Weekend

On Wednesday James surprised me by bringing Mike into town.  Mike is my brother and we haven’t seen each other in about 2 and a half years.  He was serving a church mission and just finished his first semester of school.  He had also never met James, so it was good to have the two of them meet for the first time.  

While he was here we also took a trip up to Brenham and visited the Blue Bell ice cream factory.  Blue Bell is mostly sold in the southeastern US, and it is dang yummy.  In Brenham we met up with Uncle Jack, my grandma’s brother.  He lives a little over an hour on the other side of  Brenham so it was a great meeting place.  Brenham is an adorable little town.  I will post pictures later on.

On the way home we also made a stop at the outlet mall so I could finish up purchasing a few last minute Christmas items and send them back to California with Mike.

After we dropped Mike at the airport on Saturday we continued on up to the Houston temple and then made a stop at our favorite grocery store, Central Market.  (Elise, I never told you thank you for telling me about it.  It definitely helps fill my Trader Joe’s void.)  We have decided to go very non-traditional for Christmas, so we picked up some meat and a few other supplies for the dinner.

Favorte YW Quote

Leader: Why is it important for us to repent?

Girl:  So when we get to heaven God won’t bring it up.

Hmm, she does have a point there!

Strange Gifts?

When James aunts’ asked him what I really wanted for Christmas and his answer was a pressure canner, I think he got a few funny looks.  We explained all the things we would like to be bottling and they understood a little better I think.  It has arrived in the mail and it is all shiny and new and pretty and ready to be used.  What should I bottle first?

Thanksgiving Recipes

So, like I said, we had 18 people at our house for Thanksgiving.  It was loads of fun and the day went too fast.  I didn’t manage to take any pictures when there were actual guests in our house.  Bummer!  The turkey took it’s sweet time and was done almost an hour late.  No one seemed to care and enjoyed each others company while we were waiting.  Many of our friends in the area are transplants from elsewhere, so everyone was glad to have somewhere to go and pretend that they had family nearby.

Even though we had everyone help with the meal and bring things, I still really like cooking and am pretty specific about several dishes for the holidays, so James and I were in the kitchen for quite awhile cooking and baking and getting ready.

We made the turkey, gravy, dressing, jello salad, rolls, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. And, because I was nervous I ruined the pie by forgetting the eggs I made a pumpkin cake roll.  Click on highlighted links for recipes.

We were grateful to have a reason to break out our china for the first time and play with our friends babies.  The most exciting part of coming to our house for the under 3 set was our dogs.  They were patted and mauled all day without complaint.

Cookies

We went to William Sonoma the other night.  Can I tell you how much I love that place?  I practically have to will things to not jump into my hands.  I love it.

The personalized cookie cutters are super cute and fun.  You can change letters in and out to make messages for cookie recipients.  I have decided to put this on my watch list and wait to see if they have any left for the after Christmas sales.

Check them out here.

December!

So weird!  Everything I am typing on the internet today is coming out backwards.  Since I have no clue how to fix it right now I will just do a little cut and paste job.

 

So, my last post was titled November!  I was so excited for the month to get here and now I am so excited that it is gone.  It was not my best month.  I was sick almost the entire time.  It started when we came back from Canada and I had the flu.  I stayed home from work waiting to feel better and not spread it to my co-workers in the very tight quarters we worked in.  They came in to work with bad coughs and spread it all around.  I caught the cough, which after a week turned into bronchitis, which after another week turned into pleursy.  I honestly thought dying might be better than pleursy when it hit full force.  Every breath meant stabbing pain.  When I decided that sitting, standing, kneeling, showering, and laying down were not giving me any relief I had James take me to the ER.  A long wait and some strong drugs later they sent me home to sleep it off.  And that is exactly what I did.  I slept.  They gave me Vicodin and cough syrup with Vicodin and that happened to make me itch so we added Benadryl to the mix.  I was pretty much in bed for three days straight.  Did I mention the James aunts arrived for the their ten day stay the day that I went to the ER.  Yup, it was fabulous.  James also got a massive sinus infection from dealing with a leaky, moldy situation under our kitchen sink.  A trip to Urgent Care, some strong drugs, and a nap fixed him up quite well though.

 

There really were some good parts to November.  Thanksgiving was awesome.  We had 12 adults and six kids at our house for dinner.  We made a day trip to Galveston.  We got some really great organizing done with our house.

