New Years Present for Brian

 Dear Mr. Derrick:

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the Architect Registration Examination.

Upon completion of NCARB's Intern Development Program (IDP), a certified copy of your NCARB record, indicating completion of the NCARB education, training and examination standards, will be transmitted to the Utah State Board of Architecture within 30 business days as the final step towards licensure.

Sincerely,
Tina Hawkins

The best part? Brian just finished his IDP hours this month. So he will start out 2012 as a licensed architect for the state of Utah! Brian passed all seven exams within one year--lots shorter than the five years that they allow you to take! He has worked so hard, and I'm super grateful for all he has accomplished as he wooshed through his tests. He's such a smart cookie!

On a completely unrelated note, I found this horrible picture of my filthy mirror this morning while going through the camera. But I won't delete it, because it's my inspiration for not eating all the Christmas candy in the house.

Where we started the baby adventure. I am determined to find my waist again when this is over!

 So, in summary: Brian is a genius, and I am missing energy, my waist, etc. (though grateful to be).

Happy New Year!

One...Two...Three!

Three years ago today the weather was overcast, making both myself and the Lion House staff wonder if we ought to move the evening party inside. But we held out, the sun came along and everything was lovely. Thank heavens we weren't getting married today! Today is menacing, windy, gray and dark. Not that we wouldn't have still been married, but it was nice to be out in the garden in the sunshine.

Wait, three years? When did that happen? It seems so quick, but we've managed to get a lot done. We are excited right now as we push through the end of my schooling, Brian's architecture license and start planning what we want to do with our home. By the end of the summer we should have a lot of 'needs' (like school) out of the way so that we can add some more 'wants' (like me doing a show again...oh wait, I'm already doing that...a story for another post!).

 What can I say about Brian...he's the bestest. No, seriously. I couldn't have found anyone better to be my partner in crime! I'm very fortunate that he's so supportive of me in my career, my education, my love of the TV show Friends and my mad skills at Wheel of Fortune. The man is handsome, funny, brilliant, works hard, plays hard and doesn't let me take myself too seriously. And he does all the vacuuming (to be fair, the vacuum is HUGE, but really, I just hate it). What more can I ask for?

He's so good I even forgive him for refusing to play Disney trivia with me. I suppose you can't really blame him. :)

Love you, Hunners. This next year is going to be amazing!

Sick Day

Bronchitis, I hate you. You take all my energy and make me cough like a car that can't start. Please go away.

Handsome Brian, I love you. Thank you for taking care of me, our house and for surprising me with flowers. They made my sick day end much better than it started.

Happy Birthday Brian!

March is birthday time for a lot of people in my life--we've said happy birthday this month to my baby brother (can you believe he's 21???), my cousin (also in that 21 boat, holy cow...), my aunt, my Daddy and a bunch of friends, too!

For Brian this year I actually made him a cake--the first time ever, how sad is that? I feed him every day though, so I'm going to convince myself that it's ok. Anyway, it turned out to be both pretty AND tasty, I was excited. Dan, Ashley and Sophia came up to join us for treats and we introduced Sophia to Crush. They were both very interested in each other, but reluctant to get to close. It was funny to watch them crawl around and chase each other.

Crush was very interested in B's birthday candles. It's the first time we've really had open flame around, he was extremely curious. He wasn't much help with blowing them out though. I told Brian he had to hurry and do it before Crush burned his handsome whiskers off...he was close!

 

Happy Birthday to Brian and all our March-birthday friends and family!  We love you all!

The Blue Lemon

B and I headed to SLC last night for a movie and decided to try a new cafe on Temple Square that B helped design at work. It's called the Blue Lemon.

The food was yummy, but the best part is a tie between the cookie and the smoothie. So good! I'm sure we'll be heading back on our next movie night.

We went back to Gateway to see The Adjustment Bureau and liked it a lot. If only there hadn't been such a crowd leaving the Jazz game when the movie ended!

It was a much needed date and we're excited to have another place to visit downtown. Now if only I had brought one of those cookies home...

Happy Valentine's Day

I hope if a handsome guy ever walked up to you in the grocery store that you smiled at him.

I hope if he ever popped the question during your favorite thing ever at your favorite place in the whole world that you said yes.

And I hope that years later he is still handsome (check), still awesome (check) and that you still love him like crazy (check check check).

Oh, and I hope that if he is smart enough to buy you nail polish for Valentine's day that he's also cool enough to let you try it out right there at the dinner table.

My Valentine rocks, I hope yours does too!

