Santa Fe, here we come!

Well, in about three months. Darby and I decided we wanted to take a little trip together over Spring Break this year. We had so much fun on our honeymoon and are really wanting to travel a lot together before we have kids (which will hopefully be a very long time). Right now we can't really afford plane tickets, so our destinations were limited. Neither of us has ever been to Santa Fe and we thought it sounded like fun. We'll be staying in a little guest cottage near the Plaza. It's much cheaper than a hotel and is decorated in the "authentic" Santa Fe style. It has a full kitchen which means we can cook our own meals rather than spending tons of money on eating out all the time. I just made the reservation this week, and now I'm getting so excited!

Thanksgiving Highlights

- eating a cinnamon crunch bagel at Panera with Darby's parents
- used book shopping at Golden's (even better, we got to use his parents' credit)
- doing all of our laundry for free!
- having my brakes fixed by Darby and his dad
- getting two throw pillows that Darby's mom made out of his grandpa's old ties
- PUMPKIN PIE!!
- Black Friday shopping with Mom and Hannah ($14.75 jeans at Old Navy!)
- dinner at Cracker Barrel with all 4 of my best high school girlfriends
- many rounds of Outburst with my family
- a visit from my crazy cousins on Saturday night
- having Darby help decorate our Christmas tree for the first time
- eating at Double Dave's with both of our families after church on Sunday

All in all, I thought mine and Darby's first major holiday as a married couple went well. It was a little hard to adjust to not seeing my family on Thanksgiving Day, but I am blessed with great in-laws who make me feel welcome and loved. The difference in our two houses is incredible, though. It's kind of like My Big Fat Greek Wedding (I bet you can't guess which family is which!) We are so lucky to have families that are both wonderful in different ways.

The end of an era...

Every year, sad as this may be, I feel like the Christmas season has begun when Starbucks releases their holiday menu. I know that technically you can get a peppermint mocha any time of the year, but I only like to order it when it's "official." On Saturday, Darby and I went to Starbucks, and it was all decked out for Christmas. Of course, I got really excited. So much red! So much glitter! I noticed they had added a new drink to the Christmas menu...a peppermint WHITE chocolate mocha. Of course I had to try it. However, when I got it, I couldn't even drink all of it because it was SO sweet. My coffee-addict husband has converted me to the dark side! Now I actually prefer regular coffee with just a little milk and sugar. I know it's a good thing nutritionally and monetarily, but what's Christmas without peppermint mocha?

A nerdy Halloween

Darby's friends decided to host a little Halloween party this year. Of course, we had to go all out on our costumes. Darby came up with the idea of being Tetris pieces, since we both really like that game. He worked so hard on our costumes, and they were awesome! They turned out much better than I had imagined. Everyone loved them, but we couldn't keep them on for very long because they restricted our movement and vision so much. Plus they were hot! We had a lot of fun; I'm so lucky to have a husband who's willing to spend hours making crazy costumes for us!


Me and Darby


Me


Darby

Yum-o!

Friday was Fall Break for ACU students, so I took off work to spend time with Darby. I decided it would be fun to make a "fancy" meal and serve it on our china. I picked a menu from my Rachael Ray cookbook. (It might not meet some people's standards of fine cuisine, but it's definitely more complicated than my normal casseroles).

The menu consisted of:
toasted ravioli with tomato-basil dipping sauce
seared pepper steaks with marsala sauce
roasted asparagus
individual chocolate lava cakes with ice cream

It was delicious, if I do say so myself. Here's our beautiful table:



And here's what the kitchen looked like after I got done cooking:


Aaahhh!!



Needless to say, we spent a lot of time after dinner doing dishes! It was worth it, though. Next time, I won't cook the steaks so long; they were a little overdone. But Darby was such a sweetheart; he insisted they still tasted great.

I did A LOT of cooking Thursday and Friday. Thursday night, we had our friends Laura and Dan over for dinner, and I made fajitas and a fiesta rice dish. Friday, we baked an apple cake to take to our friend in San Antonio and then I made our big dinner and dessert. We have a lot of leftovers for this week, which is a good thing, because I still have to make treats for a Halloween party on Wednesday. I love cooking and baking; if only I could cook without dirtying more dishes!

