Hello December!

Well hello! We've sure started the month out with a BANG! Saturday Ryan and I journeyed to Idaho for our Second Annual Christmas Tree Harvest with Heath, Sheila, and the kids. We had a great time searching for the "perfect" tree, cutting it down, and hauling it out. Ryan particularly enjoyed the impromptu duck hunting on the way home. The only bummer was that we got home late and didn't feel like putting the tree up so it's currently sitting in my parents' backyard along with theirs.
Sunday we went to church, Ryan gave a great lesson on the end chapters of Mormon, then we came home and set to work getting dinner ready. We played host to Jaden and Kira--Allan and Kristie have abandoned them for a 9-day excursion to Disneyland. We made roast, Yorkshire pudding, green beans, and jello for dinner with homemade donuts and hot chocolate for Sunday cinema. We're pretty proud of the way dinner turned out. We even made gravy for the roast and pudding! Good thing I watched my mom make gravy all those years!! Thanks mom!I'm bummed we didn't get any pictures of the dinner though....I was a little busy! Haha! It was fun to have Jaden and Kira over. They seemed to enjoy the dinner. I hope they had a good time. Sometimes you can't tell with teenagers. Believe me, I know. I teach them! :) So that was our weekend--busy, busy, busy. And it doesn't look like the rest of the month will be any different. How exciting!!
P.S. One more week and we'll be celebrating our FIRST anniversary! Happy Anniversary babe!!!!

A Pinterest Failure: A Tale in the Life of Ryan and Amanda

I'm a big fan of Pinterest. I get a lot of ideas from there and for the most part, what I've tried has turned out pretty good. However, it seems that when there's a Pinterest failure, it's usually big! Case in point: Ryan and I planned to have brownies and ice cream for our Sunday Santa Cinema treat. (See the previous post if you're not sure what Sunday Santa Cinema is.) When we got home from eating dinner with my parents, I had a big, nasty headache. So as we started the movie--this week it was Home Alone--I promptly fell asleep hoping my headache would go away. The last part I remember seeing was Kevin realizing he'd "made [his] family disappear." Sometime during the movie, Ryan got up to go make the treat. We wanted to try making the brownies on our waffle iron. I'd seen it on Pinterest so why not give it a try? Cue epic failure. According to Ryan, remember I'm asleep at this point, the brownies pulled apart when he tried to separate the waffle maker once they were cooked. He even tried a different kind of waffle maker but ended up with the same terrible results. To salvage the rest of the batter, he put it in a small cake pan and baked it up. When all was said and done and I finally woke up, Ryan presented me with a tasty brownie sundae and the tale of how waffle makers and brownie batter don't mix. At least the sundae was delicious! And the funny thing is, we went over to his parents last night where he shared the tale and guess what?! Allan informed us that no, you cannot make brownies in a waffle maker. The moral of my story is that sometimes Pinterest is great and other times it's a complete bust. But hey at least the things that don't turn out usually make for funny stories! And if you've tried it and it worked, please enlighten us. Otherwise, know that it probably won't work. :)

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Last night we kicked off Sunday Santa Cinema. It's a Cooley family tradition where we watch Christmas movies on Sunday nights accompanied by popcorn and tasty treats. We decided to watch Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" first--we'd just finished Halloween and figured it'd be a good transition movie. I'm just going to say that if I never see the movie again, I'm not going to cry about it. It was weird! So weird in fact that Ryan and I came home and popped in "Holiday Inn" so we'd have something to take our minds off of the weirdness of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Luckily, we both highly enjoyed Holiday Inn. It's one of my favorites and Ryan liked it as well--it was his first time seeing it. We also decided it was a better holiday movie kick-off. Needless to say we'll not be watching the Nightmare... anytime again soon and I'd very much like to start any future Sunday Santa Cinema runs with something A LOT better! So here's to hoping the rest of the season's movies turn out!!! Merry Viewing my blog friends!

P.S. If you've never seen Holiday Inn, check out this trailer!

What have the Cooleys been up to?

It's been a busy past couple of months. School started and is well under way. I can't believe I'm two units away from being done with first trimester already! My classes are pretty good this year. They do have their moments and sometimes I just can't take the incessant talking! Would you just please be quiet? But on the whole school is going pretty good. It's definitely a step above last year!
Ryan is busy with classes and work. We finally broke down and got the internet at our place which I think has been a big help! We spent a lot of time running around trying to get his homework done. It's crazy how much school relies on the internet these days.
Our families are doing well and we work hard at balancing time between the Downs and the Cooleys. I'm sure that both sides would prefer they get us more but we're doing our best to have "us" time too.
We're excited for fall weather and everything it brings with it. We celebrated Halloween with my family and the traditional chili dinner. It was pretty low-key but we did manage to dress up! (See the picture on the sidebar...)I'm looking forward now to decorating for Thanksgiving and then Christmas!! We're 8 days away from our 11-month anniversary. I can't believe how time has flown. Pretty soon a whole year will have gone by.
One new thing we've started is going up to Ryan's grandma Erm's place on Friday nights. We cook dinner for the three of us and then sit down to watch our two favorite shows--Fringe and Blue Bloods. Grandma doesn't care about the shows but I think she likes the company. We enjoy it as well--it's pretty relaxing and a fun way to spend the evening!
We both have teaching callings in the ward. Ryan teaches gospel doctrine every other week and I teach the fourth Sunday lessons in Relief Society. I enjoy teaching and LOVE that my mom comes to hear me give me lesson just about every month! That's pretty special!
Well I guess that's about it for the Cooley Clan! Twenty days until Thanksgiving! Hurray!!!!

Wow!

I know I've been a slacker blogger for a while now. I've made several attempts at trying to give it a facelift as of late but it wouldn't work so I just became more and more frustrated with the whole thing! Needless to say, the months of pictures and information I want to add has gone undone because of my inability to make simple changes to how this whole thing looks! Anyway, as you can probably see, they've been taken care of and I am now ready to download a bunch of pictures from various sources and hopefully get caught up here. After all, I've got great incentive--Christmas is coming and I've got gifts that require pictures so I've gotta download them anyway. Might as well do a little blogging here as well right?

P.S. Ryan only realized last night that we had a blog...yeah, that about sums the whole thing up!