Happy Halloween!!!

I bought 3 pumpkins that adorned our doorstep until Halloween day. One was used for our dinner in a pumpkin--which is a yummy casserole that's all cooked and you just clean the pumpkin, stuff with its new guts and bake in the oven. The other two were pawns in our hands and both experienced some of our carving skills. Conor also cleaned, salted and baked a punch of pumpkin seeds as well. I made Ghosts in the Graveyard dessert to top off our somewhat themed dinner. Of course there was snacking on the candy bars since the trick-or-treaters were practically non-existent on our street. That's why you always buy candy you like!!! : )

We had a couple friends over for dinner and had fun hanging out. Unfortunately the pumpkin was taking it's pretty time (kinda like me) and never did soften up enough to scoop some out with the dinner. It tastes like squash and is great if it's cooked! Bummer! Maybe next year I'll get it right. . . . And next year I won't be competing with football!!! : )

Surprises Come In Big Packages

A couple days before Halloween, we came home to a surprise on our doorstep. We had been shooting some bridal photos and by the time we were home it was dark. Conor wanted to know what I had ordered and I insisted nothing. He brought in the large box and told me it didn't look like nothing. Shane had just texted and told us to check our door so I figured it was from him. We had no clue what was inside, but it weighed a fair amount. I was guessing a 5 lb. brick of caramel for apples and candies since I told Shane I couldn't find any here. We opened up our box and found some lovely surprises!

I love surprises!!!

Me, trying to act surprised.

Almond Joys=joy in my mouth! Those are the best packing pellets I've seen yet!
Look at his face! Like a kid at Christmas!!!

I had to pry them out of his fingers . . .

He drank the first one so fast I couldn't capture it. So here was round 2 the next morning, thus the fluffy hair.

I think I should've timed this . . .

And he polishes it off!

He knows if he tilts it at an angle he can suck a few more drops out.

Officially gone and already compacted for the trash! : )

We were so excited and welcome surprises any time!!! : ) Shane and Mindy felt bad they were no longer going to be able to visit before Thanksgiving like we had talked about last month and sent us this consolation prize. Conor is especially grateful (not that you're not visiting) because he has been out of his beloved rootbeer milk for a couple months now. You can buy it in Logan at the Gossner's cheese factory. I bought 5 cases before we moved and hauled it with us. When we drive to UT for the holidays we're stocking up on more. Conor insists this is part of the year's supply food storage we should be saving . . . Shane thought it quite comical that we'll be loading up our car with cases of the stuff and wanted to see what it was all about when they visited Logan recently. They were very kind to think of us and send us our goodies! Thank you guys!!! We look forward to your visit next spring!

One Year Ago--South Korea

Ya, so we all know I never followed through in posting pics from our trip last year. I started out all gung-ho earlier this year with a slideshow from the first leg of our trip in Seoul. When the slideshow wouldn't play on our blog, I gave up and moved on to other things and forgot about it. Last week Conor and I were reminiscing about what we were doing last year at this time. He realized this would be his first year "home" in 4 years for Halloween. Last year we were in the air, flying to S. Korea when it hit. Total bummer! But our trip and experiences quickly made up for it! : )

Here is my tribute to exactly one year ago today! (At least according to my camera--it's too much work to figure out the EXACT same time it would've been November 2nd over there!).

All of the photos are from Hahoe Folk Village. With the exception of the last one--where Conor's loving our massive platter of food. It was a tasty, spicy Korean dish. I loved it except the fact that the entire chicken seemed to be included (minus the head and feet) and I had to start inspecting each bite. Enjoy our pics of looking back to 2008!!!

The Happy Couple!

A couple of years ago Malia was very sneaky and managed to obtain a stack of old photos from Grandma Percy's house for a "Relief Society lesson". Well, there's some truth to that, but we wanted them for another reason. Unfortunately I kept them MUCH longer than I intended. Fortunately I am finally using another of the photos from the collection I scanned in. I have wanted to print and frame this photo ever since and finally retouched it today so I can send off to the lab. Yeah!!!

They are my great-grandparents on my dad's side--his father's parents. Nathaniel Eli Thomas and Susan Elizabeth Whitt were married November 19, 1903 in the Logan Temple. Almost 106 years ago--awesome! My middle name, Sue, came partly from this woman and a Susannah on my mom's side of the family. Maybe I'll be able to track down a pic of her, too! Just a little bit of family history that has come to life for me. I'm hoping to track down more photos of our grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, etc. on each side to add to our collection. This is fun! : )

Chelsea's Visit

Fall is here!!! There may be no turning of the leaves, but our fall weather has arrived in Houston. We like to think Chelsea brought it with her from Utah during her stay two weeks ago. She visited for the weekend and when she arrived after midnight, it was smothering and nasty outside--felt just like a sweet, humid night I remember all too well. By the next day it had cooled 30 degrees and rained every day she was a here. Made it easier to stay indoors and accomplish my horrid project: cleaning up the rest of the upstairs bedrooms. Chelsea is the best friend ever and was so kind to offer (or at least agree after I twisted her arm 30 times) to help me tackle the daunting task. Despite all my efforts the past year, I still had a lot of crap--there's no polite way to put it! We were successful in our efforts and made it livable and now both bedrooms are ready for guests to visit! Yeah!!!! She was even so kind as to help Conor go through his belongings as well. lol. Sorry we don't have pics of the before and after but the stacks of stuff blocked the view. For those that saw it previously, you'll have to come back and check it out. I still have to decorate most the upstairs and hang things on the walls but have no clue what to do yet. I'm trying to let the creative juices flow since my brain is not filled with the clutter!

