He who eats alone dies alone


Chi mangia solo crepa solo

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Let the Holidays Begin!

With Halloween on Thursday it marks the beginning of the holiday season. As many people know I love the holidays! Some think I'm crazy as I started listening to Christmas music and my Christmas shopping in September but I just can't help getting excited for the holidays.

Today Arielle and I carved our pumpkins. We still have a few small details to touch up once we have candles in them but overall they are complete. For the last few years we have started carving more fun and challenging pumpkins and this year was no exception. We bought some nicer carving tools at my favorite food-ware store (Williams-Sonoma) this year and they actually made the process smoother and a little easier. We baked some pumpkin cookies and Arielle gave me a hard time for listening to Christmas music after all of my Halloween music stopped.

 
 
Dimitri (Owl, Moon, Leaves) and Arielle (Ariel and Flounder)


Halloween has a lot of fun memories for me as my dad "made" us walk block after block until people stopped answering their doors. When we were little we complained from time to time about walking but as we got older it was fun since we always had more candy than most kids.

Natalya as a clown and I was a cowboy.
As Halloween approaches I am pretty excited to be handing out candy to the neighborhood children. We weren't able to last year due to our class schedules. Happy Halloween and remember to hand out candy.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

End of Summer - School Begins

Arielle and I flew back to Seattle at the beginning of August for her cousin, Jessica's wedding. The flights over were pretty uneventful and it was my first time really visiting Seattle for vacation and not work related. We rented a car and stayed with Arielle's aunt and uncle. The rental car was a Ford Fusion and was fun to drive compared to our old car. Seattle was a blast! We visited some of my WSU friends and had dinner with them at MOD pizza (my favorite), went to the first Starbucks and went through Pikes Place Market.

Arielle decorated cupcakes for the wedding and helped to make the s'mores party favors, I helped make some massive amounts of Asian coleslaw. The day of, we helped to set up all of the food and cupcakes. The wedding was really nice in an event center next to the beach. The weather was nice and sunny, which is a rarity for Seattle.




After Seattle we headed back with Arielle's family to Spokane. Arielle went and visited some old work friends, we spent time with both families and the Walkers threw us a party so that we could see the rest of the family and some other friends. I spent a good portion with Mo Money playing FIFA and visiting with his family. I stopped and started my bike before we headed back out to Ann Arbor. Overall it was a fun visit but it was only a few days.

The flight back was a mess with delayed airports, a crazy guy who kept turning off my air, and a huge thunderstorm in the mid-west. Once we landed a friend of Arielle's picked us up and drove us home. It was raining so hard during part of the drive that people were pulling off the freeway to wait for the rain to let up. I do love the mid-west storms!
As the summer came to an end we visited campus and figured out where our classes were going to be. I started my new program in Applied Economics and Arielle is just finishing her last semester. Arielle is still working in the lab finishing up the study. They have one baby still in the study.