Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone! We hope you've all been enjoying your day - we sure have! We slept in, had waffles for breakfast, went out for ice cream, and had some trick-or-treaters stop by. The management for our apartment building sent a memo out this week, and it said to tape a piece of candy to your door if you wanted children in the building to knock and trick-or-treat at your apartment. Of course, we wanted to give out candy! We saw infant twins dressed as two peas in a pod, a little baby dressed as a lion, a one-year-old dressed as a flower and a toddler dressed as Snow White - everyone looked so cute, and their parents seemed to be having fun!

Although Evan and I don't have costumes for tonight, we're still going to head down to Harbor East. We have reservations at Talara (the place I have that gift card to) for 8:30, and we're excited for a free meal and drinks courtesy of Urbanite.

Have a fun and safe Halloween night!

PumpkinFest '09

Today was magnificent! Evan and I went to Butler's Orchard - about an hour west of Baltimore. The drive there was beautiful with all the leaves changing colors. It was PumpkinFest at the orchard, and there was so many people! A lot of the festival was catered to children, but we still had a blast - young at heart, right?! The weather was beautiful - we couldn't have picked a better autumn day - mid 60s, sunny and no wind! We went on a hay-rack ride and picked out a pumpkin for our apartment - our first pumpkin together! We had caramel apples, pumpkin pie, found our way through a cornfield maze and just enjoyed experiencing the fall season to the fullest.

We went grocery shopping afterward, as we always do on Sundays. I bought an apple spice bread mix from Trader Joe's, and it is baking as I type this. The aroma is wonderful - can't wait to finish off this fall day with freshly-baked bread! I'll be sure to post a picture when it's done.

Hope you have enjoyed your weekend!

Chicken Enchilada Soup - It's a Winner!

Ok, so the Urbanite staff is quite small - 16 or 17 employees. Our publisher feels strongly about building relationships with one another through quality bonding time. This is why we have Friday Happy Hours and birthday celebrations each month. Also, we have a program called "Random Acts of Fun." Through this, a staff member can plan and execute a fun event for our office and then be rewarded with a prize. Well, last week our production coordinator and marketing assistant planned a Soup-Off competition. Of course, I entered...and WON! :) I made a Chicken Enchilada Soup, and it was divine! I took it in a pretty hip, stainless-steel crock pot that we received as a wedding gift. Everyone was amazed at my crock pot - everyone else brought their soup in tupperware. Maybe crock pots aren't popular out here in the East. So either it was the crock pot or my soup that won it for me - either way, I won a $25 gift card to a bar/lounge in downtown Baltimore. Yay!

This past weekend, Evan and I house/dog-sat for a couple who lives in Elkridge (about 15 minutes from Baltimore). Sarah and David were heading down to Florida for the Gators' game, and asked us to house/dog-sit. It was so much fun to "play house" for the weekend! Their dog, Albert, is so cute. We really enjoyed seeing a glimpse of what the future may hold for us, once we can get past apartment living! I took some pictures of Albert, that I'll be sure to post soon!

Welcome to the world, Garrison Dale Mueller!

This post will be, by far, the most important post on this blog. WE HAVE A NEPHEW!!

Ok, not just a nephew - we have a healthy, adorable nephew, and his name is Garrison Dale Mueller. He was born on October 4 at 8:16 p.m., weighing 8 lbs. even and reaching 20 1/2 inches long!

We are so happy for Ashley and Nathan! They are going to make the absolute best parents! My parents are SO excited to be grandparents - they're already talking up a storm about the little guy. Our family is so blessed.

Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, whose books include Blink, The Tipping Point and Outliers, was a speaker for a symposium series presented by Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday night. Evan is a huge fan and has read all of his books, and I have read part of Blink (for a class-haha), so we were both very excited to hear him. He is such an interesting person and has quite the quirky personality. He spoke about the financial crisis and how he believes it was a situation where too much information/knowledge/expertise back-fired on the people in charge. He explained that sometimes a person can know too much, and they become over-confident and aren't able to really look at a situation or a change. It is this over-confidence that can get people into trouble. He had a good line about incompetent people and over-confident people - imcompetent people are never in the position to royally screw up. It's the smart people that have that power. "Incompetent people irritate me; over-confident people scare me," was the line he used.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards, will be the next speaker of the series on October 21. Also, Michael Steele, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, will be speaking in November alongside Aaron Schock (a Congressman from Illinois, who is the youngest member of Congress. As most of you know, these two people having different political views than we do. That being said, we're open to hearing other people's opinions. Sometimes doing that just reinforces what you believe in. :)

Woohoo...it's the weekend! I'll be leaving the office soon (shh!-I took a quick break!) and am looking forward to a relaxing weekend. Evan has a test next week that he'll be studying for, so please keep him in your thoughts as he prepares to take his first test in grad school!