relating to pam

Being an advertising major in college, I have, for quite some time, had an appreciation for great commercials. It has, however, been quite a while since I have seen a commercial I completely related to. Until now. Seriously. I saw this commercial, and could practically see my face in this situation. Check it out...

See what I mean? Things burning and fire alarm going off all while trying to be dressed cute and put together something nice for the hubby. I've seen that scene time and time again. One thing I am pretty sure I won't have to ever deal with though: my husband forgetting our anniversary. Even if he didn't remember on his own, I kind of love special events and start talking about them a good several months before they happen. So, there is pretty much no way I'd ever give him the chance at forgetting.

On the menu tonight...Portobello and Beef Patty Melts. Guess I better get out the PAM!

cryin' macaroni

I hate failing at things. Especially things I know I should be perfectly capable. For example, in the third grade I represented my class in the annual spelling bee. I was so nervous that morning I tossed my cookies before I even made it out of the house, but after the nerves worked their way out, I went on to school in my snap button jean skirt ready to take home the prize. I had made it to the top three, and I just knew I had it in the bag. I stepped up for my next word..."diamond." I confidently spelled the word "D...I...M...O...N...D" only to hear "I'm sorry, that is incorrect." I was heartbroken. But you know what, I have never in my life misspelled diamond again.

Well today I had another spelling bee type failure of the domestic kind. We were to have a big Thanksgiving lunch with parts of Kyle's family we won't get to see on Thanksgiving. I had volunteered to make mac and cheese, my specialty. Being my first official Thanksgiving making food with Kyle's family, I certainly wanted my dish to be perfect. We picked up the goods on the way to my in-laws house, and I started to work my magic as soon as we got to their house. I did everything just as usual, and the bottom of the cheese pan burnt a little bit. "No big deal," I thought. It had, after all, happened before. After I had everything prepared, I took a taste. Oh....emmm...geee. It tasted awful. Remember the burning in the cheese pan? Well the mac and cheese tasted exactly like that burning smells. I was horrified.

With the help of my wonderful mother-in-law, who kept telling me it was fine, we added in more butter (more butter is better, right?), milk and Velveeta. No result. I thought if anyone would know how to fix it, it would be my mom. So I went upstairs to call her, only for her to heartbreakingly tell me the only way to fix burnt cheese is to throw it out. Then, just like the rushing of a river you can't stop, the tears came. I had ruined my Thanksgiving dish for 11 people! And not only was I embarrassed at my inability to cook even mac and cheese, I now had to somehow make it looked like I hadn't been crying. FAIL. That was basically impossible. Kyle came upstairs and tried to make me feel better, but my mac and cheese failure had crushed my little heart.

Downstairs everyone assured me it was fine, and wouldn't even think of allowing me to go buy a replacement. Even though it tasted awful, it was put on the table, and everyone took a little bit of it.

In all of this, I was reminded of a few things. 1: I am so not Martha, and my mom, who is as good as Martha, has a lot she can teach me. 2: I am incredibly thankful, even more so at this time of year, for marring into such a great family who loves me despite my burnt mac and cheese (who knew that was even possible?!)

And I can assure you of one thing...I'll never burn my mac and cheese again.

Diamond.

splitting the holidays

I know, I know. I've been a bad bad blogger this last week. But, I'm back, and with a topic for discussion.

For the last couple years, the holidays for Kyle and I weren't really an issue. We kind of did our own thing with our own families, and then after the main event, we would make a round to each others families so we could spend some time with them too. Well, this year it's a little bit different, and while I think we are VERY lucky being that both our families live in the same city, it still isn't easy to have to tell one side of the family you won't be there for x, or the other that they won't have us for y.

We came up with a plan that I really think will work great, but being that I am the oldest in my family, and the first to go through this, it's a lot harder for my family to be OK with the changes.

For my entire life, and even before it, my dad's side of the family has spent Christmas Eve at my MeMe's, and that is one event I'm not willing to give up, and Kyle is totally fine with that. But, the family Kyle gets together with on Christmas Eve also does Thanksgiving, so our solution was to do Thanksgiving with them, Christmas Eve with my fam. Well, a few days ago, my mom said "so then you will spend Thanksgiving with us next year then?" I guess in my mind we would do Thanksgiving with Kyle's family, and hopefully make it to mine for some dessert later in the day. Trading off every year hadn't really crossed my mind since we aren't trading Christmas Eve's. Not spending a holiday with my family is no more easy for me than for them.

