Hmm...

So! As I was going through my photos and I came across this set taken when Mark and I flew down for Iwalani and Jeremy's wedding in November:
OH MY GOODNESS! I THINK THEY BASED THAT TEDDY BEAR OFF MY HANDSOME MARK! :-D He should get royalties for that or something, right?

Call me crazy (as I think all the people in the airport-airplane hallway connector thing did since we were blacking traffic to take this picture--whoops!), but I think there is a remarkable similarity. Excepting, of course, that Mark is a million times more handsome. And less fuzzy. And a person. :o)

Now we just need to find me a cartoon-celebrity look alike and we will be all set! Cute Cute! :-D

When Popping Corn...

When popping corn, one must never put too much popcorn into the popper

When popping corn, if one does put too much corn into the popper, one should not put in too little oil

When popping corn, if one does put too much corn into the popper, and too little oil, one should not decided to pour the hot, burned, not-popping oil-popcorn mixture directly from the popper into a plastic walmart bag

When popping corn, if one does put too much corn into the popper, and too little oil, and decides to pour the hot oil-popcorn mixture into a plastic walmart bag, one should not decide to be wearing open toed sandals

When popping corn,if one does put too much corn into the popper, and too little oil, and decides to pour the hot oil-popcorn mixture into a plastic walmart bag, and finds themselves in open toed sandals, one should have a caring friend near by with a camera handy to witness the 'popcorn dance'--its this new craze sweeping the nation

:-D

So! Mark and I may or may not have put too much corn and too little oil into the popper and poured the resulting hot mess into a walmart bag. These may or may not be the pictures.


You know that little voice in your head that says, "you know, if this pan is too hot for me to touch it, and there is steam coming off the kernels, maaaaaaybe this is a little too hot to stick into this here little plastic bag...." Well, me and Mark BOTH decided to IGNORE that little voice.

Woopseies!! :-D

Yep! Melted RIGHT through that little guy! Mark pointed out if you enlarge the lower picture, you can see the individual holes from the hot popcorn kernels blowing through the bag like hot little meteors. :o)



Ahh...what a lovely, oily pop corn mess. The floor is the PERFECT place for it to be!


Poor Marks little toes! He got a hot kerenel stuck between his shoe and the bottom of his foot! yikes yikes!
What a sad looking Mark!! :o( He is mourning the disaster of his popcorn snack

Thank goodness we had some more! :0) Yum Yum! Here is the result! Mark LOVES popcorn, and slowly, slowly he is converting me to love it too. The MAJOR drawback is thoes durn little pieces that get stuck in your teeth. If they can just get rid of those, pop corn would be bliss. Hey, they came up with seedless watermellon, right? I am waiting for the day! (but i wont hold my breath ;o)

Dinning Out!

So! For a requirement of AFROTC, Mark had to go to "Dinning Out"--part of the Air Forces efforts to teach their young men and women formal manners. The jist of the evening is that the cadets dress up in their full dress uniform and bring their dates to a formal awards ceremony/dinner/dance. The first event of the evening was a mingle and meet "cocktails" reception. It was a little scary, but I got to meet a lot of Marks Friends from the air force, so that was fun :o) Ross and his wife Lynette had just had their baby and we didn’t know if they would be coming or not--but they came! It was so fun to see them! :-D After the mingling, we adjourned to the banquet hall for the dinner and awards ceremony.

We got to hear from some distinguished guests as well as from Colonel Silvers, as it was his last year being at Purdue. Mark thinks that he is a really nice man and he really liked and respected him and will miss him :o) Lieutenant Pappas was there, with his expecting wife; Capitan Zippolla was not there as he had been called to Iraq, but his wife was there :o) They are all really really nice people.

Then, well, in the middle of the ceremony, hmmm... how do you say what happened next? Wel, lets just say that there is a lot of, er, "tradition" that surrounds the dinning out, namely--THE GROG. The Grog is a voluntary form of torture that the AF boys put themselves through ;o)
What happens is, each of the cadet units (about 15-20 cadets each) prior to dinning out selects an 'ITEM' to add to the grog during the ceremony. At this point in the evening, the cadet units have skits that they do (involving lots of props and inside jokes) and at the end of their skits they dump their 'item' into this big cauldron. The nasty resulting mixture becomes known as!: THE GROG.

