November & Our Feast with Friends

The month of November has obviously been quite uneventful. Our only post in November is of my family visiting (in October). Brendon's life has consisted of studying, reading, writing, memorizing, staying up really late, waking up really early, & occasionally eating, playing, & sleeping. He finished his first set of finals: a major feat. My life has consisted of working, cleaning, cooking, working, looking for a new job, & working.

Brendon had this past week off of school. Really exciting, aside from the fact that grown-ups still have to work (...I'm missing my childhood). So Brendon cleaned the house, watched movie after movie after movie, did maintenance on our car, & played basketball. It was really nice to be able to enjoy our evenings together without studying getting in the way.

Wednesday I took the day off of work & we went to the closest mall in Columbia (1 hour & 30 minutes away). We shopped & went out to dinner.

Thanksgiving Day...
...was spent with our med school friends. We had a blast! I made my first pies. Thanks to my Fannie Mae Cookbook & the help of my Aunt Linn, I made some good pies while still learning how to improve my next attempt.

We had dinner for 19 people & we had more food than I've ever seen in one place. We ended up bringing more food home than we brought. Not that the food we brought was gross, there were simply better food options than veggies and pumpkin pie. But we'll take it...yay for leftovers!

We really enjoyed our time with our friends and especially each other. I am looking forward to Brendon's next break in three weeks!

Our First Family Visit

We just LOVE family!...We had our first family visitors a couple weeks ago (during Brendon's birthday). My parents, sister, brother-in-law, and adorable niece came to stay with us for the weekend.

We talked, went out to dinner...

...played with baby Brooklyn...


...played games (dad's frowny face is due to his loss, an indicator of where I get my competitive nature)...

...we ate some more...

...fed baby Brooklyn...

...we sang "Happy Birthday" and opened presents...

...played with baby Brooklyn...

...stayed up late and watched a movie (and ate some more), we talked some more...

...and then we said "see you at Christmas."


Brendon spent a lot of time studying that weekend (thus the lack of Brendon in pictures), so I was especially grateful for my family and their company. Brendon wished he could have spent more time with everyone, but duty calls.

Thanks for coming to spend the weekend with us. We really enjoyed having you here!

Halloween Treats

Look what I made! I was asked to make a cake walk treat for our ward Halloween party, so I thought I'd have some fun with it and decided to make spider-web cupcakes (with spiders). It was fun, but I decided things like this and Halloween in general would be a lot more fun with kids. Someday...

For Halloween, I attempted to make bread bowls for our chili. I failed: someday I'll get the whole bread-thing down. Brendon ended up having a giant roll with his chili, but I insisted on using mine as a bowl, even if it was small. We handed out candy to, oh...maybe 30 kids, and went to the gym (TCC) for a mad game of racquetball. No need to mention who won, who played left-handed, or who got mad when they lost, but we both had a lot fun.