in our spare time

We had some fun with photobooth last week...

Working hard or hardly working

It's been nearly two weeks since we've last updated you on our lives, so here is the recent update...
For those who haven't heard, Greg and I are now both working two jobs which has been keeping us pretty dang busy. Greg is still working as a valet on weekends and during the week has been rocking it at In'n'Out! He has worked the dining room, cashier, produce prep, fry station, and drive through window. The hours at In'n'Out aren't exactly what we were hoping for as he's closing at 1:30am three nights a week now :/ However, we are very blessed that he got the job and he's been working so hard that he's already been moved up a level and got a small pay raise! Way to go Gregors! I have to admit that he does come home smelling of grease and sweat, but how I love it when he wakes me up by snuggling into bed at 2 in the morning, finally home.
My second job, I have started at Stacked restaurant in Cerritos, not too far from Long Beach. This has been a really fun experience for me to be trained for a brand new opening eatery! I am on the "hospitality team" - meaning my job can consist of hosting, service assisting and being a concierge of sorts. The thing with this restaurant is that it does not require the guests to be on a servers time frame. All of the menu ordering and payment is actually done through an iPad that is placed on each table. Most people I've told this to have jumped to the conclusion that machines are replacing humans! But, we really have been taught to help and serve our guests as a team which makes for a little lighter work load and happier customers honestly. We are able to interact and assist more than we could if we had the responsibility of writing down every order, entering it into the system, and then bringing food. It eliminates much of the unnecessary waiting most of us do at any other restaurant. Don't believe me? Come give it a try when you have the chance! :)
We have had to figure out a few extra things with these few extra jobs - like who gets the car when, and who gets picked up where, and how do we make time longer than a 30min drive between jobs in each day for quality time with each other?
The great thing is that we both know we each want that time together and can't wait to be home with each other. That assurance makes it a little easier to do our jobs well.

New Halloween Traditions

Greg is excited!

 Halloween, in the past, was always an opportunity to carry out tradition in my family. Well, we'll really take anything and turn it in to a yearly tradition... New Year's Day Pismo Beach walks, birthday breakfasts in bed, Easter morning egg hunts, cinnamon bread toast on Christmas morning, and pumpkin carving on Halloween!! I have found that I am more into traditions than I thought, because Greg doesn't really care whether we do the same thing as last year or not :P But, we always have fun either continuing or making up different traditions for ourselves. This year, Greg and I get to make up any tradition we want, which is pretty cool, right?!
So this was our first Halloween celebration as a married couple.
In the last post you saw we had bought our pumpkin already. Until a couple days ago it had been donning our coffee table quite nicely. But we figured it was time to turn it into a more enhanced piece of art. I got us a little carving kit, we laid the newspaper out on our back patio (if I can call the strip of cement a back patio), and got to work!

Our tools all set to go

 Greg cut open the top and we both gutted our little pumpkin out.

Separating pumpkin guts and seeds...ewwww.

 We drew a nice face on him after coming to the joint agreement of goofy face over scary face this year.

Eyebrows :)

Here goes the carving!

Gerald, the finished product of our creativity!

 We were pretty proud of the result to say the least! We put Gerald on our kitchen table for a couple of  days, but once we could see the mold he was kicked outside. Luckily that day was Halloween!

Making pumpkin soup together (sorry to disappoint but not made with our real pumpkin).

 The pumpkin soup turned out pretty good. It was the first time ever making it and now we know what adjustments to make for next time :) But it was a tasty harvest time dinner with steamed veggies and cornbread.

Roasted pumpkin seeds were delicious! Greg finished this bowl that night :P

Us on Halloween night - Princess Leia and Han Solo

For our Halloween costumes Greg and I worked to collect pieces of our outfits all the way up to the 31st! But we finally found him that black vest and red-orange duct tape. We had a 40 minute struggle with my hairdo, but Greg was incredibly patient and finally helped me to do my hair really well. A youtube video told us to wrap each section of hair around a tube sock, then pin it in a circle. It was quite the hair party. I was pretty impressed with Greg's hair-styling skills after I told him to let the perfectionist in him chill out :P
The Star Wars theme was Greg's idea I think. We have been trying to watch straight through different movie series and we had started with the Star Wars six. That was all the inspiration we needed!
We had a great time with a couple from our Bible study, who live around the corner from us. We passed out candy, ate some candy, drank hot chocolate and watched some more pumpkin carving outside together with the neighbors. It was a really great time. We then, drove to Huntington Beach to the parents' house of Greg's friend Andy. Surrounding the bonfire pit on their front porch we passed the rest of the night away eating, drinking, and laughing with their family. It was a great night and a great first "holiday" being married :) We might try this again next year...