By the end of the skits, the units had VOLUNTARILY added:

• Pickle Juice (1 jar, full)
• Cinnamon Extract (two 3 oz bottles)
• Vinegar (~20 oz) ***THIS WAS MARKS UNITS ADDITION!
• Milk (~gallon)
• Chunky Salsa (I didn’t see how much)
• Fish oil
  

...among other awful things.

BLECK!

I think there may have been some sort of citrus drink, but I cant remember for sure. There were definitely more items as there were about 15 or so units, all of them thinking of the most yucky things they can put into the grog. And...maybe its best not to know what was in the grog...

After all the items have been added they officially "open the Grog." Cadets then stand up and, in RHYME, challenge one another to "the Grog". The challenged cadet had ~20 seconds to rebuttal--in FULL RHYME. The MC of the evening then decided who’s rhyme was best--the challenger or the challengee--and one, or BOTH of the people had to go up to the grog. Whatever the MC says, goes, so, if he decides "both to the grog"--both it was!

Once challenged to the grog, the cadet (or group of cadest) takes the long march to the cauldron and cups "squaring their corners" (i think that means turning in right angles as they marched up to the grog table). Then they greet the grog by SALUTING and enthusiastically saying "Good Evening Grog." Then, they pour a full (CHUNKY--BLECK!) cup of the grog, about face the audience, raise their cup of grog high in the air and say--"TO THE MESS!" . Then, the have to down their cup of grog withOUT taking their lips from the rim of the cup. After they drink it all, they turn their cup UPSIDE DOWN on their heads--just to be sure. Then, they could return to their seats. (I dont know what would be worse...having to drink it, or having to wear it...)

All in all, I was REALLY glad I didn't have to partake. Im pretty sure I would have puked all of the grog--and dinner--back up all over the honorable "dinning out" head table. I think we asked some people, "so...what happens if you, like, puke?" The cadet told me: "You don't puke." (I didn't think puking was a voluntary reflex...woopsie!) :o)

Mark only got called up as his entire unit--as punishment for adding all of the vinegar--went up together :o( BLECK!

I tried to take pictures, but I didn’t get any good pictures of the grog-group since it was really far away, really crowded, and really dark in the room. I was also feeling pretty bad for the cadet sitting across the table from me on account of the flash--I hope there wasn't any permanent retinal damage--so I stopped trying to take pictures.

Mark is somewhere in that mass of people in the center drinking pre-processed vomit (i.e. grog) :o( BLECK!

I agree with the young cadet we drove to the dinner--in his words, "WHY don’t we all choose to put chocolate, or ice cream, or caramel into the grog? WHY is it always Gross? I'm telling ya, we could make the most delicious smoothie EVER and I would call mySELF to the grog."

I don’t know either.

C'est, la grog.

ANYWAY, after drinking his bought of grog, Mark didn’t have too much of an appetite for anything, and his stomach hurt pretty bad for a few days. He said it was chunky, and it burned. (I think bad things happen when you mix milk and vinegar...) I feel REALLY bad for the people who had to take multiple swigs of it. BLECK! Mark says he hopes that none of the people that went up had any allergies! Me too!

Next year, if we were to go again, I think we would eat dinner before going (get a little more somethin'-somethin' to hold that grog down) and have mark eat, like, antacids or something before hand :o) Maybe THAT would help!

After the ceremony closed, their was dancing, but mark and I were really, really tired (and mark wasn't feeling too hot), so went home :o)

Now! Time for some pictures!!


I thought it was pretty impressive that I managed to do my hair all by myself. Ta-Dah! :-D And, for my sisters nani, there is NO better way to get "random distribution" of the twisties than by doing it without looking ;o) Good luck! It makes your arms pretty tired...
And here is handsome Mark posing in his dres uniform!
It was a fun, but tiring, evening and REALLY yuck on poor marks tummy. We stopped at JimmyJohn's on the way home to get some real food to help his tummy, but it didn't help very much :o(

All in all, I thought it was pretty funny that at their formal dinner they forced themselves to drink, with composure, the most ridiculous, awful tasting stuff. STRANGE... I wonder just what these cadets are training for... ;o)

This time last year...

