December in a flash

This month has gone by fairly quickly - probably because of all of the busy-ness we have had recently! Actually, I guess it's mostly been the last 2 weeks that things have gotten somewhat crazy, even though school is out.

Ryan and I FINALLY had time to decorate our gingerbread house! He was such a sport helping me out with it, and even allowed his all-things-must-be-perfect attitude (it's a blessing...really!! That's why he married me, obviously) to help us build it. I thought it turned out beautifully.

Christmas was just 2 days after that. Ryan and I spent the first part of the morning at our own home. It was really great, and even though it was just the two of us, I think we both had a nice morning. Then we headed on over to my parents' home, where we made Ryan's delicious wassail and opened presents. Funny story: my parents both wrapped presents that looked identical to each other. Upon opening them, it was discovered that the contents were also identical! Kind of bizarre! After presents I made some Peach Blackberry Pie and rolls for dinner (my parents whipped up the rest, and it was tasty!) and then we all relaxed except for Ryan, who assembled our new TV stand. After dinner the family (including Holly and Garrett) went to see Tron.

I told Ryan to make a cute/goofy face.

check out my awesome Lord of the Rings special effect with my dad and Ben!

On December 28, Ryan and I were privileged to spend the day with some close friends, Travis and Tiffany Whitsitt, as they were sealed and then at their reception in Fort Collins. It was a wonderful day. We are so happy for them, and wish them all the best! Tiffany, Holly, and myself were all married this year, so we took a cute picture with us showing off our rings!

As Ryan and I were driving home from the reception, I got a phone call from Holly. Her car battery was dead! Ryan and I went to pick her up and then headed to Wal-mart to get some jumper cables. It was kind of "fun" to be there in a tux and fancy dress. :) Added some excitement to the end of the night, and we were grateful that we were able to help Holly out!

Special surprise this morning: Snow!! It has been snowing ALL DAY and is supposed to keep it up well into the evening. I am one happy girl as I sit on our window seat writing this blog entry. :D

Gonna get our "hippie" on

A few weeks before Ryan graduated, he was offered a job as a Test Engineer at a company called Plexus that does contract engineering. He is one of the first team members for the test group at that location, and we're hoping that this means good things for the future.

Plexus in Colorado is located in Boulder, so once I finish school in May, we will be settling there until further notice! Hopefully the hippies don't overtake us....

A Blessing and a Graduation

This weekend was busy. Really busy. But in a good way! Ryan and I both finished our last finals on Thursday. On Friday afternoon, the busy-ness began. After lunch with some of our family from Ryan's side, we came back home and Ryan's dad (Kent), was kind enough to help Ryan repair our garage and the ceiling fan in the upstairs bathroom, while I chatted with Ryan's grandmother and learned lots of interesting things about her. Now I know where Ryan gets his handyman skills from!

On Saturday afternoon, we all headed over to Brady and Erin's home for the blessing of their new son, Logan. Lots of family was there, and we enjoyed seeing everybody. The blessing was very nice, and afterwards we had lunch and chatted.

Koenig family with their new little man

Proud grandparents - Cindy and Berne

Three generations

Looks quite content with a baby in his arms, doesn't he?

Ryan and me with his grandmother, Lois

Ryan had his graduation the same day, so he and I headed over to CSU to get him ready and so that I could save seats. I discovered that people get a little irritated when one small woman is trying to save 18 seats - but I managed and we were all able to sit together.

I got there 45 minutes before it started, and got great seats!

YAY!!

After the ceremony, we went to dinner at East Moon Asian Bistro. I had been racking my brain for a good graduation present for Ryan for a few weeks, and suddenly had the epiphany that two of his very good friends and their wife/fiancée were going to be in town for Christmas. So I contacted both couples and arranged to have them surprise Ryan at the restaurant. He had just the reaction I was hoping for, and after a stressful day he was able to unwind with some people he hadn't seen in months. I wanted to get a picture of all three of the guys, but it slipped my mind with all the fun and chatting!

We've had an amazing first weekend out of school, and are looking forward to it just getting better!!

I spy with my little eye

Today I saw 3 things that made me very happy. Notably happy, not just, "oh, how nice" happy.

#1. I grabbed a school newspaper today whilst waiting for my final to begin (totally rocked the 2 I took today - I think). Flippin' through the pages, I came across this:

I should imagine that you see the notably-happy-making-sight. I cannot WAIT for this Saturday, when I get to see him shake hands with some guy and never have to take another stressful class in his life! Honestly, I may be more excited than he is!

