Just hear those sleigh bell jinglin'.

I am SO HAPPY it's the holiday season! And that I finally have some time to update! Thanksgiving was funnnnnn. I thought I would be sad about not whipping up the whole meal myself but it was a nice break. And definitely nice not to have to clean my house all by myself!

Matt carving the turkey:


Cannon still all smiles after thoroughly HATING his first taste of cranberry sauce:


Jack enjoying his Thanksgiving feast:


Some Call of Duty action occurred of course once we got home (don't mind the mess in the background):


The next day we put up the tree:


I think our tree is just perfect. I promise to share more pictures of our house because it's like a winter wonderland in here!

And of course Jack's favorite place is under the tree!

Then the rest of the weekend was pretty much a blur because Saturday we rushed to the ER when I literally thought I was going to die from stomach pain. There was an issue with my appendix and they thought I would need it out but PRAISE GOD my appendix wasn't fully inflamed and they were able to treat it with a cocktail of meds through an IV that knocked me out for the rest of the weekend. I'm still kind of disappointed we didn't get to do more with the weekend and I'm still not feeling great but I'm glad I'm resting rather than recovering from surgery! I feel like a drama queen even talking about it, but I am totally fine.

PS - Can you tell I ended up caving and buying a new camera? Matt was on duty Wednesday night and I was sitting here by myself thinking how sad I would be to not have nice pictures of the weekend. So I headed over to Best Buy and they told me if Black Friday had a cheaper price on the camera I could bring in my camera and they'd give me a price adjustment. Black Friday prices without the Black Friday craziness? Obviously, I was sold. And I love the camera.

Heart shaped food again?

I know this doesn't seem very creative, but I saw this pasta at Homegoods and couldn't resist it. Matt is obsessed with pasta salad made with five color pasta and it's not that easy to find. I knew it would be perfect for my sweet monthly gesture - it was just a coincidence it's heart-shaped. I actually had something entirely different planned for this month but I knew I wouldn't be able to hide the pasta in the pantry for long. Plus, Matt was on duty last night and whenever he's on duty I try and have dinner with him in the duty office. It was the perfect little surprise and I loved seeing his reaction when he opened the container to find his favorite pasta salad in a sweet shape. I love you, Matt.

Also, I dropped our camera and broke it. Yes, at the worst possible time of the year. So any pictures over the next week, even of Thanksgiving, will be of iPhone quality. :(

A rainy weekend.

Today my nephew Lukey turns 1 and will have his first birthday party. Matt has only seen him once in his whole life when he was just 6 weeks old. And the only other time I've seen him is when I visited in June for a week and he was just shy of 7 months old. It's times like this that remind me why I do not want to do this forever. We love you so much Lukey. We hope you have fun playing with your new toys and getting your first taste of cake. We cannot wait to see how much you've changed and grown. Just one more month!

The weather this weekend has been absolutely disgusting! On one hand, I don't really mind. It's perfect weather to pull on boots and throw on a chunky scarf or wrap up in a blanket and snuggle on the couch. Butttt it pretty much ruined all our plans. Knott's Berry Farm gave free admission to military and dependents this month (well, through Thanksgiving) and we had been planning for weeks to go this weekend because we were busy the previous weeks. We seriously considered going anyway but I know we'd be miserable.

But of course we are still just enjoying being together. Matt's work schedule has been insane so we are really grateful that this weekend we had the whole weekend together with nowhere we had to go. Yesterday we did a little shopping for Christmas goodies. We needed a new tree because the lights on our tree stopped working. I hate having a fake tree but we're not even here through Christmas and won't be for the next three years (yikes!) so we make due by burning LOTS of Christmas tree scented candles!

