Let us be thankful for the most glorious of food groups: Carbs

We started out Thanksgiving Day bright and early (7 am) with some Football. The ward Turkey Bowl to be precise, very serious, very competitive. Haha.

It was a beautiful day. I jogged around the track, burned approximately 1 bite of pecan pie off, and took pictures.

Yeah! Dan has the ball. It was fun to see Dan's Young Men (he's the Priest Advisor) and all the Military guys playing. The best guy on the field: Not the Navy Seal, or the big tongan - a 5 foot hispanic soccer player kicked everyone's trash. Then, it was time to cook and get to our friends' house!
Dan and his fabulous appetizers, including his world famous Triscut Pizzas.
I was most proud of my Pies. Never mind that the chocolate cream didn't set up and was runnier than soup.
A close up of my contributions. Notice a trend? Sugar and Carbs. My loves in life.
Dan was stoked that our wonderful hosts had an X-box.
This little guy is so much fun. We love playing with him!
He was getting hungry and ate tons of Dan's appetizers. That boy can eat!
All this food for 4 people. A pie a person. Yeah, not good for waistline.
This was my first year having Thanksgiving not in St. George, and more importantly, not being cooked by my fabulous mother. I discovered many things about myself in the quest to cook Thanksgiving, one being: I eat nothing but carbs. I also learned that cream pies can not set up and go horribly wrong - even if you've spent an hour hand crafting chocolate garnishing curls to go on top. Also, if you forget your rolls are still in the fridge an hour before, and decide to put them in a 200 degree oven to speed up rise time, it will kill the yeast and your rolls will be hard as rocks. Yeah for self discovery. I have many a thanksgiving ahead, lets hope the learning curve is steep.

I hate that I love it...

Twilight that is. I will openly say to anyone how the Twilight Series is "poorly written school girls' daydreams that create a false ideal of what true love is." But I can't help it, I've read all those poorly written daydreams, and anxiously await all the movies. So we saw it yesterday: New Moon. I chose this picture because I can hear my mom's commentary of the movie in my head: "Those boys need to pull their pants up!" Haha, so classic of my mom.

I was so happy to be seeing a good movie (after the Wild Things debacle, don't see it). I am in love Jacob's body. And all of Edward. Its sad.

So, in trying to be fiscally conservative, we decided to go across the street and buy some treats from a little grocer instead of the over priced theater offerings. However, Dan didn't notice these chocolates were $7 a pound, and I didn't notice he had filled a pound and half of candy in his bag. Here he is holding his $12 candy! Way to save money, should've gone for the $4 milk duds...

Ah, Reds. Another thing I hate how much I love: donuts. I can't say no to them. So (nearly every ) Saturday morning Dan and I go to this marvelous joint.

They are delicious.

Clearly we go first thing in the morning, before make-up and/or hair brushing.

But thats okay, cause Red's draws a pretty rough crowd. Its in the hispanic district of town, and we are generally the only native English speakers there. Dan loves his nasty coconut covered mutations. Chocolate is the only way to go.

Some weeks were adventurous and recruit some friends, get our donuts to go...

And eat them at the beach! Have a Happy Thanksgiving. A holiday of gluttony. My kinda thing.

Sew? Just say "NO!"

Last year for Halloween, Dan and I threw together a vampire costume last minute for the ward Halloween party. We were not well received and I vowed this would never happen again. So starting roughly October 1st this year, I began discussing our costume options w/ Dan and we settled on Alice & Wonderland. However, when I tried to find costumes online, I found this:

Since when did Alice start stripping on the weekends? I was under the impression that she came from a wealthy family (she did have her own tutor) and didn't need to dance at Little Darlings for extra cash. After finding this out, and being completely high at the time (not really), I thought "I can sew my own costume!" Except, I can't sew.

This was the final product after countless youtube videos on how to sew gathers, multiple meltdowns, one suicide attempt, and a lot of Diet coke. Just don't get close enough to inspect the seams.

Dan was the Cheshire cat, and it should be noted he sewed his own ears. I was too unstable after my costume to do much work on his.

This year we were well received in our ward - even though our trunk was decorated rather shoddily for the trunk or treating.

Our main competitors in the couple coordinated costume division: Calvin & Hobbes.

On Halloween Eve, we celebrated Oktoberfest/Pumpkin Fest with Leana & Mark. It was awesome and here we are with our pumpkins. Mine is a bit bigger than everyone elses'. Just a little bit. Take Home Message: Just buy your costume, don't under any circumstances make your own. It is better to be Slutty, than to sew.

Don't Hate on the Headlamps

Everytime we visit REI (which is WAY too often) Dan wants to buy a headlamp. To which I respond " Headlamps are gay, you will never use it!" Then we were without power for several days and I realized their utility. Dan finally got his much coveted headlamp which he used for our recent Camping Adventure. It was actually super useful, I shall never hate on headlamps again.Dan was "the fire master" and consequently still smells like campfire, 5 days later.
Me wearing the infamous Headlamp, and holding the delicious campfire concoction known as a Banana boat.
Also with us on the adventure was our friends Mark (also a member of the rabid pro-head lamp party) and Leana.
And Justin and Lisa - who found us a great camp site and planned our excursion!
Okay, so just a public service announcement. I work for a cosmetic dermatologist - so I'm surrounded all day by people who really care about how they look. Yet many of them go tanning! The Doctor always brings up Bridgett Bardot - she was a 1960s bombshell who loved the sun - spent years tanning on the French riviera. Now look at her. Yeah, put on some sunscreen.
I love candy corns! So I just had to buy these Hershey Candy corn kisses. And then turn them into cookies per the recipe on the back of the package. They are delicious - the perfect pre-Halloween treat. Okay, done with random tangents. Have a Happy Halloween!!!

