Pizza and Pumpkin Pie

This week was Thanksgiving. It was a different Thanksgiving because Daniel and I have never done the Thanksgiving thing  on our own. We've always celebrated with family. Someone else was in charge of organizing who brought what for Dinner. Usually, we were in charge of helping some one more professional with a dish for the meal.

We decided that, instead of trying to make a 'traditional' Thanksgiving for two by ourselves, we would rather have pizza. We planned our menu and bought a frozen pizza for our Thanksgiving dinner. Because a 'traditional' thanksgiving meal is based on what is harvested in the North East in the fall, we decided we could pick whatever we wanted to eat. But, since we are American we couldn't have a Thanksgiving without something traditional so we made mini pumpkin pies. We decided that it would be best  They turned out to be tasty, but some of them didn't want to come out of the muffin tins we baked them in. All in all, we had a lovely meal!

We decided to skip all the Black Friday madness, but I did order Daniel a new white shirt online. That seemed safer than going out and physically fighting someone for stuff. I stayed safely at home for most of the day; we did go to the grocery store to get some things to eat this week. We also decided to run down to the temple for the 5:00 session. It was a longish drive, but it was a fun date for Daniel and me!

Almost Thanksgiving?

So, I am late posting our blog post this week. It has been a pretty calm week here in Texas. The weather has been nice all week though. It hasn't gotten too hot, and one day this week it rained. We got over a half an inch; it was really exciting to get so much rain in one day! This is one of the biggest rain storms we had in the six months we lived here. We are still 12" in deficit or something like that, but we will take all the rain we can get.


Daniel has been able to leave work at reasonable times this week so we've been able to spend time together, but we haven't been on too many adventures this week. We did check out the outside mall near our house to do some browsing. We also stopped by Tiff's Treats. I had an ice cream sandwich with fresh cookies, and Daniel had a large brownie. Besides that, we've mostly stayed at home, but it has still been fun. We bought a pineapple at the store for a dollar this last week, and it was really tasty. It was so tasty in fact that we bought another one this week!

We are both in the play that our stake is putting on for Christmas. We had play practice on Saturday, and Daniel had to go yesterday because he has a speaking part. He was there for two hours. I didn't have to go because I'm just in the choir.

I also can't believe that this next week is Thanksgiving. It is kind of crazy that is basically here.  I did get some canned pumpkin at the store, so we now have everything we need for pumpkin pie! We are excited to take the vacation day as well, and plan to have a good time.  I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving too!

Ctrl-Alt-Delete

Elissa put me (Daniel of course) in charge of the blog this week, which means that it'll probably be really concise because I don't know how to write any other way. Meanwhile, she's headed to the book club that she started up a while back. This is the first time they've met so we're hoping that it goes well and people will want to keep participating.

This is probably going to be sort of boring since things have calmed down here a lot and there's no pictures again -- since my laptop died we haven't had a way to upload pictures from our camera. But don't worry, we'll be getting that all sorted out soon and then we'll be able to have exciting pictures again.

Probably the most exciting thing that has happened this week is that the control-alt-delete guy, yes, ladies and gentlemen, David Bradley, came to speak at work. I almost had him sign my keyboard, but figured he'd be busy and that it's a Dell, and he's kind of an IBM man. He was actually really interesting and funny. Of course, maybe he's only funny to nerds, but I liked it.

Also, we got to eat out with a bunch of people from the ward. We got a new Elder's Quorum president recently and he wanted to get a chance to get to know people better so he organized an unofficial activity where we met downtown and all had dinner together. This was even fun after we got downtown and realized that the place we thought had free parking was kind of expensive (and we like to save money where we can) so we drove down the narrow city streets (which other people probably don't think are too bad) looking for a decent parking space and got really stressed out but finally found a spot. I'm definitely glad that we live in suburbs so I don't have to deal with that all the time.

No Sleep for the Weary

This week has been the last week of Daniel's class. Wednesday Daniel decided that he just needed to get some serious work done, so he would stay a little late. A little late turned into 5 in the morning. Since he came home so late, we decided to sleep in later in the morning. I decided to get up and make breakfast cake. (I also told Daniel that it wasn't a reward for staying out late!) Either way this is just the climax of Daniel's recent crazy work schedule. Hopefully we get in some sleep this weekend!

Because of Daniel's work, we haven't done much that is different or exciting this week. We did go to the grocery store, and for the last few weeks, I've ended up getting something for free because of a "buy this, get that for free" sale. Two weeks ago it was free eggs (which I needed already) and this week it was free Chex mix for buying potato chips (I was buying the potato chips already). Getting something free just for buying something you were already planning on is super fun!

