After Dark

I just went to this thing called After Dark. It was a Christian concert/speaker and really was just incredible. Joe White has some awesome stories and part of his presentation is a drama where he acts as the man that built Christ's cross...and he actually builds a cross on stage. I didn't take pictures, but here's one that I found online. The event included sweet videos and performances by Thi'sl and Jon McLaughlin, who both seem like super cool people.

After this crazy powerful presentation, I walked out to a winter wonderland. Everything covered in snow. I really am loving it, even though I'm supposed to run 13 miles on Saturday...just praying it'll be clear by then.

Halloween Take 2

I don't feel like trick-or-treating is socially acceptable as a college student. But I also live at home, so it's not like I'm really trying to fit in, right? And Olivia needed someone to go with, so I gladly accepted. I really did want to rock my Ke$ha outfit again, but I thought it might be a little chilly. (Although, it was almost 70 degrees today and I wore shorts/tshirt/flip flops- beautiful.) But we stole Abby and Abba's costumes from Saturday and layered sweatshirts underneath. Warm and fashionable.

Abby and Abba's house was our first stop and Abba answered the door in a black hat and sunglasses. He was excited to see us and Abby laughed at our costumes. We didn't pull them off quite as well as they did, but we tried. It is so fun to have them close!

 Hilarious.

p.s. You can now shuffle all your stations on Pandora? Or has that always been possible? Anyways, it's pretty great.

End of October

It has been quite the week. The snow storm on Tuesday night woke me up several times when tree branches crashed down on the roof above my room. The backyard (slash the whole city) was a mess on Wednesday. We had a giant branch leaning against our kitchen window and many others strewn throughout the yard. Now, a few days later, the neighborhood streets are filled with huge piles of tree limbs that people have gathered. I spent Wednesday morning wearing cozy clothes and drinking Nutella/cinnamon hot chocolate (so good) from a Christmas mug...I'm ready. I also went to the nursing home on Wednesday afternoon, and we spent a good chunk of that time talking about Thanksgiving and Christmas, because Lucy loves them too. After all that talk, I seriously can not wait!

After class on Wednesday, I went to join Zach, Mike, and Amanda for sledding. Except they had decided to build a snowman instead. I wasn't very equipped for the snow, because I hadn't gone home first. So Amanda and I mostly sat in the snow and watched while the boys built it. But we did help lift the middle ball up, gathered a handful of grass and made his awesome pea coat (not udders).

In cooking club this week, we made Caribbean Jerk Tempeh with some kind of black rice and peanut sauce on the side. Then we made Baklava for dessert, which was ridiculously sweet and delicious. We went back to Matthew and Alex's and watched the new series, Once Upon a Time. It mixes Disney stories with real...human world, I guess. It's super good and Alex is obsessed.

On Saturday, we headed down to Berthoud to celebrate Halloween at Brian and Alicia's annual party. Activities included donut-on-a-string eating contest (proud winner), mummy wrapping, balloon popping, and lots of eating. Everyone's costumes were awesome...we've started to take Halloween pretty seriously in this family. I've been planning to dress up as Ke$ha for about 9 months, so I was pretty excited. 

 Mom found these costumes for Abby and Abba

 John was the energizer bunny...doesn't get more perfect.

 Jackson is precious even when he's grumpy.

I've also spent the last week wanting to make Monkey Bread, so I finally did this morning. It was a success! You can't really go wrong with cinnamon, brown sugar, and carbs. My mom made omelets to complete the meal and it was a perfect Sunday brunch.

It's about 4:30 on Sunday afternoon and I still have not done any homework at all. I'm sad to go back to the reality of Monday. But only 3 weeks until Thanksgiving! I am counting down the days until I get to forget about school, see my best friend, eat too much, and hang out with my fam, including Cathy!

Winter?

What I love about Colorado is that it was almost 80 degrees yesterday and now it is snowing. Everyone kept telling me they were excited for colder weather and snow, and I was like oh no, give me this warm weather for as long as possible. Because I felt like Spokane was cold and cloudy October through April (maybe an exaggeration, but hardly), and I hated it. But walking out in the snow tonight actually made me a little excited. And snow means winter, and winter means CHRISTMAS. Which I already can not wait for.

 Looks like I was feeling very patriotic, but it really just happened because I didn't want to venture from the porch.

I'm pretty excited to stay in bed tomorrow morning and enjoy not having to go anywhere until noon. Hot chocolate, sweats, and fuzzy slippers, here I come.

Also, I love this song from the new Coldplay album...and the video is pretty cool too. Win/Win/Win. The end is my favorite so don't try to skip out early.

Fall is Fun

 Fall is pretty!

 Gorgeous red trees in the Hardings' backyard

 This week's meal at Vivacious Vicky's Vegan Cooking Class...sweet potato/black bean tamales and stuffed squash. Not our favorite, but still so fun!

 Dessert...chocolate dipped shortbread cookies. YUM.

After dinner, Alex, Allison, and I went to the Asylum. I think maybe the photographer messed up.

 My creation at home...Nutella Mug Cake

It overflowed a little in the microwave...totally screwed my presentation. But with a dollop of vanilla ice cream, it looked ok. And tasted SO good.

There are so many to choose from because we were laughing all night, but this was one of my favorite moments today...blasting this song in the car and singing along with my brother. My family is fun. 

Also, Matthew was playing with his new iPhone and thinking of weird things to ask it (her? Siri?)... so he said, "Let's get married," and she said, "Let's just be friends, ok?"

Happy.

Stole this from another blog because I just couldn't resist. This should make you smile.

Disney...and the Blue Bomber

In one of my classes today, we watched part of a video about the bad influence of Disney. And I just thought it was stupid. I mean, they had valid points. But I love Disney. I am all about strong, independent, powerful women, believe me. But I also don't have a problem with traditional male/female roles. And I think there can be both...strong women that are pursued by men. I'm also involved in a Bible study with a bunch of girls and we are going through a a study around the book, Captivating. A few weeks ago, we talked about how God created men and women with different roles in mind. A woman's desire to be romanced and her desire to be heroic and irreplaceable comes from God. Feminists make us believe that these roles are terrible and make women weak, but I really do think they're part of God's design. Which is sweet!

In other, completely unrelated news, the Blue Bomber (aka our 1995 baby blue Ford Taurus) is probably done for. I got rear-ended a couple weeks ago and apparently the damage will cost more to repair than the car is worth. Super sad. I really had grown attached to the car that didn't have hubcaps and couldn't automatically pop the door to the gas tank. We had gotten the hang of accelerating to make the air switch to defrost and playing music loud enough to be heard over the air that only worked on HIGH. I will miss explaining its stupid quirks to my passengers.