Once Christmas Day rolls around, it actually works out beautifully since my family does Christmas morning, and Kyle's does Christmas afternoon.

So, anyone else have to split the holidays? Any advice? I honestly feel incredibly lucky we even get to spend parts of each holiday with each family. It could be much more difficult if our families were in different cities, or even states. But that being said, it doesn't make it any easier to miss out on a family event.

Because of Kyle's career path, we already know that some Christmas' and Thanksgivings' throughout our lives may be spent in a hotel room while Kyle has a layover, where the holiday feast is a pancake platter at Denny's (if there are any open any more!) But I'm very thankful this year isn't the year for that, and we get to enjoy the holidays with everyone we love the most!

And now for some pictures from last year's Christmas. Can't wait for new memories this year.

copy cat

If you know me very well, you know I LOVE mac & cheese. All kinds. Kraft is my favorite for home, but around Tulsa, I have found mac & cheese goodness at The Brook and Outback, and I hear Oliver's Twist has a great one too. Well, tonight I made use of Copy Kat Recipes, a great website that gives you food's equivalent to a knock-off handbag. I made one of my favorites, Outback's Macaroo n' Cheese. It was delish.

We followed that up by attempt #2 at Chocolate Chip Cookies. Sounds so simple, but we made a batch last night that turned out terribly. There's a certain website that has failed me more than once now...not mentioning any names...ahem, allrecipes.com, ahem. You know the saying, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...well, you won't fool me a third time. Tonight, I turned to trusty Food Network, and the cookies were perfect. I'm not saying the first batch wasn't some sort of user problem, but the last recipe I pulled from that site didn't turn out either, so you can imagine my skepticism.

I uploaded some pictures from my camera last night. There are some good ones. Enjoy! Hope you are having a great week!

These pics are from when we made Mexican Manicotti!

And here are some Halloween pics. Popeye and Sandy. Haha. Not quite the normal dynamic duo, but my Olive Oyl costume didn't quite work out. Maybe next year!

meet miss nellie

Over the weekend we made an addition to our little family.

Her name is Nellie, and she's a 4.7 lb black Cocker Spaniel. She is absolutely precious, and in the 36 hours we have had her, we have fallen completely in love. We have been talking about getting a dog for a long time, even before we were married. We kept debating on whether or not we should wait until we had a yard, but we just couldn't resist her. We played with her at the pet store, and even left to "think about it." But I think we both knew we were coming back for her.

She already is a lot of fun, and she brings with her a whole new adventure. We are going to be very informed "parents," and have already bought a book on training a cocker spaniel. This Christmas will be a lot of fun with her running around tearing into the wrapping paper.

Last night she got to sleep with us, but we got a kennel today, and are crossing our fingers she will sleep in it tonight without crying....too much.

I love seeing Kyle play with her. He loves animals, and is so great with Nellie. He even taught me a little trick yesterday about using Windex for carpet cleaner. Who knew?! That's a trick we may be using quite a bit in the training process.

And now some pics :)

fun in the craziness

Have you ever had a day, week, month, just some period of time where you feel like everything has been crazy, and you just need to get out and do something fun? I felt like that on Tuesday.

The last few weeks have been insanely busy, and this week wasn't starting out any different. Then, on Tuesday, I had the day of all days. Tons of work to get done, and trying to figure out how I would find the time for it all. Lunch time rolled around, and I decided I would go grab a drink at QuikTrip, pick up our mail and pay the rent. I pulled up to our apartment office, got the mail, and as I got back to my car, I began to realize I had no keys to get in. As I peeked inside, sure enough. There they were sitting in the cup holder along with my cell phone and purse. What's a girl to do? Thankfully I had keys to get inside my apartment where I began frantically e-mailing my mom to call AAA and my sister to text Kyle. I even downloaded Skype to see if I might be able to call someone from my computer. What a mess!

