Pumpkin carving fun-ness!

On Sunday, we went for a drive to look at the leaves (most of which were already dead/gone/only semi-colorful) then came home and carved pumpkins. Here are some pictures of the evening.
This is the only wildlife we saw on the drive - yeah...can't really see it (it's a dear). Seeing that was probably the most exciting part of the drive.

Here's a picture I took of me and Nate from the car. At first Nate refused to smile for the picture, but finally relented and then it was blurry...boo.

He absolutely refused to smile again. I told him I was going to post it anyway. That's what he gets for being a punk about pictures. :D he he
So then it was home to carve pumpkins. Here is Becki working diligently on her pumpkin while...
Her husband (and mine) worked very hard at...not carving pumpkins. They cut the lids off the tops...

Trav and Rachel had this gargantuan pumpkin so Rachel thought it would be fun to stick her head inside and... Become the Headless Horse-woman! (with pearls on...)
Here are mine and Becki's final pumpkins (mine is on the left - scary huh?) I didn't get a good picture of all 4 of them lit up - it was too hard to get them in the dark. And here is my FAVORITE part of carving pumpkins! The SEEDS! We made three huge pans of pumpkin seeds, which were SO tasty.


So, Nate and I work in the temple on Friday nights and neither of us are huge fans of trying to find costumes for Halloween anyway, so that worked out nicely. Sorry if you were hoping to see fun pictures of costumes later....Can't wait to see yours though! :D

I'm a bad wife.

I see all these people posting cute things about their husband's birthdays and how much they love their husbands, etc. etc.

Did you know Nate's birthday was almost 10 days ago?

So, to show him that I don't hate him and that I DO, in fact, love him like all those other wives love their husbands, I'm posting about his birthday (the worst part about it, is that occasionally, I forget the day of his birthday. I can never remember if it's the 18th or the 19th - don't ask my why, but it's awful).

So happy birthday Nate! I'm glad you were born! :D

For his birthday, we made Boneless Buffalo Wings (of course - if you know Nate, you know that's his favorite food). We had a bunch of his friends from Colorado and their spouses over - 13 of us in total - so we made a LOT of wings. And, amazingly, I took a few pictures. Aren't you proud?

So here's the birthday boy, blowing out his candles (his birthday cake was apple crisp and candles melt really bad in apple crisp - we learned that the hard way).
From left to right, Annie and Quinn Hout, Nate and Brett (Brett is our most prompt friend, by the way).

Mekelle and Jake Sorenson. She's pregnant. Can you tell? Of course not. She's tiny. :) Again from left to right, Damien and Natalya Olenslager & Adam and Becki Johnson

Travis and Rachel - Rachel also dislikes cake as much as Nate, so she was happy for the apple crisp. :)

So there you have it. A wonderful birthday celebration.

Let me tell you what I did at work this afternoon:

I'm not sure why I was thinking about this, but I had been talking to some friends about the song "American Pie" by Don McLean and I had no idea what day it was that "the music died." (I know, everyone knows that and it's SO sad that I didn't). These friends mentioned that it was the day Buddy Holly, etc. died in a plane crash (by the way, I only know who Buddy Holly is because of Weezer...). So, since I didn't know anything about it, I Wikipedia'd it (hey, if "googled" is a word, so it Wikipedia'd). I learned the whole story about the plane crash and what other things the song is about (apparently, it makes references to the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, etc).

Did you know that?

Then, that got me thinking (because Wikipedia mentioned it) about the song "We didn't start the fire" which I have ALWAYS loved, though the only words I knew were the chorus. I just loved the beat and it was popular when I was really little. SO I got going on that with the help of Wikipedia. It had a list of all the things mentioned in the song and what Billy Joel was referring to, so on any that I didn't know about or wanted to know more about, I clicked on the link.

Did you know, by the way, that the song is all about things that happened throughout Billy Joel's life? It starts with the year he was born. Pretty cool idea I think.

ANYWAY, this whole post is just to say how COOL Wikipedia/the internet are. I know there are definitely problems with the internet, but I'm so much smarter than I was 2 hours ago!

PLUS! I was reading about the Berlin Wall (mentioned in Billy Joel's song) and it reminded me of this movie I saw about 15 years ago. I couldn't remember the name, I just knew it was about some people who built a hot air balloon to cross the Berlin Wall. So I googled that: "movie about people crossing the Berlin wall" Lo and behold, the 23rd link was to Yahoo Answers where someone asked the SAME question and I got the name of the movie! (it's Night Crossing by the way).

