What We Did This Weekend: Murder Mystery and Spooky Mummy Pizzas

Some friends hosted a Murder Mystery at their house on Friday and invited us. Check out this incredibly detailed invitation they made (very impressive). Unfortunately, unlike last year (you can skip ahead to the 3:40 mark for the good stuff), I didn't have enough time to perfect my character's accent. But at least we were able to come up with some good costumes.


Brookie borrowed some cool clothes from a coworker and came up with a very "Rita Skeeter-esque" outfit. The spectacles she's wearing only cost one dollar. However, proving that you really do get what you pay for, only one lens was included.

Just hours prior to the party, I finally had a good idea on how I could throw together a costume for my character, the Duke. I pinned some of the awards I'd won in my youth to my suit to make it look like I was a highly decorated member of a regal army. Some of the medals on my chest were the Eagle Scout, 1996 5A State Baseball Champions, NJCAA 2002 Conference Baseball Champions, Duty to God, and a very cool looking keychain from Spain that I made look like a medal. Around my neck I had my medal of valor(-dictorian), and for a sash, I used my old Boy Scouts merit badge sash (do the Boy Scouts call it a sash?). The entire thing was accented by a large black belt I stole from Brookie's closet and wore on the outside of my suit. And, of course, I had my sword at my side the whole time. I was so glad that I was finally able to use all of that stuff I won that has been sitting in a box downstairs since high school.

We had a really fun time and I'm happy to report that we caught the murderer.

Saturday was Halloween. Since we like seeing kids in costume, we were excited to maybe have a few trick-or-treaters come to our door that night. Fortunately, we only had one fewer trick-or-treater this year than last year. Unfortunately, last year we only had one total. Oh well. One day we'll live in an actual neighborhood. But by then, trick-or-treating may be entirely replaced by truck-or-treating and all of the other "safer" alternatives. It's a miracle we all survived our childhoods.

We were very excited for our dinner on Halloween night. We made Spooky Mummy Pizzas. Yum. I love pizza, even the non-spooky variety.* We also love making our own pizza. A while back we found this recipe for an awesome pizza sauce, and we've used it ever since. And now, after trying a new pizza dough recipe Saturday, we've found an excellent crust solution. The only drawback being that you need to plan ahead because it needs to "rise" in the refrigerator over night (how is it that "refrigerator" and "fridge" are both spelled correctly? Shouldn't they both have a "d" or both leave it out?). But the results were very, very tasty. We also really liked using provolone cheese instead of mozzarella this time.

*Funny story: When Brookie and I were dating at BYU, she was speaking with her mom on the phone, telling her about me. Her mom was trying to get to know me, and was asking Brookie questions to ask me. One of them went like this:

Brookie-"My mom wants to know what your favorite flavor is; hers is grape." Todd-(after pausing to decide) "Mine is pepperoni."

My answer probably told her more about me than just my favorite flavor.



Our pizzas ended up looking like ancient Egyptian burn victims after cooking them, but they tasted SO good. My pizza had a layer of pepperoni beneath the cheese and two more slices under its olive eyes.



Sunday night some friends had us over to their place for fondue. It was the chocolate, dessert version of fondue, and we were dipping chunks of rice krispy treats, chocolate chip cookie dough, chocolate chip cookies, marshmallows, apples, pineapple, and Brookie and I brought some dried cherries and cranberries. It was very tasty. However, despite my longing desire to gorge myself with chocolate chip cookies and rice krispy treats covered in melted semi-sweet chocolate, I stuck mostly to the apples and dried fruit. Moderation is a good thing.

And that's what we did this weekend!

Go to the board!

What We Did This Weekend:Temple Trip with Friends

So by now you should all come to expect the monthly blog about our trip to the temple. For the most part, this blog is about our weekend adventures (since our weekly adventures are light on the "adventure" and heavy on the "weak"), and when the closest temple requires over seven hours of driving, it naturally becomes the highlight of that weekend.


We've made the offer many times to many friends. If you haven't heard the offer, here it is: We'll gladly watch your kids while you attend a session in the temple if you hang around and wait for us. Better yet, if there's room, we could even carpool.

