or would eat sushi.

After our sushi came we started to eat and around 9:40, they actually started to shut off lights and get ready to go. Service just got worse the later it got. She stopped asking if we needed things and didn't hear when you asked for stuff. It was crappy. By the time we left, right around 10:00, I think all of the cooks and most of the other staff had their jackets on and bags on their shoulders and were waiting by the back table for us to leave, so they could leave. Yeah, that sucked.

Besides that... Mom, Maria, Jayme, Charles, Nikki, and Hendrix came in later Wednesday night. We finished up some cooking/cleaning and headed to bed.

Thursday we had some soup for lunch. Everyone but Mom and I went to Hunter park and played for over an hour. They had fun. At one point I called Shannon and asked what he was doing "Putting out a fire." I was rather surprised and asked him about it. It turns out he and Nikki were playing. No real fire.

After soup lunch, we had an assortment of appetizers, cheese, fruit, crackers, home-made Chex mix, spinach-artichoke dip, garlic cheese ball, raspberry cheese ring, and some other random things.

Then we eventually finished the actual dinner and at around 7:30. Everything was tasty! We have so many left overs (still). But it was a good time. After dinner and desserts, we just hung out. Maria decorated Hendrix's hair, too.


Then Friday came, there was more food to be eaten, some Garden Ridge shopping, but no other Black Friday shopping adventures. The main event on Friday was making gingerbread houses. Shannon and I baked all the pieces earlier in the week and then we assembled and decorated them on Friday.


And the houses...

Shannon's: Red and green and lots of it!


Nicole's: I stuck with red and green and basic.


Maria's: Its about the accessories. A dog, snow angel, snowman, and Jeep.


Michelle's: She has a very cute snowman.


Jayme and Nikki's: They worked together to make it all! Chimney and dog with the head that fell of a few times.


Charles': He made a sled with Santa and a jolly man actually inside the building.


Mom's: Lots of color and cuteness!


Jenette's: She made a deck and the window on the backside looks into the house showing the Christmas tree.


Chris': Nice thatched roof and friendly little man in the door.


Rhonda's: Covered in candy! No gingerbread showing.

Pre-Thanksgiving Photo Tour

Before I post about Thanksgiving, I've finally got some pictures of stuff since Halloween. So here is a picture tour of my past month.

Our house all Halloween-ified.
Playing safely with sticks on the swings at Jayme and Charles'.
Baby bellies at about 15 weeks.

Playing with Maria and her dog Hendrix at Hunter Park.
Most of Thanksgiving dinner before we cooked it.

My blister about 1 stage before I accidentally popped it. It was even bigger than this when that happened.
But then while washing dishes, I shook my arm and the blister popped. Now it looks more like this. (for some reason it keeps rotating the picture, but you still get the idea, much better.)

Weekend Adventures

*I had this posted last week, but with fooding with family, I decided to take it down until afterwards. Now that that is done, here is the post! again*


I enjoy having fun-filled weekends. Since the work week is always the same thing, day after day, it's nice to spice things up over the weekend.

After spending time at Riverdance and dealing with our car last weekend (by the way Jenette, Chris, Newgen, and Andrea, I belive we were in the wrong seats b/c someone else was in ours), this weekend we stayed home and spend time with Maria.

This was the third time she's been to our place. She helped us move in, and spent the night when we went to New Jersey last November for Teresa's wedding. So it has been a little over a year.

She came in Friday and we showed her around work. Then we used her Durango to pick up our tv stand. We brought it back and set up our new tv on the new stand!! It's wonderful! The tv is nice and now the cable works* and our room is so useful! The couch is marvelous the tv is great. It's nice!

We watched movies, hung out with Hendrix, played games, went to the park, ate out, cooked at home, and just kinda chilled. She left Monday morning because she had work. No fun.

Well, even more no fun. I was making Shannon and I some Maple Malt-o-Meal for breakfast after she left. It had been cooking in the microwave for 3ish minutes. I went to take out to stir, and spilt it. All over my left wrist. It. Hurt. A. Lot.


I cried (and I don't cry often over pain). It sucked. I soaked it cool water for a good while. Shannon went to the store to buy me some gel to put on it. When he came back, I put it on and put some lose gauze over it. Then I layed down on our new couch with Shannon and watched some tv. Trying not to think about the burning pain on my wrist.

Eventually the pain stopped and we made some gingerbread for houses on Friday. Then we make a huge list for Thanksgiving and went shopping. We got almost everything we need, it ws 300$. :) That was a lot. But really, Figure it'll be around 375$ with everything (turkey and bread and all) for about 3 meals worth of food. We got stuff for lunch on Thursday and for Thanksgiving dinner, and for dessert, and for breakfast on Friday and for making gingerbread. (6$ in molasses!).