Then I get am e-mail of rescue. Amazingly, my dad just happened to be less than a mile away from my apartment, and he was on the way to rescue me! So an hour later, the nice old AAA man had unlocked my car and I had my keys back...and my Diet Dr. Pepper.

After all this, I told Kyle we HAD to do something fun that night. After doing a little googling, I had a good little night out planned. Dinner and an Oilers hockey game. One of my favorite parts of our nights out are the car rides together. We turn the music up, and I love hearing Kyle sing the songs on the radio. He would probably never admit it, but he has a great voice, and I love hearing it. As we walked up to the BOK Center for the game, a nice guy outside the arena handed us two tickets...for free! And to make it even better, they were on the 5th row in a fancy box section. We saw three fights during the game (I mean, that's really why you go watch hockey anyway) and took advantage of their $2 night. Oh, and the Oilers won 4-0.

After such a crazy start to the week, it was a perfect night with my guy.

In other news, I have been reading and hearing a lot of raves lately about a brand of cleaning products called Mrs. Myers. I had thought about trying it out, but wasn't sure where to get it other than online. Then, the other day I was picking a few things up at Target, and there it was! Mrs. Myers products in "Iowa Pine." I grabbed a bottle of the countertop cleaner, and I have to say, all the reviews are right. It smells great! I hate that harsh scrubbing bubbles smell, so to be able to clean and have it smell great without lighting a million candles is awesome! Mrs. Myers, you have a new fan.

Busy weekend coming up. We are celebrating Kyle's grandparent's 60th Anniversary! They are the sweetest couple, and it's great to see how much they love each other after all these years. They gave Kyle and I the best advice when we got engaged. They said "always keep each other special." We take their advice to heart, and are looking forward to just as many years together as they have shared.

Have a great weekend!

wednesdays with kyle is back! (hooray!)

Well everyone can relax now, I'm back in action, so you don't have to worry about wondering how you were going to get through your week without Wednesday with me. I learned some new things while I was away from blogging though. First, if you know some one with the flu you should stay away from them and second if you know someone with swine flu you should make them move to another state. I was fortunate enough to enjoy all of the pleasures swine flu has to offer last week. Among these, my favorite were painful body aches, fever, dizziness, extreme fatigue, and my personal favorite uncontrollable diarrhea, all of these really made for a wonderful week. I will say one thing though, my wife is awesome in more ways than one but there is one way which exceeds all others and that is her ability to take care of me when I'm sick. I don't know how she can even stand to be around me when I'm sick, but she took care of me all week and I'm sure she was the main reason for my speedy recovery. My advice to everyone is to get the flu shot cause it's worth not feeling what swine flu has to offer. That's really all I have this Wednesday so until next time... wash your hands a lot.

november?

I honestly can't believe it's November already! That means the start of the holiday season is only DAYS away! On our way home last night, I sneakily put a Christmas CD in to play thinking the Mr. would try to stop that if he knew about it, but instead, he just smiled, knowing it made me happy, and even sang along with me :) I didn't decorate the apartment for fall at all, but I am beyond excited to decorate for Christmas. We decided on a real Christmas tree this year, and found about about a place where you take a hay ride to where the trees are, cut down your own tree, and they have hot chocolate and a gift store! It sounds like it came right out of Whoville.

I need to order stockings, and have been eyeing these from Pottery Barn. I figure the white will last us a while, and match anything. I do love the look of these, even though I usually don't like non-matching stockings...but how cute! I think you need to have more than two people in your family for that to work though. Maybe if we get a puppy :)

Now we just have to decide on decorations. Do I want it to match our apartment, or go classic Christmas colors. Growing up, my family always had a pretty, matching tree with bows, and then we had our fun tree with all Santa ornaments. I always love putting that tree up just to see all the silly ornaments we made as kids, and gave to our parents. More than anything this Christmas, I'm just excited for the Mr. and I to have all of our Christmas firsts, since it's our first married Christmas. Our first tree, first time doing stockings for each other, etc. I'm always incredibly excited for Christmas, but this year there's extra excitement!

So, it may seem a little early, being only November 2, but in my mind the holidays have started. What's your favorite part of this time of year?

And now, in honor of Christmas, here are some OLD pictures I dug up of both Kyle and I. Enjoy :)