Every Sunday night, I watch Desperate Housewives while Darby works on his homework. Usually, he goes in the other room so he can concentrate. Lately, though, he's been staying in the living room while I watch. Last Sunday, he admitted to me, "You've kind of got me hooked on this show. I really want to find out what the new woman is hiding." Yes! Further proof that this show is irresistible. I had actually planned to stay away this season since my girls that I used to watch it with are gone. But then they had to end last season with a big cliffhanger, so of course I tuned in "just to see what happened." Now, I'm hooked on this season, as well. It's a vicious cycle.

***

It's actually cold this week! I love fall, and I'm so happy that it's FINALLY here. I love pulling out my jackets and sweaters, sleeping without the air conditioner on, drinking hot chocolate, wearing scarves, eating soup for dinner, and starting to think about Christmas - only 2 months!

I hate Wednesdays

Okay, I need some help. Wednesday is consistently the worst day of the week for me. I wake up dead tired, without even the consolation that the week is almost over. Every other day of the week, I have something to look forward to. Mondays, Darby and I watch Headlines on Jay Leno. Tuesdays, I get to practice the piano. Thursdays is The Office. And Fridays are, of course, Fridays. We do go to church on Wednesday. But it's hard for me to get excited about that. I enjoy seeing everyone at church, but by the time I get home from work, cook dinner, clean up, and make it to church, I'm usually worn out. What's a fun, cheap routine I can have on Wednesdays to make me look forward to the day instead of dreading it? I don't want to hate a whole day every week.

Girls' Weekend

I had a great time hanging out this weekend with my Fat Tuesday girls. We got to Kalyn's house in Frisco about 10 on Friday night, and she had a bunch of yummy snacks waiting for us. We ate and caught up until about 2. Saturday morning, we got up and went to Le Peep for breakfast. I had blueberry pancakes, which were delicious:

These aren't actually my pancakes, but I didn't take a picture, so I found some similar ones online.

After breakfast, we went to a ginormous mall and shopped, shopped, shopped. I didn't purchase much, mainly just drooled over all the clothes I couldn't afford.

Then, we went to the Cheesecake Factory, where I had a slice of my all-time favorite - Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake.

Yummy! It doesn't get much richer than that.

We walked off our cheesecake at IKEA, then went over to Carolyn's apartment in Lewisville. After a slight detour through downtown Lewisville (we meant to do that!), we headed back to Frisco for pizza and Wii-playing. Here's a shot of Erin in action. What a bowler!


And here's all the gals (minus Em).


Here's how Em spent most of Saturday evening.

And they make fun of me for going to bed early! Ha!

On Sunday morning, Kalyn got up and cooked us a big breakfast (That girl is quite a hostess!), and then we headed back. It was a great weekend to catch up with my girls, but I sure was glad to come home to my wonderful husband!

Fat Tuesday Reunion!

It's Friday! Yay! And I am super-excited about this weekend because we are having our Fat Tuesday reunion. Brittany's coming down to Abilene today, and she, Erin, Em, and I are going to drive to Kalyn's house in Frisco, where Carolyn will also meet us. It'll be the first time we've all been together since my wedding, which didn't really count because it's not like we spent much time together. We're going to spend the whole weekend shopping, chatting, playing games, and, of course, eating. (We call it FAT Tuesday for a reason). I'm so excited to catch up with everyone. I've missed our weekly meals so much. I'll post some pictures of the mayhem when I return.

Lately, I have become obsessed with cooking blogs. Why did I not discover these before? They combine my two favorite pastimes - cooking and reading blogs. Two I really enjoy are The Pioneer Woman Cooks and Smitten Kitchen. Both are very entertaining, in addition to having great recipes and photos. If you like cooking, go check them out. You'll be hooked. Every time I read them, I want to go cook something right then. Of course, I'm also the type of person who could flip through a cookbook for hours without getting bored.

Happy Fall!

I know the beginning of fall was really Sept. 22nd or something, but I think fall officially begins October 1. I got out my Halloween decorations this weekend, and they make me so happy! Here are my favorite things about fall:


Candy corn! This stuff is awesome! It looks cute, and it tastes even better.


