Thankstaking...I Mean Giving

Well, Thanksgiving is not all about giving thanks, sometimes it fun to take good food, good company and enjoy it! We got to have Thanksgiving in Maryland with Alan and Lyanna. We had a wonderful time eating Turkey, Spinach Dip, rolls, pie, mashed potatoes, gravy, and did I say pie (some things are more memorable than others!).

We had a wonderful time and we are definately thankful for our two friends out there in MD.
(Oh yah, this is Scott for a change).

I looked out the window

And what did I see? Snowflakes falling on the ground and tree.

Not good. It does explain why my toes would not warm up, though!

Speaking of snow, I finished re-designing Shaun and Lanette's blog header for Christmas. I made three that have varying degrees of Christmas-ness. They liked all three enough that they are going to use them all throughout the season! Go see how cute header number two looks here.
This was number one:


And soon, I'll post some photos from our most recent photo shoots. At least we got a few in before the ugly weather started!

Cold weather looks good on some people

Like my husband, for instance.

Hmm

I always feel like I have to write news on here. I guess I don't, but it feels like that. Maybe news isn't even as interesting to read as general thoughts, though. So, tonight, just some random thoughts.

It's way too cold outside. Lots of wind. We did our first photo shoot with the new camera this morning. So rewarding to take pictures with a camera that responds quickly and has a nice picture. The wind made the little gal not so happy, so I'm thinking I'd like to re-take some of just her some morning. Hopefully on a warmer day.

I'm getting sick of my job's demands. Working at night is not my favorite thing to do. The problem is that they trust me too much! So I end up spending too much time there. And the scheduling is just silly. It changes every week and sometimes I don't know my schedule for Saturday until like Thursday. Not nice. I'm definitely looking forward to starting school again. It has been good to be taking pictures all the time, though. I have an arsenal of poses and can just spew them out and order people around! Good skills to have, I'd say.

We had a lovely dinner/get together with some folks in our ward. The only other "phd" family in the ward. They have some cute kids and are fun to talk to. I enjoyed it a lot. Dinner was quite tasty, too. I'll have to try it sometime. She basically slow-cooked chicken in enchilada sauce and cilantro and served it over rice. VERY flavorful and good.

I can't believe it's halfway through November. I'm not really ready for that yet. Work makes the time fly by a little too fast for me, sometimes. Thanksgiving and Christmas will be nice, though. I'm hoping Heather and Gordon will be able to join us in NC after Christmas, at least.

La de da. Just a few random bits of lately. We moved our front room around, so now I'm wanting to figure out how to organize everything again and make it look good. Scott's been so good at this all, but I just feel undermotivated, and a little perplexed. Organizing is not one of my natural abilities. I can organize words and people (sometimes) but stuff is just hard for some reason. Any solutions? I feel like living simply, but I also feel like I have some cool, useful stuff. Like, for instance, my pack-ratish-ness impelled me to keep this funky "pillow-top" mattress pad. I just thought I could at least make the air mattress more comfortable with it. Then, I figured we could wash it and use the fluff on the insides for some random sewing projects. So, the fluff has been harvested for use in the ward activity craft. Cheap? Yes. Resourseful? Yes. Grossing you out? Try not to think about it.

You see what I mean? Stuff can come in handy sometimes when you least expect it. Now for making it look good wherever we put it . . .

Good Day

You asked for it. Here's my new haircut on a good day. It's short, but slowly growing out of the horribleness that it was the day it was cut.

The neatest thing about this picture is that it was taken with our NEW CAMERA! Yay! We can hopefully start a business going now that our camera is super reliable. It's beautiful. Just look at my studly husband.

Do you see that depth of field? That fuzzy background and sharp foreground? Do you see his handsome goatee? Do you notice the crisp picture quality? Scott is doing some of those things, and the camera is doing some of those other things to make this picture so fun to look at.

Good News! I got into graduate school! Crazy, huh? I'm busy filling out forms and trying to figure out how we'll pay for this whole thing and stuff like that. I'm really excited to be in school again and get to study some of my favorite subjects (stories and people). I'll keep you updated, of course.

It's raining galore today. I don't have work for a few hours still, so I'm working on Christmas surprises, filing, and laundry in the mean time.

Update

Business as usual for us this past week. We've had surprisingly nice weather and it only got chilly again today. I'm getting over my haircut. That is, it's starting to work out a little better for me, yipee! Scott is so sweet he would tell you that it never looked bad to start with, but that is his job. He's in a new lab rotation and I think he's doing something with how the immune system fights cancer. Pretty cool, but also slow going type experiments that take weeks to do. He has only one more test before the end of the year, I think. At least only one more big one.

I had an interesting experience at work yesterday getting to use my Spanish skills (or what's left of them). There was a cute little family that didn't really speak any English. They wanted pictures of their little boy, and I was the designated translator! I was able to tell them how much the photos cost, when to return and what was going on when the flash stopped working. Then, when they came back I was even able to explain to them how the sheet prices work and help them choose the sizes they wanted. They even looked happy at the end! I wished Scott could have been there, but it was really a good opportunity for me to realize that I could actually communicate in Spanish if I needed to.

That's all for now. Bed time at the Joneses.

Something to blog about

With the election over (yeah that prop 8 passed!) I think we need a new cause. One that's more fantastical, romantic, colorful, and witty.

The cause is: keep Pushing Daisies on air!


Have you watched an episode yet? You have? Oh good! Go catch up with the ones you haven't seen yet on abc.com. And plan a little time on Wednesday nights to enjoy this fabulously creative show.

What? You've never even heard of Pushing Daisies? That's just silly! Go straight on over to abc.com and watch some episodes! Their episode viewer is very nice and you only have a few commercials. Scott and I look forward to it every week!

If you need help with this, I've just added a new widget so you can just push "watch" and it'll take you right to it! It's a beautiful, sweet, romantic, stylized, clever show with some serious fun. Enjoy frequently, okay?

What are you doing reading our blog? You should be out voting! Okay, well, when you're through voting you can come here and tell me about your experience. Was it a long wait? Were there any fights that broke out about who got to go first? See any crazy people?

Happy VOTING day! I hope we get some winners who will be good. I hope the people of America choose good people to lead. God Bless America!

Un-Halloween

This was the first year I didn't dress up for Halloween. It was kind of weird, but also a sort of relief. I was going to be Dorothy (again) and try to make Scott a Tin man outfit, but by the time it needed to be done, I was overwhelmed by it. Also, I knew he wasn't thrilled about the idea, so we went without. And we didn't even carve our pumpkins! How lame of us? I know. But, they are still pretty fresh lookin' so, we'll probably carve some Thanksgiving pumpkins, instead.

My first ward activity was successful at least. The ward Shindig was well attended, and everyone danced, ate, and cake-walked into the night. You can see some pictures (as well as my oh so clever last minute advertising) here.

Scott is busy with tests and homework and his scoutmaster calling. He's making some serious progress with it though, I think. And now that he has his super sweet scouting "man bag" that I made him, he's even more organized! (pictures forthcoming, we need daylight for good ones)

I'm just plugging along at work and trying to get a big Christmas activity together. We decided to do a Christmas in Nauvoo theme, so I'll be drowning in cardboard for the next month. Also, I got the worst haircut of my life this week. I may or may not show you pictures. I got it "fixed" a little bit by the owner of the salon after I called and told him how disappointed I was with the cut, but it's still really short!

That's all for now, I've got to take some pictures of our house. Most of our art is hung finally! Here's a short clip from our cookie decorating adventure Thursday night.