Thanksgiving for the new couch

Well happy Thanksgiving everyone! We celebrated by going to Utah! It was not as cold or snowy as we thought it would be, but it was still way colder than Texas! (It was 85 when we left, and by turning off the AC we got to save on utilities!) (it is alot cooler now down here.) Anyways, Thanksgiving in Utah was a lot of fun, we got to see family and eat lots of good food and do some black Friday shopping! The Black Friday shopping was a new experience for me (Reece) but not for Caity. The line outside Best Buy was way too long for us when we went at midnight, so we went back the next day and got all the deals we wanted anyways. I guess people really want a good deal on an off brand TV! Although maybe if we could have fit it on the plane it would have been more enticing. We loved seeing family, we are just so far from everyone down here we take all the family time we can get! Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for the fun trip! We love you guys! Anyways, Thanksgiving was great, and when we got home we decided to have our own little thanksgiving dinner today. We got stuffing, sweet potatoes, and a turkey. Yum yum. The turkey we got was a smoked turkey breast, so it was full of yummy smokey flavor, so we figured it was a more Texas style turkey. It was really good. This is a picture of our dinner, apparently we forgot to take any pictures while in Utah. hmmm. oops.

And our most exciting news, we got a new couch! We have been wanting one for quite a while now, and we found a good deal before we left for Thanksgiving and jumped on it! So, here is our old couch. It came from my sisters apartment, and before that my parents place in ML, where it had been for 20+ years. Why did you get rid of a couch with such history you may ask? Let me show you:

Did you notice the sweet floral print and the rips in both arms? Not to mention the faded appearance....and the cushions that are losing their shape, etc. If you want to come visit, you are welcome to sleep on it! We still actually have it, it has become designated as the eating couch, or the one where I am allowed to eat my popcorn! Anyways, here is our new couch!

Notice the attractive young woman that came with the couch! Lucky me! :)

Happy Halloween!

Well we did a little celebrating of Halloween tonight. We started off by carving a pumpkin! We didn't get any fancy patterns or knives for carving, so ours is pretty basic. Or traditional. Traditional sounds better right? (I think all of my pumpkins have been the same since I was 5. Maybe I should work on that lol)

Then we watched our favorite Halloween movie, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. One of the best Halloween movies ever!

Our trip to California

Well this past weekend we took a whirlwind trip to Los Angeles! My roommate from BYU was getting married, and we decided to go and see! We left after I took my cardiovascular block final on Friday, and drove to Houston to see my cousin and his wife. We stayed with them that night and went to eat sushi with them. It was a lot of fun, especially since he is now an ER doc and I got to talk to him lots about what he does and what I want to do and about stories and what not...it was fun to catch up with them and to see their kids, who were really cute! They even came down stairs to give us a goodnight hug and kiss, and I got hugs and kisses from both kids, but the little girl (who apparently wanted to come down stairs just to say goodnight to Caity) decided that when she got downstairs she did not want to give Caity a hug or a kiss. Poor Caity! Anyways, we got up at 5 the next morning, and drove to the airport in Houston, got in to LA at ten, got to our Hotel by 11:15, freshened up and left at 11:30 and got to the temple by 12! It was alot of running around trying to be on time, but it was worth it to see the wedding! I got to be best man....

Here is a picture of the happy couple:

Here we are outside the temple....

Anyways, after the wedding and after taking pictures, we went to the reception. It was at a youth center on the beach, and we were pretty excited for that! Except for when we got there, it was super foggy! So....no pictures from the beach there, but it was still fun being at the reception. That night we went and walked around Santa Monica beach and pier, and the 3rd street promenade. It was cold and foggy and we were really tired from running around all day, so we didnt last long. We did go there the next day before leaving town though

Since we did not have another person with us, we took all our own pictures, which results in lots of pics with us by ourselves or me holding the camera as far away as I can.

Well since we were at the beach, we had to get at least partway in the water, and we thought this next picture was pretty funny. Apparently I need to work on my jumping picture skills. LOL

We saw this man on the beach, and I mentioned that I thought it would be cool to have a metal detector, but then after laughing and realizing that I do not want to look like this guy, we decided to bag that idea.

After hanging out on the beach for a little while, had to leave to catch our plane...it was the shortest trip ever! But it was a lot of fun, and we enjoyed getting to see the wedding. Congrats Steve!

