Wishing the weekend wasn't almost over...

We had a wonderful time this weekend. I hate that it's now Sunday evening and that means tomorrow...back to the work week. (SIGH...it's life...if we didn't work, we wouldn't probably be able to have the wonderful weekends that we do.) Friday night we went to visit Grandma and Pop Pop. We had some homemade chili, which was yummy. It was our first bowl of chili since the beginning of chilly weather. (Which by the way...we are not ready for yet! Gotta get the plastic up on the windows ASAP!) We ended up playing three games of 10 point pitch and an entire game of Mexican Crazy Train Dominoes. An entire game of MCTD took us two hours! It was so much fun though! Oooo and grandma sent us home with a jar of homemade pepper relish! It is DELICIOUS! On Saturday Allen had to work, I ended up braving the crowd at Hy Vee so I could have a gallon of milk for .99, 2lb of 85/15 hamburger meat for $1.98 and four bags of shredded cheese for $4.00. The prices were so good I couldn't pass it up, and apparantly neither could anyone else in Quincy. (The sale was a six hour sale.) I'm not kidding you, it was a MAD HOUSE! No parking spots, no carts, no room in the aisles...CRAZINESS! It honestly looked like Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving! I made it home safely from that and then I went up town with Mom and Caleb. We went to the Farmer's Market at Farm and Home, and to the mall. While mom was trying on a shirt in the dressing room, I saw a GIANT spider just sitting on the back of one of the shirts hanging on a rack. I took a picture of it, but the picture didn't come out well. I took the shirt and the spider up to the cashier. I would have killed it first, but I thought maybe they would want to see what kind of spider it was. Wierd huh? When Allen got home from work we decided to have date night. We went to Sprouts for dinner, then we went to the mall. We went to shop ko and came home with a Shop Ko brand magic bullet blender! YAY! I've been wanting one of those soooo bad! We got ours for $25 with a three year warantee! Which, the Magic Bullet at Shop Ko is $70! We've already made smoothies with it! I LOVE IT! :) We also bought a dice game called Kismet for $4. We figured what the heck...we would try it, since it was only $4, couldn't go too wrong with it! Well, it is definately worth what we paid! It's so much fun we played five games of it last night! We can't wait to play with everyone else! (Grandma D. , we think you are REALLY going to like it!)

Today, I cleaned up house a lil bit and started to do laundry, but stopped as soon as I realized there was a swarm of some kind of hornet around the dryer. Allen is home now and says that he can see two now in spider webs, but earlier I swear there were at least ten-fifteen of the suckers! UGH!

Tonight for dinner we are having a recipe that I have completely made up on my own. I didn't have a recipe, but I stole a basic idea and built on that. We are having mexican stuffed peppers tonight! They are in the oven now! I hope they turn out good!

Hope everyone else had a good weekend too! LOVE YOU ALL LOTS!

October means...

POMEGRANATES!!!!! YAY! :) Last year Allen and I both tried our first ever pomegranates and we LOVED them! October is the first month of them being in season, and last year Hy-Vee was selling them for $1 a piece. I hope it's the same this year. One pomegranate yields ALOT of delicious fruit. Last year we just ate them raw, but this year I'm planning on cooking with them. Pomegranates are not only yummy, but REALLY REALLY good for you. They are in the "super fruit" category for their nutritional richness.

Some interesting pomegranate facts here: http://www.xomba.com/fun_facts_about_pomegranates

Hope every one is having a good week!

Catching up

Sorry we haven't posted in awhile. Just to let you know this is Allen making the post this time around. I don't post much because Amber loves to do it and tells it all anyway. Saturday we had some friends over (and Josh). We had a blast. We played guitar hero, poker, and apples to apples. Amber and Amy split the pot in poker because they had about the same amount of chips and the already long game would have took forever. I'm not sure but I think Amber has some pics. I'm sure she will post them asap.

Sunday we went over to the in-laws. We had BBQ beef sandwiches and Amber made her parmesan green bean casserole. Everything was awesome! Its always a treat to go over there. Its very relaxing.

Well I'm about one week away from my interveiw with General Mills. I'm both excited and nervous. This job would mean so much to our little family and would allow us to have a bigger one in the future. I hope everything goes well.

Some bad news today, I started my cluster headache cycle with searing pain at 4:00 am. If anyone wants to know what cluster headaches are Wikipedia has done a good job discribing them. The link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_headache . I get what is known as episodic cluster headaches and it has been over a year since I got one. I had been noticing some signs that it was going to hit soon ie. popping and ringing of my right ear and some pressure that felt almost like a shadow. I think everything was just in order last night that made the "door open" : amount of sunlight changing rapidly, lots of stress (about jobs), hadn't had a cycle an awhile, food from super didn't settle (both of us had that issue), allergies at the max, and I got really hot last night with the comforter on. I am very thankful that I have went over a year without having one but this is some really bad timing for sure. I'm tough though and will make it through it.

