Shaving, Skype, and Sugar Cookies.

There are so many thoughts tumbling around in my mind, and I hope I can get them all out in a post that makes some kind of sense!

First off, I keep meaning to do some sort of video tour of the apt, or pictures or something! But, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. It will happen before the end of the year!

Braden decided to shave his beard. And we thought we would shave it in stages and have a little fun.... :)

Those last two pictures gross me out so much... I can't even....yeah. Let's all take a moment to be grateful he shaved the entire thing off! (Although, if you wanna know a secret, I miss the beard. I didn't think I would, but I think he looks like a small boy without the facial hair. Don't tell.) 

We are slowly adjusting to Provo, and getting to know others in our ward. We have had a few couples over for FHE in the past weeks, and that has been so fun! My visiting teachers came today, which I was so grateful for. There were so many semesters at college when I never knew who my visiting teachers were, and so I really appreciated these girls coming to visit me! It is such a blessing to be a member of the church, and to be able to make friends wherever we go. 

This past weekend we had a few skype calls to family members:

These are my new twin nieces, Sage and River. Aren't they so precious? :)
Congratulations to Brad and Amelia on doubling their family in a day!

Then we skyped these lovely people. My brother Jared, and his wife Whitney. 

To finish it off, we skyped Braden's parents in Rexburg. This time,
we used google plus and had fun experimenting with all of the effects :)
Entertainment comes easily around the Dennis Household. 

We went and saw the new Hunger Games movie - Catching Fire. It was so good! A little intense, and we both jumped at a few parts. 

We have enjoyed experimenting with a few recipes lately - sugar cookie bars (tastes just like sugar cookies, but without all the work!), kale chips, and a cheesy ham and potato casserole. Here is the Sugar Cookie Bars for anyone interested. 

My preschoolers are funny. Here is one of the highlight quotes as of recent.

Preschooler: My mom is coming to pick me up at 1 today.

Me: I wish I could see my mom at 1 today.

Preschooler, mouth dropping open in shock: Your mom's not dead yet?!?

haha. Still makes me laugh. I wonder how old she thinks I am....

Since Thanksgiving is this week, I decided to share a few of the things we are grateful for.

• I like to listen to the BYU-Idaho devotionals every Tuesday. This week, my laptop died literally 2 seconds after the closing prayer ended.  I didn't even realize it was low on battery, but it made me happy that it lasted long enough for me to hear the final 'amen'. 
• We both have jobs, and come December, we will both officially be college graduates! It is nice to not be completely starving, and to have more than we really need.
• For student housing, we really live in a nice place, for a good price. It was truly a miracle that we managed to snap the apartment when we did. If we had called even an hour later to see if the complex had openings, we would have lost our chance. 
• Technology! Without it, we wouldn't be able to skype our families and see their cute faces on a regular basis.
• Kale. I love kale chips, and kale is so good for you!
• Having a temple so close to us. Actually, having several temples close to us! It has been a blessing being able to go on a weekly basis, and help serve others.

Well, we love you all. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Carcassonne

Since it is my turn (Braden) to write the blog for this week, I'll start off by listing my top favorite things of the week.

Carcassonne- This is my new favorite game.  It is a tile based strategy board game that is very fun.  Sarah and I have played it a few times (we need more people to play it with) and then went out and bought two expansions for it as well. We have run into a little problem though. We don't always have enough space on our kitchen table.  We might end up playing on the kitchen floor but that's not the most comfortable thing.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  We need a surface harder than carpet but maybe slightly mobile...

Snowman - We officially built our first Snowman of the season.

Work Partay!!!-  Alright, so it was just an unofficial work party.  Matt, from our legal team, hosted it at his house.  I brought a cheese ball that I made all by myself.  It was pretty tasty.  Sarah wasn't a fan of the liquid smoke and nuts on it but I thought it was great!  We stayed for a couple hours. Nothing too exciting - just eating and talking. Sarah kept eyeing all the babies there. I need to watch that girl so she doesn't get too baby hungry!

Baking a pie - Who knew I could do it?  Not Sarah...  I surprised her with my excellent cooking in something other than eggs. (She only thought I could  make things like fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, and egg rolls.) I used my Momma's apple pie recipe, and it was so good!

My Beard - I have started to grow out a beard and it is pretty decent.  It itches sometimes because I think it is starting to curl a bit, which is not the most comfortable thing.  Question.. Should I keep it?  If so, for how long?

Bowling-  Sarah beat me in bowling by 2 points.  She was on cloud 9.  Why, you might ask?  She looses most of the card games that we play. If she ever wins any other type of game against me, she doesn't forget to show her excitement. I think its kinda cute.

Cool new things of the week!!

*LastPass is something that I have learned to love!!  Its a username and password manager.  I am already at 30 different usernames and passwords.

*ShayTards

This is a clip of a family that call themselves the ShayTards (The father's name is Shay).  They are a Mormon family from southern California that have 5 children. For the past 4 years, they have uploaded a vlog every single day. They just video what they do as a family, and talk about their day. It seems pretty mundane, but Sarah and I love watching them! Their videos are funny and the children are pretty cute.  The second video above has to be one of my favorites.

P.S. I have a cute wife. Sometimes I come home from work, and I find things like this.

Sleepy Sarah.

I'm Gonna Make This Place Your Home.

Getting married is an interesting thing. All of these dreams I grew up with of things I wanted to do with my future husband aren't in the future anymore! It has been fun to see those things becoming a reality. One thing I always wanted to do was cook with my husband - real meals! Not the typical crappy college meals of quesadillas or ramen noodles. So this week, we did just that :) We made delicious sweet and sour chicken, with broccoli on the side, and homemade rolls (which I used the kitchen aid for!). So good.