 

I would like to officially welcome December.  I love the Christmas season.  Somehow, when the day after Thanksgiving hits my brain turns on the Christmas music and I can’t stop humming and singing Christmas songs.  My nativities are all set up (and a few more have been added to the bunch this year).  The tree will probably be trimmed tonight.  The lights will be put on the house this weekend, if I can convince James of the importance and the weather cooperates.  And, I am determined not to get sick at all this month.  Also, I have told James that if our health in December looks anything like it did in November we will be seriously considering a job transfer!  (kidding, sort of)

November!

Can you believe that it is November already?  I am having  a hard time wrapping my head around it.  This is going to be a big month at our house. 

We started the month off by travelling to Canada this past weekend.  James served his mission there, and we decided to return to visit the area and to visit with FALL!  I love fall leaves and they were plentiful.  I will share pictures and details of the trip soon.

I am starting a new job next week.  I know you are probably thinking to yourself that I just started my current job two months ago, and it took me six months to actually find it.  You would be right.  I did.  I also got an offer that I could not refuse for a new position.  James and I thought and prayed hard about the decision and it just felt right.  It will be a new adventure.  I will also still get to commute into the office with James, have the same hours, and still get Fridays off. (I love my Fridays off!)

I am getting our house holiday ready.  We are having James’ aunts come for Thanksgiving.  Today I started making lists of things I need to clean and organize and lists of what we are going to eat while they are here so I can cook ahead of time, and lists of things that we can do with them.  Did you know I really like lists?  I do.  Now, I just need to get the things done that are on the lists.  I feel like my cleaning and organizing skills have slipped since I have started working.  I had gotten into bad habits of taking my time and doing a little every day.  Now that I am limited on my time I am trying to figure out how to cram it all in on the weekend.

Christmas presents are far from finished.  Whoever came up with the idea to do a mostly homemade Christmas was crazy.  Oh right, that was me!  I need to have some presents done by Thanksgiving and the rest need to be done pretty quickly behind that so they can get into the mail.

Did I mention that this is the first year that I will not spend Christmas with my family?  James is my family and we will be spending Christmas together, but we will not be going “home”.  I am trying to come up with things that we can do to make Christmas feel like Christmas to us.  I know all of our traditions do not need to be started in the first year, but we need to do something.  I have a few ideas, but will let you know what we end up doing.

With all of the hustle and bustle that will be going on at our house this month, I want to take some time to stop and remember what I am thankful for.  That is what this season should really be about, shouldn’t it?

Mayberry

The transition of moving from a major metropolitan city to a small southern town has been quite the culture shock.  Our town is small and things are done much differently here than I have ever seen before.  When I was living in San Francisco, I had to walk about a mile to City Hall several times to pull permits and take care of some office business.  I loved City Hall.  The building is impressive, inside and out.  The rotunda in one of the largest in the world.  The are grand official looking stairs.  The looks old, and official and important.

Our city hall and police station is housed in a building the size of two trailers put together, in fact until today when I actually went in, I thought it was a trailer.  We have 5,000 residents all of whom live in single family dwellings (I am pretty sure).  We only have eight police officers.  Our officers make it their official duty to make sure the old man in town who had a stroke recently has eaten today, because we have almost no crime to keep them busy.  We have to contract out with a neighboring city for Animal Control.  Our fire department, as well as other neighboring departments, is volunteer.  Our judge only hears cases on Wednesday evening, because he has a full time job to do during the day.

Like I said, culture shock.  But, it is cute and quaint and suits us pretty well for now.

Dear Fall,

I love you!  I was done hibernating from the heat, when you swept in and lifted up my spirits.  I am now filled with excitement for days spent outside at the beach, and in the park, and in the garden.  Honestly, whoever would have thought that I would think it was too hot to go to the beach.  The crispness in the air is urging me to plan a camping trip, something that I would never attempt with all of the heat and humidity of the summer, but now seems possible.  If I could find a mountain right now, I would climb it and let the cool breeze wash over me.  Our menu has quickly changed to all things pumpkin, apple and stew.  Yum!  I hope you last as long as possible!

-Stacy

Swimming

Don’t people usually crave swimming when it is summery and hot outside?  Apparently, not me.  For the past week or so I have wanted to go swimming really bad.  The weather has finally started cooling off and the humidity has let up a bit and all I want to do is jump in a pool.  Maybe it is because I felt like I was swimming in my clothes all summer?