Exciting Halloween

This blog may be a little premature, but I just can't help being really excited for our first Halloween in a house together!!! And then Thanksgiving, and Christmas and New Years, OH MY! Then of course...dun dun dadunnnn, The Wedding.

I've mostly all of a sudden gotten really excited about Halloween because this means that we will be able to stay at home and pass out candy to all of the kids in our neighborhood! Yay! Also, Halloween is on a Saturday night this year so we should hopefully get a steady traffic flow of kids. Dave suggested we even dress Thor up as Frankenstein. How funny would that be. He may scare kids away though, so more than likely he will stay in the backyard.

This weekend Dave is going to College Station for the OSU v. A&M game. Go Cowboys! My parents are going to come down on Saturday to keep me company and hit up some stores. I am hoping to get my Halloween decorations this week. I'm only looking a couple of things because however ever much I want to go all out for the holidays this year, any extra ounce of money we have for extras is going for wedding related items. Things I'm looking for:

1) 2 good sized pumpkins for carving. I want to carve one and one for Dave.


2) A fun door decoration, or possibly even a scary door cover. Ohhhhhhhh.

3) A candy bowl


4) Halloween candy, however, I'm pretty sure that if I can hold off and wait till the Saturday morning of Halloween I will be able to start getting the discounted candy.


5) Ideas and recipes for a Halloween themed appetizers, dinner & dessert. I may try and have a couple that we are friends with over if they are not working/going out. If not it will just be a fun dinner for Dave and I.
I think when the weather really starts to change I get excited about the holidays. This morning was cooler than normal, even though last night when I went to bed it was 89 degrees out still!

I'm also more excited about the holidays this year because our wedding is shortly after and this is our last holidays as single people and this transition to a married couple has been exciting in general. So hopefully I do not go overboard with the Halloween stuff and still have energy and money left for Thanksgiving and for Christmas!

Working around the house Saturday

Saturday started out with an awesome 5 mile jog with Dave & Thor at 6:30a.m. Then we got ready, and headed out to the grocery store for the upcoming weeks meals and really stuck to our list and bought almost ever single item with a coupon or the item was on sale. Yeaaa. With the combo loco deals and all additional coupons we saved $24.75. By far the most we have saved on any single grocery trip. That made me happy. We then came home and had a late breakfast around 11am which consisted of any and all leftovers we had in the fridge.

Prior to heading out to the store when I was doing an inventory of our fridge & freezer to see what we needed to buy I realized that my frozen rotten banana stash was getting out of hand, I had about 6 rotten bananas stashed in the freezer. Time to make banana bread, found a recipe and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the only ingredients I was missing was sour cream, cinnamon, and walnuts. Yay. So I made banana-walnut-raisin bread from scratch and it came out really good! Dave even liked it and he is the biggest critic. Success.

Dave worked on replacing airvent things and hanging up our last picture frame. He also worked on putting up our "nightstands".

We just have not been able to find nightstands that we want so Dave suggested doing these shelves for now and eventually getting real nightstands. I'm happy with them so far. We need a bed post next. All in due time.

Thor & Hardin were very helpful today too, they stayed out of the way :o).

High & Low

Something that I heard on the radio this morning jogged a childhood memory of mine was the show was playing the game High-Low.

Many people know this game, you tell your daily "high" thing of the day and your daily "low" thing of the day. My mom use to ask us ours quite regularly growing up. I think this is such a great game for families and even couples to play with each other daily, if possible. For us it really helped open up to talking about our day and also helped reflect on it a little bit.

I'm going to try and make a bigger effort to initiating this game with Dave so that it will hopefully continue on once we start a family. So anyways, yeah, play High-Low with your loved ones.

Kinnidi Marie

Kinnidi Marie is my first cousin. She is the youngest child of four (2 boys and 2 girls) to my Uncle Ed & Aunt Misty (who aren't much older than Dave & I ). Uncle Ed is my mom's youngest brother by more than a decade. Ed & Misty started having babies right around the time I came back to Texas for college, and I was lucky enough to be at the hospital each time a baby was born, with the exception of Kinnidi. Sad, I know! Well anyways, she is named after me! Same middle names, on purpose, because that was my middle name. She is a precious doll baby. Kin just turned 1 a little over a month ago, but has been walking for about the past 2 months.

