The never ending adventures of Mario and Luigi

Hey all! This is what our October has looked like for us! Hope you enjoy your adventures as much as we have enjoyed ours!

Halloween Funness!

Our festive door decoration = $1.20 baby!!
 I found a picture online and started cutting

Our Halloween costumes Luigi and Mario respectively.
We went to DI and found a doll with cool hair...
which we proceeded to cut off for our mustaches. 

Wanna bite? Our contribution to our FHE Halloween party:
witches fingers!

Bishop Whittison as Beckham
and his wife as...cuteness 

The Hebdons came as
science nerd and kitty cat :)

Tasty Treats :)
Here are some recipes that I've made/ finally mastered! It just happened to be October that it happened :)

It took about 5 different times, but I've got it down now :)

Ingredients

***Only makes 12. This recipes does great when it's doubled, but you can't put it in your bread machine. That's okay because you can just throw all the ingredients in a bowl and mix it up, just make sure your fluids are warm (helps the yeast out). It doesn't call for it, but I've found it works better if you let the yeast rise with a little water and sugar for 10 mins before you add everything else.

1/4 cup warm water

• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1/2 (3.4 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
• 1 cup warm milk
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups bread flour
• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 
  
• Cinnamon filling 
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup chopped pecans
•  
• Frosting
• 1/2 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened *** I like a little less then half
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar *** aka powdered sugar. I like to put a little granulated sugar as well
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons milk

Directions

1. In the pan of your bread machine, combine water, melted butter, vanilla pudding, warm milk, egg, 1 tablespoon sugar, salt, bread flour and yeast. Set machine to Dough cycle; press Start.
2. When Dough cycle has finished, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll into a 17x10 inch rectangle. Spread with softened butter. In a small bowl, stir together brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans. Sprinkle brown sugar mixture over dough.
3. Roll up dough, beginning with long side. Slice into 16 one inch slices and place in 9x13 buttered pan. Let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
4. Bake in preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes. While rolls bake, stir together cream cheese, softened butter, confectioners' sugar, vanilla and milk. Remove rolls from oven and top with frosting.

***They don't say this, but I've found they work out better if you let them rise for about 30-40 mins before you put them in the oven

Pepper Pasta

This is pepper pasta. A friend who served his mission in Italy showed it to us. 

Sauce:
3-4 red, or yellow bell peppers
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 bit of olive oil
Bit of onion, salt, pepper, oregano for taste

Simmer till peppers are soft (30 ish minutes)

Chicken:
Take raw chicken (mine was frozen, doesn't matter) spice it up with all things Italian (more than you think you should because the juice will soak it up. Put it in a glass pan, cover with tin foil and put it in 350 oven till cooked (about 20-30 mins). It comes out super moist mmmmmmm!

Pasta:
I really like this with bow tie, but any will do. I like to put a dash of olive oil and oregano in there for taste.

Homemade Bagels

3 C. flour

4 T. sugar

3/4 C. warm water

1 tsp. salt

1 T. yeast

3 T. cooking oil

4 Quarts boiling water

Mix flour, salt, and 2 T. sugar in bowl. Dissolve yeast in 1/4 C. warm water and add to the flour mixture. Add the oil to the remaining water and stir into the flour mixture. Feel free to add cinnamon-sugar, raisins, or anything else to change the variety of bagel. Knead for 5 minutes. Place dough into greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled. Punch the dough down and roll out to about 3/4 inches thick. Cut out 12 circles and then cut out the middle so you have created a bagel shape.Add the remaining 2 T. sugar to the boiling water. Drop the bagels into the water one at a time, cooing 2 or 3 at once. Simmer the bagels for 1 minute from the time they rise to teh surface of the water. Then lift them out of the water with a fork an dplace them on a towel, pat dry and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Let them cool for about 5 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-35 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

Outdoor Adventures! 
I have been wanting to train as a rock climbing instructor for sometime now. This was our first training and I got to take Austin along with me! It was a blast!

Awesome view with a little Austin on the right

This was a medium hard climb....I got my butt handed to me.
 Oh, the facts of being out of shape!

Austin's long legs are a big advantage!

Beautiful way to end the day!

"Autumn: the year's last, loveliest smile"

I love fall. I love the chipper brisk air, the sweaters, raking leaves, pressing apples, finally eating all the stuff in the garden, the orange red yellow and brown. This has been the first fall in 4 years that I haven't been super stressed, super busy working, or super engaged so I am drinking it in!! When I'm driving around I look out my window amazed...how could I have missed this whole season for so long!?! I love change. I love when the frigid winter melts into a brand new spring, when suffocating heat succumbs to a brisk fall air which then builds till snowmen grace the front lawn (or in the case of the Bowen household, snowmen on the roof tops).

Seasons represent a lot to me. They remind me of the variety I get to experience in life. That sometimes I'm am in the summer of my life and everything is care free, then without a moments notice those times can jerk into icy winters. But to remember that spring will always come sooner or later. The important thing is to enjoy the moments I am in now whether it be the "winter" or "summer" season of my life. Or like Robert Braut says:

"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were big things"

On to the more exciting things! My family decided to get some family pictures before Ben leaves on his mission (which reminds me again of how fast life moves!). My brother (er, technically "in-law") Josh did an excellent job! He gets better and better the longer he does photography. If you want to see more of his amazingness click here!

Here are our lovely faces:

Ben, Dad, Josh, Austin, Michelle, Mom, Jenn, Beck, me

Josh was just messing around with lighting and snapped this. I thought it was a keeper

What a fine lookin' man!

I was thinking of sending it out as our Chirstmas card :)

We were going for a good med school application head shot. I think we got it!

Sweet Becky :) I don't know why we took this other than she looked good!

To infinity and beyond!!

And finally our missionary :) Daaaaang! He has become one handsome fellow!

I can't believe it's time for Ben to go on a mission. While growing up people thought Ben and I were twins. We both had brown hair, brown eyes, and because I was small for my age Ben (3 1/2 years younger) and I were about the same size. We were buds :) We played horses, loins, pretended we were Swiss Family Robinson in our tree house, and played battleship by throwing dirt clods at each other from over the corn rows (not the smartest of ideas). Ben would sleep with me when he got scared at night (he might not remember that, he was pretty little), and he would always try to scare me by pretending to be the bubble gum monster (an old TV show...it was really scary for a 7 year old!).We would come up with brilliant plans like cutting a hole in the wall between our rooms so we could have a "secret" passageway between rooms. The plans was that this hole would enable unlimited playing time after lights out. Dad shot that idea down pretty quickly :) We were always trying to come up with secret things: secret clubhouse behind the china hutch, secret hiding places between the three pine trees out front, secret handshakes, secret languages and codes. We had some good fun growing up :)
We sort of halted communication for a couple of years, but now that we are both out of the land of teenagers it has been great to have him back! And now he is leaving :( Ben will be a wonderful missionary. California will be lucky to have him. But I'm sure going to miss him while he is gone. I guess having him gone is winter, but being a missionary is summer? Good luck, Elder Bowen :)