The Ogden Marathon

 

First, just in case anyone wondered, we sure didn't run the Ogden Marathon. Ha! BUT we did go and volunteer for it, which was very fun. We got to hand out stuff at the finish line, including prizes for the 'KidsK' race, help runners find their gear that they left at the start and get food where it needed to be. The weather was just perfect!

Here's the finish line, what a party! It was fun to watch as people cheered for their friends and families. Brian took one look at the people who were finishing and came to two conclusions:

1. Those people were awesome. So tough!
2. Running a marathon must be brutal.

Part of our job at the finish was watching for those who needed to be pointed towards the first aid tent, which was not uncommon. Everyone got there though. Ice was also a popular item, I think we went through truckfulls!

In the runners/volunteer area there were all sorts of vendors doing food like smoothies and Great Harvest. I think B enjoyed his smoothie a little too much...maybe he just needed another one!

At the end of the day we came back to our car to find 3 or 4 fliers under the wipers...B laughed mischeviously and let the car next to us adopt our fliers as well! We had a great day and we earned our free day at Disneyland thanks to their 'Give a Day, Get a Disney Day' promotion this year. Hooray!

Master Brian!

Congratulations, Master Brian!

After a lot of hard work Brian is pleased to know that he will never have to do this again:

I am so proud of Brian! His Masters degree has been a TON of work, and he's been in the Architecture program the entire time I've known him! We had a great time today seeing him graduate with his buddies.

Yeah...it was a little on the sunny side...not the best picture!

Here is most of their graduating class--I think 90% of them really resent that they have to wear lavender!

And finally, this is the sad goodbye face that Brian made as we left:

Yeah, I don't think either of us will be missing the architecture building for quite a while! Congratulations Hunners, you are amazing!

Our Music Video

Today I got the following email. To understand the joke you really need to know how Brian and I met, which can be found here if you want to review. :)

From: Brian Derrick 
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 2:45 PM
To: Derrick, Amanda J
Subject: The day we met

They made our grocery store encounter into a short video.  It just about sums up what went through my head at the time.

B

Ok, so it wasn't quite this, um, musical. But it was still a pretty good day!

Dancing and Dragons

A few weeks ago I was able to go and see my niece Kate's ballet recital. She did such a good job! Watching all that dancing made me wish I was still taking dance classes. As it turns out, the studio that Kate dances at is owned by a woman in our neighborhood. When I told her how much I enjoyed the recital she said I should come try one of their adult classes. They teach a ballet class for adults (whatever that means) on Tuesday nights. I decided it would be fun to try, so off I went this week.

This morning (Saturday) is the first morning since then (Tuesday night) that I haven't been sore. Ha!

It felt SO good though! I had forgotten how much you can work in a one hour class. There were only two of us in the class plus our teacher (who also teaches Kate's class) and boy did she work us! It's fustrating to see what she's doing, remember my body doing that, then struggling to make it do it now. But I had a lot of fun trying! Believe me, after 8 years of no ballet whatsoever I am genuinely terrible. But my teacher was encouraging, the other girl in the class was very nice and it's easily the hardest I've worked out in a long time. So back I'll go this week! Hopefully the longer I go the more it will come back to me. I miss being good at dancing just as much as I miss dancing itself!

Yesterday Brian and I went to see How to Train Your Dragon, which was way fun. A very cute movie, my favorite Dreamworks one by far. The main dragon, 'Toothless', reminded us a lot of Crush. In fact all of the dragons had cute, pet-like traits; rolling in grass, a sweet spot for petting, crouching and pouncing, purring. It was fun to see a movie that put so much personality into characters that never spoke (that is what I loved about Wall.E). It was also a very good example of 3D movies. Lots of fun! We really wished we could have seen it with our nephews, those stinky boys would have loved it! It was also fun to see 3D previews for the first time! We're getting excited for Toy Story (Allie, I'm gonna need to borrow Ethan!) and the other summer movies that are coming out.

On the excited note, Brian graduates in six weeks! Woo! I have been with him for all but one semester of architecture school and I can speak for everyone around here when I say we will not be missing the College of Architecture much. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer! Brian was also approached by his work this week to negotiate a full-time offer, which is fantastic. We're glad they've noticed how awesome he is, because it's true! Life will sure be different with our time at the U of U offically over!

Happy Anniversary!

