Pumpkin Carving

On Monday for FHE Tyler and I carved our pumpkins. I was super excited. This is only my second time ever to do it. We did it the first time during our first year of marriage and had not done it since. They turned out pretty darn cute!

This is April's first Halloween and she was sooo curious to see what we were doing! This is a cute picture I got of her and my pumpkin. I thought it was so funny.

Us and our pumpkins

All lit up!

Creepy doggies with creepy pumpkins!

Once we finished Tyler had to run off to a basketball game (imagine that!) so I picked through all the stuff and roasted pumpkin seeds. It was my first time doing it and Tyler said it turned out really yummy. I made one batch of just regular salted ones and one with chili powder.

We had a lovely evening together. Hopefully we'll do it again next year!

Pumpkin Patch with the doggies!

Tyler and I love our puppies. Who doesn't know that by now really? So after searching high and low for a pumpkin patch that allows pets we finally were able to go to a cute one on Saturday that was pet friendly and got some very cute pictures of our doggies and our little family. The good thing about it was that it was in the town that we live too! We also got pumpkins to carve, which we'll do sometime this week.

Our little family

Oliver and April

Mommy and Oliver

Mommy and doggies

I was laughing because Oliver was coughing like he always does and it never stops being funny.

Daddy and doggies

Oliver is behind little April.

Us with our pumpkins. I can't wait to carve them!

They had some cute picture places that they set up for families and were very friendly. It was put on by an Assembly of God church. I was proud because the doggies behaved very well. It was a great time and I'm so happy we went.

Heaven Can Wait

On Thursday Tyler and I went on a date to a play at the Garland Civic Theatre called "Heaven Can Wait". It was our first time there and we were pretty happy with their facility and play. We just love going to plays so it's always nice to find community theater that is good. This is one of the things we missed about Utah. Lots of very good community theater.

We hit a little snag in the beginning. We got there early, but it was a chilly chilly night in Texas so we stood outside the theater while I finished my hot chocolate. We got had gotten tickets about 3 weeks ago so we were in no hurry to get in the theater. We got in and went to get in our seats and there were people sitting there. We were confused and thought maybe we had it wrong since it was our first time there, so we got some help. The lady came and showed us our seats and sure enough... people were on our seats. I was flustered by now because the play was supposed to start in a good 5 minutes. They checked their tickets and they had double booked our seats!!! Instead of fixing the problem Tyler just said it's ok we'll just pick one. I got real grumpy at that because our seats were crappy. We were at the very far stage left side and got to see lots of head nodding because the actors back was to us in some scenes. Our original seats were awesome. I was grumpy for a good little while but then couldn't help but snap out of it because the play was pretty funny.

Afterwards we wanted to eat some dinner, but everything was closed!!! The play got off at 10pm. We tried a few restaurants but by the time we got to one that closed at 10:30pm we were too late. So as we were driving home I saw the IHOP that's open 24/7 and we had some dinner there. Not the Chinese food I was craving, but it beat coming home on an empty tummy. I had breakfast and Tyler had a burger. It was pretty yummy.

It was a good date. I didn't even remember the last time we went on a night date. We will go again to the Garland Civic Theatre but they better not double book our tickets again or they'll hear from the feisty Winmill. :-) Oh and we went out for Chinese the following night with some friends... I was really craving it.

Dinner anyone?

It's currently 55 in Texas. All of our windows are open and it's 71 in the house. :-)
I'm happy for now. It'll be 80 by Sunday. :-(

So I made creamy cheese potato soup and biscuits. Anyone want some?

Great Pumpkin Festival

On Saturday Tyler and I went to the Dallas Arboretum so we could enjoy their Pumpkin Festival. I also wanted to see the Barkitecture where architects around the metroplex build doggie houses, but when we got there we found out that they had taken it down that morning, even though the advertisement clearly said that the last day was the 18th which is when we went. I wasn't happy because I really wanted to see so I filed a suggestion card, maybe I'll get free tickets??? We still had fun. It was a nice cool day and their pumpkin stuff was beautiful. Here are some pictures.


They had volunteers taking pictures for free for people, but she wasn't very good. We still took advantage of it and had her take the above picture.


They had a little sign for all the different pumpkins that they used on their pumpkin house and it was neat to see the names of all the pumpkins.




I caught this little squirrel running around the pumpkins. He was so cute.


This is the back of the pumpkin house. It was a busy day at the Arboretum so it was hard to get pictures without random people being in it. This was the best we could do. :-)


The following are just some pictures of us. We traded off with different people that were kind enough to take our picture.




It was a good day. We had some yummy lunch at the arboretum and had fun walking around and seeing the different displays and gardens. I just love going to the arboretum. I can't wait to go there with our kids and get cute pictures of them one day.

TCU v. BYU

Last thursday Tyler and I went to the BYU game at TCU out in Fort Worth. Tyler was super excited to go and I was nervous about going because I had paperwork to do for clinical the following morning which also meant I needed to wake up at 5am the following day. But I went because I knew it was important to Tyler. However he was very grumpy through all of it. We got there on time and parked by the HS and then we had to wait a good 20 minutes for a shuttle which meant we missed kick off. And we also learned TCU was kicking BYU's butt which made Tyler even more grumpy! Here we are at the game:

During half time the marching band did some pretty cool things, including the breast cancer awareness ribbon filled with breast cancer survivors or family members of people that have been affected by it. They also released several pink balloons which was neat.

The end of the game. And the big whooping BYU got from TCU.

