Pumpkin Custard

I found this recipe today after talking to some great friends about our Thanksgiving plans together this year. I've never heard of Pumpkin Custard, but it sounds like a fun idea, and so good and easy to make! So this week, I vow to try this and hope it turns out to be yummy!

Pumpkin Custard

Ingredients

• 1 can (15 ounces) solid-pack pumpkin
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup half-and-half cream
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1-1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 
  TOPPING:
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted
• Whipped cream and ground cinnamon, optional

Directions

• In a large bowl, combine the first six ingredients; beat until smooth. Pour into four greased 10-oz. custard cups.
• Place in a 13-in. x 9-in. baking pan; pour hot water around cups to a depth of 1 in. Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 20 minutes.
• For topping, combine the brown sugar, pecans and butter. Sprinkle over custard. Bake 30-35 minutes longer or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Serve warm or chilled; top with whipped cream and cinnamon if desired. Store in the refrigerator. Yield: 4 servings.

Our Life

Our new apartment is amazing and I love love love it!!! There is so much more space and we have our own washer and dryer! I really love it. Brenden has his own bedroom and its great. He's got this humongous walk in closet all to himself. And I think Brenden loves it as well.

Brenden is so great! He is the best little boy in the world. Sure, I may be a little bit biased, but I'm the mommy and I'm supposed to be. He has just been so great with the move and packing and unpacking, all the while he is teething and he was awesome! He has 2 teeth now and is a rock star baby. I'm really in unbelief on how wonderful this little guy is. I love him so much and I can hardly believe that he's going to be 8 months old on Monday. Time has just raced away.

So a little bit about the new place. It has 3 glorious bedrooms, 2 full baths, wonderful shower heads, a ton of storage. All the closets are walk-in closets, a coat closet, a huge living room, the master bath is enormous, our dresser fits in our closet to give us more room, outdoor storage, a huge patio, a lawn, playground out back, a full size washer and dryer, front loading, they're amazing, 3 doors, a ton of wall space, and extra wide doorways. It is so wonderful. I'm so excited that we decided to make the move. Its only $40 more a month and we would have been paying that much for storage anyways. We had just ran out of room. Now we can have all of our stuff in one place. Life is amazing.

And to top it off, I have the most amazing husband in the whole entire world. This morning I woke up to a wonderful text from my husband telling me just how much he loves me and why he married me, it was just so nice to be the first thing I read in the morning. It made my day, and this day has just been the greatest.

The end!

Mini Update

We're all moved into our new apartment and for the most part just about everything is unpacked and in its place. It feels so nice to have accomplished so much in the past couple of weeks. We found out we were moving, packed up, moved, and unpacked all in 2 weeks! Life is truly amazing. Once we get all the miscellaneous stuff put away I'll have to take some pictures and post them. Until then...

BIG NEWS

You think you guessed it yet? Well, no, we're not having another baby. We've got Brenden and he's so cute and awesome. But we are moving into a new apartment and super soon! As soon as next week! I can hardly believe it! This opportunity just kind of jumped at us. Literally. So here's the story....

School started on Monday and after Chris got home from his classes we decided we wanted to go on a walk as a family. We loaded up Brenden in his stroller and hit the pavement. By the time we had walked a couple of blocks I realized I didn't want to go too far, so I had the great idea to stop in at Donegal Bay. These are the apartments that we have been looking at for quite some time now. We go into the office and asked if they happened to know if they were going to have any openings in November. Well, we were in luck, and even better, they had something opening up even before November. They had something opening up in mid-October. We were so excited. Someone had just come in that morning and gave their 30-day notice. We feel so lucky.

I went home, got some boxes and have been a packing fool ever since. Can't tell I'm too excited, can you? We also put our apartment up on the bulletin board to get our contract sold. We've had people coming over all week to look at it and have had some pretty good offers on it.

Chris and I went into Donegal Bay to start our paperwork on Wednesday and you would not even believe it. The people that turned their 30-day notice in on Monday are moving out this weekend! What luck. Our luck is amazing. That would mean that apartment would be ready much sooner. The lady we had been talking to said that it could be ready as early as Wednesday. At this point Chris and I are so excited we don't even know what to think. We tell her that we would have to go home and talk about it and sell our contract before we could give her a move-in date.

We go home, and yes, I continue the packing. We found someone to take over our contract, and they wanted to move in as soon as possible. We just needed the go ahead from our current landlord. What a mess. This guy is just horrible to get a hold of. Seriously. But that's ok, but only because this is a good experience. Chris finally got a hold of him today. We told him that we happened to find a bigger place and a couple to take over our contract and that we would be moving out this weekend and that this other couple would be moving in on the 27th. He was down with the idea and ready. The new tenants would just have to pay a $300 deposit, and we would have to pay a $100 early termination fee. Not too bad on our side, but for a deposit just to be living here for 3 months? On a college budget, that did not sound too great. I emailed the couple and started getting scared because I hadn't heard back from them for awhile.