So, back to what's important. I was much in need of some Chelsea time and had missed her dearly. I was so excited she was able to visit! It was fun to hang out, talk and catch up a bit. Next time I promise we will: have more time to play, see the sites, not eat any ground beef chimichangas, and TURBO!!! ; ) We ate out, saw Whip It (hilarious--all 3 of us enjoyed it!) at the movies, went to the Houston Arts Festival downtown and had our friend Danielle join us, got loads of chocolate goodness at the Chocolate Bar, and topped off our sugar fix at Candylicious. Or maybe we topped it off to our trip to Kroger for ice cream and more candy. . . those Core Skittles flavor are amazing! I felt a little sick. But it was a great weekend and we loved having Chelsea here--just like old times!

Korean Festival

Look how tasty! Conor heard that they were holding the first-ever Korean Festival here in Houston last Saturday. It has been almost a year since our trip to South Korea and we thought it would be a fun experience. It would've been better had I not botched the time. We arrived 20 minutes before it ended. The dances were held indoors and we couldn't even crowd through the doorway to see what was going on. We just admired all the Korean people, they do have cute kids, and tried some food. No clue what this dish was called--but it was good, maybe even better since we ate with our fingers since they ran out of chopsticks. Fingers are just portable chopsticks! I love these clear noodles. We're going to have to test out the restaurant to satisfy our Korean food cravings! Any takers?

Flat Stanley

My friend's son needed help with his Flat Stanley project for 9th grade a couple weeks ago. They live in Utah and had to find someone in another state. I printed him out, gave him a nice trim and had a day of fun. You can read below what I wrote for him; it's somewhat entertaining. And excuse the highly professional photos!

Well, they say, "Go big or go home"! That’s when we gladly welcomed Stanley into our home. Home is Houston, Texas. The terrain is much different than Utah and there are no mountains to speak of in Houston. It is very hot and humid, but this week it was finally “cool” and rained a lot. The big difference is this time of year the rain wasn’t hot and muggy and brought a lovely cool air with it. Because of the torrential downpours, which is a normal rainstorm here, it put a damper on our day of fun with Stanley where we could take him out on the town and show him a good time.

Our adventuresome day started out at home. Now, this is where I spend 95% of my time. I am self employed as a photographer and had some wedding photos to edit and get ready to post online. Stanley was an avid observer and learned how to use Lightroom and Photoshop, plus check e-mails every 5 minutes and respond to those as well. We were then graced by the presence of a DirecTV newbie that didn’t have a clue what he was doing. But after nearly five hours he finally had our dish installed, boxes hooked up, and plenty of new holes drilled into the house to tempt more cockroaches. I quite dislike the nasty, filthy, grotesque rodents and kill them the instant I find one. It’s a necessity to have pest control and I love having them come if I find anything crazy running around the house. If you spent most your time inside the house, you would too! Stanley enjoyed a little cable while I finished up the photos.

Then we were off to the local post office to mail a couple packages. Looked like any other post office in the United States. Nothing exciting, other than trying to get creative with moving the stale air filled with a man’s b.o. standing in line behind me. Then it was off to downtown Houston, about 5 miles from our house. My husband, Conor, works for Chevron in the old Enron building. It’s a beautiful glass building with spectacular views of the city. Stanley hung out in Conor’s office and checked out the sweet view from the window. Amazingly he wasn’t scared of heights!

Conor came home from work and we took a field trip a few miles away to show some of our area. You can see them together in the photos. First was a house a few blocks from ours in an area called the Heights (kinda like the Avenues in SLC). The past couple of weeks an arsonist has been lighting fires to old, abandoned houses in the Heights and burning them. I think there are 9 now in this recent rash and pretty scary when it hits that close to home! Most of the homes in our neighborhood are around 100 years old and have a lot of character. There a lot on the historic register and people fight to preserve them. The Heights is the highest part of Houston and therefore the safest area around for hurricanes. It has been 1 year since Ike hit Galveston, 45 miles from here. Hurricane season is going on right now and it’s something we always have to be prepared for. That’s why Stanley helped me clip some coupons earlier so I can save money building up our food storage!

The next stop was an old historical bridge with the river below. It has an amazing view of downtown and we just showed a small piece of it hear since we were in the tow zone and they were putting out orange cones to do construction right then. But we couldn’t cheat you on the view. We visited Glenwood, an old and beautiful cemetery close to the Heights. Trees and gorgeous landscaping enclose and add to the privacy of this place. As you can see, with all our humidity and rain we receive, it’s really more a tropical area and it stays green almost year-round. It is a busy and fast paced area—4th largest city in the country—and takes quite a while to get around because there are so many people and the city is spread out. It is a beautiful area with many amenities and many options. We were happy to take Stanley into our lives for a day and allow ya’ll to see deep into the heart of Texas!