::yum::

Do you want to eat something delicious and not at all nutritious?
Try whipping up a batch of these brownies.

They're from my favorite foody blog, Baking Bites. I like to read it all the time and daydream about the yummy delicious food. I try to only make treats from it quarterly. They're just too delicious not to eat every crumb of them once they're made.

These brownies have a layer of oatmeal cookie crust at the bottom. The brownie part is really chocolatey in a dark delicious way. (all you dark chocolate lovers out there would love them--mom and dad!!).

Luckily I had a good excuse to make these tonight because I've been dying to! Kris met a kid at church who is applying to a master's program at RISD. He was here for interviews and had taken a cab to church. He was nice and Kris recognized the lost traveller feeling that he's had a lot during interviews. Kris invited him to dinner and gave him a ride home from church.
After we fed him a yummy spaghetti dinner and he left, I started thinking about all the people that were so kind to us when we first went out to Kansas City, that made us feel welcome and at home right when we got there. And the friends who have done the same here. We're just so lucky to have our church, to have a built in support system with great friends no matter where we have to go.

Anyway, we're grateful when we think back on it, and it was nice to share the love a little bit today with somebody who needed it.
And Max liked the brownies of course.



Tomorrow's a new week, and I'm going to blog more, yay! Another week closer to spring. We'll make it there eventually.

::some thoughts::

These are some of things swirling (or squirreling) around in my head right now.

I think that four year old boys, in bed, heavily sleeping with their arms above their heads are very very very cute.

My parents left today, it was so fun that they could come and visit.  I wanted to take care of them, but of course they ended up taking care of us.  I miss them already and they've only been gone for a few hours.  Poor Max really wishes he lived closer to all his grandparents, and I don't blame him.  He probably has the four best grandparents in the world.  Oh well, maybe someday we can get closer.

I miss the fall leaves!  They're mostly all gone now, and it's sad.

I can't believe how cold it is here suddenly.  It's freezing outside.  As I sit here my hands feel all cold and stiff from typing and my feet are frigid.  I wonder if it's just going to stay this way until spring.

Today when we got home from dropping Max off at school, Sultan had escaped the yard.  The back gate blew open in the wind last night I guess.

When I walked up the sidewalk I saw him there at the end of our driveway sitting right by the back of the car.  Poor guy.  He was all scared, and so was I.

I'm so glad he had the brains not to run away.  I'm so glad he didn't get hit.  Phew.

Kris is coming back from NYC right now.  He got to be involved in the interviews for next year's residents.  I'm very interested to hear all about it.  Thinking about the whole application and interview process sure brings back some stressful memories.  I'm just so glad we don't have to do that again anytime soon.  I have big-time sympathy for anybody that's doing it right now.

I can't believe we're seeing this around here:

It blows my mind.  I honestly thought it was a possibility that we'd never see gas below $2 again.  And it's quite the relief to my pocketbook right now.  I know it's not a great sign for the economy that gas keeps dropping, but I can't help but like it.  Between the lower prices and our new smaller car hopefully our gas bill is going to be quite a bit lower.  We'll see.

Happy wednesday everybody.  I hope you had a good one.

::TV and Other Random Thoughts::

How cool is it that I'm watching a BYU game right now? Let me tell you, it's cool. It's cool because the BYU game was last night, when we were too busy to watch. All I had to do was pick up my remote and hit a few buttons and then I didn't have to worry about it again.
I guess the DVR/Tivo thing isn't all that new, we've had it for a while, but it is just really cool.
We end up watching a good amount of TV at our house at night because of Max--I'm sure those of you out there with little kids understand. Bedtime is bedtime. It's rather sacred, and once the kid's in bed it's not like you can head out to have fun. So we like to watch TV because it's something we can do together, instead of like reading or something (which we do also of course) that's a more singular experience. Because of the DVR we probably watch more TV than we would otherwise, but I like to think it's more quality TV, because we can actually watch the shows we want. We have a whole bunch of shows from the Discovery Health channel recorded, just waiting for when we're collapsed on the couch, ready to stone out. I just hate channel surfing. There are just too many lame, bad or nasty things on. It's also really nice to have about 40 different episodes of Sesame Street recorded for Max. If I need something to entertain him for a while I know we've got something fun educational ready to go.
So anyway, I love being able to watch the shows I like without having to plan my life around it. It's definitely a small thing in the scope of real life, but for me, with how busy our lives have been it is really nice.

How about dishwashers and clothes washers and driers? I was just thinking this morning as I brought a load of laundry up from the basement. If we didn't have washers and driers, it would take so much stinking time to do laundry. It would be ridiculous! I feel like I can barely find time to run downstairs and switch a load. We are lucky to have technologies that helps us to have time to concentrate on the more important things in life. Like blogging? Hmmm.

Max and I just dropped Kris off at the airport this morning at 5AM. He's on his way to Buffalo NY to interview for a residency position in the pediatric dentistry dept at the hospital there.
On sunday flies to New York City where he has another interview. He's going to be gone a little less than a week. Max and I are getting pretty good at taking care of ourselves, although we still don't like it. Nights seem darker and days seem longer when Kris is gone.
I'm hoping he's going to post some trip updates here on the blog, but he may need a little encouragement. Will anybody that wants to hear from Kris please leave a comment telling him so?

So I'd better go do some work and finish watching the BYU vs TCU game. It's looking good so far, but I've been a BYU fan long enough to know never to take anything for granted......
Go Cougars!!!