I finally heard back from them. I talked to Chris while he was at work and asked if he could call Brad to see if we would both have to pay all of that money because before we were under the impression it would only be $100 between the 2 of us. That was just the beginning of the problems for this couple. Chris said that everything was going through. That we would pay the early termination fee and the couple was in the process of signing a year contract. How is that possible since they only wanted to rent through December. So I emailed them to see if they had talked to anyone to sign a contract. And no they hadn't. Turns our Brad just called someone off of the Hyde Park waiting list and let them sign a contract. Long story short, we had someone lined up to take our place, and Brad gave it away. I just think it was a lot of miscommunication. I feel so bad for that other couple though. I realize that it's not our fault and that we just weren't being listened to, but I can't help but feel guilty.

Good news, We've got someone to take over our contract, we get to finish signing our papers with the new place on Monday and depending on the condition of it, if it needs new paint, or carpet or whatever, we can move in on Wednesday!

I'm still in so much disbelief, so Happy!

Avoiding the Blog

I have been avoiding the whole blogging world lately and I have missed out on so much! We had some friends in the ward that I had no idea had moved! Which really was sad. Good thing they only moved to Idaho Falls. I've been hiding away afraid to share my thoughts and afraid to share things that are going on with our little family because of one little statement. It ends now. How crazy is it to change something so big in my life because of one thing. I'm tired of the hurt feelings and hiding away to not have that happen again. I have really realized that there's nothing I can do to change the past and that there is nothing I can do to make it better now. I have tried everything in my power to make it better, but it hasn't made a difference.

I'm emotional, my feelings get hurt, I get bothered by things, I get excited about things, I love life, I love my family and my friends in it, I love sharing almost all of my life with people, I love reading about what's going on in everyone else' world, I get bothered by press statements, I like to hear about difference of opinions, I like to hear how other people have done things, I crave things, I learn things, I live life to the fullest, and I do the best that I know how to do.

Have you ever made a mistake? I know I have, I'm only human, the important thing is that I learn from my mistakes. I can grow from them, I can teach my children to be better. Who ever said that once we make a mistake that we're done. Our Heavenly Father sent us down to earth to experience, to learn, to grow, to be able to choose, to be able to forgive those who we believe have done us wrong.

Today is a new day and this is the day where I can start new, not to be offended and hurt, to do better and to be better! This is today.

Muffins at 1am!

What in the world am I doing awake you may ask?? Well, its 1:30 in the morning and this mama just can't seem to get to sleep. My sleep schedule has been all wacky this summer and the past week or so I can't seem to get to bed before 2am! Seriously? This is madness. And its not like I sleep in either. I'm usually up and going before 9 in the morning. Sure this may sound like sleeping in, but going to bed at 2am, not so much.

So what am I up to tonight? Catching up on everyone's blog that I've missed, figuring out couponing for in the morning, and baking some yummy smelling wheat blueberry muffins. Chris brought home some blueberries the other day, he wanted some blueberry pancakes yesterday morning. And by the way, they were pretty yummy!

We invited over the usual, Mike and Melanie for breakfast. We also invited our new friends, Paul and Jess. They're pretty awesome. They're this newly wed couple who just got married last month and just moved into their first apartment together on Friday. We met them over at Mike and Melanie's on Friday and played some games with them. I thought for being so newly wedded that they just fit in with the rest of us just perfectly. They weren't that typical newly married couple that you can tell are newly weds. What a relief. We might have to hang out with them while Mike and Melanie head back east in a few weeks. The thought had crossed my mind that maybe I should go home to Seattle for a few days with Brenden, I just don't know. We shall see.

I was seriously thinking about it until tonight. We were planning on me going out in a few weeks because we weren't sure when we'd make it back out to Washington since Chris' family will be out here for Christmas. Sorry, Mom! But now it sounds like they'll either be traveling, or in Seattle themselves, so we may just be in Washington for Christmas this year. That would be happy. Hopefully Chris' family figures out their plans soon so I can make some plans.

Well that's all for now, muffins are about ready to come out!

Brenden, 7 months?

Its been awhile since I've blogged, but for good reason. I really needed a break from all the chaos. Most of the chaos has come from reading other people's blogs. But with me blogging every day it was just impossible not to want to read everyone's else blog. So here I am, back and ready to tell the whole world my story!

Brenden turned 7 months old yesterday and he just amazes me! He has grown in so many ways over the last few months. I can hardly believe it! In just a few short 5 months he'll be a year old! Crazy though, huh? Well, I think so anyways. Every month as he grows a month older it just gets more and more unbelievable. I think about things like how I grew this little person inside of me for 9 months, I think about the day he was born and how happy Chris and I were and still are, I think about the development he's made since he was born, I think about all of the time that he has made me laugh, I think about what a little trouble maker he has become, I think about his personality, I think about the future with Brenden. He is so tiny right now, but I know that the time will just fly. He is my whole world, and he makes me so happy.

This week Brenden has started to crawl. A weird baby crawl, but a crawl. He gets up on those little knees of his and propels himself forward and than drops and does it all over and over again. He's really just like an inch worm. He's been eating a whole lot and is so happy. We were over at out friends, Mike and Melanie's for dinner the other night. Great story! We had some yummy chicken and baked potatoes for dinner. Melanie was eating on the floor, and Brenden happens to be playing on the floor. Rolling all over the place. Well, he's playing and rolling and the next thing we know, Brenden has Melanie's potato and he's trying to get away with it. He's such a funny little guy.

It's labor day weekend and I really wish I was back home for garlic dip. My Grandpa makes this fantastic garlic dip, but he only makes it on 3-day weekends. And I want some!! Call my mom and have her send some??? I wish!