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?

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.

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

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?

Hank really belongs to the neighbors across the street but today he decided that he wanted to hang out with us.  The weather has been pretty nice today, so I had all the windows open.  James and I were sitting in our guest room, at the front of the house, using laptops and Hank decided to hang out with us, in the bushes.  I think he was a little bit lonely.  Any time James would make a noise Hank would rustle the bushes with his wagging tail.  Good thing we don’t really care about the bushes that he is standing and laying in.  The flowers he had to walk through are a different story, but oh well.

Can you believe that this happened six months ago?  The saying time flies when you are having fun is definitely true in this case.  We have been having a blast.  James and I often find ourselves looking at each other going, “who knew it could be this good?”

I am continuing to learn that life is all about the little things.  While my schedule is no longer filled with big parties or nights out on the town at fancy restaurants, it really is so much better.  We work hard together, we play hard together and we have a lot of fun.

Yesterday I had a meeting at the Stake Center, an hour away, before the Relief Society dinner and broadcast. It was a long evening and I was tired. When I came home I was greeted by steam cleaned carpet and couch, loaves of freshly made bread, washed and folded laundry and a tired James.  I asked him if he realized before we got married that the way to his wifes heart was through clean carpet!  He is amazing.

The past six months have been great.  I can’t wait for many, many more!

We made calzones for dinner.  My mom wanted the recipe.  There isn’t one.  Every time we make them they come out a little different.  Here is what went into todays concoction:

Pizza Dough- I made in the breadmaker set on dough setting or you could make it by hand or buy from Trader Joe’s if you are fortunate enough to live near one.  I added a little Italian Seasoning to the crust today too.

Filling: Sauteed garlic, onion, mushrooms, spinach.  Added cooked, crumbled  sausage.  Added mozzarella cheese and ricotta cheese.  Added salt and pepper.

Split dough in half.  Roll dough into a cirle on floured surface.  Add filling to one side.  Fold dough in half.  Crimp edges with a fork.  Cook on a pizza stone for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

Serve with pizza sauce for dipping.  Todays sauce included- 1 can tomato sauce, 1 can petite diced tomatoes, salt, pepper, sugar, 2 cloves garlic, onion powder.

I put my pizza stone in the oven while it is pre-heating so it is nice and hot when the calzone starts to bake.

When it comes out it should resemble this, but if it doesn’t that’s okay too.  Hope this helps Mom.  I told you that there wasn’t a recipe.  I wasn’t kidding!

I plucked my first okra from the garden today!  It is about as long as my pinky.  The ones that I have seen sold in the stores are about double the length, but everyone tells me if you let them get that long they get really woody and don’t taste very good.  I am not really sure what we will be doing with this one little okra but I am sure it will taste good in something.

These are all of the states that I have been to.  I guess we are going to have to make a few trips!  A southern states tour may be in order in the near future.

Sunday, the day of rest, was actually restful.  Sometimes I feel like we run around awhole lot on Sunday.  Today we relaxed quite a bit before church.  In Sacrament Meeting I started trying to count heads of how many Young Women I would have for my lesson only to not see any heads at all.  All of them were either sick or enjoying the holiday weekend with family.  James taught the Youth Sunday School class that consisted of one Young Man.  Then I got to go to Relief Society for the first time in several months.

We made cookies and delivered them to a few families in town.  Now, we are doing more relaxing.  We are staying up much later than we should considering I need to start getting myself on some sort of schedule now that I need to be at work earlier in the morning than I am normally functional.