It's beginning to look a lot like ... Thanksgiving?

Lately not too much has gone on, hence the silence the blog has been getting...then all of a sudden, I have the busiest week of my life followed by a trip? What in the world haha isn't that how it works?

2 weekends ago we had 2 of our friends from Harding come and visit! They are getting married to each other this summer and Chad is a groomsman in the wedding. It is in Colorado - woo hoo!! That means an AWESOME vacation. I absolutely love Colorado. In the summer it is PERFECT. Not too hot during the day and a light jacket weather at night. Scenery is breathtaking. Ah, looking forward to that. We hung out with them all weekend like old times sake at Harding. I must admit, it made me kind of miss Harding that atmosphere. The townhouse we lived in was great, and we had people over all the time. I miss that! Now our place is flooded and boxes are everywhere. Who wants to invite people over to that? ha.
This past week was busy busy busy! Monday night one of my friends from our small group was having some of us over for her Birthday! It (of course) ended up being an incredibly late day at work; I got home at 6:40, changed, and ran out to the parking lot where one of the girls was waiting on me. We drove to another girl’s house that we then carpooled with to Erin's house because it was kind of far out. We got there around 7:30 and I really had a ton of fun. Its great having a group of friends again...as pitiful as that sounds haha. Everyone knows what that means though. We just hung out, ate pizza, ate cheesecake (all the healthy things), opened gifts, and just talked. 9:15 we left and headed home. Great night!


Tuesday we got together with another group from with in our small group. We do it just about every week. Chad had a meeting / presentation for work in Jasper so I went alone this time. We finally got back home, and went to bed.
Wednesday was church and pack as much as you can tonight-night, and Thursday Chad drove me to work in the morning so that he could pick me up and we could head straight for Memphis. We are serious when we go out of town as you can see :) The trip up was great, I wasn't feeling too good but I pushed through it. I was kind of a bum that weekend - bad headaches / nausea. Lots of the fun stuff that doesn't classify you as 'sick' but just makes you a bum to be around haha. The trip to Memphis was so fun though. It had been since FEBRUARY since I had been up there - FEBRUARY!! What kind of daughter-in-law am I? SO yes, wonderful trip- Thursday night we got there around 9 and hung out, played some foosball (which I am pretty bad at, but got better the more we played...yess) and went to bed. Friday morning Chad woke up to go to a meeting with his dad at their new church they are building (Chad's dad is the architect!) and then they went and played golf the whole rest of the afternoon. While that exciting adventure was going on, Sherry and I went to Garden Ridge, and let me just say, that place is spectacular. I probably could have spent an incredible amount of money...but I withheld and showed control haha I was looking for some fall decorations - I have NONE and every decorative pumpkin and ever sparkling fruit basket and leaves I see makes me want something decorative. So we looked at some glass pumpkins that Sherry and Mema had gotten before - and they were half off! WOO HOO! Gotta love sales. I loved them and ended up getting 2! There were also these little basket-like pumpkins on sale for $0.99...and you just cant pass that up (am I my father's daughter or what?). SO now I have successfully started a fall collection!

There they are! So we did that and then headed to a Tea Room for lunch! This is a tradition in Missouri but this time it was in Memphis and just me and Sherry! It was so much fun! It was an old house that had been turned into a tea room/ Christmas Shoppe. Food and Christmas? Some of my favorite things :) I got a turkey a bacon pesto sandwich and it was DELICIOUS! (Bacon again? Can you believe it?) We both got raspberry tea which was equally wonderful. After lunch we looked around the shop and we both got some ornaments! I am SO EXCITED about Christmas!!! Just had to throw that out there :)


After that we headed to some grocery stores to get some stuff for dinner. That night was some great grilled salmon, man do I love that stuff. More foosball that night!


Saturday we went and looked at the new church building. It...is....the most amazing thing. Every room was one of those close-your-mouth-and-quit-saying-WHOA-every-two-seconds kind of room. Can't wait for that first Sunday!