Well, by all standards I think we are no longer newlyweds. Our summer has been so crazy so far, but we did get a chance to celebrate our first anniversary. We started off the morning by going to see Up! which was so adorable. We went with all the nieces and nephews in celebration of B's dad's birthday on Sunday. We caught some pizza for lunch and then headed to play racquetball with the siblings. I'd never played before, but it was a lot of fun. A little disconcerting, since one second you can see the ball and the next it's hitting you in the back of the head but fun nonetheless. With a little more practice I think I'd really like it.

After that we had to run home and get cleaned up for our dinner reservation. We'd been wanting to try The Melting Pot for a long time but wanted to wait for a reason to celebrate. Oh my word, it was SO worth it! We had an awesome Fiesta cheese fondue, cooked some great Cajun-seasoned chicken, steak and shrimp (for B) and finished off with a great turtle (caramel-swirled) chocolate. Mmm! We were soooo full but it was all so good! We had a great time, it'd been a long time since we'd decided to get dressed up and go out. Turns out we still clean up pretty cute!

Our anniversary present to us is...drumroll please...our new house! The ball is rolling and we hope to close on July 1st. We are so excited to escape from our tiny apartment and have someplace of our own. It's in a great neighborhood in Bountiful and is really in pretty good shape. The inspector came this week and was very happy with it, didn't find any major problems. We're really glad we found this one, we feel like it will fit us very well for a first time house. The plan is for Brian to build our house eventually, but this will be a great in-between step.

We have been SO lucky in the last year! We can't wait to see what the next one has in store for us. I love you, hunners!

The Good Side of Spring Break

May I just say, thank goodness spring break is over.

No, really. I'm very serious. It was way too long, filled with way too much to qualify as a 'break' and involved far too many cuts and bruises without enough sleep and playing to make it worth it. But get this:

1. The Moonbuggy is done and in the mail
   
2. My midterms are done
3. My projects are done
4. My apartment is painted Tinkerbell and Key Lime
5. My toe no longer appears to be broken

I'm pretty happy, to say the least. A week from Friday we'll be racing in Alabama and our Senior Project will truly be over--we'll just show it off at the end of April to complete the class. Woo! This is following a solid week of 8 hour plus days working on it over the break. May I just say that the senior design room has a particularly stellar first aid kit. And the day we finished? Yup, it snowed. Makes riding a little harder, and a lot less fun. Oh well. Then yesterday when we were supposed to ride the construction workers on campus managed to hit a natural gas line and successfully caused all of campus to be evacuated and closed for the rest of the day, which is more than three feet of snow has ever been capable of.

Sigh.

So the Moonbuggy went this morning with less practice than we would've liked, but we'll deal with it. It's done and it works! It also works in the snow, as we discovered this morning.

Saturday...with nice weather

Today...with Utah weather

B was my hero over the break and got everything moved around our living room so we could paint. Ironically, we chose green. No, that wasn't in the paint chips that I posted online. We had ruled green out but then changed our minds. Soo....here's what we got!


I really love it, it makes that room so much more cheerful. B is really pleased with the two-tone effect, but you can't really see it in pictures. It was while sneaking around painted wall/moved furniture that I managed to bash my toe into the wall so well that it was taped for several days (also, not fun on the Moonbuggy). But the purple finally faded and today the littlest piggy is happily tape-free. This is great because I no longer have to get tape from the previously mentioned first aid kit at school.

For B's birthday last week I surprised him with a night away from our mess of an apartment (the middle of painting + lots of dishes = very very bad) with a night at Anniversary Inn. I get a killer discount for work so we decided a while back that we should pick a crazy room and try it out just for fun. Seriously, these guys are themed to the extreme. Some are just frilly and 'romantic', which didn't sound like us, so I chose 'Swiss Family Robinson'. There were two appeals to this room:

1. Waterfall shower
2. Bed in a tree

Yup, I opened the door and Bri just burst out laughing. We had a great time watching our usual Thursday shows--The Office and 30 Rock, as well as the Pres. getting himself into trouble on Leno as a bonus--eating cheesecake and laughing at the work of sculpture that was our shower/tub. It was a lot of fun to just get away for a night, although I'd never pay full price for it!

So we now find ourselves on the 'good' side of spring break. School still has six more weeks, but they're usually pretty low key. Next week I order a cap and gown and fly to Alabama, then just a month of classes only two days a week. Dude, that's only like eight days of classes. See my wicked math skills I've garnered from my higer education?

Yeah, I know. I am SO ready for the real world. Haha, right! Seems irreversable now though, so we'll just have to roll with it.

Finally, I was turned on to this cute site called Wordle. Look at the cute things it makes!