Another food we made this week is no bake granola bites. They are simple and quick to make, but so good! Here is the recipe: http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2013/08/no-bake-healthy-granola-bites.html I would highly recommend trying them at least once. You can totally alter the recipe to your liking - adding coconut flakes, nuts, dried fruit, whatever you want! And it makes a great snack :)

Tuesday night we went to the temple to do sealings. I am so grateful for a temple that is so close to us, and for the power and blessings that come from attending the temple. 

Wednesday night we did a double date! Braden set up one of his coworkers with our good friend, Rachel. We were going to carve pumpkins, eat apple pie, and play games. Braden and I had gone to a pumpkin patch two weeks ago, and had a pumpkin we were going to carve. His coworker was bringing the pumpkin to carve with Rachel. I had the apple pie in the oven, and we were set to go! 

At least we thought.

The date was set to start at 7. About 6 pm, Braden looks at our pumpkin. I had cut it open the week before, and brought it to preschool so I could teach my class about the parts of a pumpkin. What we didn't realize, is that it had started growing mold after we cut it open. The outside looked fine, but the inside was green, nasty, and moldy. We knew it wouldn't exactly work for carving anymore. So with T Minus 1 hour until the date, Braden set out to get us a replacement pumpkin. He checked the tiny supermarket around the corner from us. He drove out to Springville to check Walmart. He drove around Springville, checking all the little supermarkets and such. NOBODY had pumpkins out. It was the day before Halloween. You would think there would be pumpkins everywhere! We thought about stealing a pumpkin, buying one off our neighbors, etc. But clearly those weren't great options. So Braden came home around 6:50. I set off to go pick up Rachel (she broke her foot, and can't drive for the time being). After I picked her up, we checked one more grocery store - Smiths. Thankfully, they had pumpkins! There was only a few left, and they were little itty bitty, but it worked for the date :) 

Braden only does cheesy smiles. But I love him anyways :)

Or he doesn't smile at all. Still love him :)

Another dream I was able to fulfill this week is finally decorating our own apartment! We finally got all of our pictures up on the wall, and it is starting to feel more like home :) I'll post pictures of that next week.

I finished another paint-by-number, which is one of my most favorite hobbies! I'm definitely not a talented painter without the numbers there, but I love being able to depict God's creations. And it sure makes beautiful pictures to hang on the walls. 

This one is called "Sunset Cabin"

We had the wonderful opportunity to attend a Vocal Point Concert last night. Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE LOVE live music. I feel closer to Christ when listening to music than just about any other situation. When they sang their rendition of "Come Come Ye Saints", their percussionist teared up. His face was so filled with light, I couldn't help but just cry with him. It was so beautiful, and I love how quickly the Spirit filled the room. I think it is so neat that they can share their testimonies of Christ through their music and performances. Here is the song:

Another song they sang that I just LOVED is one of their originals. It is called "Home for Me". They introduced the song by talked about how sometimes being away from our families, we feel like we get homesick. But the truth is, home is where our loved ones are - whether that be our roommates, our real families, etc. No matter where we may be, we can choose to make it our home. The song has a fantastic key change towards the end!

Braden and I talked about how moving to Provo has been a change. We both miss Rexburg, and being close to our friends and family. But this is our home now, and we are going to make the best of it! We love each other a whole heck of a lot, and that makes it home for us :)

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." (Oct 21 - Oct 27)

This week has been a very busy week for Sarah and I.  Last weekend Sarah and I were in Rexburg wrapping up things with our final reception.   It was hard to fully process everything because my Grandma Stuart had died Saturday morning (the 19th - the day of our Rexburg Reception!)  The funeral was on Tuesday morning, and luckily I was able to get off work to attend. It was sad but I very much enjoyed seeing many of my cousins and aunts and uncles.  It gave me time for pondering.  I wasn't able to attend my grandfather's funeral because I was on my mission when he passed away.  After the funeral, the family helped in the cleaning up of Grandma's possessions.  The number one thing that reminded me of my grandparents was an inch and a half tall ivory man, I had looked at it many  times when I was growing up. I requested to take the ivory man with me, but for a while no one could find it. After searching I found it in a little wooden box full of my grandma's other nick-knacks. We were also able to inherit my Grandma's Kitchen Aid, which Sarah and I are so grateful for.  I have attached a wonderful picture of Sarah and the Kitchen Aid.  The first picture I took of her when I left the apartment for work. The second picture is when I came back from work ;) While we were in Logan we got some wonderful cheese and chocolate milk from Gossner Foods and Goldfish from a Pepperidge Farm Outlet.  I think we might have spent a little bit too much on those places!  Friday was Sarah's Birthday. I woke her up bright and early by playing Taylor Swift's "22". She was a good sport and got out of bed to come eat Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes with me before I left for work. We went out to Olive Garden that evening, and had a nerf gun fight. I won! On Saturday, we went to Lagoon's Frightmares.  Sarah might have wet her self out of fear, but at least she didn't lose a meal from going on all of the rides (like I did).  I am such a baby.   Today was our first day in our new ward, we decided to go a little bit early so we could find the church and well... not be late on our first day.   After being at church for 30 seconds I was asked to help out with the sacrament, which was a little overwhelming.  I honestly was a little nervous but in the end it wasn't that bad.  We met some new people and watched a clip of Star Wars in Elder's quorum.  I think I like this ward.     

This is a picture of Sarah before I left for work.

This is a picture of Sarah after I got back from work...9 hours later.

This is the little ivory man, he only stands about an inch and a half tall.