Many of our friends find it difficult to attend the temple because they don't know what to do with their kids. They feel it would be a burden to leave them home with family and friends for almost ten hours. But you don't have to leave them home. Bring them along. Come with us and we'll play with them while you're in the temple. And then when you're through and we're in the temple, you'll have a great chance to teach your kids about the temple and to help them come to love the house of the Lord and to look forward to the day when they can enter and serve as well.

This weekend some of our friends finally took us up on the offer and it was awesome. Since our ward's "Halloween Party" was Saturday evening, we had two choices: We could either get up really, really early Saturday morning to be able to be back in time, or we could spend Friday night in St. Louis at a hotel. The great deals at Hotwire.com made the sleep-over option possible.

After work on Friday our friends picked us up. We threw our bags in the back of their vehicle and hopped in the back seat next to their little baby girl who would be our tiny travel companion for the trip. We stopped for dinner in Columbia at Applebee's (you already know what we had), then continued on to the Holiday Inn near the airport in the St. Louis area. By the time we arrived it was pretty late, so we went straight to bed.

The funny thing about teaching early morning seminary is that 6:30am is considered sleeping in. So, after "sleeping in" we ran down to the fitness center for a quick 30 minutes of cardio (I know. We're freaks.) before showering and meeting up with our friends at 7:30am.

The temple was only about 15 minutes from our hotel. Our friends went in for the 8:15 session and left us with their daughter who, lucky for us, was awake and as cute as ever. It was just us in the waiting area next to the Distribution Center for the first 30 minutes. Then other people starting to show up. The longer we were there, the more the kids in the room began to outnumber the adults. Our friends were back from their session in no time, and then we took our turn in the temple.

Two stops on our way home (St. Louis Bread Company for lunch and the Outlet mall in Warrenton for shopping) put us back in Kansas City by about 6:40pm. The ward party started at 6:00pm, so Brookie and I put on our Apple Genius costumes, put our trunk-or-treat candy in a bowl and left for the Stake Center. We got there in time for dinner, some friendly visiting, and the trunk-or-treat. We were too busy this year to be able to do anything fun with our trunk, but we had a fun time regardless. As usual, there was a chili contest and our favorite turned out to be the winner of "Most Healthy" (go figure), and it wasn't even chili. It was taco soup. And we want the recipe.

And that's what we did this weekend!

Adoption Update: New Us = New Collage

At the suggestion of our adoption agent, we've created a new and improved adoption collage. Our first collage was pretty good. At the time, I thought it was brillant (you know, because (a) I'm conceited like that, and (b) it was pretty good).


Then two things happened. First, a colleague of mine had a tremendous idea for her own adoption collage and hired me to bring her vision to reality. Ever since I created that collage, Brookie and I have been jealous that we hadn't thought of the idea first and used it for ourselves.*

*And on a very happy side note, our friends were just blessed with a brand new baby boy last week. Their case worker called last Tuesday night and they took the baby home Wednesday morning. So yeah. It could literally happen at any time. Congratulations to them! I'm super happy that my collage played a tiny part in their story.


And, second, all of the pictures we used in the first collage were either five years old, or we were fat pleasantly plump.

We're much more excited about our second adoption collage. This one was created by hand (the previous version was done in Photoshop), and I don't think it looks as great on-screen as it does in real life, so hopefully you get the idea. There are tons of nuggets about us on every "shelf" of our new collage. Click on the pictures below for the hi-res versions and you'll be able to pick out some details, like significant book titles and such. Hope you like it. Actually, what we really hope is that someone out there thinking about adoption likes it.

Front and back:

What We Did This Weekend: Cookies with Todd and Brookie

It turns out that a half cup of shortening, one cup of sugar, an egg, a half cup of milk, a teaspoon of vanilla, three and a half cups of flour, half a teaspoon of salt, and four teaspoons of baking powder make some pretty darn good sugar cookies. Add some brightly colored icing with a hint of almond extract and they are even better. But since we wanted to take this classic cookie recipe up a notch, we added seven energetic kids to the mix by hosting the first annual "Cookies with Todd and Brookie."

We had the idea for this little event about a month ago. We wanted to steal our friends' kids for a little while on a Saturday morning. So this Saturday was the day we chose to have all of our little friends over to help us make and decorate cookies.

