Joan Ellen Cornell

Lola with a necktie :)

Perfect Halloween sunset (from my back deck)

Friday night and last night we bought String Cheese's Hulaween shows to watch live on our tv...the next best thing to being there :) Here's some pics, and a video! Watch it...it's almost my fav Cheese song!

Tonight, some Umphrey's live via iClips. Couch touring this weekend...hehe.

I'm feeling MUCH better today. My mouth isn't really sore anymore, but I still can't eat too much on that side of my mouth yet. Speaking of eating, I made this really awesome Crock Pot Chicken today...i'll post the recipe in a few.

Had a pretty productive day. I went with Lily, Katie and Laura Lee to this Halloween thing that Evergreen hosted for kids. It was in this museum a few mins from my house. Each room had different stuff...crafts, snacks, and spooky movies. So many little kids in cute costumes :)

I did my hair today, haha (still kinda wet in this pic). I love french braids.

Jeremy "tanning" on the back deck, haha.

Now I will go watch some String Cheese Incident live on iclips with my bf :) Wish we could be there instead of watching it on tv (but I suppose our 73 inch tv is probably the next best thing anyways...)

Crock Pot Chicken

SOOOO delicious, let me tell you! And super easy (perfect for me! haha).

Ingredients:

4 boneless chicken breasts

White onion

8oz package of cream cheese

1 can black beans

1 can corn

Chili powder

Cilantro

Fajita Seasoning

15oz jar of salsa

1. Put frozen chicken breasts into crock pot.

2. Chop 1/4 of onion.

3. Mix into crock pot corn (drained), black beans (drained), salsa, onion, fajita seasoning, chili powder and cilantro. I don't really measure things often, so I just threw in the seasonings.

4. Cook for 4-5 hours on high.

5. Take out chicken and shred it, then mix back into crock pot.

6. Put cream cheese on top.

7. Cook for another 20 minutes.

8. Stir and serve :)

I also made rice and ended up using the crock pot chicken for burritos. SO DELICIOUS, and plenty for leftovers :) You could also not shred the chicken and just put each breast over rice and spoon the mixture from the crock pot over the top.

Such a easy recipe and makes your house smell goooood all day :)

I spent pretty much my entire day yesterday watching tutorial videos for the software that came with the BambooCraft Writing Tablet (there are 26 videos and some are over 20 mins long each...I got through 17 yesterday). Pretty interesting stuff. Except the ONE thing that I want to know how to do, I can't figure out how to freakin' do. I want to be able to write in my own handwriting the title of my blog (to put on the header of the blog and on my pics I post on my blog)...and I want it to be without a backround, so just the letters that I can put in place of the words on the header I already have. But I can't for the life of me figure it out. I also realized how hard it is to write something on there and have it be straight and exactly how I like it. Haha. I probably wrote "Expecting the Unknown..." a hundred times yesterday, without ONE version that I REALLY REALLY liked and was happy with. But if anyone can tell me how I can make my handwriting into a file of just the letters, PLEASE HELP ME! :)

HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY.

for real.

So i've had this chipped molar for a while now but it never bothered me, so I kept putting off going to the dentist, of course. Well, in the past few weeks, it's woken me up in the middle of the night throbbing...but then in the morning it would be gone, so I kept putting it off. Well, last night around 3am I woke up with it throbbing again, like never before. And I couldn't go back to sleep. And it continued to feel worse and worse. I tried to sleep on ice in a ziploc (so annoying). Didn't work. I tried to put warm towels on my cheek. Didn't work. So at 8am when the dentist office opened I called and made appointment. Thankfully they could get me in today...at 2:30. But that still meant I had another 6 1/2 MISERABLE hours to deal with. Ahhhhh! HELL.

They did a couple of x-rays on that tooth (after phone calls to my OB making sure that was ok)...and what do you know....ROOT CANAL. So she decides to show broke, pregnant, emotional, in pain me a HUGE bill. So there I was, bawling in the dentist's office. Bawling because it's pay up or suffer in tremendous pain forever. I eventually got the money part figured out, and then had to call my OB again to make sure a freakin' root canal was ok. She talked to the dentist and ok'ed that as well- even is going to let me take Vicodin if I need it (so far so good, gonna hold out until/if completely necessary). So they proceeded to give me a total of 6 shots of Novocaine in the next 15 minutes. Half of my face was numb and felt HUGE (it is not uncommon for me to need extra number, I always end up feeling the drilling 2 mins into it, unfortunately).

Lola and Lucy's first collars! :)

A little grammar lesson for my fellow bloggers :)

(I happened to minor in English, and as weird as it may sound, I LOVED grammar and spelling. Everything about them.)

Throughout my childhood, into my teens, I was corrected by my father for the misuse of grammar in my vocabulary. I was raised to believe that you would be perceived as a smarter person if you spoke correctly. I mean, it does make sense- if you are raised in the United States, you should know the language. Flat out. So I did just that...I guess because I wanted people to think I was smart :) Now when I hear people speak incorrectly, it takes all that I have to not correct them. It's not because I think i'm a smarter person than them, I just want them to sound smart too I guess- i'm not sure. I want to save them from sounding like a dumbass in the future. Haha.

Here's some friendly, somewhat funny advice I found on commonly misspelled words. Maybe it will help someone...maybe it won't. But I find it very necessary. We don't always have spell check to help us out (although it does help when you are half asleep and blogging, typing away at top speed to get all of the thoughts out)...but spell check is no miracle worker. Especially when it comes to some of these words. It can't always know how you meant to use a certain word...

Found on TheOatmeal.com. Check out their website...there are a ton of entertaining things to read :)

Jeremy just took off for Kansas again...to finish the heating in his Aunt's house. I decided to stay home this time. His parents will be in Manhattan, KS visiting his younger brother, Jared (who lives in Hilton Head Island, SC now, but is back in his college town visiting for homecoming weekend)...so there would have been nothing for me to do while Jeremy was working anyways.

I am going back home to visit my family on November 7th-13th. It is kind of a last minute trip to see my Grandpa who has Cancer :( I am really happy to be able to get to see my family though...all of them :) I will spend the first few nights at my aunt and uncle's house in Chicago and then the last half of the trip with my parent's, sister and nephew in Rockford.

I guess I feel like I need to forgive myself for moving so far away from all of my family. Sometimes I feel guilty when I think about what i'm missing back home. I need to think about the fact that I am the kind of person who NEEDS change, and that's why I moved to Colorado. I needed change, I needed to be in a new place and meet new people and experience new things.

While I know I am missing things at home, I need to remember how much I could be missing if I never would have moved away...