I was late posting this blog because yesterday Daniel had to go to play practice. He got cast as Nephi in "The Savior of the World." He has a few lines that he gets to give. It is kind of cool! I'm sure he'll do a great job.

Cool Weather and Cool Stuff!

This week, Daniel has been really busy working on his project , so we haven't gotten out much to do things. I'm really proud of him working hard to get everything done on time the way it is supposed to be. Earlier this week he found out that he could use his laptop at home and do some of his work at home in the evening. That when well for a couple of nights, and then one evening he opened his computer and it wouldn't boot up at all! He says that he thinks it is something like the CPU dying or something. Either way that meant that he had to go back to working at the office in the evening instead of being home.

Saturday, however, Daniel couldn't work on his project because the computers were undergoing maintenance at work. We went to choir practice (for the first act of The Savior of the World), and then we decided to finally get downtown to a store we've been wanting to visit. We went to the Paper Source, and browsed. I saw that they had these really cool "Wrapping Papers ." I'm not sure I'll ever buy one of these for wrapping a present, but I think they would make pretty cool wall decorations or something. The store was pretty cute. It had papers, planners, and books. It was fun to go see a little boutique in down town. (Because we don't go downtown very often.)

Then, we went home and had a pizza party to celebrate having a free Saturday. We bought a frozen pizza and baked it in the oven and ate some cookie dough afterward as a treat. While we ate, we finally watched Iron Man 2 on Netflix . (The last time we wanted to watch it there wasn't any video to go with the sound!) It was a fun afternoon of being together after Daniel being at work so long!

The weather here is also kind of crazy. Earlier this week the highs were in the mid 80's and then tomorrow we aren't supposed to get into the 70's. (I'm excited about having fall weather this weekend!) Its kind of fun because the weather here shows the little blue and red "weather front" lines on the map. We watch them slowly come from different parts of America to get to Texas! This new cold front crossed Denver leaving 5" of snow (right after an 80 degree day!) I'm excited for the cool weather, and hopefully Daniel and I can come up with some fun stuff to do outside this weekend to celebrate the cooler weather.

Apple Pies and Other Little Adventures.

This week I decided I wanted to try out a new recipe, and I wanted something sweet. Apples were on sale at the store. Then, I found a recipe for mini apple pies. This is the link to the recipe that we used:
http://www.noveleats.com/dessert/mini-apple-pies/

We used half granny smith half gala apples for our filling, and I think that if you want enough dough for a top like they show you'll need to make more dough than the directions say, or roll it out really thin. We doubled the batch though.

Daniel did all the lattice work on our pies. He did such a good job with the little strips of dough. I just cut them all out to help though. I was really excited that they turned out tasting so good! It was really exciting to make something new and different. They were also the perfect size for Daniel's lunch box (so Daniel got to have a tasty treat in his lunch box several days this week instead of something boring. They taste good cold or warm.

Other than that Daniel has been busy with his work class this week. Saturday we went into his office so he could do some homework. Homework is kind of lame, but it was cool to finally see Daniel's cubicle. We also went over to a couple from our ward's apartment for games and had a lot of fun. Neither of us won, but it was a good time anyway.

Singing and Scooping

This week was full of cool things that Daniel and I did. Friday we had a couple over for dinner and games. We had some great hamburgers which we got on sale from the store and popcorn. We played lots of games and had a pretty good time!

Saturday we went to stake choir practice for our stake's performance of the first act of the Savior of the World. It is going to be pretty cool. Hopefully we can get down all the music and a few more people show up to be in the choir! It should be fun. We probably should have tried out, but that would have been a lot more of a time commitment.

Later that day we went down to Bastrop, Tx (which is just outside Southern Austin) to volunteer with the church cleaning up properties. We basically moved trees, bricks, and metal into piles near the road so that the trash companies could come pick it all up. We even got to wear the yellow "helping hands" vests along with face masks so we wouldn't breathe too much ash. Apparently almost 600 members volunteered from 4 area stakes. They helped clean up 75 homes. They split us up into groups of 30 to go to houses. Our group ended up helping with two homes. It was a good experience; we ended up coming home covered in ashes and with a real appreciation for what we have.

So, apparently the group who sponsored the event asked our area 70's executive secretary (who happens to be in our ward) if he could even find 100 people that could help. He replied, "I can do better than that I'll send 200!" Afterwards he thought to himself "I hope I didn't just embarrass myself!" He asked wards in 4 stakes for volunteers and they ended up with 580 or so people to help! Here is the story that the local news showed! (We aren't in the movie, but you can pretend that it is us :P) Video Link- Click here!