Spring Fever

First off, thanks to those of you who have already donated to the Relay for Life! We are so excited to go do that. If you haven't yet it's not too late! Check out our nephew, Eli, and our team page for the Relay for Life to donate! Thank you!

Well, my Valentine's Day daisies are finally giving up...which means it's time for spring. Thankfully we are now just one week away from our spring break, even if Weber State is out already. Oh well. Utah is taunting us as it always does this time of year with warm, sunny days quickly followed by scraping snow off my car.

This is the time of year I really wonder why people think it's so great to live here.

Normally we'd run away during spring break but I'm about this close --> <--- to finishing my senior project so we'll be sticking around this time. Since we'll be here I decided it was time to do something for our apartment; the beige invasion is starting to get to me. What's worse than beige paint? Beige paint on cinder blocks. Yeah. So tonight B and I went to Home Depot and picked so many paint chips that I wasn't sure they were going to let us out of there with them all; the number was partially due to the fact that Bher makes DISNEY paint and so they were named things like 'Tigger's Tummy" and "Donald Orange" which I obviously had to take home regardless of how irrelevant the actual color was. The Home Depot gal was probably hoping that we'll come back to buy gallons of paint to do a whole house, but we have two words for her:

"Accent Wall"

You see, evidently the U is very attached to the, er, lovely color that they've painted all the apartments. Consequently, no matter how awesome we make it look we have to paint it back before we leave or pay the maintenance guys to do it which, rumor is, isn't cheap. So we're going to at least start with one wall. For the few of you that have been here, it's the wall on the east side, where our entry door is. We're considering doing some kind of texture, two-color deal. Apparently B helped do something like this for one of his sisters a long time ago. Times like this make me glad B is so artistic, yet wishful that the artistic-ness wasn't quite so time consuming and messy. Anyway, when I get some daylight in here tomorrow I'll try to post a picture of our paint finalists so everyone can vote or something. I know you're all just dying to see what "Love's First Kiss" looks like, but sadly it has already been deemed too pink by Bri. He said that about several, actually.

I know, I was shocked too!

So...here are our finalists! The numbers match the pole on the right -->
Remember, we're probably going to use two that are kinda similar to do some textured stuff.


Speaking of the hubby, it's almost his birthday! He's going to be 25 in less than two weeks. Scary, is it not? I'm thoroughly enjoying the teasing, but have also told him he needs to decide on his "quarter life crisis" so we can do something fun. We decided mid life is too far away, so we'll do quarter life crisies. Besides, then we get to have more! He's a lucky duck, his birthday is always on spring break, so we'll get to play for his big day. After that we are officially on the good side of the semester!

Yay!

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I must say, I prefer two things about Valentines this year.

1. It's on a Saturday
2. Brian doesn't have some stupid Architecture thing

Granted, number 1 is no longer such a big deal compared to high school days. I used to hate going to school watching girls walk about with some ridiculous bunch of balloons all day long. The engineers rarely have that problem though. Number 2 is a much more impressive feat. Our first Valentines day Brian was on an Architecture day trip to the Salt Flats (romantic, I know) and didn't get back till about 10:00 pm. Last year he just had homework, which seems tame compared to the field trip torture. My gift last year made my feelings about the Arch program perfectly clear; I got my WACA T-shirt. Wives Against the College of Architecture. B decided that being the fiance was enough qualification. After making my shirt, complete with the college logo, he had many requests for the graphic so the guys could make one for their own wives.

The last few days have kind of all been Valentines-ish. Thursday we caved and exchanged presents, while my adorable daisies decided to drop in yesterday. This morning we made crepes, which is pretty much how every morning should start.

For Brian's birthday two years ago I made him a Build-a-Bear friend. He is a turtle, dressed up as a ninja = Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. It went along with his present of going to see the movie (which, by the way, you can totally skip). Anyway, I'd been hinting for a while that Squirt (the turtle) wanted a buddy. Brian correctly interpreted this to mean that Amanda wants a Build-a-Bear. After successfully hiding a very large, house-shaped box in our apartment for a full 24 hours we decided that we didn't want to wait until Saturday to open presents. So Brian got a new Blu-Ray (Batman Begins) and I got Flopsy!


The only bad Valentines gift is the weather this morning. In the last 30 minutes we've escalated from flurries to full-blown whiteout. Ugh. Flopsy is so not dressed for Utah. Oh well, we're probably just going to play Wii all day anyway. We don't want to go out with the crazies who are willing to brave snow and the waits at resturaunts on Valentines day! I guess I could do the dishes though...nah.

