check out . . .

. . . this sweet bruise I got from jazz class. There are identical ones on my other knee, my hip bones, and my ankle bones. Who knew?

. . . my jack-o-lantern toe nails for a little Halloween spirit! I heart them!

. . . our Palmyra ponchos we wore to the rainy BYU football game against Wyoming last Saturday! We just knew they'd come in handy again!

. . . 109 pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! (gahh!)

Yesterday was my Sunday to teach Relief Society (I don't think I've ever loved a calling this much :) and it was on two conference talks, both about being mothers and nurturing and teaching children in the home. So, I began by asking "What is the best part about being a kid at Church?" Everyone answered "treats" as I pulled out bags of cookies from inside the podium! Everyone loved it and I got a good laugh.

Now you may be wondering, are there 109 Relief Society sisters in the BYU 44th ward? Certainly not. But . . . last time I made these cookies, 1 batch = 18 cookies. So, quadruple the recipe and get 72 cookies, perfect for our 71 sister Relief Society. But, as Ben figured out in his head in like 4 seconds, I made the right amount of dough, but I made the cookies only 2/3 the size as I did last time! Hence, 109 cookies. It took 3 1/2 hours to bake them all!

. . . our nifty BYU football Pez. Before the football game on Saturday, we went to a PwC tailgate/congratulations for making it to the 2nd round of interviews party. Before Ben flies to NYC next week, they wanted to butter him up. On each table were all kinds of goodies. I came away with BYU beads, BYU tattoos, a PwC notepad, and some PwC cups. Ben's only desire was the BYU football pez. When we got home, it was promptly placed on top of the TV. I told Ben I was going to take it down when our home teachers came over, but he pointed to my Ikea shelf and asked why I could have all of those decorations and he couldn't even have one! Hahaha, good argument, my man. The pez remains. :)

I asked Ben to smile for the camera & I got the tush.

Isn't he a stud?

Hand. Some.

Caramel chocolate malt in a chocolate waffle cone joy.

cougar blue

We kinda got stuck in the Homecoming Parade that was marching back into the SFH and RB parking lot . . . so Cosmo helped us turn around. Cosmo is so cool.

A little football game lovin'.

home improvement

way before:

before:

now:

doesn't it look so much more home-y? we love it. my latest project has been painting picture frames for wedding photos to go on our living room wall. the frames are from ikea - cheap and wonderful, and i painted them egg plant, ivory, hunter green, and chocolate bar brown to pull some of the colors from our wedding photos. many, many thanks to ashley henderson for the suggestion of using gm velcro stickies to hang them on our cinder-block walls! they look great and i am SO excited!

next time we drive past ikea and it's not on a sunday, i'm going to get two more larger picture frames - one for the family proclamation and one for our marriage certificate. i'll hang these with a large picture of ben & i in front of the temple and our picture of the Savior on the other wall.

close-up:

another view:

siblings

I was telling Ben tonight about a certain kitchen table occurrence when Scott and I were little. The bad words in our house at the time were "dumb", "stupid", and "poopy-head". Scott said the prayer at the dinner table this night and as soon as he said "amen", he looked up, said "Dumb, stupid, poopy-head!" and ran to his room because he knew he'd be in trouble. Hahaha!

Anyway, pretty much all of the photos on my phone are ones Dad has sent me over the past year or so. I look at them every now and again and I thought it was time to share because, frankly, my siblings are dang hilarious. Enjoy! :)

Love, love, love them and can't wait to see them next month for Turkey-Day! :)