Caramel apples...yummy! The perfect combination of sweet and tart, and so deliciously messy.


Friendly ghosts...they look so cute and not scary at all.


Pumpkin pie with whipped cream...there's nothing more to say.

Is it sad that most of my favorite fall things are food? Probably so.

There is one thing I really DON'T like about fall - allergies. Mine are horrible right now as are pretty much everyone else's in Abilene. If those will clear up and the temperature will drop about twenty degrees, fall will be pretty much perfect.

What I did this weekend...

Yes, it's a puzzle. Jealous? Darby and I are such nerds. We love puzzles, but we have a hard time finding ones that we like. We only like ones that have lots of distinct sections, not 200 pieces of sky. We went to Frontier Texas a couple of weeks ago and spotted this one in the gift shop. We've been waiting for a free night to put it together. Usually we work them straight through, but this one took both Friday and Saturday. So that was pretty much our whole weekend. Yeah, we're that cool.

On a different subject, Darby made a 1400 on his GRE!!! He would never announce it to anyone like that, but I figure I'm allowed to brag on my husband. So our grad. school prospects are looking pretty good. Yay!

Discovering Grandpa

I just recently got to know my Grandpa Rod. He is my mom's stepdad and was married to my Grandma Trish before I was born, but I never really knew him until a few years ago. Growing up, we didn't spend much more than one day a year with him and Grandma Trish because my grandma had a somewhat strained relationship with my mom and her sisters. I have to confess, I never really thought much about Grandpa Rod. He seemed nice enough and collected model trains, which was cool, but I didn't mind that I knew so little about my own grandpa.

About six(?) years ago, Grandma Trish and Grandpa Rod moved from Dallas to Eddy, a small town about 15 minutes away from Waco. Our family all wondered how that proximity would change our relationship with them. We started spending more time together, and all of us grew closer to them, but I think the focus was more on Grandma than Grandpa. In January of 2005, Grandma Trish passed away after battling lung cancer. Shortly after that, Grandpa Rod discovered that he had cancer, too. My mom quickly assumed the role of his primary caregiver, driving him to appointments, making sure his house was clean, etc. All this meant that we started seeing a lot more of him. And without my grandma around, things were more pleasant. Sometimes it was awkward, having this grandpa we barely knew, but it was also really nice, since our other two grandpas died when we were all little kids.

Grandpa Rod had fascinating stories about his time in the military and other adventures. He was extremely smart, having worked as an engineer most of his life. Besides his love of trains, he also was an avid star-gazer. His declining hearing made it somewhat difficult to carry on a conversation with him, but I enjoyed listening to him tell stories. Like me, he was a reader and always had a recommendation for me. When I visited him in August, he loaned me Water for Elephants, which a friend of his had just sent him. He really liked talking with Darby, a fellow scientist, and when he found out Darby was wanting to buy some tools, he gladly gave us a bunch of his.

Grandpa Rod died on Saturday morning, the cancer finally taking its toll. My mom and his daughter Tracy were with him. I'm glad God gave me the opportunity to get to know him better before he died. Grandparents are a true blessing, and I have been blessed abundantly.

True Confession...

After I post my blog entries, I always go back and re-read them. A lot. I guess I just find myself fascinating :)

In other news, I have my first modeling gig tonight. That's right. My friend Em works for a bridal boutique, and they have a bunch of older dresses they are trying to sell on eBay. So I get to model them for the pictures. After people see how great the dresses look on me, I bet those babies will sell like hotcakes! Haha!

Home Sweet Home

As promised, here are the pictures of our apartment (finally!) I've been meaning to post some for a while, but I kept waiting until we were done decorating. Well, we're still not totally done, but I decided we're close enough, so here goes:


Half of our living room. It usually doesn't look this dark, but I took the picture in the evening when it was raining. We got the slipcover as a wedding gift, and it fits much better with our stuff than the blue and white stripes did.


The other half of our living room. Sadly, we have nowhere to put our desk, so it has to go in the living room. We're hoping to get a nicer desk at some point, but we got that one for $10, so you can't beat that. We bought the TV stand at Target with our gift cards. It was hard to let go of the old Wal-Mart entertainment center, but we managed :) Please notice the long antenna ears. I meant to put them down for the picture, but I forgot. That is definitely one of the downsides of not having cable; those things are tacky!