Have a great day everyone!

*Update*
We just got takeout from Pei Wei, which is how PF Changs trains their chefs. Holy cow it was good, and about half as expensive! AND I did the dishes :)

The Wedding Growing Up Pictures

So this was originally meant to be played at our wedding lunch and reception. Technical difficulties meant it never happened so I thought I'd post it here. After all, we were cute once!

More About B

I started this blog to record fun stories about my relationship with Brian. To be frank, I'm not doing an amazing job here. I'll have to work on that. Maybe the Calvin and Hobbes snowmen will be next. However, this should cover a bunch of little stories. I'm not usually a fan of these quiz/question things, but 30 Rock doesn't start for another fifteen minutes.

1. Where did you meet your husband?
In Dan's Supermarket, Foothill Village. Yup, my hubby hit on me in a grocery store. Romantic, is it not?

2. How long did you date before you got married?
We dated for ten months and were then engaged for eight. So a nice round year and a half. He saw me in Disneyland before we were engaged and still married me. That should tell you how awesome he is.

3. How long have you been married?
Seven months!

4. What does he do to surprise you?
When he gets up before I do he tucks me back in with the stuffed turtle, Squirt. He's also an amazing cleaner! Who knew? And he always manages to surprise me when he gets flowers, I don't know where they come from. Somehow he just happens to have them at eight in the morning on my birthday.

5. What is your favorite feature of his?
His smile when he's laughing hysterically, that he's the right size to hug me.

6.What is your favorite quality?
How he won't give up until he sees me smile like I mean it when I'm sad.

7. Does he have a nickname for you?
Hunny, Manders.

8. What is his favorite food?
Mashed potatoes, taco stackups (aka nachos), red and white lasagna.

9. What is his favorite sport?
Basketball, playing and watching. He's also good at Frisbee, and yells like crazy at Ute football.

10. When did you first kiss?
New Years Eve 2006.

11. What is your favorite thing to do as a couple?
We love to get take out, watch a movie and play the Wii. We also play a lot of board games.

12. Do you have children?
Believe me, we're enough children for our current relationship. Again, me at Disneyland. Enough said.

13. Does he have any hidden talents?
He's a good singer, but he'll only sing when he's not paying attention.

14. How old is he?
Twenty-four.

15. Who said I love you first?
We'd hinted at it, but he said it first.

16. What is his favorite music?
Jack Johnson, Dashboard, John Mayer. Acoustic-ish.

17. What do you admire most about him?
It's practically impossible to get him upset about anything short of an earthquake. Even then he'd probably still be chill.

18. What is his favorite color?
Green.

19. Will he read this?
Probably only if I tell him I did it. In fact, we'll test it. B, if you read this, I'm stashing mint Aeros in the picnic basket in the pantry.

And We're Done!

Ok, NOW we are done.

Whew! Brian gave his final presentation yesterday, so we went to dinner to celebrate. When we got home (at seven o'clock) he promptly went to bed. Thank goodness our nephews called and agreed to play Mario Kart on the Wii with me. I would've been so bored! However, I was justly punished for my idleness--those guys beat me thoroughly. They have a knack for being sneaky and choosing the courses with no walls, so that I fall off the course multiple times in a lap. Eli (nephew) always says to go easy on him...little does he know that I am so very bad at it that I should be the one looking for a handicap!

It's that time again...Disneyland! My brother and cousins are actually going to drive to Disneyland the same time we are, so we might bump into them. Obviously they have learned from my great example that college fun means driving to Disneyland as often as possible. I'm excited for them to get to make this trip. None of us have ever been at Christmas time, so we're all pretty excited.

I'm very curious about who decided that this time off from school was a 'break' or 'vacation'. After we speed back from Disneyland we'll be five days away from Christmas! That means cleaning, wrapping and lots of driving between Ogden and SLC. Last year I felt like I needed a break because Christmas made me tired, not school! Hopefully we will deal with fewer blizzards this year...last time around I spent about twice as many hours driving as I should have thanks to Utah's uncanny ability to dump snow exactly where I need to be. Cute, huh?

About the time we're driving home this weekend the rest of our family will be following us in. My out of towner aunts and uncles as well as B's older sisters. We're so excited to get to see everyone over the next month!

For now, I'm going to go wait in the car. We're only 10 hours away from leaving. I need to be ready.

