Happenings of our lives

Jordan and I really like Sushi, so we made some on Monday night. I just used the mat and Jordan used the sushi press, and it didn’t work so well because we forgot to put rice on the top of it. But it all tastes the same in the end.

Jordan and I love having a backyard. We’ve had a lot of fun in it when it’s light outside, but it gets dark here (like before Jordan gets home from work). So on Sunday we wanted to enjoy the yard during the day when it was light. We went outside and played some games and we also ate lunch outside.

So on 09/09/09 I got a great deal on some gift certificates off of Restaurant.com I got a couple of $25 gift certificates for 90% off, and we wanted to use them this weekend. We wanted to go to an Indian Restaurant, we called and got a reservation, but when we got to the restaurant was a big sign that said Dwhali. We found out that that we couldn’t use the certificate. So we decided to go to Red Robin instead.

Jordan loves wheat thin crackers, and eats them like most people eat cookies or candies. So I decided I wanted to make some, so I did.

Here’s the recipe:
1 ½ c all purpose flour
½ c whole wheat flour
½ c sugar
¼ t salt
2 T butter (room temperature)
½ c milk
Salt for seasoning

They are super easy to make. Mix all the dry ingredients and cut in the butter like you would for a pie. Once the mixture has the texture of course meal then add the milk but just enough that the dough sticks together. Split the dough into two pieces and roll it out as thin as possible (I didn’t do a good job of this the first time I made them, and if they are too thick, they are hard to eat). So, roll them out really thin and poke them with a fork so they don’t arch when you cook them. Cut the dough with a pizza cutter (this really saves time). Then gently scrape them off the counter (the second time I used a flexible cutting board which also was easier). Place them on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake them for 20-25 minutes at 325 until golden brown. Allow them to cool slightly before removing them.

*if you try to take them off when they are not cooled the crackers will bend and break. If you wait until they are cool, they just pop off the pan.

Well, as I have said before, there are a lot of weird bugs here in Missouri, but there are the normal ones too. I mow the lawn when Jordan’s at work and some weird bugs pop out of the grass when I mow the lawn (occasionally a frog does too).

Here’s a picture of a really green grasshopper and a lady bug. I’m glad the weird bugs are gone until next summer.

We knew that we were spending Halloween with Whitney and Evan. When we got to their house we decided to go to the Haunted Corn Maze. We went to the same place as we went to earlier in October. This time we went in the 8 acre corn maze, and it was haunted.

I was really scared that the corn maze would be really scary, but it wasn’t. It was a full moon and we could see everything.

We got in the maze and early in it there was a guy that was trying to scare people. I wanted to take a picture, and when I tried to he went and put a different mask on, then let us take his picture. The funniest part of all, was when we took his picture, he asked if any of us had a smoke.

Jordan started to get bored and run away and hid and scare people. We made it out of the corn maze pretty fast (less than 1 hour) and then went back to Evan and Whitney’s house and played Cranium Pop 5. Evan and Whitney totally beat us because we didn’t know that Monday Night Football had a theme song. Thanks guys, it was fun, we’ll have to do it again.

I was so excited for Halloween this year. Jordan and I knew that we were spending Halloween with Whitney and Evan and we wanted to bring some food to their party. So, I started making some cookies that morning. I made some that looked like candy corn and some other ones that looked like spiders.

The candy corn ones were really easy to make. I just made some normal sugar cookie dough. I split the sugar cookies into 3 pieces. To make the orange dough I put food coloring in one and in the brown, I melted some chocolate and mixed it in. Then, I split those into two pieces and then put them into small bread pans and then let them chill for 1.5 hours. Then I sliced them into candy corn chunks. After I cooked and cooled them, I dipped the chocolate part into chocolate.

The spiders were just cake mix cookies with M&M eyes and licorice legs. They were so cute, we just wanted to eat them .

Later that night, Heidi and Ryan came over and we had hamburgers and played Cranium. We had a ton of fun with them playing Cranium. Jordan and Ryan beat Heidi and me. The funniest thing that happened was when Ryan was trying to show bungee jumping with Heidi. He picked her up and turned her upside down and kept shaking her. It was so hilarious!

After the service project Jordan and I went to the corn maze and pumpkin patch. I’d wanted to go for most of October, so we finally went. We drove to the corn maze and when we got there they told us that we could only go in the 3 acre corn maze, but that was okay with us. In the corn maze there were riddles, and we found them all except for number 3, we couldn’t find it. We even asked someone else where it was, and they didn’t know. I guess we’ll never know…

So after we left the corn maze, we went on a tractor ride to the pumpkin patch. The pumpkin patch was lame. There was even a flat bed semi that had bushels of pumpkins on it. So Jordan and I figured that they were taking those pumpkins and putting them in the in the patch. The pumpkins were also really expensive, so we didn’t even buy one. The mini pumpkins were a dollar each, so we just walked around the patch and then went back on the tractor and went home. We had a lot of fun, but mostly because we were together.

On October 23. Jordan and I decided to go camping right after he got home from work on a Friday night. By the time we got to the camp it was dark and we started to make dinner. We played Catch-Phrase (it is the electronic version so we could actually see the words). It was starting to get cold and we went in the tent to play. We started to watch a movie and then we smelled something skunky (literally). We stopped watching the movie and just sat there and the smell got stronger. Jordan was so worried that a skunk was going to spray the tent, but that didn’t happen.

We had to get home early the next morning because there was an Elder’s Quorum service project. So we left fast the next morning and it was so foggy. We couldn’t see the car from the tent. I tried to take a picture and the campsite, and when the flash was on you could sort of see the fog. We turned the car lights on and we got an okay picture of the campsite (it was right next to the creek, so that’s why there was fog).

It was so pretty driving back. We stopped to take a picture of the fog with the sunrise. It was amazing, the fog just ended when we went up a hill. We got home just as it was getting light and Jordan got ready for the service project.