This is our little dining area. We can't fit all four chairs, so we keep the other one at the desk and just pull out the table if we have people over. And yes, I actually use my placemats. Aren't you proud?


Darby and I bought these shelves and cabinet at IKEA. Even though Darby nearly killed himself hanging those shelves, we've really enjoyed having the extra storage space near the kitchen.


Part of the kitchen. I LOVE my Kitchen Aid mixer! And Darby and I are pretty happy with the way our mugs look hanging from the cabinet. I like how the kitchen has a bar area that looks into the living room. Even though the kitchen is tiny, I don't feel closed in.


Our bedroom. The shelves are another IKEA purchase. Also, notice the dirty clothes peeking out of the hamper...I guess I should do some laundry :)


Our bed. I absolutely love our bedding! We made the headboard out of plywood, batting, and fabric. I think we're going to recover the middle panel, though. We tried to tie in the fabric from the curtains and pillows, but I think it looks a little out of place.


The awesome curtains Darby's mom made for us. They look much better in real life than they do in the picture. And when they are loose, they block out tons of light, so we can sleep late on Saturdays. Yay!

I tried to get a picture of the bathroom, but there was no where I could stand and get a good picture. It is blue and brown, just like the rest of the house. We reeealllly like blue and brown!

Well, hopefully that gives you some idea of where we live. It's not much, but we really enjoy it. Of course, if you really want to see what it looks like, you could always come visit us. But, you'll have to find somewhere else to sleep, because obviously we don't have room :)

Isn't it ironic?

Yesterday at work we had an all-staff meeting. It was supposed to last from 2 to 4:30, but it ended at 4. The president of the university told us that we could all go home, and that hourly-paid employees could still enter that they worked until 5. I was so excited. I NEVER get to go home early. So I went back to the office, gathered up my stuff, and shut down my computer. As I'm walking out the door, a co-worker walks in. I had been helping him with his department's website and there was a page we had to get up that day. He was supposed to give me the corrections earlier in the day, but he and I had both forgotten. So I ended up having to stay, not just until 5, until 5:20! Grrrrr.... Actually, I wasn't that mad; he was very grateful and apologetic. But I just found it funny that usually I have nothing to do at work and have to wait around until 5, but the one day I could leave before 5, I had too much to do. Crazy.

**Disclaimer: I do know that this story doesn't fit the strict definition of irony; however, it does fit Alanis Morisette's definition, hence the title.

Bored?

Go to this site and make a word cloud of your blog. The program scans your blog for the most commonly used words and creates a word cloud for you. The more common the word, the larger it appears on the cloud. Here's mine:


Sorry it's not very big. I couldn't make it any bigger without it getting blurry. I like how a lot of my friends' names are on it and the words books and reading. I also like that yay made the list. Yay! :)

One Month...

At this time last month, I was standing in the bride's room, waiting eagerly for 2 p.m. It's hard to believe we've only been married a month. Don't get me wrong, it's been a great month, better than I could have imagined. But, in some ways, it seems like the wedding was so long ago. Has it really only been five weeks since we counted down the days, willing them to go faster? Now that we are married, all the years we waited and worried seem like a different life. I've never been happier, never more at peace.

The best thing about living together (besides the unspoken given) is having the opportunity to express our love and care for each other in numerous small ways every day. Even after 6 years of dating, Darby still has a few sweet surprises up his sleeve! In honor of our first "monthiversary" on the 7th of August, I've come up with a list of 7 new things I love about Darby:

1. Every morning while I'm in the shower, he makes the bed and ties back the curtains.
2. He is crazy-good at loading the dishwasher.
3. He is always up for a game of Dr. Mario, even though I beat him (nearly) every time :)
4. He cooks fun things, like English muffin pizzas and hamburgers, for me.
5. He willingly puts together anything we buy and hangs up all our pictures and decorations.
6. He forces me to go lie on the couch while he does the dishes after dinner.
7. He still sleeps in the same bed as me, despite my nighttime "episodes" (talking to the closet door, jumping at the sound of a page turning, accusing him of murder, you know, the usual).