We also continued some of our traditions. Every year we pick out a special ornament. Of course we have pretty glass balls and icicles and snowflakes. But our tree is also littered with lots of ornaments that are specific to US. Like a Diet Coke can (to represent my dangerous addiction), a football, and a pineapple (for Hawaii of course!). I don't think you'll be surprised about our ornaments this year:

Mine:

(since my own mixer is red I just couldn't resist!)

and Matt's:
(for the record I hate Matt's HAHA but I have never seen him more excited about something decorative in my LIFE!)

I can't wait to add them to our tree! We also got another little something that we get yearly but we haven't taken him out of the box yet so I won't share him just yet. I refuse to decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving but I am dying for it to be Thursday night after dinner!

I also ate my first holiday treat last night:

Chocolate ice cream with crushed candy canes on top? Yes please!

Can you tell I'm excited for the most wonderful time of the year?

Today when Matt gets back from the gym we are working on a little project for the house and watching football. Happy Sunday!

Maple Salmon and Sweet Potato Mash.

When I think of fish I never think of fall. But I had salmon that needed to be used so I searched on trusty allrecipes and this maple salmon recipe had pretty good ratings. And then I wanted to make sweet potatoes because maple anything sounds great with sweet potatoes... but Matt does NOT like straight up sweet potatoes, even in fry form (what is wrong with him!?) so I made this sweet potato/Yukon gold potato mash. It's so delicious and has all the sweetness and yummy-ness of sweet potatoes without such an intense flavor. And here's another crappy iPhone picture taken in the pitch blackness of 6 PM:


If you like fish and/or maple syrup, PLEASE try this fish. You will NOT be disappointed!

Today I officially started my holiday shopping! I bought Vinny a big Bruder logging truck I found for cheap cheap cheap (for Bruder anyway) at Homegoods. Last year we gave him two big Bruder trucks and he didn't stop playing with them the entire time we were there. I hope he loves the logging truck as much. I also bought some supplies to decorate the entry which I am SO excited about. And Sim and I also did our shopping for Thanksgiving. Would making an apple pie, pumpkin pie, and cheesecake be absolutely crazy? I think I know the answer, but holidays are the ultimate excuse for baking and eating, are the not!?

Jack gets a new coat.

I always said I would NEVER put clothes on Jack. But lately he seems cold all the time and since he desperately needs exercise or he gets fat, I knew he would need something warm for walks in the coming months. Sixty degrees is cold for him, okay? He's a Hawaiian dog!

I saw this little jacket and couldn't resist!


I'm pretty sure he hates me for putting him in it but he does look pretty freakin' cute, doesn't he?

Affordable homes for returning OIF and OEF veterans.

THIS is freaking awesome - especially that homes can be customized based on the needs of the veterans who are selected for the homes. This should be happening all over the country.

Today was the laziest day ever.

I got home from work and then went to Target and then went to the post office and besides that I have done nothing today. I feel like I'm never going to catch up on sleep! Or my TV shows! I just wanted to share this recipe with you guys. This chili is not the best chili in the world, but the real shining star of this recipe is the biscuits. The chili just complements it. I love eating chili and soup out of bowls. Its super comforting to me to snuggle under a blanket with a big huge mug of something tasty in my hands.


The best way to serve this in my opinion though is with the biscuit cut in half and chili spooned on top with cheddar cheese a big dollop of sour cream! Yum!

We survived Vegas.

Everyone has been emailing me for pictures of our ball. I wish I could say I had tons of pictures to share with you from our ball and Vegas but I don't! The ball was a nightmare - I hated my hair and makeup, we were running WAY late, it took the boys three hours to check us in because the hotel overbooked everyone and we had to move hotels - so pictures were really the last thing on my mind, which is totally unfortunate since it was such a special and fun occasion. None of my friends have put their pictures up yet and once they do I'll be sure to post more if there's any of us worth posting (and I know there are some pictures of Matt fist pumping and booty shaking that will definitely be making their way onto the blog). But for now, this is all I have! I'm sorry family who I know wanted a nice picture of us. We just didn't get one! This is the best we got, and my hair had already fallen by the time we took it, and the flash made us look weird and blurry, and my red eye was so ferocious that I just look creepy:


But in the end the ball ended up being so much fun. Our guest of honor was a Marine with terminal cancer and our guest speaker was a POW for 6 years in Vietnam, so needless to say, the ceremony was very moving, and especially so on Veteran's Day. And after the ceremony, as an apology for the hotel room mishap, they gave us open bar! I don't think I need to say more about that. ;)

We didn't get to do all the things we planned on doing in Vegas. All of us felt sick from enjoying the open bar a liiiittle too much (well, with the exception of Matt obviously who as most of you know has never had a sip of alcohol in his life - such discipline!), so we laid around most of the day. We ended up only staying one day so now I wished we had taken better advantage of our time! But we had an awesome night out anyway. Us at the beginning of the night (the pictures from later on aren't so pretty, ha!):


And in case you're wondering what most of our night consisted of:


Scott dancing. And dancing on the pole. Yes, that really happened. And notice his shirt. I seriously laughed so hard I cried for a good majority of the night. Love our friends. And I can't wait to go back to Vegas, we already have another trip in the works. And I know Simrin has more pictures of us in Vegas so I'll be sure to post those when she sends them to me. I hope everyone had as much fun this weekend as we did!

But you knew every word they sang, you knew just the right thing to say.

Last night me and Matt had plans to go to dinner and celebrate my job but he was so exhausted from dealing with work stuff so we decided to cruise down the PCH, listen to our favorite CDs from high school, get hot chocolate, and watch the sunset from a park in Leucadia instead. It ended up getting really cloudy and I was worried that we wouldn't be able to even see the sunset but then the clouds lifted juuust enough. And the green flash was clear as day and felt like it lasted forever. It's not the prettiest sunset I've ever seen (duh, we lived in Hawaii) but it was my favorite night in a long time.

Halloween.

Ahh, I'm almost a full week behind!

Our Halloween was actually pretty low key because we were (I was) a little crazy at the football game the night before. We had our Halloween movie night and carved pumpkins and roasted seeds and made candy apples. But I forgot to take pictures of ALL OF IT! Well, actually I was just too busy enjoying having Matt back for the night I didn't even think to pick up my camera. It seemed like he'd been working so much lately.

But I do have SOME pictures. We were Monsters for Halloween, as in the energy drink. Anyone who knows Matt personally knows he is OBSESSED with energy drinks, and especially Monsters. It was fun and slightly ridiculous.


We went to a small party and also trick or treated with our favorite little buddy, who was dressed as a dragon!
Cutest little dragon in the world right? The low key holiday was actually nice because we have been on the go for the past two months and it doesn't look like we'll be slowing down anytime in 2010!

I made these owl cookies for the party we went to, so adorable right? I saw a picture of similar cookies with bats but couldn't find the recipe. So I used this recipe for the cookies, and made a ganache filling out of 9 oz bittersweet chocolate and a cup of heavy cream.

I've also made these recipes which were all SO DELICIOUS but I wasn't able to take pictures of them for one reason or another.

PW's Spinach Salad (Even though it's a salad, this was our "bad" meal of the week.. you literally pour bacon grease dressing onto the salad. So good but so bad.)
Apple Turnovers
Flank Steak with Mushroom Sauce (Seriously one of the tastiest meals I've ever made, this will be a regular at our house and if you are a mushroom lover I guarantee if you try this it will be a regular at your house too - also this is a new favorite food blog, definitely check it out.)

P.S. - I had every intention of taking pictures of the apple turnovers and making it my fifth fall baking post the day after I made them because they looked so pretty but Matt literally took the entire plate to work that day, not even kidding.

We had a ton of plans this weekend but Matt is doing a million things for work right now and he has duty tomorrow - meaning he has to go in at 8 am and stay overnight since the students are never left unattended. Even though he's working a lot he's working so hard and I'm so proud of him. I know his hard work will be recognized again this cycle! So it will be another low key night for us! Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

USC vs. Oregon.

