BYU vs. Notre Dame

My dad, Jared and I woke up early on Saturday morning for the game. We had a 3 1/2 hour drive ahead of us to South Bend and we were privileged enough to do it in style with a car that Jared checked out for the weekend from GM. 

We drove in to South Bend and headed straight to the College Football Hall of Fame. As the afternoon went on the HoF was filled with Cougar fans. We spent a couple hours touring the inside of the hall and playing some football on the turf outside. Jared can still throw the long ball pretty well...he was throwing me some 40+ yard balls across the whole turf field. 

It was a close game with BYU only losing by 3 points. Pretty good to stay in the game now seeing that Notre Dame is going to the national championship game this year after beating USC in their final game of the year. BYU would have fared a lot better if they had an elite quarterback - Riley Nelson just didn't get the job done. It was nice spending time with my dad and my bro for the weekend. We don't have too many opportunities to have a guys getaway.

BAPS

 NOTE: I have been trying to tell Mike that he needs to add to our family history here and there. He has kindly agreed to write a few posts about some "guy things" he has done recently. So with out further ado Mikes blogging debut!


Here goes my first post in the blog-o-sphere that Kristin has so dutifully kept up these past few years. I figure that I should get a few posts in here and there so that I don't look like a complete slacker when it comes to the world of journal keeping and blogging. My first post I will share the good time that it known as B.A.P.S. (Bowling After Priesthood Session). Each priesthood session the older men and the young men in the ward get together in the gym area for pizza, drinks and some brotherly bonding. I have had to organize the event for the past three years since I was in the Young Men's presidency but this was the first year I have just come to enjoy the pizza. After the priesthood session we gathered guys from the Stamford and Darien wards to head over to the lanes in Norwalk for some BAPS. This year my team was Justin Berrett, Braden Edwards and JT Davis - the Stamford team. To make a long night short we ended up beating out all the other teams with the high score of the night and enjoyed our free milkshakes at the nearby diner courtesy of the lowest scoring team. 

Sweet Things and Date Nights

I know a lot of you probably think you have the best husband ever. Well, you would be wrong. My husband is the best! As many other people, our life is pretty busy. Most nights I don't get home till 7:30 or 8:30. Mike is usually right behind me around 8 or 9. Then when we both are home I am usually doing homework, packing my lunch for the nest day and trying to get into bed as early as possible. Mike usually takes off shortly after he gets home to go play in some type of sporting game (city league basketball or football, tennis if it's nice enough and church ball if he can make it.) As you can imagine that leaves very little "us time" in the week. After only four years of marriage we know the importance of "us time" so we make up for it on the weekends. Friday night is date night. We try to make it just an us thing, but sometimes its nice to have company we we'll invite another couple to join us. But really, its usually just us. We catch up on all the random little things from the past week, laugh, talk business, graduate school, kids at school, family affairs and go over upcoming events. It is my favorite!! Just him and I with no distractions. Ok, well sometimes the food is so good we just sit there and rave about it. I can't think of anything I look forward to more each week :)

On top of weekly date nights we've talked about how important it is for us to go out of our way to show the other we love them. I leave notes on mirrors and cars, make his favorite treats and occasionally drop surprised off to him at work. He writes me poems, leaves me flowers and hides notes in obscure places. I always get the biggest smile when he shows his love for me in these fun ways!

A few weeks back I was having a really bad week. You know, the kind were everything and anything goes wrong and you feel like you can't get your head above water and you just want to cry? Well that's the kind of week I was having and on top of it I had to stay late to babysit one night. After I got the kids into bed I check my phone and found a text that said

"clue: you are the _____ beneath my wings and I will forever protect you with my sword and _____."

I was pretty  tired and didn't really put it all together to fast. I texted him back "wind shield?" Then I waited for him to give me some explanation. I sat down on the couch and thought about it for much longer than I should have. Then the light clicked on and I ran to my car to find my favorite flowers (gerber daises) and a note on my windshield. How sweet. He really is my prince charming. I am so lucky to have found the perfect person for me!!