Written fall break of 2009 :


"This time last year I was excited to be in school, rapidly approaching graduation, and pumped about my chosen profession. Classes were going great and despite being very, very difficult they were engaging and I loved the material I was learning. I respected and admired my professors and I was pretty sure of where I wanted to work after graduation.

This time last year I was busily coaching a bunch of high school girls for my old high school marching band’s colorguard. The highlight was getting to spend time with my FABULOUS little sister, the goose. :o) I was trying to balance my desire for them to do well at competition with my passion for them to learn respect for themselves and for each other.

Perhaps most importantly—and most surprisingly—this time last year I met Mark for the first time. Somehow, wonderfully, miraculously, we were introduced. And then, my life changed :o) Suddenly sleep was so much less important than getting to talk with him every morning and evening, just talking about things and hearing what he had to say. Then, last year over fall break I flew out to Indiana, excited to meet face to face the man who was rapidly becoming my best-est best friend :o)

Nothing about my time in Indiana could be identified as particularly remarkable. I slept in the Chicago O’Hare Airport Terminal between flights to get to Indianapolis. My flight was late, and I anxiously texted Mark, wondering where he was and hoping neither of us crashed in our remaining travel time (I get worried traveling). He met me at the airport, hiding in the baggage claim and giving me hints about where he was while he watched me look for him among the strangers. He brought me fruit snacks (YUMM!) and a rose, and took me back to what would become my home: West Lafayette Indiana, but most importantly, with him. We ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches with grape juice and carrots on the kitchen floor, (we went to Wal-Mart down the street for supplies first) and after we went to the computer lab on Purdue’s campus where we had the first—of many—“study dates” :o). I drove with him back to meet his parents, meandering through corn and soybean fields, traveling the same rode he had traveled many times while talking with me. Our time there was wonderful, and before we knew it, we were driving back to Lafayette to work on school work yet again.

This time last year, somewhere between West Lafayette and Muncie Indiana, I was telling Mark how much I didn’t want to go home. And this time, last year, somewhere on the road between West Lafayette and Muncie Indiana, Mark Andrew Pfeil asked me to marry him. :o)

While some people may tease Mark about his proposal, to me it was completely perfect. Ironically, in my high school seminary class (I don’t remember why) we had a discussion about what our “dream” proposal would be like; there was a lengthy list from most people—guys and girls—about the elaborate scheme they wanted when the question was popped. When it was my turn I said, “I don’t really want to be asked like that, I just want it to be a normal day, doing normal things, and then…be asked!” Bravo Mark! How did you know!? :-D

Call me crazy, but I think everyday romance is timeless. I am so excited to share that with Mark. :-D We may spend a lot of time in the car, we may spend a lot of time in the computer lab—who knows, we may be in school forever! –but when we do, I get to recall pieces of the everyday romance Mark and I share. Special occasions and dates are really nice and lots of fun, but there is something so touching about making memories out of things that can become everyday romance :o)

This time last year I had no idea that in one year I would be attending a new school, living in a new state, eating new food, attending a new branch, and be the wife of a most remarkable man: Mark Pfeil.

Oddly enough, nothing seems odd. Life continues to pass, breath by breath, moment by moment, and Mark and I continue to grow, challenge by challenge, victory by victory. It feels so right to be here, doing what I am doing, learning what I am learning, with Mark. "

I LOVE YOU MARK! HAPPY ENGAGEMENT ANNIVERSARY! WHAT AN ADVENTURE THIS LAST YEAR HAS BEEN!!

Los Colores!

