For the past few months we’ve been looking at houses with our awesome agent Tina.  Our lease is up at our apartment (we’re moving to month-to-month now) so we’re taking the oportunity to move on.  We’d like more room, bathroms, and privacy - like being loud without disturbing other people.

Well we’ve found one.  It took looking at a lot of bad ones but this one is great!  It’s priced well and fits our needs: plenty of rooms, lots of bathrooms, big kitchen, backyard for a pool, and an unfinished basement big enough for a putt-putt course!  Right now we’re getting with the bank about the loan paperwork so we can put in a bid tomorrow.  Everyone cross your fingers that nobody else has found this beaut, and we’re the only ones bidding!

It’s the week after Halloween, but it’s never too late to do what you’ve been meaning to do the entire month.  Last night we finally carved our pumpkins.  The cats had to be locked out because they were being too curious around the knives and guts.

Last weekend we ran away from work early and booked it to the mountains. It used to be that the women in the family would take a weekend away to go shopping somewhere and just get away, but has changed into an anybody that wants/can go kinda thing. This year (the first year either of us have gone along) we stayed in a cabin on the side of a mountain in Gatlinburg, TN. The view was great, the rooms were big, there was a pool table and an arcade machine and a hot-tub and a movie theatre.

Our little camera is broken, it won’t open the lens at all, just jerks and sputters and gives up, and we didn’t feel like hauling our big cameras around, so we only have a few phone pictures to show. ByTheWay, anyone that wants to get rid of a small point-and-shoot camera can inquire within.

Friday while we were on our way up everybody else went shopping at Tanger, which is fine with us because we don’t have money for shopping anyways. Saturday we walked around Gatlinburg in the rain then went to the Dixie Stampede, Dolly Parton’s more wholesome version of Medieval Times, with cowboys. Advice for vegetarians: eat before you go, the generic pasta they served me was gross.

We also played black-light mini golf, which was lots of fun, and did go-karts with my dad. When we went to Panama City Beach earlier this year with Mike and Jenny we found out we like go-karts. Lori screams because it’s too fast at first then gets into it and screams to go faster. There are a bazillion tracks to pick from in Pigeon Forge, we chose the one next to the goofy golf course (not really Goofy Golf, but close). The only problem was going up and down the spirals so many times got boring. Nobody else was around us and the guys running it let us keep going on and on and on and on and on and on and on because nobody else was there to ride. It was still fun though, Lori even liked the hill you go over that turns your stomache, and she absolutely hates that stuff.

It’s been a year, can you believe it?  Wow.  It feels like only a few months ago we were shaking our groove things at the beach.  To celebrate this year we went back to Charleston, which is where the cruise ship left from on our honeymoon.  Last year we spent the night in a dinky motel in the smelly part, about 5 or 10 miles from the good part.  This year we stepped it up and stayed at the LaQuinta right across the bridge from the good historic part.  Not so smelly, and we were right in front of a dock with lots of fancy boats, Lori was thrilled!

On the first day we walked around and did mostly window shopping. Lori found a dress she absolutely loved, but they didn’t have the right size, then miraculously on Monday we found another store that did have the size!  Something to note about Historic Charleston if you’ve never been is that it’s like that long street in Savannah (not River Street) where all the shops are, but times four.  And it’s a giant maze.  We walked so much and saw so many shops we thought we’d seen it all, but the second day we parked in a different lot and realized there was another section of stores we completely missed.

Saturday we decided to give gifts to each other, so we could enjoy the presents all weekend.  Lori got a Peacock Feather head band, and Daniel got a veggie T-shirt.  There is a long market there with artists and jewelry and purses and basket weavers and more jewelry, where Lori found her new favorite purse.  Adam gave us a Starbucks gift card that had nothing left on it so we bought coffee to try and keep us going.  We were going to eat at a veggie restaurant outside the Historic part but realized we’d have to leave and come back and park again so we stayed and had bar food.  That night we had Japanese Steak House, which is what we usually do for special ocassions because it’s so awesome.  No one there believed we were old enough to be married.

Sunday we went to see a giant old tree, but the tree was closed until later.  So we went back into the city and ate at Yo Burrito.  It was ok, salsa was good but they were out of tofu.  How do you run out of tofu?  Then it was off to the museum where they were having a special wedding exibit.  Anyways, for dinner we went to Mercato, an Italian restaurant, for our actual anniversary dinner.  Oddly enough, there were two other couples seated in opposite corners from us that were celebrating the exact same thing.  One of the couples brought their cake top with them and ended up throwing almost all of it away because it tasted like cardboard.  Our cake on the other hand was just as great as a year ago.  We couldn’t help ourselves and opened it the night we got to the hotel and nibbled on it the whole trip.

The day we left we went to a corn maze that wasn’t made of corn (bushes).  They said if we found 6 of the 10 hole punches for our punch cards we would get a small prize.  We found 9 of the 10, but would have had all of them it someone hadn’t stolen one of the punches from the pole.  When we went to collect our prize there wasn’t anybody there.  The lady that told us we’d get a prize was driving away when we got out of the maze, a full hour before they were supposed to close.  They left us in there alone, in a maze, possibly dead or dying or injured or making out.  Good thing we gots the smarts and could find our way out of what they say is one of the worlds largest mazes.

We cook alot.  It’s super fun and gives us something to do besides computers or TV.  One of our favorite things to cook is picture above, BBQ Tofu.  We drain the tofu, slice it thin, pepper it, lightly pan fry it, then pour over some BBQ sauce (letting it cook a bit in the hot pan).  Lori says it’s like crack (or what she thinks it would be like).

Another of our favorites is Enchilladas.  The tortillas come from a mix we get at Wal-Mart, we mix it then roll it out, fill it with TVP (flavored with a taco season pack) and cheese and sometimes onion or salsa, roll it and cover it with our AMAZING homemade sauce.  This is also like crack to Lori, she would eat it every day if she could.  She is telling me right now to go out and get the ingredients so we can make it tonight . . .

Last night we made Country Baked Seitan for the first time in a while, we didn’t realize how much we missed it until it hit our tastebuds.  This time we mixed it up with brown gravy (from a pack) enhanced with mushrooms and onions.  It tasted like the sauce on salsbury steak.  And then the first chef to get kicked off of Top Chef made Seitan, but sucked at it.  They should have had ours!

Mike and Jenny recently had to let go of one of their kitties because they couldn’t handle so many at once, so we took Hannah Montana into our home (and swiftly started calling her Stevie).   She loves to cuddle, and freaking spaz out, usually one right after the other in rapid succession.  At bedtime our toes have become chew toys, and our faces are way more interesting in the dark apparently because she gets all up in our personal space while we sleep.

Ringo didn’t accept her at first, and was a big jerk when we brought her home.  He hissed and slapped at her while she explored the apartment.  We layed the smack down on him more than a couple times.  But now he tolerates her, has stopped following her around everywhere, and hasn’t hissed in a while.  Last night they played tag, he chased her into the bedroom then she chased him into the living room, then back and forth and back and forth.

Woo Hoo, Xander’s 4 now.  April and Bill (his parents, duh) had a super fun party for him today.  There was a pool, sprinklers, water balloons, a sack race, cake, presents, and hot dogs and burgers (veggie too).  April was running around, making sure everyone was having fun, laughing the whole time, running through the sprinklers, jumping in the sack race.

We didn’t bring our bathing suits, which disappointed Lori very much, so we took pictures instead.  Xander picked the Sponge Bob cake because the heads shoot off the bodies!  We had a great time with the family, and they had a great time with us.  They even gave our car a semi-bath by throwing water ballons at us as we left.