#2. After I finished my final, I walked outside and noticed something I did not think I would be seeing today:

This is an artistic shot of the front of my coat. See that whiteness that could be mistaken for a fizzle? It is snow. Snow!! Granted, the little baby flurries stopped after like 30 seconds, but I still saw them, and they brightened my day.

#3. My hope was not to have to go grocery shopping this week, but seeing as Ryan's dad and grandma are going to be staying with us for a night this weekend, and Ryan and I have kind of been scrounging for food already the last couple of days, I figured it would be best to stock up a little on nourishing goods. So to the store I went, and happened across this loveliness:

This is a particular ice cream that was introduced to me by my Sessie (grandma) when we went to Utah for General Conference in October. It is Blue Bunny's Caramel Toffee Crunch. The best part?? Not only is it quite yummy, this stuff has no sugar added and is fat free! Try some, your life will be better for it.

Sugar Cookies

On Monday night all of the local Duggins children gathered at our parents' home for some traditional sugar cookie decorating! We had 72 cookies to do, but it went by super fast! I guess that's what happens when you're having fun and concentrating on making them pretty!

First they got everything prepped and ready (I was sure to be fashionably late)!

Ben was feeling extra creative that night!

Even though schoolwork was more demanding of his time than I was, Ryan came anyway, and laughed at all of the appropriate times during our conversation. I loved having him just in the other room. It may look like he's being a hum-bug, but he was hard at work studying. My mom was kind enough to offer her extensive knowledge of engineering, should he need it. Oddly, he has yet to take her up on it!

Some our fabulous finished products!

It was a wonderful evening!

I'm dreamin'...

I love snow. It is beautiful, white, and somehow evokes a wonderful feeling of peace and goodwill towards man. It's romantic, too! Every year I look forward to the first real snow of the Christmas season. Last year by this time there had been several rounds of snowfall in Fort Collins, and the weather was bitterly cold. (I remember walking to class in -19 degree weather one morning; a day I absent mindedly forgot a coat). It was wonderful and horrible at the same time, but I will always love the snow, and knew that I would undoubtedly have a white Christmas!

Today is December 12th; less than 2 weeks until Christmas. Usually by this time of year, there has been at least a few instances of a blanketed-in-white world. This holiday season, however, good ol' Fort Collins has been a little more like this:

I took this photo on Friday, the 10th, at school. Ryan and I got new winter coats for extra warmth for Christmas, and I want to wear it!

This is the Christmas I experienced last year:

I suppose I may just have to have a White Christmas by memory.

(Come on, Jack Frost, come out from your hiding place! )

Like Husband, Like Wife

It's a little quirky the things we pick up from our significant other....

Ryan navigating the mouse on his laptop

Me navigating my mouse on my/Ryan's old laptop.

Weird.

Oh, the muse of it all

CSU parking is absolutely ridiculously horrendous. Yes, I did need all of those describing words because it is THAT bad. I had a test in my first class this morning. One to which I am habitually late. I did not want to be late today, so when I saw an empty spot for my car, I took it. No matter that it was only big enough to grant 6-inches of exit space on either side. It wasn't MY fault that the other parkers felt the need to give themselves ample amount of room to get out of their cars. So. I smooshed my car in there, climbed into the back seat and out the door and was 5 minutes early to my class!! Success. And I think I did very well on my test, in case you were wondering.

Sometimes there are more important things to do

School takes up a lot of time. So much time, in fact, that getting some much needed husband & wife time often gets placed on the back burner. Not because we want it that way - there are just certain things we both need to focus on right now (i.e. ensuring graduation in a timely manner). But this past weekend, we ignored all the stuff that NEEDED to get done and instead focused on some things we WANTED to do.

Ryan and I met up with Holly and Garrett at my parentals' home on Friday after school. We were going to go on a triple date to the Denver LDS Temple. I love going to the temple, and was excited to get to go with family this time!

After the session we headed to Marie Callendar's for dinner. Wow - gargantuan cornbread. The entrée portions alone could feed two lumberjacks, so I was sure to watch my consumption to make room for some delicious strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert! (I gotta splurge sometimes! ...right??)