I said I was going to post about Halloween weekend two nights ago and I ended up being completely lazy on Monday night. Yesterday I deep cleaned the house from top to bottom because I knew the house would be neglected while I got used to my work schedule. So anyway, I'm a little behind but I'm posting now!

My first day of work was AWESOME. I am so happy to be a productive member of society again! haha :) I don't know if I can cross having a job I love off my 26 Before 26 List... but I think it will be pretty freaking sweet. I love everyone I work with, I loved my boss, I love the hours, and the job will definitely be something different every day which is always nice. Plus I can earn commission on top of my already awesome hourly pay which I didn't know to begin with!

Like I mentioned in my Patriots post, we had tickets to the Ducks game at the Memorial Coliseum in LA (actually, Compton). Simrin and Scott are from Oregon so we went to cheer on their team. Their dads actually came down and we all had a blast. Parking around the Coliseum is SO expensive so we literally tailgated on the streets of Compton.
I honestly can't tell you how nervous I was that when we got back to our spots our cars wouldn't be there. Besides the trash in the lower left hand corner, I know it doesn't look that bad, but it was scary.

Then we had to sneak alcohol in the stadium since alcohol isn't allowed in NCAA stadiums. Here we are hiding the beers in the sleeves of Sim's sweatshirt!
We sure are two classy broads!

We were in an awkward section reserved for Ducks fans but our view was still pretty good. I have never been in a stadium so big.
It was an exciting game at first going back and forth but then the Ducks just blew the pants off USC, which was still fun to see.

And after their win the Ducks were ranked #1 in the nation! And after this week the Patriots have the best record in the NFL! It's so nice to see teams you love do well! And we love being able to attend legitimate sporting events, can you tell?

But I just want to take a moment to publicly appreciate Matt. Monday night he drove home really late when he would have normally stayed to celebrate the job offer and brought me flowers. I found out today that last night all of his friends went out after work and he came home. I was upset at first that he came home, thinking he felt obligated since he never even mentioned it to me, and he said he just wanted to be there for me since he knew I was probably stressed and nervous about the new job. He is more loving, supportive, and encouraging than I could ever ask for him to be. I love you Matt and I am so lucky to be your wife.

November.

November is shaping up to be an amazing month! I have much to report from this past weekend but the most exciting news of all is that I GOT A JOB! I originally didn't want the job and even told my brother so on the phone on the way to my interview, BUT I loved everyone I met there and realized it's actually a perfect "quality of life" job (as my brother described it). My job is very similar to my last job at Interisland Airways in Hawaii but I'll be making the same amount and working half as much. So I'll still have time for volunteering, cooking, working out, spending time with Jack, and if I get into school, I'll be off in plenty of time to get down to San Diego for afternoon and evening classes. The best part is they close from Christmas Eve to New Years so it will never be a problem to go home for the holidays. Another job had us considering going home in January rather than over Christmas and I couldn't stand to miss Christmas with Vinny and Luke. But of course, things worked out in the end! Actually maybe the best part is that even when Matt is on the off cycle (meaning he has no students) I'll only be at work for a few hours so we'll still have plenty of time to spend together. Yes, I think that's the best part. :)

It was becoming beyond discouraging to not even get calls back for jobs I was more than qualified for. I'm just so happy because Matt is so happy and so proud. It was the best feeling to call him and tell him the news because he has totally been along for the ride of applying and interviewing and getting turned down and listening to me complain and after my last rejection, cry. I was really starting to feel like a loser for having not worked for a YEAR! Especially considering how hard he works and how much he provides for me. I'm so excited that I can contribute financially again and we'll be able to save for the future AND fun adventures. And I'll be able to buy Matt Christmas presents with money that I actually made. My first day is Wednesday and I have so much to do before then, but I'm going to take advantage of my last days of being lazy and catch up on TV shows from the past week and post about our Halloween!