The Pringle Problem

Well we discovered a problem today. We were eating some Pringles and I looked at Caity holding her can, and I realized that her entire arm was in the can! "What? You can fit your whole hand into the can?!" I was so surprised!

As you can see, I can only fit my fingers in.

I have always been frustrated with Pringles cans because after I eat 10 or so chips I can't reach any more of them. As a result, I tip the can at an angle, but that often results in bunches of crumbs and chips coming out too fast and making a mess. I guess Caity is the only one who can eat the last half of the can!

Steak and Wine

Well about a week ago we went to the big event in downtown Bryan. The Steak and Wine festival! It was free admission on Friday, so we went to check out the steaks and try some of our favorite vintages....haha jk. It was like one of those little town festivals where they have music, art, and vendors, only in this case they also had wine tasting and lots of steak. We checked out the art, and we decided it was pretty poor. Although better than what I could have done, I am not sure who buys all of these pictures of Native Americans people paint. I mean I am sure they are a good subject, but I don't think I have ever seen one anywhere besides in odd stores, stands, and reproductions at truck stops. I still need to get me one of those sweet t-shirts from a gas station....

Anyways, we wandered around the festival, there was a bit of a crowd there, but not as many as we expected. We did come on the first day, I think maybe all the main event stuff was the next day. To spice things up, we stepped into a western hat shop and decided to see how we looked in $500 cowboy hats! We did not look for our size though (as you will notice). Yes Caity's hat has zebra print on it.

Here we are in line for a funnel cake!

I don't know if you can tell how big this funnel cake is, but it was huge! And with both of our powers combined, we still could not finish it!

We had so much fun!

We didn't last very long at the festival, it was fun but the local country bands were just a little too hokey and the face painting was dominated by little kids, so we left after eating our funnel cake. Mmmmmm that funnel cake was worth it though.

Van Gogh's Digitalis problems

So we learned about Digitalis last week at school, it is a drug that is used to treat heart failure. Well if you take too much of it and experience some toxicity problems, your vision starts to turn yellow and greenish, and you start to see lights being more blurry than before. Also, one source of the drug is the foxglove plant. So after explaining all of that the professor lecturing us explained that there was an article released in JAMA, a medical journal, in which someone explained that Van Gogh, prior to 1888, had mostly painted with lots of browns and blacks, with kind of a depressed, somber tone. After 1888, we start to see an drastic change in the coloring, with an increase in yellows and greens. And he even painted a picture with his doctor in it, with the foxglove in the corner. So, one idea is that after 1888 his doctor started to treat him with foxglove, which was used for a variety of medicinal purposes at the time. Van Gogh is thought to have been overdosing (or suffering some other form of toxic reaction) on foxglove, or Digitalis, and had thus been suffering the effects of yellow vision (seen in his paintings) and then the blurry lights, as seen with the blurry stars in the starry night painting. Kinda cool huh? A medical explanation for one of the world's great artists. Here is the picture with his doctor and the foxglove flower seen in the bottom of the painting.

Starry Night (note the blurred stars)

Some of his yellow-er paintings

There are more, but I don't want to look them up.

At least it wasn't a roach

Well we had a kinda fun, kinda traumatic event in our apartment the other day! We got home from working out and were walking into the room, and I noticed something on the wall! It was about 2 inches long and looked like this:

The way Caity screamed though, you would have think we had this on our wall:

Anyways, when we walked a little closer, it fell off the wall and down by the head of our bed, which then elicited more screams, and so then we had to clear out all of our furniture and stuff under our bed in order to find that little lizard that also happened to be the same color as our carpet. And really really fast. So we got the broom and a little tupperware, with Caity watching with the broom I stuck my head under the bed to find it. Then it ran out from under the bed, and after a lot more screaming, I trapped it under the tupperware, and we then took it outside. That lizard was so fast, but as Caity said, "at least it wasn't a roach."

The Lion King

Well tonight we went and saw the Lion King in 3D! It was pretty fun, while I was laughing with the kids at the movie, Caity was watching the kids around us and laughing at their reactions to the movie, like when the little girl in front of us started crying when Mufasa died. It was kinda funny. Anyways, who knew Disney could re-release a movie years later and make millions on it. Again. Maybe we can convince them to re-release Mulan!

I love animated movies...they make me fill like a kid! I'm just a big kid I think.