We walked back to our car because the shuttle would have taken longer than walking. We got home around 12:20am and I stayed up until 2:30am. I got 2 1/2 hours of sleep before I headed off to clinicals the following day. I was very very tired but made through it. I got home and was asleep by 8:30pm and we slept in until 10am the following day. It was heaven.

Our First Halloween

When we were first married... about 4 months we went to a little get together at one of our friends house for Halloween. We decided to dress as haggard wife and husband, kind of a look into the future. It was fun. Since then we haven't dressed up for Halloween because we haven't gone to any more parties. So here's the only one we've ever done. I love this picture, it makes me giggle every time!



Don't we look good!?? lol Tyler had a pillow under his shirt, and we made him look scruffy with mascara. I have a shower cap and green facial scrub on my face.

Tip Junkie is doing a couples halloween themed costume. Wanna join us?

Michael Buble concert!

On Saturday Tyler and I went to the Michael Buble concert at the Fort Worth Convention Center. This has been a very long waited for concert. He was in Dallas back in March, but the concert was on a Sunday so we didn't go. I was so sad, so you can imagine my excitement when he came back to Fort Worth!

The concert was awesome. And we had GREAT seats. He was very funny, a little too crude at times, but great. He worked the audience and made everyone laugh. He had a few skits and jokes that were just great. The Star Telegram wrote an article on it. You can read it here.
You'll be able to read most of the details of the show. You can also see some videos from the concert here. It was a smaller venue and it was nice that it was small. He really put on a great show and I can't wait until the next tour! :-)

I wish the concert was a little longer. There were many songs I wish he would have sung, but he didn't. I guess he can't sing all of his albums in one concert. Bummer. lol

Us before the concert started.

Our view from our seats. This is without zooming in. Pretty good huh! :-)

A skit with part of his band

Us on our way home. Me --> Happy as a clam. Tyler --> Surprised he enjoyed the concert as much as he did.

This week

Tyler plays basketball quite often. He's on a city league that plays Monday nights, Wednesday nights is church ball, and Saturday mornings he plays with some friends. I'm not crazy about all this because Tyler tends to get a little competitive and he's gotten hurt several times while playing. On Monday he sprained his ankle for the fourth time. It wasn't as bad of a sprain as the other ones have been in the past, but still it's a sprain. He stayed home from work on Tuesday so he could elevate his ankle and ice it during the day. He's able to walk on it and is not in pain, it's healing quite nicely, but he definitely won't be playing any basketball for a while.

I finished my Maternity Health class last week and this week started my Pediatrics class. I got a B in both lecture and clinical. Pediatrics clinicals start next week. I'm hoping this will go well, I tend not to do so great with children. I just don't know how to talk to them. The lecture part is online so it'll be nice to be able to stay home and not fight with traffic in the mornings, but I'll have to be disciplined and listen to them in time to take the tests.

The doggies are doing well. April is one week post op today and she's doing just fine. She's back to eating, drinking, jumping, running, dragging her toys all over the house, and bugging Oliver. Now I just need to give them a bath! They're stinky. I am allowed to do it on Saturday.

We have lots of things planned for October so it'll be a busy month for us, but so much fun!

Opa!!!! It's all greek to me!

Dallas Greek Food Festival!

This past weekend, on Saturday, Tyler and I went to the Dallas greek food festival. Earlier in the day I went to take my final for my OB class and then we went to the festival. We got there around 2:30pm. We had fun and some yummy food and we learned about the Greek Orthodox Church. It was really neat.

Here's Tyler getting us tickets!

Tyler and I at the festival.

The yummy lunch we got with our admission tickets. We had Chicken Origanato, Kefthethes, rice, spanakopita, feta cheese and olives, greek salad and pita bread.

Since we stayed there for a good six hours we also got some snacks. Tyler really wanted to try some Saganaki which is basically fried cheese.

I tried their greek fries. They fried the potatoes in a mixture of olive and canola oil and seasoned it with oregano and kosher salt. It was weird, but not bad.

While having our fries we watched some of the youth of their church do some traditional greek dance. They called them the Holy Trinity Hellenic Dancers. They were cute, it was funny to watch them and some of them were pretty good.

I have a story for the next picture. I have always, always wanted a belly dancing costume. The past two years that we've gone to the Renaissance Festival I've been very tempted to buy one there, especially since we watch the belly dancers. I think it has something to do with my Syrian ancestry. So we saw these shawls at the festival for $20 and I pouted my way into getting one. I am in love with it. It's sooo dang cute. Now I just need to take a belly dancing class. :-)

Tyler and I on our way home, waiting for our bus ride back to the parking lot.

These are a few pictures of the Orthodox Greek Church. They were so nice and they had tour guides giving you information about their beliefs and the different symbolism in the paintings. It was very pretty inside of the church and so interesting. I really enjoyed the tour.

Here's a little snippet of some conversations we had at the festival:

Thais: I think we should have a Mormon Food Festival. Why don't we have a Mormon food festival?
Tyler: We have them, but we don't invite the whole city to it, it's just the ward. But what would we serve?
Thais: Jello salads
Tyler: ... and casseroles
Thais: OOOO and we could have everyone wear pioneer clothing and have some dutch oven cooking, Oh no... better... everything would be made using food storage stuff!!!
Tyler: sure...

While watching the dancing:

Thais: It would be so nice to be greek. They have all these traditions and these strong families that pass these traditions down to their children and it's all because of their strong pride of being greek. I want to be greek! I think it'd be fun. What traditional dances do Americans have?
Tyler: The Hoedown
Thais busts into laughs

As you can tell we had a blast. It'll be fun to go back next year!