The Creepy Couple without Kids

That’s what Dan and I were when we went to PUMPKIN FEST. I read about it in the newspaper, it was advertised as family fun (they just didn't mention to qualify as a family means you must have a screaming 3 year old.) We went out to the Pumpkin Patch in Carmel Valley and it was a madhouse of children, we felt awkward.

They did have many varieties of pumpkins, I liked the cancerous looking ones

I got this cute mini pumpkin

Dan got this giant gourd for us to carve.

And we got the heck out of pumpkin fest in less than 20 minutes.

Later that night we had some friends ( 6 adults and one toddler, it was a full on party) over for dinner and games- despite Dan and I's anti-game attitudes, it was fun. Dan set the table and did such a more ascetically pleasing job than I would have, I had to take a picture:

Lest I not forget: WE ARE COUCH RICH. That was our big joke, someday we'd be like the people up the street and be so rich we'd have actual furniture. Well, the dream came true, here it is:

Now we can only dream of the day we will be TV rich haha. Its okay, I can watch Glee on Hulu, and thats all that matters.

First ever "DAN'S MUNCHY MOMENTS!"

Hello Internet world this is the first ever posting of “DAN’S MUNCHY MOMENTS!” where I, Dan, post about the exciting world in which Lo and I eat in… So look forward to a non-expert opinion on food and some really cool pictures to back it up.

For the first posting of “DAN’S MUNNCHY MOMENTS!” I have chosen a local Chinese restaurant by the name of “DYNASTY CHINESE” (and yes they didn’t have a “THE” in the front of “DYNASTY CHINESE”). It is literally about 300 yards from our humble home (which now has a couch, ‘we couch rich! Wrd!’) Lo and I picked up my friend ‘razer’ (his name has been changed to protect his identity, but not by much) on our way to the “DYNASTY CHINESE” for the first ever posting of “DAN’S MUNCHY MONENTS!” post review. And can I say I enjoyed everything about this place (the others not so much) from the 3D wallpaper, to the extensively ethnocentric Chinese décor (with all the workers in awesome Chinese outfits! Oh and they were all Chinese also!) To last but not least, the food! (Which was sub-par even by my standards, but it was still good). One of my favorite things about this place was the way that you are treated. Upon finishing all the food on my plate (which in the west is considered a compliment to the chef, but I guess we were in the east then) our server stared at me like a fat freak, replying, “WOW! No one ever finishes their whole plate! But I guess you are big, but still, WOW!” Then she continued staring at me with a mixture of awe and disgust. Which I found to be very funny: having someone who is wearing a ridiculous ‘work uniform/costume’ that capitalizes on all the Chinese stereotypes of the last 200 years, look at ME like I was a freak. But the best part of all about the place is that there is an area where you can put on a Chinese costume and sit on a giant gold throne to have your picture taken. As you will see, I had to do such a thing. The man that was helping me in to my outfit was laughing so hard because he told me that I was the first person to act so ‘silly’ (right before he said ‘silly’ he had to pause, I could see in his tight little eyes that he was searching for the right word as to not offend, which was a first in this establishment for me) while taking these pictures.

This is lo and I at our table.

This is the cool 3D wallpaper.

This is my friend 'Razor' holding some very large fire crackers that are apart of the 'decor'.

This me chillin like an chinese emperor.

This is the man that called me 'silly'. He is fixing my hat and telling me thats not how I am to sit as an emperor.

This is me doing it his way, boring :-(.

Oh this is just me being.... 'silly'..

Thank you for reading the first ever "DAN'S MUNCHY MOMENTS!".

Everyone's Favorite Holiday: Columbus Day!

Like any good God-fearing Americans, we celebrated Columbus Day (for which Dan had Friday and Monday off!) in the traditional way: exploration! In honor of the great explorer we too ventured the ocean and discovered new things! Except we didn’t find any new continents, just Big Sur.

I know - you want to know who does my hair so you can get it done there too! It was super windy – the beginning of a storm which has left all of Monterey without electricity for the past two days. Its great! Not.

The greatest find of our exploration: A purple starfish! Dan did save the guy by throwing him back into the ocean, thereby paving the way for a future Sacrament meeting talk.

Since my job is only every other week, and this is an off week, my domestic time filling has returned:

What is better than bananas, chocolate, and peanut butter? Answer: Nothing. In the two months we’ve lived in Monterey I’ve tried no less than 5 Banana Bread recipes (unhealthy, I know). But this one is my favorite! And has the least amount of sugar and butter of any of my experiments. Try it (click try it for link to recipe).

I decided to make some inexpensive Halloween crafts to festive up our house. I saw these glittered pumpkins in Martha Stewart Living, ran out and bought Martha Stewart Brand Glitter, only to discover my pumpkins still didn’t look like the magazine – and that I preferred them in their un-glittered state. Oh well. Also, I watched one of my favorite movies, The Nightmare Before Christmas, to get in the spirit of the holiday. I’m quite excited, I love Halloween!