birthday

dreamstime.com and picmonkey

Happy birthday to me! It's just me and Chipper today since Jeff is flying. But that's ok, I plan on having a nice little celebration at home with some takeout sushi and Grey's Anatomy.  Having a wonderful day so far and hope everyone reading this is too!

fall

I love fall. It was my favorite season before it was cool. I think I always liked it because my birthday was in the fall and I liked going back to school. In Alaska fall is a blink-and-you-miss-it thing. It wasn't till college that I really discovered how great fall can be. I just have really great memories of things like bundling up for the Homecoming parade and walking downtown from my apartment while bright red leaves actually fell down on our heads.
That doesn't happen in Alaska. Up there, yellow, orange, and sometimes even green leaves just show up on the ground one morning. And then the next day it snows. I'm exaggerating but it's not too far from the truth.
Anyway, even though I like fall, I never really got into the pumpkin thing. I don't like pumpkin spice lattes, I don't run out and buy pumpkin candles, or obsess over everything pumpkin. I'm just not really into it (pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving is a different story). I also don't really like muffins. I know, it's sad. I can never finish them and then it just feels like I waste half of it, and it feels like I just ate half a loaf of bread for breakfast. But for some reason beyond my understanding, I had a little craving today. For pumpkin AND muffins. So I made these mini muffins with a cream cheese frosting because why not. When I saw on Pinterest that you can make pumpkin muffins with just cake mix and canned pumpkin I was like oh this is happening. And I kind of tweaked a bunch of recipes I found online to make this work for me because there wasn't a perfect recipe for mini muffins with only 2 ingredients. So that means I, not being a baker at all, had a major success here because I did not botch these! If you know me and some of my baking experiences, I know you're celebrating with me.

This is all you need! Until you want to make frosting.

Don't you just want to catch that drip from falling...

Mini Pumpkin Muffins
1 box yellow cake mix
1 15 oz can pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix ingredients together and divide among muffin cups. Bake for 12-15 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting
4 oz softened cream cheese
1 c sugar (powdered sugar will be less granular, but you may need more of it)
1/2 tbsp softened butter
1 tbsp milk

Whip ingredients together until smooth. Add more milk as necessary to make thinner.


That's it! Anyone can do this. If I can do this, anyone can do this.

nights

So from here till sometime the week of October 13th Jeff is on a night flying schedule. This comes at the end of helo training and they learn to fly with night vision goggles. I know, straight out of a movie. So cool. The thing about having everyone you know finish training before you is that you hear all about stuff like night flying and you know what to expect. Kind of. For those following along from Columbus (MS, not OH), it's a little later than the night flying we were used to in T-6s. He won't take off until 10 pm-ish and by the time the flight is over and they are done debriefing it will be about 2 am. So that means Jeff won't get home until sometime around 3 am. We knew that we'd have to turn nocturnal during these weeks and we were kind of looking forward to it. Both Jeff and I are night owls. There's something really relaxing and quiet about midnight that I really enjoy. But what we didn't know was that about 2 weeks before the night flying started we'd both turn into morning people somehow and that transitioning into night weeks would be really difficult. We can't seem to stay up past 1 am! And now I am just looking forward to this night flying to hurry up and be over so that we can get back on a normal schedule. It's barely started and I'm already over it. And, when it's over... he's officially done! As each day and small milestone passes I can't believe it's almost over.

You know what else feels surreal? I'm turning 25 this week. Um, what. No. Surely I'm only 23 right? Right?

two years

Jeff and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary on August 27th. It was a Tuesday and Jeff had a big flight the next day so we didn't even have dinner together that night (don't worry, he still sent me a dozen beautiful roses!). He was studying all night with some of his classmates. So that weekend, which was Labor Day weekend, we went to the beach. Where else?? Jeff actually surprised me and set the whole thing up himself. He booked a hotel in Destin for us and we dropped the dog off at doggie daycare then hit the road. We had a really great time but I took hardly any pictures. So none to show, sorry. :(

One thing I recently realized is that our anniversary will always land a few days before a three day weekend. I'd like to say we planned it that way but we really just picked a random weekend in August and went with it.

On deck in the coming months:

- one more drop night and graduation before ours

- my birthday

- filling out the dream sheet (ranking our preferred bases for where we'd like to go next)(it's really called the dream sheet)

- our drop night!

- Jeff's graduation

- Jeff's birthday

- Jeff goes to survival training

- we take a vacation to celebrate it all being over

- we move!

Somewhere in there after graduation is Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our guess is he will miss one of them while he's gone at training.

Also right around Jeff's birthday we are expecting the arrival of our new nephew! My sister in law's due date is the day before Jeff's birthday so maybe they will just have to share their day :P Lots of exciting things in the coming months!