Megan's Baby Shower

My good friend Megan is having her first baby within the next month or so. Naturally, this meant it was time to get out the baby shower decorations and throw a party. I had a lot of fun with this since I have discovered pinterest! I found tons of fun little ideas for a fall themed baby shower. The theme was "Little Pumpkin" so we tried to stick with oranges and other fall colors for the decor. I planned the menu and gave out some recipes of things I knew we had to have. I mean the best pumpkin, sausage pasta ever known to man. Really, it was that good! I also made a yummy fall salad with pears, bacon, blue cheese, crasins and candied walnuts, topped off with a poppy seed dressing. So delicious. I had one of my girlfriends make a delicious pumpkin pie fruit dip served with crisp apples. Then I had someone else bring a pumpkin soup and delegated desserts. Can you tell I was a little over obsessed with the menu? I was so happy to hear all the raving reviews from the guests. The whole thing went very well I thought and Megan just glowed with that new mommy glow. It's so fun to watch your friends have babies :)

Field Trip Indian

In school we have just begun "our trip around the world." For social studies (or core as we call it) we study all 7 continents. While visiting each continent we learn about a few countries in that continent. Currently, we are in North American. We just finished studying American Symbols and now are moving onto a unit on the Native Americans who lived in America before it was settled by the pilgrims. It is a fun unit because it falls around Thanksgiving so we can do a lot with it. This year we heard the nature center in Stamford had a program for Kindergarten age children on the Native Americans. We booked it for the week before Thanksgiving. It was a lot of fun! The person running the program had several stations set up for the students to rotate around too. On station had NA tools, one had eating/cooking utensils another a game, that sort of thing. At one station they had some pieces of hardened clay. When you rubbed them together hard enough the clay became soft enough that you could rub it onto your skin, like war paint. The kids had a blast with this station. I didn't want to be left out so I put some on myself. My coworker who was taking pictures of the trip snapped a picture. When we looked at it we both got a big laugh... It looks like that bird is sitting on my head! It was really just a stuffed bird positioned in the right place to look as if it were on my head. We all got a good laugh out of it, what a fun field trip!

Big Bird and Mitt Romney

This year our Halloween festivities were put off a few days due to Hurricane Sandy. But don't worry we still got to celebrate at a few great parties! We dressed up this year as Big Bird and Mitt Romney. I thought it was a pretty clever idea. With the election being such a hot topic I wanted to do something political. Then when I watched the first Presidential debate where Obama made it sound like Romney hated Big Bird because Romney wanted to cit funding to PBS (which sesame street airs on,) then Romney goes "I love big bird." I was like "BAM! Halloween costumes!" Just kidding, it took me a while to figure it out, I was just glad I thought of something that would require very little effort from Mike. He is kind of a Halloween party pooper. BOO. I'll make a believer out of him yet.

I'm really hoping Romney wins tonight. That way we have Halloween costumes for at least the next 4 years. I figure we go as Romney and some other political figure of the year. lol. Good idea right?

We had a lot of fun at both the parties we went to this year. It was good to see so many friends from the other ward (the one who use to be part of our ward before they split.) At one party we all made Halloween scenes with graham crackers, candy and frosting. I forgot to snap a picture but I made a Harry Potter themed scene. I had the tomb of Dumbledore (with him inside, holding the elder wand,) the whomping willow, Aragon the Spider, the lake with the sword of Gryffindor in it, and Gryffindor tower. I was pretty proud of myself.

The Great Jack-O-Lantern Blaze

Last weekend was Halloween weekend. In honor of the holiday Mike and I traveled over to Sleepy Hollow, NY. Since Mike spent most of the day studying we weren't able to head down till around 5. Since it was so late a lot of the fun day time actives were over. We did happen to pass a halloween block party. It was cute and very small town. A few local food vendors had food stands up, a boy scout troop was selling hot coco and apple cider, that kind of thing. We got some food and walked around for a while, it was pretty fun. Next year we will go in the day time and see all the fun Headless Horsemen things :)

After our dinner we headed to the main event of the evening, The Great Jack-O-Lantern Blaze. It was incredible. There were thousands of hand carved pumpkins in so many different designs. Words really can't describe how awesome it was. Some of our favorite displays were; the cemetery, giant spider web with lots of spiders all around, dinosaurs, three witches, butterfly garden, halloween cats, clock with "The end is Near" on it and a path that slowly went out, monsters, sea life, zoo animals.... I guess we loved the whole thing!  I think we will need to make it a family tradition. We got tickets the same time as a few of our friends so we were able to walk through with some of them. It was a lot of fun to sip hot, over priced apple cider, hold hands and interpret the pumpkin designs with our friends. It was a great night.