By the time the first kids arrived Saturday morning, we had already made the cookie dough and the icing, and had baked about 18 cookies. We set up some extra chairs around our dining table and spread out a table cloth in case things got messy. As our pint-sized pals arrived, we said goodbye to their parents and gave them a seat at our table and a softball-sized mound of cookie dough. A few of them brought their own cookie cutters, but we had also provided 40 Halloween- and Fall-themed shapes of our own that were spread out for them to use.

I must admit that at first I was trying to help them to roll out the dough to about a 1/4 inch thickness, as the recipe suggests. But it didn't take long before we just let them pound away at their own dough and do it themselves. Soon there were all sorts of misshapen ghosts and pumpkins (I think) on our cookie sheets ready to be baked at 400° for 5-7 minutes.

Having thought ahead a bit, we had baked some cookies beforehand so that they would have something to decorate while their own cookies were in the oven. It worked out beautifully, as did our idea of placing icing in some disposable paper bowls and giving them popsicle sticks for spreading the icing on their cookies. There were drips of bright green, orange, and purple icing all over our vinyl tablecloth, as well as orange and black sprinkles virtually everywhere. But everyone was having a great time, so who cares about a little mess?

Most of the kids were able to focus long enough to decorate 4-5 cookies that we put on a plate for them to take home. But I'd estimate, judging from some of the pictures we took, that for every two cookies they decorated they ate at least one in between (maybe two or three).

By the end of the party, we had them all outside playing "Red Light, Green Light" in our backyard. And, just like with the cookies, some of them grasped the concept, and some of them didn't, but were having fun just the same.

When their parents came back to pick them up, we got everyone together and took pictures on the front porch. One of the picture takers yelled, "Say cheese!" But from the looks of things, they must have been yelling "QUESOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" because there were no "EE" sounds being made at all. I blame Dora.

And that's what we did this weekend! Here's a quick slideshow:




Go to the board!

What We Did This Weekend: Stroke of Genius

This weekend we attended a tremendously fun pre-halloween/birthday party at our friends' house in Lee's Summit. There were more than a dozen of our friends there and, of course, all of their kids (which increases the fun exponentially). We carved pumpkins, had a cake walk, braved the spook alley in the basement, helped the kids fish for candy and prizes, and shared all sorts of treats and goodies, including the "blood" punch below.


It happens most every year. At sometime during the summer, Brookie and I start thinking ahead to Halloween and planning our costumes. This year our big idea was for me to dress up as a Kansas City Monarch and Brookie was going to be a Rockford Peach. But since we didn't do anything about it, we ended up finding some cheap, last-minute costumes instead.

In 2006 we were going to be Mario and Luigi (which I still think is a great idea for us), but couldn't find what we needed. That year, our last-minute solution was to be an email and an attachment. I thought it was clever, however, that's probably only because I'm a geek.


In 2007 I don't remember what we were going to be, but I remember that we had trouble coming up with anything. Then we finally decided on something kind of straight out of Guys and Dolls. I guess I was supposed to be a ganster-type scoundrel, and Brookie was a flapper girl. At the time we thought this turned out great. But looking back... Well... Did I mention that we've lost a little weight recently?

Last year was 2008 and yet again we needed a quick costume idea in time for the Ward Halloween Party (and, since that's what it is, that's what I'll call it... I don't care how many posters at church say it's a "Fall Festival" or some other innocuous title– it's a Halloween Party. Deal with it). Amazingly enough, the party was on a Friday and we still hadn't decided on a costume when Brookie got home from work. Then, with no time to spare, we decided to be a pair of Newsies, using stuff we had in our closet and some newspapers we picked up on the way to the church.


This year, like I said, we had some grand plans of sweet, award-winning caliber costumes. But, come Saturday morning, the morning of the "carnival" at our friends' house and the first time we would need to dress up this year, we had nothing. Then, Brookie had a stroke of genius (literally) on our way to the gym. "We could be Mac Geniuses*," she said. It was so simple. And, quite honestly, so us. We picked up a few blue t-shirts at Michael's, and I whipped up some copy-cattish graphics and printed out our name tags and some iron-ons for our "uniforms."


*It was apparent at the party that many of our friends have the unfortunate distinction of never visiting an Apple retail store, and thus, had no idea what a Mac Genius is. If you are in the same boat, do yourself a favor and make a point to visit one soon. In the meantime, here's a video explaining the role of Mac Geniuses. And here's a funnier video. And here's one more, just because we love you.

And that's what we did this weekend!

Go to the board!