November Happenings

Life has been busy for the Alston's this month! At the beginning of November, Jon joined a co-ed indoor soccer league with our friends from the ward.

I am really terrible at sports I really didn't want to put everyone to shame with my mad skills, so I decided to sit out this season and support Jon from the sidelines :) One Saturday morning we went without our hot chocolate and cartoons to practice at a nearby park.

The day was amazing! Margo took advantage of the sunny grass and napped.

So much action! The whole group is super in shape and played for hours...... ha.

The team name is "Overrated" - if that gives you any indication of how long it's actually been since they all played.

Really they have been doing well so far. They won their first two games! Although this week they are up against The Ligers, who are actually supposed to be pretty good. I'm just glad to see Jon out there again :) And it's nice to have something to do on a Tuesday night.

This month I also got together with some past work friends to do some crafting in preparation for the Christmas season! Paper mache reindeer were calling our names.

Meet Mele, Teresa Collins (half finished), and Sophie...

Thanksgiving was also fantastic. We had two turkeys between my family and Jon's family. We ate WAY too much! We also forgot to take any pictures.

To top it all off we went with Jon's family up to the Little Bear Creek tree farm for our annual Christmas tree hunt yesterday!

Meet this year's tree - Tumnus:

It was really fun to have family in town visiting. My favorite part is eating chili and animal cookies after the trees have been chopped down!

December is only a few days away... what fun adventures will come next???

6 Years of Being Rad

Friday (November 18) was mine and Jon's 6 year wedding anniversary!

Our plans for our anniversary changed many times over the past year. At first we wanted to go on a road trip down California's Coastal Hwy 1 starting up in Oregon and coming all the way down to below San Francisco. Then when I changed jobs and we realized we didn't have time or money to do that we thought about going to Tahoe for a day or two. Realizing that this would also cause us to want to buy a lot of things, we decided to stay home and go to a really fancy dinner instead :)

Enter: The Melting Pot. I had only been to this restaurant once before when we had desserts for my bachelorette party. So this was the first time that Jon and I had a REAL fondue dinner. It was basically 4 courses of awesome.

Spinach Artichoke cheese fondue with chips, breads, veggies and granny smith apples:

Jon had never tried apples and cheese before! So this was a great adventure for him. He loved it :) How did I survive a cheese fondue appetizer course, you ask? Lots and lots of lactaid pills. I risked it, and luckily everything turned out just fine :)

The second course was a salad. And let me just tell you... one thing some of you may or may not know about me: I. LOVE. wedge. salads. Like, I really really love them. I think they may be one of my most favorite foods in the world. I know it sounds silly, because it's really just a salad that you put together yourself. But for some reason I drool over them every time. I have never ever had a bad wedge salad, and if there is ever the option for one on the menu, I always go with the wedge!

The Main Event:

Contrary to my previous, uneducated belief... all fondue is NOT cheese or chocolate. In fact, the main course is all raw meats that you cook via fondue at your table. The base is usually a broth of some sort and then spices and seasonings are added, creating a boiling tub of fantasticness to cook your meal in. Our course included sirloin steak, teriyaki steak, shrimp, sushi grade tuna, and chicken along with sides of veggies and potatoes. The amazing dipping sauces that you see above included a gorgonzola sauce, chive sauce, plum sauce, teriyaki sauce, spicy cocktail sauce (which was an interesting experience of simulated fire inhalation for me...) and some other sauce that I don't remember because it wasn't my favorite so I mostly avoided it haha.

This dinner ended up being in my top 5 of most favorite dinners of all time. It was so much fun and absolutely delicious! Every part of it was amazing, and it was even more fun to spend a real date night with Jon having good conversation and talking about the past year.

 

We ended with a dark chocolate flaming turtle dessert fondue (complete with pound cake, rice crispy treats, strawberries, bananas, brownies, cheesecake, oreo covered marshmallows, etc to dip with) and then went to a comedy show in Sac at Comedy Sportz! We've been a couple times since one of Jon's friends plays at the venue. It's pretty fun and it's all ages, so the improv is clean and family friendly.

 

Of course, Jon let Johnny (the ref for the night) know that it was our anniversary and told him that anything he could do to embarass me would be appreciated. Of course I was called on stage for one of the skits (having NO previous idea that this would be happening) and performed a gibberish opera with one of the teams. Jon wasn't able to find my camera fast enough to record it, but the venue did take a picture of me in costume with the players, so that should be posted on their FB page soon for any of you who would like to check it out.

 

Thank you, Jon, for making this anniversary an awesome one! I can't believe it's been 6 years already. Only infinity to go :)

Halloween Festivities

I know it's already November, but I would be remiss if I didn't post about our awesome Halloween! Jon and I have thrown a party the last few years, but this year was the best yet because we were able to combine forces with the Taylor's! (Another young childless couple in our ward) We had so much fun planning and decorating. Brandon and Tiani really went all out, and there was so much more we could do since they had a house!

For one thing, we got a HUGE pumpkin at the patch to put drinks in. (An idea I found on Pinterest). We also had glow bracelets "radioactive snake venom" bracelets waiting for people as they walked in the front door:

Everyone was asked to bring a Halloween food or dessert to share. We ended up with a LOT of cupcakes...

We also had some spooky candies around. Thanks to Jen Holtry for letting us borrow all your apothecary jars!

Crusted Newt Eyes (aka Reese's Pieces)

Fried Bat Tongues (aka Heath Bars)

Flattened Frog Pies (aka Reese's PB Cups)

Abominable Snow Monster Paws (aka York Peppermint Patties)

Dried Pirate Fingers (aka Kit Kats)

Candied Bullets (aka Whoppers)

Poisonous Worms (aka Gummy Worms)

Rotted Witches Teeth (aka Candy Corn)

Between all of us we came up with some super fun decorations. The Frankenstein paper lantern was from a display at my work :) Tiani cut out TONS of paper bats to put all over the walls, and she even made a seance table by burning the edges of old books and some of our blood drip candles from last year got some good use.

Tiani also had the idea of getting cream colored homespun yarn to hang from the ceiling. It made a cool effect around their house!

Outside we had the walkway lined with 8 carved pumpkins and the porch was turned into a haunted house with black lights and a fog machine!

Of course it was mandatory that everyone come in costume. I felt like everyone did really well this year! Unfortunately I didn't get pictures of everyone once we got caught up in the party festivities and games (sorry to our Mario, Princess Peach, CIA Agent and Terrorist, amongst others!) But I think this gives you a pretty good idea of everyone :)

Bay & Shawn as Wayne & Garth / Michelle and Dan went with a Medieval theme

Ron & Hermione / The Smarty Pants - haha

Brandon & Tiani aka Danny & Sandra Dee!

Jon and I were a Ballerina and Soldier. (To see the story our costumes were inspired from, check this out.) Michelle was Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Kevin was The Mad Hatter from Alice and Wonderland. I love that they were both from Tim Burton movies!

Waldo & Wenda / Indian Princess and Jack Sparrow

We of course had some super fun games, but since Jon and I were in charge of them, I didn't get many pictures. Everyone had a lot of fun playing Dance Step 2 and Ping Pong though!

Thanks to everyone who came and made our party a success! It was super fun staying up until 2am watching Hocus Pocus too :) Can't wait until next year!