Thursday, October 31, 2013

Our First Halloween

After living in apartments/condos for the past 7 and 12 years (me and Ped, respectively), we were pretty excited to experience Halloween in our house. House = lots of spooky decorations and trick-or-treaters. TRICK OR TREATERS, PEOPLE!!

A synopsis of our first Halloween:
  • Spooky decorations consisted of gravestones and pumpkins in the garden and a handmade foam skeleton thingy on the front door. We didn't even pull ourselves together enough to put costumes on. I promise we'll do better next year. 
  • New Jersey kids start trick-or-treating at noon. That's an exaggeration, but there were kids knocking on doors at 4. Apparently, there's an 8pm curfew for kids under 18. Is that normal or just a Jersey thing?
  • We had no idea whether we would get 2 kids or 40 kids so I bought enough candy for 500 kids. My last minute purchase of the 60-pack of Airheads was clutch.
  • Ped was very excited but didn't get home until 6. (We really didn't know kids started at 4.) His excitement was evidenced by his first group of kids when he said the ominous statement "Take a handful". Greedy brats acted all thankful then tried to clean us out. No joke, one girl stuck her hand in three times. Ped got them all to go away, but felt he needed to apologize to me and didn't want to do it anymore. I was proud of him though. He totally made us the cool neighbors and the kids loved him. Plus I bought a ton of candy, 'member?
  • I bought too much candy. I made a big dinner of grilled chicken and spaghetti squash in an attempt to limit the candy inhalation, but we've been noshing on Nerds/Reeses/KitKats/Whoppers/DumDums/Airheads since about 7:30. 
  • Thanks to all of your adorable kid costume posts on Facebook, my husband wants me to have a baby yesterday. So thanks for that. Really.
Bring on Thanksgiving!!!!

Monday, October 14, 2013

Going...too....fast....

It seems the older you get, the faster time goes. There are so many milestones and events in any given year that make it seem like you go to bed on New Years Day and wake up on Christmas morning of the following year.

Now we don't have kids yet, so we can only look at our nephews and think "man, they're alot bigger than when we saw them last month." Wednesday is our two month anniversary but the wedding and honeymoon seem like so long ago, the fact that it's only two months is surprising. It is weird that we are already in mid-October, but my hunt for stable employment and Ped's job keeps him so busy that we almost want to fast forward things to be where we want (me with a routine job and Ped with some time for research).

However, we do experience the "how is time going so fast?" epidemic every week. Ours is not by how quickly our kids go through school or get big; it's not by how close Christmas is or how little time left we have to shop; and it's not measured by our time being married.

We realize time is going so fast because of trash day. Seriously! We take the trash out on Tuesday night, take the cans back in on Wednesday, then I blink and it's freaking trash day again!!!! How is that even possible???? I actually feel like my life is getting measured by the amount of times I take that trip back and forth from the end of the driveway. By my count, I'm actually 47 years old and not 31.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Rejoice in All Things

The one glaringly beautiful thing about today was Ped's words before he left - "thank you for being such a great wife. I know you do so much around here." Hearing something along those lines can get a girl through the day. However, following up to yesterday's post, today's journey of housewifedom has not been much better.

The Lord says to rejoice in all things...so here it goes...

I rejoice that I got a new toy.
I rejoice that our basement floor got cleaned. Heftily.
This is my rejoice face. 

 Luckily the washing machine isn't broken. We thought the pipe was just filling up too quickly, and put the tube into the sink for the next load to check. Wellll that pipe fell onto the floor without me knowing thus - new toy, clean floors, rejoice, yada, yada, yada.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Lord Help Us All

Given my mood swing between yesterday and today, Lord help us all when I'm pregnant and the hormones kick in.

Let's start with how fabulous yesterday was:
1. I got up and worked out. As much as I hate exercise, I love the results - I want to eat better, I have more energy, the soreness is actually nice, the bowels start working right (gross but so true), etc.
2. 87/88 on my calculus exam. That's 99% people - 99%!!!!!!! Man I'm a freaking genius.
3. I didn't get my exam back from my math reasoning class. I'm praying for at least a 75 but not getting it back means more celebrating my 99%! Why? Cause I'm a genius until I get the other one back.
4. Ped got me chinese food for dinner. That's how you end a good day.

Fast forward to today:
1. Soreness made me sleep in.
2. Training module for new job (more on that later) took 2 hours instead of the 30 minutes I was expecting.
3. Computer battery is kaput. Need a new one.
4. Water coming out of the washing machine.
5. Work didn't need me today.
6. And then I ate the remaining chinese food before I remembered I was supposed to work out. I also need to clean our floor today which means working out won't be happening until at least this evening.

I want to sit on the couch in my penguin pjs and eat ice cream. All day. Yesterday was so good, and today just pooped on it.


Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Crockpot Recipe for Indian Food

I made this for us the other night and it was BANG!

Chicken Tikka Masala for the Crockpot

I don't cook with spices that much but need to learn now that I'm married to a Persian man who enjoys spicy food. Trying this one had me all confused because it calls for like 5 pounds of spice. Okay, not really 5 pounds, but from someone who only uses salt, garlic, onions and cheese to flavor stuff, it felt like I was dumping it on and was sure I was doing it wrong.

If you feel like that, keep going - it tastes amaze I promise.

Here's my input on the recipe:
  • You can use greek yogurt when it says plain yogurt.
  • The cayenne pepper is impressive. I used one teaspoon and my eyes were watering. If you can't handle the heat, go for one teaspoon or less.
  • They didn't have Garam Masala in the grocery store. Apparently it's just a mix of spices, some of which are already called for in the recipe. I used this to make the mixture - Garam Masala. I didn't have coriander or cloves so took a chance it would be okay without them. If you have them, throw it in. If not a standard in your spice rack, our dinner was proof it's not really necessary.
  • We are almond milk people, so I was hesitant about the heavy cream. I used half a cup and 1.5 tablespoons of cornstarch for the thickener, and it was good.
Bon appetit!