Speaking of church - we got to visit their church that Sunday. It was so good to see everyone! I've gotten to know several people there so it's always good to have people that you know you can talk to and say hey to instead of just awkwardly standing around and smiling ha. We got to visit the youth group, see the youth ministers, chat with the kiddies, and then we headed to lunch. Went to Dixie Cafe and our conversation shifted to how Chad and I started dating, who we dated before each other, how he dated my suite-mate, and I dated his roommate, so on and so forth haha. It was quite hilarious though - I think we have quite a good story.


After lunch we headed back, packed up, and left for b'ham. Chad had a presentation for work to give that night and so we had to get back in time for that. We didn't turn on any music the entire time on the way back! We were talking the entire time - let me just throw this in. I love my husband :) Who does that? I love that he can talk like that! What a man.


When we got back Chad headed to the presentation and I headed over to our church's fall festival that was going on. Saw some costumes, ate way too much candy and hot dogs, and saw cocoa as she went crazy because there were so many people around haha it was fun.

For other news...


We have been deciding whether or not to renew our apartment lease, look for another place, etc. With our apartment we are in now, to renew it for however long would actually be cheaper than what we are paying now. BUT, you have to take into consideration 280 (which I grow to hate more and more every day), and the fact that we have flooded twice. SO we decided to just parooze what was around us. We went and looked at a few other apartments but everything else was either way more expensive than what we were paying, or smaller, or something. Nothing seemed right. We had just about given up when I just decided to check around Craigslist. Now, I must say, this was quite sketchy. I emailed a TON of people, half of them came back as scams, the other half was true but then I saw pictures and said "no thanks". There were about 3 that looked decent - 2 houses for rent, and one duplex. All great locations. So I emailed these people and asked if we could see them that weekend. One townhouse and the duplex said yes we could! So, even though I was nervous about this being a scam and us going inside the duplex and being on the news the next morning ("Craigslist listing leads to young couple’s death") we went ahead and said we would at least just check these 2 out. Thank goodness for Chad ha. We pulled up to the townhouse and both of us were just like "look at this! how cute!” and that was just the outside! It was an end unit so it had an extra patch of grass on the end too. We knocked and I held my breath imaging who..or what was about to open the door. And to my surprise, a girl a few years older than me opened it up. Completely normal looking (besides the disgusting Alabama sweatshirt she had on haha) and very friendly. She welcomed us in, and showed us around, and we hung out and talked for a little bit. Turns out her future sister-in-law went to high school with me ha. Small world. Anyways we walked back to our truck, closed the doors, looked at each other, and said 'wow, I loved that!' and there ya go. We called them the next day and said we want it, they said OK, and it’s a done deal! We are renting a townhouse for the next year! One step closer to the real thing haha. They are buying a house and that should be closing around Thanksgiving so as soon as that is over we will paint and move in! We are SO EXCITED. Every day since then I think I have said that. I cannot wait. Only a month to go! YESSS!
SNEAK PEAK...

(yep, that's an Alabama flag...ugh)

So that’s the new exciting news as of late. This weekend for Halloween we aren't sure what we are doing. Guess we should figure that out pretty quick haha. Tonight we are going to eat pizza and play games with the rents! Hasn't happened for a while - it'll be good.


*I'm adding a new little end to these blog posts because I want to...so here it is*


~Little Things I Love~


- I love when you buy a brand new tube of mascara and you dip it in for the very first time so that the brush changes colors. Why? I don't know, but it makes me smile every time :)

Saturday, October 3rd, I woke up at 5 in the morning. 5 IN THE MORNING! Why oh why would I ever do such a thing? For the love of my football team, the Auburn Tigers.