I was able to spend some time with Ed's family this weekend because the other kids, Alec, Adan & Kelsi had a Jr. Mavs football game in my neck of the woods! (Kelsi cheers for Adans team, Aleck plays two age groups above Adan). Anyways, we had a really good time on Saturday hanging out at the fields and getting some sun!

Sarah, Kini & I hanging out on the track in between games. Sarah is really really blossoming & coming into her own. She's gorgeous! Dad needs a bigger and better shot-gun.

I tend to smoother babies! They are just too cuddly.

Kinnidi was dancing to the "get crunk" music the sound guy kept playing.

Following the games, my folks, Dave & I, and all of Eds clan went up to Round Rock for Mighty Fine Burgers. I LOVE MIGHTY FINE BURGERS. Without the risk of sounding too annoying, they make their burgers are made from fresh 100% pure beef. You can watch their assembly line behind this massive glass window hand-forming each and every burger. The meet is all-natural and the beef is strictly vegetarian fed. The french fries are fried in trans-fat free peanut oil. So, needless to say, after you eat a burger and fries here that gross greasy feeling that happens after you eat McDonald's never happens.

They also have this awesome hand-washer machine. You just stick both hand in these two hole things and hold them there for 12 seconds while your hands get washed. It's very spa like, but in the middle of their restaurant. Dave and I washed our hands and then proudly wore our Clean Hands stickers the rest of the evening.

Being Knocked Up.

MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO!!!! Pregnant Women Are Smug. Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to save and embed it into this post. Promise it is not spam.

Very funny.

It is a reminder to me of how I don't ever want to act once I am blessed enough to be pregnant.

"Live it, Love it, Suck It." - Quote from an aunt of mine whom shall remain anonymous. She now has children, and they may be devastated to know that there was a time before them in which their mother was kick ass.

my boys

Thor is not allowed into Dave's office. We have been trying to train him to stay out. Thor likes to be a rebel and lay right in the door way....

Looks like he is waiting for his chance to get in a little bit further.

These next two pictures were taken when I was home the other day. Hardin & Thor really do love each other. The entire day no matter where they were napping they wouldn't be further than an arms length away from one another.

OOPS! Hardin caught me snapping pictures!

Water Drama

Two steps forward, one step back! Seriously, that's how my life feels sometimes! In all reality, our water drama was NOT that big of a crisis, but it did throw a kink into our daily lives.

Sunday, Dave & I along with JonO and Lexie went to the Hot Sauce Festival in Waterloo Park in downtown Austin. Lexie has decided that it would be great if we could all get together and continue to do couple things that are inexpensive to do. She got the Austin Chronicle and has been finding fun stuff for us to try in our own city. The Hot Sauce Festival was free with the donation of 3 canned goods from each person. So not only is it low cost, we are giving back!

Well, anyways, we all piled up in the Jeep with our folding chairs and headed downtown for some Hot Sauce. It was really fun and very Austin. If you live here, or have ever visited here you know what I mean when something is very Austin. This city is so diverse, it's a mixture of hippies, liberals, yuppies, working people, business people, cowboys, college students, you name it. We had a really good time tasting all sorts of hot sauces.

When we got back home I walked through the frontyard chasing after Thor I found a swimming pool in our own front lawn! Apparently a pipe busted somewhere in the front lawn and there were several different puddles everywhere. After calling the city and learning that it is a customer issue, meaning that a plumber must be called, all they could do was turn our water off for us. Yay...no water. I quickly showered while Dave ran around the house filling bottles of water (the dogs would still need water) and filling big buckets with water so that we could flush the toilets. The water eventually got turned off and Dave learned how to turn it on and off. Problem solved for the night.

Monday I had already planned to take the morning (which turned into the whole day) off because we were having the washer/dryer delivered. I thought it would work out because hopefully the plumber would come during that same time. Wrong. Our water was not fixed until Tuesday afternoon. We finally had water when we got home Tuesday after work. So we had all these dirty clothes and a brand new washer and dryer and no water! Oh well, it all worked out in the end and now life has fallen back into place.

However, Thor was not super happy about the delivery about the washer and dryer because it took up his space from the utility room.... I was at the table working on some wedding stuff and he sat in this position for about 5 minutes. He couldn't quite figure them out I guess.

As we like to call this around our house: A-THOR-ABLE