I am SO looking forward to seeing family and eating food and having off of work and making gingerbread houses! I love the holidays!

*The cable would have worked when we first tried on Friday evening if the cable guy who came out when we moved in turned on ALL the cable and not just one of out connectors... Oh, Oklahoma.

Today I went to the doctor for my burn. He gave me some ointment to put on it. I'll go back in 1 week to make sure it's all good.

Okay, the picture below is kinda gross. So if you don't want to see my ugly blister (that is now HUGE) don't scroll down. If you want to be grossed out, then go ahead. It's quite huge. (like 1" by 1.75"...







.






really, you don't have to look.














.















but if you want to.....












.











here it is!!

Panera Bug

Meet the little fella who was chillin' in my Chicken Salad Sandwich lettuce at Panera. Iew.

A Cookie for Free

Shannon and I have now been at our new jobs for 92 lunches. Of those 92 lunches, all but 2 have been eaten out. And those 2 that were ate here, were catered by Pei Wei and Hideaway Pizza, so no brown-bags.

For the first month we ate somewhere different every day. Then we ran out of places (or so we thought) and started to repeat places we liked. About two months later we were down to only a few restaurants, Panera, Qdoba, Bill & Ruths, Hideaway, and an Groening handful of others.

Then we drove down 11th Street. We found an Arby's and a Rib Crib. Eh. Not anything great, still.

Then we drove a block or two south of our usual on Peoria. We found great. Two places, The Blue Moon Cafe and The Crusty Croissant.

The Blue Moon Cafe is a small joint with some good breads and awesome sides. There is a great atmosphere there and it feels clean.


The Crusty Croissant is another uber-winner. We ate there today and I would go back tomorrow. The croissant tasted great, the fruit was fresh, the loganberry limeade was awesome, the worker was so happy and helpful. It was just a fabulous lunch. After eating I went to get a Snickerdoodle cookie for Shanno and I to split. She gave me two, for no apparent reason. Then she asked if I'd like a to-go drink, at no charge and if my husband would like one too. It was great.

Well...

As you may know, I've been working on my Masters, oh about all the time. Shannon and I get to school at 7:30 and besides my hour+/- long lunch I am on campus (usually in my office) until at least 9:30. Today it'll be about 10:15. Today is also the only day I didn't spend the whole time coding and writing. Instead I graded my student's exams. I still have a report that they turned in 2 weeks ago to grade, but that'll get done some other night.

The 14 hour long days have been paying off. I've gotten a lot done. But still a lot more ahead of me. Shannon helped out the efforts today by delivering a survival package consisting of a 12-pack of Coke, a Powerade, an Arizona green tea, a loaf of bread, some soup at hand, some Hershey's kisses, a Twix bar, a Powerbar, an apple, and some Nutrigrain bars. Now, don't worry, I didn't eat it all today. Only about half of it. :)

The food helps, the support helps, the times then the code works helps, there a lot of help involved. I can't possibly let it all go to waste, now can I?

Keep on Giving

With our arrival to Wichita came, well more good times! Mom, Jayme, Nicole, Maria, and her boyfriend Matt were out taking advantage of some Black Friday sales when we got in. So, when they got home, we had some dinner and then played some games, some Wii game called Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party. Not so surprising. It was great fun, as usual. But we did get tired and then had to go to bed.

Saturday we woke up did some things. One of which was go to Target and get some food for us to eat and for Jayme to cook with. When we got back, Jayme did a lot of cooking, and we eventually did a lot of eating. But before that happened....

It snowed in Wichita too! So what did we do? Put Nicole in a snow suit and took her out to play.


There wasn't much snow, less than an inch, and it was already starting to melt by the time we got out there. But it was great. Nicole ate some snow. Mom and Nicole made a snowman. Nicole ate some snow. Jayme and Maria made snow angels with Nicole. Nicole ate some more snow. It was rather entertaining. See for yourself.

She just laid there and let her mommy move her appendages. It was very cute. Nicole could hardly walk right in the snow suit.

After the snow, we came in and eventually had dinner. Jayme made a cranberry turkey which was injected with some flavor and stuffed with some really sweet cranberry stuffing. She also made sweet potatoes with bananas. It was actually really good. But the best tasting thing was the turkey salad. She used left over turkey from real Thanksgiving and made this awesome tarragon turkey salad. It was very very good.

Eventually, we let our tummies settle and then had some dessert. Jayme (that little cook) made pumpkin pie from scratch, a chocolate filled chocolate cake, a blueberry cheesecake, and some amazing cranberry apples. They apples were the best dessert. They tasted great.

It was a good time. Saturday we played some games with Mom. Then Sunday we took some pictures for Mom of her three girls. We haven't done that since I was about 9. We eventually came home, with Maria packed in the back seat. Now there are two weeks and finals left of school. It's exciting and scary at the same time.