I must say, Indiana has its treasures and the list is gradually growing to more than just 'Mark Pfeil' as reasons to live here ;o)

Fall "colors" is a new thing for me. Fall in New Mexico is one color: gold (aka yellowish brown). And as all the tress in the Rio Grand corridor are the same (cotton woods) they all turn at the same time. They may be gold for a week and then fall off brown, or they may just turn brown and fall off -depending on how fast the cold sets in. Fall has always been my favorite season. I love the golden leaves that glitter in the wind. I love the satisfying cruch leaves make when you jump on them in the gutter. I love the crisp scent of the air growing cold, and especially, especially I love the smell of roasting green chiles. Mmmmm... they may make your eyes sting, but that smells means fall is here :o)

This year was my first fall away from the southwest, and, I will admit, I did miss the smell of roasting chilies--AND hot air ballons--BUT! Driving through the Indiana countryside at the beginning of fall break, I was awestruck with the majesty of mother natures color pallet. Simply breathtaking. Aaaand, in Indiana, Mother nature takes her time painting the world for fall :o)

She being with a few trees, turning them into what I like to call the 'fuji apple' trees, lightly dusting the edges with a mottled redish orange:

then, she fills in the middle:
then its almost as if once started, mother nature goes into a frenzy and paints everything at once! reds! and yellows! and oranges! and browns! and burgundies! and every combination in between :-D


The campus was aflame with the splendor of fall!

Leaf texture! Individual leaves are even striated! One of my favorites is the fire bush which turns a deep rich red color :o)


Leaf group colors!:


Leaf Sillouettes. I love the way the trees look with the sun backlight, they just glow!:



What a delicious feast of colors for fall, and how blessed Mark and I were to share it with each other :o) We hope you enjoyed it too!

Nani's Wedding!

Iwalani Marie Evans was sealed to Jeremy Nichols in the Albuquerque New Mexico Temple on November 1st, 2008.

WE ARE SO HAPPY FOR THEM!! :-D Mark and I were SO HAPPY to be able to be there, we flew in on Friday, Nani got married on Saturday, and we had to leave on Sunday. AND IT WAS SO WONDERFUL!!

They were married early in the morning, here are some pictures of us getting the Nan ready!


The sealing was wonderful, it is so incredible how families can grow :o) We are so happy for Nani and Remy!


I realized in retrospect that since Nani had her friend Joseph take pictures of them as a couple and I figured they would be better than MY pictures, I took very few pictures of them as a couple :o) But! Here are some pictures I did take of them outside the temple!
aaaaaww... :o)
OH MY GOODNESS!!!...THEY'RE MARRIED!!

Nani/Remy kissy pictures! :-D Kiora (or SOMEone ) actually started pulling-instead of pretend pulling as per the plan- so yes, that is genuine clinging to nani for dear life and hoping not to rip her beautiful dress.
The boys decided that they wanted jeremy to kiss nani, so they decided to push him instead of pulling him. Jeremy thought that was a pretty good idea too :o) and there is me and the NAN! Isnt she a princess?! This is my FAVORITE of the with nani picture :o) She looks so pretty and happy :o) We were laughing because I accidentally kept taking pictures of the air and nothing while we were trying to take this one, I am glad we finally got it aimed right :o)

And look at little chio! She is a princess TOO!



After a while, me and the teek got a little distracted with the picture taking and we MAY have had some fun with the flowers... AND the camera. I thought Nan would like to have these pictures too since they are fun so I am putting them up here :o)





And! There is Mark in his red tie!

WE LOVE YOU NANI AND REMY!! *MUAH!*

Halloween at Purdue!

Purdue students have this thing about dressing up. I think it has to do with "breakfast club," but for whatever reason, Purdue students seem to have a plethora of costumes lying around that they put on for minimal excuses: its Finals week, its Midterms, its Friday, its spring time, im having a bad hairday better make the best of it. Sometimes you just have kids running from class room to class room in costumes--just becasue. Sometimes the costumes are really creative and happy, like "Happy Friday" man who wears a super hero suit and rides a scooter around telling people 'Happy Friday!' Anyway, as Halloween is a more traditional time to wear costumes there seemed to be more students on campus walking around in costumes than usual. In my Nuetronics class, for example (who would have suspected!?) :

Mr. Chicken Man with Mr. Scary Man in a Robe.

Mr. Chicken Man, Mr. Scary Man, Smurfette, Mr. Irish Man in a Kilt, and Hercules

Now we add the Phantom! to the mix!

