Pumpkin Puree

Well the pumpkin puree was easy! A little messy, but easy. Seriously. All you do is roast your pumpkin, then scoop out the insides into a blender, add a little water, and blend it all up. The best part was lining a mesh strainer with paper towel and straining the water out (pumpkins have too much water in them right off the bat, plus you added water to puree it), then you have beautiful pumpkin puree. So far I've made two loaves of pumpkin bread with it. I have about a cup of puree in my freezer and will be using it on Saturday to make pumpkin pasties from Harry Potter (found here: http://www.harrypotterrecipes.net/search/label/pumpkin%20pasties).

On Halloween, Brad and I are making Butterbeers, eating pumpkin pasties, and watching the last Harry Potter movie. We wanted to refresh ourselves for when the next installment comes out. November 19th! It will be a fun little halloween activity. We've also got a bit of candy to hand out, but I doubt any trick-or-treaters are going to venture up here. It would be fun if they did though!

Let's see... nothing else very exciting is going on with us. Brad's just working and I'm working on doing school. I found out earlier this week that the substitute people had entered my phone number wrong and had been calling someone else all this time. No wonder I never got calls! I've gotten one every morning this week. Unfortunately I'm working on a fairly large project for school, so I've had to turn them down. I think maybe tomorrow or Friday I might be able to accept a job. So, we'll see. If some other person has been getting my calls I can see how annoying that would be to be woken at 6:30 every morning with a call from a robot, haha.

The weather has been weird this week. It's been really warm (today it's supposed to be 85 out) but it's also been really windy and rainy. Not particularly stormy, but just kind of wet and gross outside. I want it to go away and be cold. It's almost November for Pete's sake!

Here I am again!

Well, it's been about a month since I last updated. Lately we've just been hanging out and enjoying the slow onset of Autumn. We've been going to a church we like and will continue going there for now. Next weekend is their annual Chili/Chowder cook out and I am entering the Holloway Family recipe. I hope I win!!!
 These past few weeks we've gone on a couple adventures, so I thought you would enjoy seeing some pictures of our adventures. We went to a Switchfoot concert

It was a lot of fun! I am hoping to see another switchfoot show in my lifetime.

We also went to the Norfolk Zoo. It was pretty small but had some cool stuff. And we went for free (Brad got tickets through the carpool rewards program at work):

This past weekend we went to a pumpkin patch to get some pumpkins. I bought a pie pumpkin and I am going to attempt to make my own pumpkin puree. It doesn't look too hard. We'll have to see how it goes!

Hmmm... what else have we been up to? I've been going to the library a lot lately to do school work.I find it helps me to a.) get out of the house and b.) get more done because there are less distractions. I also had my first substitute teaching job last week! I was in a class of Kindergartners. It was pretty fun, but I'm glad I don't have to teach kindergarten all day every day. I would probably end up with my head exploding. I had another teaching day this week, but I had to cancel it because of an unexpected conflict. Lamers, oh well! I guess I'll just have to keep my eyes open for other jobs coming up!

Brad has been keeping busy with work. He's really liking his job. He's waiting to get his security clearance, but that should be coming through quickly. He's also submitting an application to do an online engineering master's degree. The company will pay for it, so we decided it would be a good idea to take advantage of that. More education never hurt an engineer! So hopefully he'll get everything together today and get that submitted.

I have been keeping up on my running. I've been running four miles once a week for a while now, and it's pretty fun. I've also started adding intervals to my short running days. It keep things more interesting. After awhile it gets boring to just run. We finally have the TV back (the one that was in there was broken) so I've been enjoying watching Say Yes to the Dress during my work outs. That show never gets old, haha. Speaking of running... I probably need to get myself to the workout room. The plan for the dad: Work out, Shower, Lunch, Library until fiveish. WOO!