Hurricane Sandy

The hurricane is coming. And Jason is giddy. He, with his Idaho background, is apparently built for natural disasters and survival. I just have to thank his mom and dad for doing such a good job raising him with a lot of practical skills. A tree branch (aka full size limb) fell in the middle of the road narrowly missing two cars. As Jason was bravely facing the storm (exaggeration here, it was lightly raining with minor gusts of wind, no bravery needed) to get the flashlight from his car he watched as the branch fell and he went and pulled it out of the street. Now he is home and at the slightest noise he looks at me with big hopeful eyes and asks "did you hear that?" to which I reply yes, it was our neighbors upstairs and then his hopes crash when he realizes he can't go pull another branch out of the street. Now he's going to go in the basement of our house to see if the owners have any tools to help us survive. Tell you what, I definitely married right since natural disasters are not my thing. Neither is survival really. Overall we don't feel too threatened and we now realize the security that comes with having food storage which I think we will make a goal to build from now on. Anyway, here's a couple of pictures from the last of our fall activities as winter is fast approaching....By the way it was a win win for homemaking this last weekend, I cut Jason's hair for my first time ever  and it actually looks good! I felt so accomplished! I also made pumpkin cookies which are addicting and we have a mildly clean house :) 

After a really hard week Jason brought home these glasses and new shirts for a good smile on Friday night.

I promised my sister pictures of the fall colors so here you go! These were trees from the temple and few on my walks to work.

Oh and don't forget Salem for Halloween, crazy stuff here, definitely beats frightmares at Lagoon.

Midterms

As much as this blog would make you think that we do awesome things all the time, it's not entirely true. After all we (Jason) are at school which comes with the fair share of college life including midterm papers, projects, worrying about paying rent and finding quick meals to make. I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this post other than it's therapeutic and Jason is over in the dining room typing a midterm paper so why should I let him have all the fun? It's been two months to the day that we arrived here. I feel like life has settled down somewhat into a pattern which I've decided isn't always the best. It's nice to feel like things are different, like you have a new start, and everything is fascinating. When I settle into a pattern I start to think about my life and where I'm going which isn't always so fun. Also with the seasons changing I find myself homesick for the Utah mountains full of colorful leaves, normal fall temperatures, roads that I can actually drive on and grocery stores I can actually go to more than every other week. Not to mention a warm house, the smell of pumpkin cookies and being surrounded by family where life is just comfortable, you can just be you wether that's the tired, stressed, worried "I don't know what to do with my life," or the "life is awesome and I just want you all to know." *sigh*

Wonderful Conference Weekend

Wasn't General Conference wonderful this weekend? So many beautiful messages of service and that Heavenly Father and Christ are there for us no matter what. Besides the wonderful messages it was also nice to have a weekend to spend at home curled up on the couch. We were very grateful for the internet which allowed us to enjoy conference from our own home. We also had Columbus Day off so we got to go see a couple things too. 

First was our first experience with seafood! And it was surprisingly really good, we felt completely satisfied and wouldn't have ordered anything different. Crab cakes and New England Clam Chowder were so good! (By the way, did you know there are different clam chowders? google it, you'll be amazed)

Then Sunday morning before conference (since it starts at 12 here!) we went on a walk to Mt. Auburn Cemetery which is just down the road from our house. Here were a couple of our favorite tombstones and the leaves have started to change! 

Finally we went apple picking today at Honey Pot Hill. We brought home so many apples! Jason was pretty skeptical at first but he came with me anyway and I think somewhat enjoyed it. Especially those fresh apple cider donuts. Can't get much better than that.