When I got home from work Saturday afternoon, Ryan and I decided that we needed a date night. So after a rigorous work out to make up for the previous night's splurging, we headed out! After making a quick stop at REI to check out winter coats, we went to see the movie Morning Glory. Oh my cute! It was quite funny and a good story.

After the movie we ran to Sonic to get some dinner, and then, because our movie quota has not been reached for months now, we went back to the theater and saw Unstoppable. Oh my stressful! It was a great movie, but is not for the faint of heart! All in all, the night was fantastic.

On Sunday evening Ryan and I went to my parents' house for the second time that weekend to whip up batches of pumpkin pancakes and eggnog pancakes for dinner. Holly and Garrett came over again, too! It was really great to see everybody again so soon. Another fantastic evening with great company.

I will probably reminisce about this weekend for the next few weeks, as finals get closer and time for fun diminishes. Thank goodness for Thanksgiving break next week!

'Tis the Season

It's coming to the end of the semester. Ryan and I are becoming accustomed to spending our evenings engaged in a rigorous bout of homework. Last night Ryan had a schoolmate (too 1940's?) over to do homework. I was honored to supply them with dinner and snacks. Chicken fajitas and pumpkin scones! And then I hopped on to Yahoo!Games and challenged my mind with a hidden object game. Those things are addicting, I tell you! All in all, I think the three of us had a very productive evening.

Tonight is Take 2 of Homework Party Central. Although tonight we changed it up a bit. After dinner, Ryan threw some peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies into the oven, I steeped some tea (peppermint for him, bengal spice for me), and then Ryan built a beautiful fire to keep us snuggly warm on this cold night! We have filled our tummies with warming goodness but are still wracking our brains for homework and test answers and working on a paper.

Break time is over - back to the books!

Fall Harvest

On Sundays I love to make bread in my bread machine and dinner in the crock pot. This past week, both items turned out fantastically.

It was the third time I've tried this particular bread - the other two failed miserably because I had tried to do it with a gluten-free bread flour, which is apparently a very wrong name for that product because the bread did not rise AT ALL. So this time I made it with regular bread flour, and it was beautiful. It's called Cranberry Oat Bread, which I found while perusing allrecipes.com. It says to add the cranberries before the final kneading. I didn't do that, and I don't know if it made a difference, but at any rate that direction isn't necessary to follow.

The dinner I made is called Pork Chops & Acorn Squash, which I found in my Oct/Nov 2008 Healthy Co0king from Taste of Home magazine. I have been trying to make sure that Ryan and I eat healthy dinners as the holidays approach. That way I won't feel AS bad for eating all the sweets! The reviews for this dinner on the website don't make it sound like all-the-rage, but it turned out great for us! We added some cranberries and orange wedges, and the squash cooked wonderfully in the crock pot. We ended up having it cook for 4 1/2 hours instead of just 4 - maybe that made a difference as compared to the people complaining about the squash not being cooked all the way. The flavors were great, and I recommend this for a snowy day when you can enjoy the fall harvest in your mouth!

Halloween Night 2010

I am married now. Do you know what that means? No more YSA Halloween parties at church. At least not "legally". And for whatever other reason we didn't get invited to any other Halloween parties. It probably has something to do with the fact that we both found our love penguin and therefore lost all contact with the outside world and now have no friends that are used to hanging out with us on a regular basis.

That being said, we decided to have our own "party"! Guests? The fabulous Duggins clan + 2 Meehleises. The festivities began with dinner. I made spaghetti with orange pepper pumpkins (they had worms for brains!) and Holly and Garrett brought some garlic bread that fills your mouth with goodness.

After dinner we watched Jack O' Lantern, an old Duggins tradition! It's about a million years old, and memories came flooding back while we watched it.

Afterwards, my mom served the dessert she brought: Blueberry Yum-Yum. A childhood favorite of my dad's, and it was yum-yum (ha...)! Then we set up the glorious game of Atmosfear, another tradition of us Duggins children. This game is a "scary" game with a VHS (yes, I know) that goes along with it. It was a close game, but Ryan and I won!

After the game we all chatted for a bit and then it was time for bed. It was so much fun, and I'm so glad that Ryan and I were able to host this get-together. I think one of my most favorite parts was getting to share some of my Halloween traditions with Ryan, and I hope that they will be ones we can continue in our own family along with new ones (like Pumpkin Pancakes for lunch on Halloween! Ask Ryan about them if you get the chance, he is quite proud of his chef skills).

Happy Halloween!