Top Ten Reasons Why Brian is WAY Better than Edward Cullen

Ok, so I read Twilight.

And you know what? It wasn't bad. Not great literature, but interesting enough to get me to finish it. I read it so I'd be able to see the movie without feeling guilty about it. As it was getting closer to time for the movie I was increasingly disturbed by the, uh, crazed Edward-obsessing females in the world. Don't get me wrong, I can understand getting a little enthused about a fictional character. But for the love, these girls were getting obsessed about a desperate 17-year-old, not a Mr. Darcy or even a sweet Prince Charming. A teenager who stays awake to sneak into another girl's room to watch her sleep.

Yikes.

So after dinner on Thanksgiving we were looking for something to do that would involve as little movement as possible. The women decided to head off to see Twilight, leaving the men happy and safe at home. Boy, was I jealous. By the time I got to go home I gave B a huge hug and said 'You are SO much better than that vampire. I don't know what all those women are so excited about'. Let me explain to you all why that is.

10. Brian isn't (always) cold. A vampire characteristic is that their skin is ice cold. Something about not having any blood. While I am not a fan of blood, I also don't like being cold.

9. Brian can go in the sun. Sure, I like sparkly things, but that effect in the movie was one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. So dumb.

8. Brian's parents don't look like they're his same age. That would just be weird.

7. Brian won't keep me in high school forever. Man that movie made me glad I wasn't in high school any more! Their high school kid actors were just a little too realistic.

6. Brian has friends. Seriously, the vampire guy and the desperate girl were alone the entire time. Every time he mentioned this was dangerous she said she didn't care. Which brings us to our top five!

5. Brian's love for me doesn't come from a desire to kill me. What a concept.

4. Brian can have a conversation. Every conversation in that movie was shoved under the weird, emo-like music. Oh, except for the real gems like "You are my whole life now". Those were loud and clear. Ack. And don't even get me started on the creepy stares.

3. Being with Brian won't require me to abandon everything else in my life. Granted, this was not in the movie. But it's coming.

2. Brian doesn't have to 'change' me to be with me. Edward will, eventually, nearly kill Bella. Marrying Brian was pretty darn painless. Planning the wedding wasn't, but I didn't have a vampire sister-in-law to plan mine like Bella did. Oh well, can't win them all!

1. Finally, Brian is Jason Bourne. Vampires are cool, but they can't hold a candle to that.

If you must obsess over Edward, watch the fourth Harry Potter movie. He's way cuter as Cedric Diggory.

Finally...Wedding Picture Favorites!

Yes, it is a miracle. We finally have digital wedding pictures. Our album is spectacular, but weighs as much as Bruce the Pumpkin (see It's the Great Pumpkin!) so we don't carry it around much. These are some of our favorites!

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

I am a firm believer that there are some things in life that are not meant to be grown out of. These include Disneyland, Christmas stories and shoes. One of our family favorites is carving pumpkins for Halloween. Brian has embraced this tradition with a passion--being the architect he's always ready to do something meticulous and time consuming. Combine this love of pumpkin carving with my Aunt Brenda's ability to grow pumpkins the size of my car? Well, you can see what you get.


Now that pumpkin was from last year. I decided to name him Bruce, after the shark in Finding Nemo. They smile the same...and I think the pumpkin may have actually eaten a child or two.

This year the cosmos apparently had a shortage of pumpkins aspiring to size greatness, so B had to make do with a slightly more typical pumpkin. But don't worry, he still spent inordinate amounts of time and energy on it. And it looks great! Mine didn't even turn out too bad, despite my engineering brain trying to stifle every artistic element in my little being. So I had to have instructions...it still looks cute!

It's a castle!

Woo...Scary! This picture really doesn't do it justice.

One of my favorite things about watching Brian do something like this is seeing what kind of tools he ends up finding. When we colored eggs at Easter he actually had a little tiny vice grip-like device so that he could paint alllll the way around his egg without touching it (yet more evidence that my mom can find anything). This time he started with the poker to make the pattern, etched outlines with a carving knife, took large chunks out with my aunt's frighteningly sharp butcher knife and then painstakingly scraped away at the design using a grapefruit spoon. That's right, a grapefruit spoon. I didn't even know what a grapefruit spoon was. But my family is always ready to help B in his artistic antics. He does good work :)

We haven't actually lit them yet, so I'll have to post a picture of them then. I hadn't planned on taking them back to our apartment, but Brian and my mom would have none of it--so our door is now graced with two spectacular pumpkins. Hope we get some trick-or-treaters!