Deck the Halls....

I have been waiting for these moments ALL YEAR LONG. Seriously. Mark can attest to the fact that he probably can't count the number of times he has heard "I can't wait until I can decorate for Christmas!" throughout this year.
Hallelujah! The time finally came. :)

Happy Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving time! I love how it gives me a chance to remember all of my many blessings. I love that there are fun fall time activities to do at school. I also L-O-V-E pie!!!!!!!!!!

This year we had fun with our fall time activities.
Our "I am thankful for..." turkey. We added a feather each day. We are so very blessed!


We cooked up our first ever turkey this year! Yay...it turned out DELICIOUS!


I forgot to post about this---our "Orange Dinner" around Halloween time. (Those are eggs if you are wondering).


We were able to spend T-Giving with Mark's brothers and their families in Texas. We had such a fantastic time and are grateful that we have a wonderful and fun family! Shout out to Jeff and Heather-THANK YOU!!!!! Um...now I'm wondering, why didn't I get some better photos of everybody???? Scott and Kels are barely represented. Look for them in the croquet pic. We love you too, don't worry!
Right before the big feast...notice the workers in the back ground creating the delicious food.


Heather and the kiddos made these cute name tags and turkey napkin rings. Love it!


After the big feast....

Tew Gathering=Croquet.


Hope to see you again soon J, H, P, A, S and K!!!!!!!!

Benj

My little brother Benji, who is serving an LDS mission in Peru, was stabbed by a robber last Sunday. He is okay and expected to have a full recovery. Most of the Grantsville people already know, but I thought I would just thank everybody for the support and prayers in our family's behalf and inform other friends about the incident.

Here is a link to text and the news report on TV that explains pretty accurately what happened.

Thanks again for prayers for Elder Benjamin Cole!

A Glimpse of My Job...

I love to see these cute smiling faces each day. The pics show some Halloween/Math activities we did this year: Pumpkins and measurement, "Monster Numbers", and a jack-o-lantern addition and shapes game.

Go Wildcat or Go Home.

I thought I'd enlighten those who are curious about our environment and surroundings. It has been a fun change moving to Kansas. We have really enjoyed it! We live in a "college town" and enjoy the excitement that KSU brings to the citizens of our town daily. Mark WILL NOT conform and wear purple since it's a "girl color and every male in town has been brainwashed to think it's masculine." Mark isn't really thrilled that we have a purple garbage can either. But I figure it's a once-in-a-lifetime possession. I have conformed to the sea of purple people. Even though red and black from GHS as well as Aggie Blue are true to my heart, I now own a purple K-State shirt, mainly because I need to wear purple at school or I won't be "respected." I told the children last week that I didn't own a K-State shirt and they gasped for air and covered their mouths like I had committed a terrible sin. I am not a "sinner" anymore. Go Cats! (P.S. Yes, this is a purple porta potty and it lives across the street from us. We named it "Parley Poo Poo." just kidding. I made that up just now.)

Shout Out to Mom and Pops!

The parentals came out for a visit over Labor Day. (Yes, Labor Day. I am just being "fashionably late" on my post. hee hee.) We had a fantastic time together!!!!!!! I just have the bestest best parents in the world! We went shopping, went to a few church sites, toured Fort Riley a bit, ate out, and just enjoyed ourselves! THANK YOU MADRE Y PADRE for coming out to visit! Sure do love ya!

This picture cracks me up! The men and women folk each bought similar shirts so we wanted a picture of each set together. Thank you boys, for being such superb models--and for being so genuinely happy about it! New shoes too.It was a must to take a picture of my dad in front of his very own dog house. This is right outside the gate of Ft. Riley. It is a pretty popular place for lunch time! Too bad they weren't open when we stopped, but we still snapped a pic. Dad--you should start one of these in G-town! I'm sure it would be a hit! If we do CMM in Kansas, the dog house is a MUST for the whole fam!

Just a Li'l Bit of Lately

I have been searching for "cool Math stuff" for my upcoming job and I ran across a website with some games, naturally, I had to try them out and found one to be pretty fun. I showed the hedgehog game to Mark and since has successfully beat it, twice. I enjoy this game but I'd have to say one of my favorites is still the classic, Pac Man.
I have been trying a few new things in the kitchen as of lately. I made strawberry freezer jam a couple of months ago with my mom and sis for the first time. It was much easier than I had imagined. Since blueberries and strawberries happened to go on sale again, I decided to try some more jam, this time with mixed berries. {To be quite honest, I can't taste a difference with the blueberries in the jam, really}

It's always nice to have meals where over half the ingredients is fresh from the garden. Everything seems to taste so much better being fresh rather than from the store!

I caught the "baking bug" the last few days and decided to try a couple new things. I tried making jalapeno-cheese bread. It was delicious! I think I will definitely make it again. I did eat one bite in particular that required an immediate 64 oz. of water within 20-30 seconds after indulging. Other than that bite, I would say the 'kick' is just about right. I spread some cream cheese mixed with mozzarella and a few seasonings on the bread. I don't know which was better, these or the cupcakes. It's a toss up because they both included cream cheese (who doesn't love anything with the word "cream" in it, honestly?).
I tried a colorful cupcake recipe from this website. I modified it a little bit by only doing three colors and making my own frosting version, but the addition of sour cream {there's that 'cream' word again} to the cake mix made this cake really moist. I generally prefer ice cream over cake nine times out of ten but I can't seem to keep my paws off these babies.

A kiss from the cook...Two random facts about the Tews:
Something new that Mark enjoys:We have officially changed from the dog being a man's best friend to the DROID. Mark is passionate about getting good deals on things. It's fitting that his favorite "app" is the bar-code scanning feature. He scans something and then checks online to compare prices. He loves it! (and I think it's pretty sweet too)

Something Lacey enjoys:This plant {and cream cheese}. I keep taking pictures of it because I think it's so cool and because it seems like every week it looks so much bigger than the week before.