I dont know how much Mr. Chicken Man got out of lecture that day :o)

I have NEVER seen students dress up like this for Halloween at UNM!!

Purdue. Living in the cornfields must do strange things to students.

Halloween at the Branch!

For the Branch halloween party, the YW were in charge, so Heather and I had to be there to decorate and set up (although, Heather and Alex did most of the decorating that afternoon!). Mark couldn't come to the activity because he had Airforce stuff to do, and the next day he was going to take he FE exam and needed to sleep and study. So! We had to rally our spirits :o( we missed Mark a lot thought, and I tried to sneak away as fast as possible. For the mutual activity before, the young women and us stuffed "ghosts" (little trash bags full of newspaper) and made bats and covered the "haunted house" walls with black trashbags. The haunted house was a halway that we made all black and had a smoke machine and scary music in. Emanual and Alex were the scary guys in the hallway, they were doing a pretty good job scaring people:



Here is Heather and I, partners in crime!

This is the hallway, we made it green with green tissue paper over the lights with little ghosts. The entrance to the haunted house is on the left.
There were also activities likke bobbing for apples and eating doughnuts off string and makeing popcorn hands and coloring for the kids.
Then, the kids went around from room to room asking for candy in the non-haunted house hallway. Here is heaters room that they decotrated.
Here is Alex with his candy to give out!:Here are our lovely YW!!

More YW! Here are some more pictures of the event!




It was a lot of fun, we were really sad that Mark couldnt come :o(

Violin Recital!

Our friend Amanda Baer is SUPER SUPER DUPER-EST talented and awesome in a million ways. I get a call on a Saturday in October and it is Amanda!

"Hi Amanda!"

"Hi Teandra! Hey, what are you and Mark doing?"

"Oh, well, Mark is taking his FE exam, and I'm washing dishes, and then I am going to maybe start laundry and do homework, why what's up?"

"WELL! I wanted to know if you would like to come to my violin students recital to be an audience member? Like, right now?..."

"oh! Sure!" :-D

OH GOODNESS IT WAS A LOT OF FUN! :o) I drove over and had to bring my camera. One set of students were unable to make it, so Amanda had another recital that evening for them, so only one student performed at this recital. Here are some videos and photos of Amanda, Brian, her student and his family!




This is fiddling, request of Brian, and the song is called "Orange Blossom Express" and it sounds like a train! :-D




This is Amanda's Student playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. He did a GREAT job and got to play a few more "encore" pieces :o) He played them all from memory and introduced them ane everything! Quite the young performer!



This "Sonata No. 2 Mvt.1 "Obsession" " by -Eugene Ysaye. So pretty! We were supposed to be counting the number of times the composer integrated two songs into this piece; Brian was so engrossed in counting that he forgot to turn the page :) oopsies!

It was so much fun to go to the recital and we hope to attend many more! It was great!

Little Baby! :-D

...of our friend the Castros! Kellie and Emanuel Castro had their little baby Joseph this past December, and in October I had the pleasure of making Kellie's cake for her baby shower! Sharline Queen hosted it for Kellie and it was really nice to get to spend the afternoon with her, her mother and sister, friends from the branch, and some of Kellie's friends from work. She is such a WONDERFUL person and her and Emanuel are really, really nice and we are SO excited for their growing little family!

As of yet, we have no pictures of Jospeh, (but he is pretty stinking cute). I also have no pictures of the shower, BUT! I did take pictures of cake and preparations, so that is all I can post here

It was a lemon cake with raspberry cream filling. If I were to do it again, I would just have it plain raspberry filling, no cream, since it was TOO sweet and the raspberry cream didn't set up the way I would have liked. Another thing I may try is to make a white chocolate mousse and put raspberry extract (if there IS such a thing) into the mouse, and maybe fold in some fresh or frozen raspberries for the color, that would be pretty :o)

Here is the final product!:

....awww.... :o)
I made the baby about 3 days before I made the rest of the cake so that he could dry. I wanted the blanket to dry draped over the edge of the cake, so I thought to myself, "oh! I know! I will let it dry on the PAN! that is the PERFECT exact shape of the cake!" I was so excited about my brilliant plan...until I realized that I had to MOVE the baby to comething else to cook the cake. OOPS! Doing it again I am going to cook the cake first, then let the baby dry on the pan. I had to move the baby to a different bowl, and the blanket dried with a different arclength, so when I laid him on his little perch the blanket cracked :o( But! Have no fear! The beauty of fondaynt I just balled it up and threw it in the microwave for a few seconds and viola! It was as good as new to reshape!
I am a big fan of the little rubber duckie. It made me think of my sister the teek and my nephew alex. I love the picture of him with the rubber duckie suctioned cupped to his forhead. I contemplated sticking the duckie on this babies forehead but figured the reference would be a moot point and lost on the people at the shower ;o)
look at the babies cute little cubby arm rolls! and his little pacifier! When I had to move the baby to dry, the head also fell off and the arm fell off (it was a really tramatic move for the baby) so I had to stick him back together. He was cuter the first time, his face looks pretty flat now, but i think he still looks cute :o) Toy blocks!
A little Tonka Truck!

I don't have a rolling pin, so I had to wash off and use my baking spray bottle as a rolling pin for the fondant :o) I felt pretty official. I also used one of the jam jars also to roll out the fondant (the jam jar was heavier so it was easier to roll out). I had some pretty ghetto lines in the fondant from the lid of the jam jar and the spray bottle that I had to strategically roll out. Made things more interesting :o)


I love fondant! here is my favoirite recipe I found online (http://thecookduke.com/category/cakes/birthday-cake-ideas/):

"Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp of unflavored gelatin
• 1/4 cup of cold water
• 1 tsp of almond extract
• 1/2 cup of light corn syrup (If a corn syrup is not available, you can substitute it with a sugar syrup made with 1-1/4 cups sugar and 1/3 cup water, boiled together until syrupy)
• 1 Tbsp of glycerin (some recipes say it’s optional, believe me, it’s a must)
• 2 lbs 10X confectioners’ sugar
• 1/2 tsp of white vegetable shortening

Directions:

• Sprinkle the gelatin over cold water in a small bowl and let it rest for 2 minutes to soften
• Place the bowl in a microwave for 30 seconds on High, until the gelatin dissolves
• Add the Almond extract
• Add the corn syrup and the glycerin and stir until the mixture is smooth and clear (if the mixture is not turning smooth and clear, microwave it for an additional 15 to 20 seconds on high and stir again)
• Sift 1 1/2 pounds of the sugar into a large bowl
• Make a hole in the sugar and pour the liquid mixture to it
• Stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture becomes sticky
• Sift some of the remaining 1/2 pound of sugar onto a smooth work surface and add as much of the remaining sugar as the mixture will take
• Knead the fondant, adding a little more sugar if necessary, to form a smooth, pliable mass
• Rub the vegetable shortening on your thumbs and knead it into the fondant
• Wrap the fondant in plastic wrap and place it in a tightly sealed container to prevent it from drying out
• If the icing dries out and harden it can often be revived by popping it into a microwave oven for a few seconds and then kneading it back to life"


Here is the little baby! He has no legs under the blanket :o)










Here is a before and after shot of my kitchen (poor mark, I am SO lucky that he is so patient with me) I can make a pretty awesome mess when I put my mind to it ;o) Actually, I am pretty sure the kitchen mess factor is directionally proportional to the fun factor of the baking project :o)

I also made cupcakes for the baby shower. They are dark chocolate cupcakes with butter cream frosting:

we put them on top of little cardboard squares lined with foil and the wrapped them in plastic paper and tied it with ribbons and but little bangles on it :o) So cute!! :o)

All in all, it was really really fun and I had a great time cooking and decorating. The shower was really great and was a lot of fun. It was fun to spend time with the other ladies and Kellie's friends and help to welcome in her little baby boy!

*one final note: On the way over to kellies party I was loading everything into the car and Mark was like, "Teandra! Your pants!" yep! I had accidentally ripped the pocket of my jeans. oops! I went over to my friend Heathers house who lives by Kelli and she let me use a long sweater wrap jacket :o) Then, we drove together to the shower :o) How silly!