Hope everything is going good with everyone. Love you all!

Allergies are the worst...

WHY IS THIS YEAR SO BAD FOR THE ALLERGIES? MY FACE HURTS!

So, Allen ROCKS at mini-golf and Beatles Rock Band really rocks, and I was trying to think of something else catchy to put in this sentence that also includes the word "rocks", but I've run out of ideas.

Tomorrow is Friday, which is wonderful. I can't wait for it to be over. It's also pay day Friday, which makes it even better.

Nothing else to report. Oh wait, one thing, I talked to a customer on the phone today who told me that I should stop drinking milk, to help with my allergies, and that I should call her doctor in Chicago...hmmm....

Hope everyone has had a great Thursday!

As promised...

Allen's boss gave him a three day weekend , so I took PTO today to have the full three days off in a row with him. (When Allen gets his new job our weekends may not happen as often and we probably won't get to see eachother nearly as much as we do now...so we took the extra three day weekend glady!) We went to Sturgeon on Friday night. Penny didn't puke this time, thank goodness! (Last time we went to Sturgeon she had eaten something from our bedroom that made her puke all over me and our car.) Saturday was a wonderful lazy day of sleeping in and spending time with the Cooley's. We played our new guitar hero with Matt and Nicole and we got to meet Mooney , their adorable 8 week old miniature schnauzer! She was sooooo darn cute I just wanted to hold her and squeeze her all day! But she wasn't about to have too much of that. She was typical puppy! Wanted to play with everyone! (We remember when Penny used to want to play with everyone...now she's a little shy...we're working on it...) Mooney and Penny got a long really well, and Allen's parents' dog Rose, who is a much bigger yellow lab didn't mind the smaller dogs at all. Penny suprised us a little bit because typically Penny LOVES to play rambunctiously with other dogs, but it was as if Penny instantly knew that Mooney was a puppy, instead of a play mate. Penny really acted like a big sis or something, she played a little bit with her, but gently. When Mooney gets a little older though, then I think Penny will play with her. Especially since Mooney is going to get quite a bit bigger in a short amount of time.

We had grilled chicken for dinner on Saturday which was DELICIOUS, as always.

Sunday we went to church with Allen's dad. Their church is very beautiful and the preacher had a great message. I'm glad we got to go!

We decided to come home Sunday night and spend the day today together, just Allen, Penny , and me. It was a good day. We REALLY must have all needed to sleep in because we slept in later today, all three of us, than we have in a long time. We had BLT's for lunch because Allen has been craving them, and he finally got me to sit through the movie Ben-Hur. All three hours and 40 minutes of it! I do have to say, it was an amazing movie. Now I can say I've seen it, and Allen can stop begging me to watch it with him lol! Seriously , though, he was right, a GREAT movie; just make sure you have plenty of time to watch it.

It was the season premier of our favorite TV show, HEROES, tonight. Looks like it's gonna be another great season! YAY! :)

And tonight I made Winter Squash Chowder. IT WAS AMAZING! :) Definatey worth all the time it took to get the squash peeled and chopped. (Allen helped me because he didn't want my inner Kensai to come out and chop a finger off...) The recipe is one I found on www.foodnetwork.com . The recipe is a keeper for sure! I think I will make it some night for my mom because I know she would love it. Recipe here:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/winter-squash-chowder-recipe/index.html

Another blog to come...

So, it's really late, I'm not blogging about this weekend yet, but I do have some good news to share with everyone. When we got home tonight, in our mailbox Allen had received a letter from General Mills. He passed the second round of testing and has an interview scheduled for October 7th ! YAY! :) Well, I will be blogging again tomorrow with some pics of Matt and Nicole's ADORABLE mini-schnauzer. Until then, check out this video of kids with the Marshmallow waiting test. SO CUTE! They even say that a child's ability to resist the marshmallow was directly related to their later success in other things as they got older.

Hmmmm...

Hmmmm...is the title of this blog because I couldn't think of anything better.

Last night Caleb and Josh came over for dinner. We played a little bit of Guitar Hero, ate dinner, and headed to the tennis courts. It was Caleb's first time playing. He got upset because he wasn't instantly Andre Agassi. We had to keep telling him that he will get better with practice. We took Penny with us again, and she again LOVED it. We tried to catch some good video of her running with the balls, but my batteries were low on the camera, so no luck. We'll try harder next time. IT'S SOOOO CUTE! We had a really great time hanging out with Josh and Caleb. As long as Caleb promises to get his homework done, maybe Mom will let him come over again with Josh on a school night. Tomorrow night we leave for Sturgeon. YAY! :) Matt and Nicole, I hope you're ready for some serious Guitar Hero songs and we can't wait to meet your puppy!

Grandma and Popop, be careful on your way to Columbia and on your way to Iowa. Tell everyone hi!

Everyone else reading this, hope you have great weekends too! :)

We love you all!