Thanksgiving and Breaks

This year we were with Jake's side of the family for Thanksgiving.  This was going to be my first ever Thanksgiving away from home....  We went down to Salt Lake to Jake's aunt Kristi's house.  I was a little nervous to be somewhere different.... but it was delicious.... they ate turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and stuffing and pie and even watched football!!!  Just like my house!!

I have been under the weather so I wasn't up to my picture taking self.  I didn't take one picture!  This is just about what our beautiful dinner looked like though!  That night we stopped by to see more family.  It was good to get down and visit Jake's family in Salt Lake.  It seems like we have been so crazy with school that we haven't seen anyone for ages!  We stayed at Jake's grandparents and had some great thanksgiving leftovers and more pie.  The next morning.... I'm sad to say....

I didn't do any of this!  Not at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. or 6 a.m.  I am usually one of the crazies in line at four in the morning running around finding all sorts of deals and saving all kinds of money.  But sadly, I slept in til about 9, being sick and all...  and its hard to save money by finding deals if you have none to spend in the first place!!  Ha!  (I'll have to start saving for next year)  So my mom and sis-in-law and aunts and cousins in Idaho better be ready for next year!  And in years to come I'm going to bring the Black Friday craziness to the Larsen side :)

We are almost done with this semester of school.  We have one more week of school and then the dreaded finals week.  I think we are going to make it.  We have enjoyed being together in Physics, not the Physics part so much, mostly the together part, and are sad to see it end.  It will be fun to tell our kiddos that we took a class together in college (and that mom did better that dad.......j/k we'll see :) )  I have to take the GRE during finals week to complete my application to OT school, so wish me luck.  No calculators allowed.  Do you think I remember long division, the rules of a 30 60 90 triangle, or multipying fractions?  Don't get me started on all the crazy vocab words that I have to memorize......  Nope, I'll be studying all this for the next couple weeks.

Anyways, we are looking forward to a nice LONG Christmas break, we have a whole month!  We are going to Idaho Falls for Christmas and we'll get to see my bro Chris and sis-in-law Kelsey and nephew Logan, who we haven't seen since August?!?!  So that will definately be a good time.

{Real Pumpkin} Pumpkin Pie

I was trying to be a little martha stewartish, i guess...... I decided to make a pumkin pie out of a REAL pumpkin!

Here is my little pumpkin.....

I scooped out the strings and seeds, cooked it.....

Scooped out the flesh and mixed till smooth.....

Combined it together with the other ingredients (sweetened condensed milk and a variety of spices) and poured it in the crust.....

Baked it.....

And ENJOYED!!!!

I was worried that it would taste yucky and stringy and pumkiny, but I was pleasently surprised when it was delish!  It was hard for me to believe that it was made from a REAL pumkin.... crazy!  Thats what happens when you decide to try something new, sometimes its strange and yucky and sometimes its great.  I might make another for Thanksgiving this week!!!

Happy Birthday MOMS!!!

Just want to give a shout out to our moms!! This week was my moms and my mom-in-laws birthday! My mom's on the 17th and Carolyn's on the 19th.  Happy Birthday to them both!

Jake and I really have the greatest moms. We are so lucky to have them.  They are so good to us and always make sure that we are doing okay.  Gotta love our moms, they are the GREATEST!!!!

WANTED....

Who is this man and what has he done with my husband!?



Justin?! Motorcycle?! Mustache?! I want my Jake back!!!!

Happy Halloweenie!!

Our Halloween started out with some awesome pumpkin carving! We went up to Jake's parents house and had a party with the whole family. Jake, Jeff, Mike and I carved pumpkins and Carolyn made a haunted gingerbread house. Amber roasted some pumpkin seeds from our pumpkins and Camden helped us all!!









Jake's Monster pumpkin and my Happy Baby pumpkin



On Friday we all dressed up for work. We had a sports theme in the Physical Therapy department! Sly the soccer player, Ginger the crazy sports fan, I'm the referee and Kelli the lacrosse player! It was a really fun day at work, the CEO of the hospital came around dressed as the big bad wolf and delivered cookies!!!



Friday night was our ward Halloween party. It was so fun to see all the fun costumes! There were a lot of creative ideas. Jake and I were......



...Barbie and Ken!!!





Ha! We had a lot of fun!

It just gets better.... On Halloween night we had a murder mystery dinner party. It was set in Chicago in the 1920s. We all had different characters and costumes and personalities to go with! Jake was Eddie "Socks" R. Gyle a famous golfer, and I was Molly M. Awbster a flapper from head to toe!



We had a blast! None of us had ever been to or hosted a murder mystery party, so we were hoping it would be fun, now we want to do more!!! The stage was set, we were in an old speakeasy bar, ready for dinner and mystery!!





We had so much fun, acting as our characters, accusing each other of crazy things, eating good food, and mostly just having a good time!!



Amanda "Torchy" and I, looking sassy in all our feathers!



The girls, Scoop, Torchy, Molly and Silky!



The whole gang!



I won't tell you who did it, you'll have to play and find out for yourself!

As you can tell, I love dressing up, so I love Halloween!! I'm so glad that Jake will dress up with me and go along with all the crazy ideas that I have. I already can't wait til next year.