D, I love you much more than I could have even imagined a month ago. Life is good.

Tagged!

John tagged me to share 8 random facts about myself, so here goes:

1. I get nauseated when I have to do repetitive tasks, especially ones that involve fine motor skills. Cross-stitch? Forget it!

2. I am obsessed with adjusting the volume on the television, especially during movies. I hate how music on movies will be really loud, but then characters will talk in a whisper and you can barely hear it. Darby sometimes takes the remote away from me because he gets so annoyed with my constant adjusting.

3. Any time I go up stairs, I automatically count them in my head. I've tried to stop, but I can't. Even if I force myself to think about something else, I seem to always know how many stairs there were once I get to the top.

4. I have ADD when it comes to projects. I find it really hard to complete one task before starting another. When I had several papers due in college, I would pull them all up and switch from one to another every fifteen minutes or so. I know it's not the most efficient way to work, but it works for me.

5. I am a serious blog stalker. I love finding blogs of people who I kind of knew in school or even people who I didn't know at all. Recently, I stumbled across the blogs of some of my second (or third?) cousins. I will follow their lives for months or even years. I am a sucker for people who post a lot of pictures of their kids. I never posts comments, though; I'm usually too embarrassed to let them know I've been reading their blog. Does this mean I have no life? Maybe, but I don't care.

6. Even though they are probably the worst things in the world for you to eat, I really like Sonic's extra-long chili cheese coneys.

7. I am a homebody. It seems like everyone I know is constantly going to Dallas or Austin on the weekends to see friends or just to shop. Call me boring, but I'd much rather stay in Abilene. I love just staying at home and working around the house, reading or scrapbooking. Plus, I really dislike staying at other people's houses. They could be the best hosts in the world, and I would still prefer to stay in a hotel. I'm just not a go with the flow type of person, so I like to set my own schedule. This kind of makes me seem like a grouchy old woman; I really do love spending time with friends and family, just not every weekend.

8. Although I'm an avid book reader, I secretly prefer magazines. There's just something about the glossy pages and snappy writing that I find irresistible. I'm not allowing myself to subscribe to any magazines, so that I'll spend more time reading books. But I love reading the subscriptions we have at work or sitting down at Barnes and Noble with a stack of celebrity gossip magazines.

Well, that's probably much more information than anyone wanted to know, but when you're tagged, you've gotta do it, right? John already tagged some of the people I would have, but I'll tag Brittany and Carolyn because they both really need to update (Brittany more than Carolyn!)

Happy belated birthday to me and Darby!

D and I decided back in December that we would get each other a Nintendo Wii for our birthdays. However, when we started looking for one in June, everywhere was sold out. We figured we'd just have to wait it out. On Saturday, we were at the mall, and we decided to go to Best Buy on the small chance that they might have one. Of course they didn't, but while we were looking at the games, an employee told us that they would be getting a shipment of 10 in on Sunday. They open at 11 on Sundays, so Darb and I went over right after church and grabbed one! (It was so tempting to skip church to get there right at 11, but we decided to be a little more mature than that).

Darby was so sweet and bought me a game I had been eying (that spelling looks weird, but Blogger says it's right). It's called "Cooking Mama Cook-Off." If you're not familiar with the Wii, the controller looks like a remote control; it's wireless, and you can move it in any direction and the movement registers on screen. So, in Cooking Mama, you use the controller to stir, chop, peel, etc. You can compete against another person or just against the clock to make recipes from different countries. It is so fun! Here's some screen shots, in case my description wasn't clear:

This is chopping an onion: You shake the controller up and down to chop.


This is piping out cream puffs. You press the B button to squeeze the dough out, but you have to stop before it goes over the guidelines.

It's a pretty silly game, made even sillier by the slightly broken English comments. (It's a Japanese game). You make recipes from all different countries, so for France, you make cream puffs, for Italy, lasagna, etc. Guess what you make for the U.S.? Popcorn and hot dogs! Wow, I guess we're not know worldwide for our gourmet cuisine =) Anyway, I love the game, even though Darby beats me every time. That's okay, we still know who's the better cook in the real world!