We woke up at 5 to prepare to leave by 6 or 630 which turned into 7 really. The reason for that being that you just HAVE to get a chicken biscuit to start the road trip. We were making the long drive to Knoxville, TN to see the Tigers and Vols duke it out. Chad's best friend lives in Knoxvegas so we had somewhere to stay, which is always nice. We were going to go Friday but I had to work so there was no point in getting there at one in the morning, so we just woke up early Saturday. I hate waking up early, and I hate packing, and I had to do both of these things at the same time. UGH.

We headed out and walked out side and it was COLD! Can you believe it? Alabama? Cold? I know it. It was wonderful. The drive seemed long but it wasn't too bad...of course I was out cold for about an hour of it. We got there about 11:30 and that's when we saw it....drum roll.....Steak and Shake. Now, if you don't know, this is about Chad's favorite burger place, ever. He loves it. So we picked up lunch and headed to Jeremy's (Chad's bff) afterwards. We hung out for a little bit but then headed down to UT to start mingling and tailgating! We parked in some random parking lot and paid some guy who sounded like an elf and went down to a parking lot absolutely covered inch to inch with tailgaters and tents and games and food, etc. We met Jeremy's friends, and then the rest of the afternoon was just chilling. It was PERFECT weather and just a whole lot of fun. I met a girl who I instantly connected with and we basically hung out the whole time so I had a TN buddy so I wasn't just a random Auburn person meandering aimlessly.

Game time came and we headed to Neyland Stadium. This is in the top 5 biggest stadiums in the US - 102,037 seats. Now yes, it was incredibly HUGE but we found out how they fit so many seats in there very quickly as we headed to our own. We got to our section, and proceeded to head almost literally STRAIGHT UP as we climbed the stairs. Then, getting to our seats, saw that the numbered seating gives everyone about 5 inches per person (ok, it may be a little more than that but that is what it felt like). As you are sitting in your personal 5 inch space, you CONSTANTLY are getting up and down to let others go to their seats because there was only one entrance on our section. Our seats were 3 from the very end, so anyone from seats 26-1 got to walk by us. As you stand up to let someone else by, you realize there really is no room at all to let that person by, therefore causing you to curve your knees over the bench seat like a v as the rest of your body counts on your knees not to give out as you teeter back and forth.. Then there was the whole fact that if you leaned even an inch forward you felt like you were going to plummet to your death on the field down below because of how steep it was. To make it more interesting, a guy who had just torn his ACL sat right behind us, crutches, brace, and all. Our backs still have bruises...

It seemed like ALL of the students who actually chanted and cheered were about 3 sections down from us. We had the geriatric Auburn section. At first we were a little bummed but we have many interesting stories because of it. For example, I sat next to a guy who HAS to be an older twin of a guy I know (don't question the fact that you can't be twins and be older, just take that at what it is) It was almost like I knew him already. They left at half time and then I was sitting by a lady about 80 years old. She was a lively ol gal - she got so into the game that on every play she would flail her arms over to me or hold my leg as if she was waiting to see a crash. It was hilarious - we were cheering and yelling the whole time. Way to go geriatric section.

We ended up winning the game 26-22 and the last 6 points on TN's end were scored at the last 2 seconds of the game, and that’s not an exaggeration. We should have blown them out of the water, but at least we won. We are now undefeated, ranked 17th, which is both good and bad. Good that we are doing so well, bad that we might now be seen as a threat, but ya know, what happens happens. We are awesome though. WAR EAGLE baby!

After the game we walked proudly among all the depressed vols fans and went back to Jeremy's apartment. We talked and watched an episode of something called Top Gear which was quite hilarious - take into consideration though that it was about 2 in the morning at this point, so I'll need to see another episode to correctly judge how funny this show actually was.