I've made a list of movies and book I want to see and read because of all this reading (The Color Purple, Bridge on the River Kwai, A Streetcar Named Desire, read the Catcher in the Rye again, etc.)

GO WIKIPEDIA!

(I'm sorry there are no pictures - our camera has been in the closet for WEEKS. I'll try to post pictures soon...)

Win a Free Handbag!

As many of you know I'm obsessed with purses, and there's a new website launching in a few days (October 15), where you can register to win a free handbag! (for those guys out there, who don't know, a handbag is a purse). Even if you don't win a new bag, they seem to be relatively affordable (okay, honestly I only end up buying a purse MAYBE once a year...) so check it out!

Go to www.handbagplanet.com to see their different bags, which are WAY cute and there are TONS of styles!

I love it!

This is for Nate, because it thoroughly embarasses me, but he thinks it's so funny, so I'm sharing all of this since I know he wants to tell the world how funny I am (without even trying!).

I'm on a roll lately.

You know how I have funny dreams? Well during the summer, Nate and I would go to sleep about the same time. Now that school has started, however, Nate is usually up a couple of hours after me.

I'm scared to fall asleep before him now.


Night #1: (from Nate's perspective) Alisa was sleeping and all of the sudden rolled over and said (with her eyes open and rather loudly) "Initiatory....staff..." at which point Nate started laughing, which woke Alisa up (actually, it was probably her loud talking that woke her up). She tried to explain how it made sense, couldn't, got angry and rolled over to go back to sleep.

Night #1: (from Alisa's perspective) That evening Nate and Alisa had gone to an accounting event, at which a whole bunch of accounting wives were on a panel and talked to the student wives about having a husband work for this accounting firm. They kept saying the different areas of service (meaning audit, tax, human resources, etc). So in her dream, Alisa was on the panel and some girl asked her to name the areas of service. Of course, since she was sleeping and this was a dream, Alisa couldn't think of ANY. But she had to say SOMETHING, so she said "Initiatory..." and immediately realized it was wrong. So she tried to cover her tracks with "staff..." because every company has staff, right? By this point, she was awake and was going to try to make Nate think she hadn't been asleep, but couldn't think of ANYTHING to say. So she went back to sleep.




Night #2: (from Nate's perspective) Nate hears Alisa say (again, rather loudly) "OOOHHH NOOO." So Nate asks what's wrong. Alisa MUMBLES something about not being able to carry/hold onto something. Nate asks what she has to hold on to? "You know," Alisa says "Binders," (while opening her hands into the shape of a binder). Nate laughs, of course. Alisa gets upset, of course, because it makes sense in her head. She tried to explain it, gets upset, rolls over and goes back to sleep.

Night #2: (from Alisa's perspective) Alisa and Nate were on an African Safari (I'm not even making this up). They got to a part where they had to climb down a steep cliff, in a crevice. Alisa needed both her hands and was, apparently, carrying binders. Hence the conversation. Not sure what happened to the binders, because Alisa climbed down the precipice and the dream continued (Alisa never woke up and doesn't recall the conversation with Nate). She remembered the dream the next morning when Nate asked if she remembered what she said to him, though she didn't remember saying it out loud.




Night #3: (from Nate's perspective) Nate walked into the room and Alisa turned to look at him and said something about a tour and coffee. Then she sort of sat up, reached over and started playing with his chin while smiling at him (yep, her eyes were open AGAIN). Nate started laughing, Alisa got angry, turned over and tried to insist that he understood what she was talking about with the temple and taking a tour. Of the three nights, Nate thought this was the funniest.

Night #3: (from Alisa's perspective) Alisa and Nate had just worked in the temple that night, so it was fresh on her mind. One of the temple workers Alisa works with had been talking about giving a tour to a sister who had just started working in the temple. Somehow, all of that transferred into a dream. Alisa only vaguely remembers the dream and knows she was in the temple and there was a coffee cart for when this new sister finished her tour. That's the extent of Alisa's recollection of the dream. She does remember playing with Nate's chin, but her eyes were closed and she wasn't smiling. She woke up enough to hear Nate laughing, tried to explain, got angry and turned over and went back to sleep. Of the three nights, this one is the most embarrassing to her.




So there you have it. I'm crazy.

And I have to quit sleeping.