We went to sleep around 3 (I actually lasted the whole day - that my friends, is a miracle) and then woke up the next morning around 10? Someone was blasting a sermon from their truck outside...not sure if that is just an "easy" way to do church for some people or if the guy who owned the truck was doing it for all the people most likely passed out drunk from the night before. Either way, interesting way to wake up haha. We laid there for a little while longer (on our new air mattress) and then finally got up, packed up, and headed out. On the way out I mentioned maybe we should get breakfast at a place Jeremy had been meaning to go. (Yes, I suggested breakfast...I have changed so much over the years). We found it and pulled up - it was ADORABLE! It was a house that they had turned into a restaurant. We walked inside, I think I said "aww look at that!" seven times as we were seated. We looked at the menu (quite large and many choices) and I found what I wanted pretty quick...and then about 4 other things that sounded good to go with it. That’s how it normally goes. Both of us ended up getting chocolate chip pancakes and hash browns, and then I got a side of bacon to go with it (Yes mom, I did get bacon. Can you believe it?). We both got coffee too. The meal was SPECTACULAR. We both said best chocolate chip pancakes we've ever had. We will be going again next Knoxville trip, for sure.

Thats us sad to leave Knoxville. Well, I'm sad. Chad just looks tired/indifferent.

Best place to go!!!

After that we drove the long trip back home and got home about an hour before we went to out small group Sunday. Group was great as usual, we really like everyone there. Everyone gets along great and it’s always a weekly pick-me-up.

This week so far has been looooooooong. Its only Wednesday, and I feel like it should be Friday. I hate when that happens. Just drags everything out. I also got sneezed on in the face by a 2 year old that is sick when I was helping him take his shoes off. Now that’s exciting. If my next post is about me being sick, we know who to blame :)

Big Broiling Bust

I had my first fail at an attempt of a new recipe this week. Granted, I haven't really tried too many new things that require something I've never done before, but still. FAIL. What was it? A simple pecan crusted chicken.

I had printed off a recipe online that sounded wonderful, however, didn't exactly read through the directions (A problem I face more often than I should ha). I just saw that the only extra things I would need to buy from the store were soy sauce and pecans. SIMPLE! Hooray!

As I started making the dish, I realized it said 'in a broiler...' I stared at it and was trying to figure out what to do. What was my solution? ... When in doubt, call Mom. Mom said you could do a home-made version by putting a rack over a cookie sheet to drain. However, the only rack I had was in the toaster oven. I took the oddly shaped rack and placed it on the cake pan (all the cookie sheets were dirty) and admired my DIY broiler. You mix honey and soy sauce for the beginning - that went well...then you dip the chicken in it and proceed to cover with pecans. As I dipped I realized it wasn't quite coating as well as what I thought it should...which continued on to the pecans. A few of them stuck, but looked nothing like what you would see in a magazine...or even close. SO I covered what I could, laid it on the metal concoction, and watched as the pecans slid off the chicken. I grabbed a few and sprinkled them in the naked areas and looked at it as I thought to myself "huh...this is not going to work". I carried on, however, thinking maybe it could possibly turn out somewhat decent.

The next step was to broil on each side of the chicken for 2 minutes. I put it in, set the timer for 1:40, and cleaned up some stuff while I waited. Timer buzzes, I open the oven door, and see my beautiful creation. My beautiful, black, burned creation. Lovely. 2 minutes in the oven and it burned. HA. I took it out to survey the damage - I turned one of the chicken breasts over. It was still raw on the other side. I contemplated " maybe if I pick off the pecans and just made chicken...hm..." and then realized that pecan crusted chicken was not suppose to be chicken with crusty pecans. Therefore the chicken dinner went gladly into the trash can.

It may take me a little while to be brave enough to try to broil something again. Grilled chicken sounds just fine to me :)

There ya have it. The one on the right is what burned and the one on the left is what I turned over to show the raw pecan un-crusted chicken.

By the way! New email - cristy.burris@gmail.com if anyone wants it. I guess the entire world could see that if I wanted so it should be interesting to see what types of emails I get, but I'll take that chance. That one is just mine so that if anything needs to be just between me and you (whoever you may be) it can happen! Chad and I still have the other one though, don't worry :)