Mini muffins will be the death of me

I was gunna put these pictures in the fall post but decided they needed their own post. These muffins were that good. I made them twice in one week. Dustin and I consumed 24 Sweet Onion Mini Muffins in one night. One night of pure bliss.

Pretend this is a picture of chopped walnuts and not a picture of chopped walnuts and chopped pecans because I ran out of walnuts. Pretend these pictures aren't from the second batch of mini muffins I made because we ate the first batch too quickly. No time for pictures. There are walnuts in these muffins which we weren't too sure about until we tasted one.

First batch had yellow onions which turned out to make a far superior muffin than the second batch with red onions.

Sweet amazing deliciousness. I actually turned down dessert one night just so I could shove more muffins into my face. I chose onions over sugar! Am I turning into Dustin??? Scary.

Eat it. You want to.

*Sigh* Now I'm considering making these for dinner. Nothing else. Just mini muffins.

I'd happily email anyone the recipe so you can have the amazing mini muffin experience for yourself.

It's the little things

It's the little things that Dustin does that makes me the happiest bitch in the world. Like when I come home from work to find the floors swept or the dishwasher unloaded.

Or when I wake up in the morning on the first day of my period, doubled over in cramping pain to find this, on my bathroom sink. Just so you know, Snickers is the food of choice during that time of the month. Snickers and burritos actually.

Things like this make me overlook the farting and laziness. It makes me overlook the overwhelming, vomit inducing, morning breath that I get exposed to every single morning. If we had a song it would be this one that he had set up on the computer. Lost Without Each Other. Hanson. Of course. I named one of my stories for Dustin after this song also.

How many men deal with their ladies' period issues THIS well??

Tara gets excited!

Fall is here! I don't know about officially or anything, but to me it's already fall. And it has been since September first. I get a little excited at the idea of fall. Fall means that Christmas is right around the corner. And Christmas is the most exciting time of the year for us. And lucky for us, it happens every single year! I love consistency.

Last Christmas was lame. We spent it in a hotel, watching season 2 of 30 Rock and eating Cup of Noodles. Oh, and I had a random allergy attack where I would completely exhaust myself by sneezing 57 times in a row. It totally sucked. We essentially didn't even have a Christmas. We were too busy planning to move here. No time for baking or decorating. Nothing fun.

So this year we plan on having a super duper Christmas extravaganza! Operation BEST CHRISTMAS EVER! That's probably why I'm extra amped this year for the holidays. We already started inviting people over for Thanksgiving at our place. We decided to have a big bad potluck which should be delightful. A friend of ours is gunna deep fry a turkey for us since I don't make turkey. We prefer ham so I normally just wouldn't bother.

For Halloween we'll be signing up to take some local Japanese kids trick-or-treating on base. I'm super excited for that, of course. People don't really celebrate Halloween too much here. You would think they would since they jump at the chance to dress up for everything else. Dustin and I are going as Mickey and Minnie. We already ordered our over priced costumes. Hopefully, they'll come in on time. We wanted a Pluto costume for Apollo but apparently none exist. What's the deal with that?? They have Goofy costumes for dogs but Goofy wasn't Mickey and Minnie's pet. I suppose we'll just have him be himself since he's super cute anyways.

Work has been busy for both of us. We don't like it but it makes our days off and time spent together that much more special. Or whatever.

Here's a few shots of what the fall season means to me.

Baking! Because I don't bake the rest of the year.

Pumpkin bread. I cannot tell you how good this recipe is. When I was a kid, my mom made this in cute little mini loaf pans and would wrap them up all pretty and give them to friends and family. Now that I'm an adult, I make them normal size and keep them all to myself.

It's actually more like pumpkin pound cake but it says bread on the paper I have so I get away with eating it for breakfast. With apple butter. That's pretty much the best fall treat ever. OR, cut a slice and drizzle caramel sauce on it and sprinkle some pecans over that. Hot damn, I love fall!

If you have seen the Martha Stewart Cookies book then you may recognize this cookie from the cover. Dustin got the book for me for my birthday and this is the first thing I made. I needed to relieve some stress and this recipe totally did the trick.

Ready for this? Chewy Chocolate Chunk Gingerbread. Are you dying inside yet? They taste like Christmas and happy.

I fed some to people at my job and (reluctantly) made Dustin take the rest to his job where they were quickly devoured in a matter of minutes. These cookies are trouble. They made me wanna not leave the house so I could just sit in bed and eat them all day. I debated calling in sick so I could do just that.

Acorn squash, apples, oranges, sweet potatoes and a giant pear without the flash on my camera.

Acorn squash, apples, oranges, sweet potatoes, and a giant pear with the flash. I think I like the first one better. It looked more Autumn-y.

This is the only kind of pear I can find at the commissary. It's Asian and huge.

Asian Twilight book cover? They should change the cover to this. With my face and everything.

It's so fat.

This has nothing to do with fall or the holidays. I just decided to post this so you could all feel sorry for me and send me presents. I would like some MAC makeup brushes please.

Fall also means typhoon season. From August to November I believe. Mostly lots of rain for us. Apollo loves this because it means that after his walks he gets to be rubbed down with a fluffy towel and I honestly don't think there's anything he loves more.

Fall also means Franken Berry cereal. But I don't have a picture of that.

100th Post And a Very Special Lady

100 blog entries is a pretty big deal to me. Even though I could've written way more by this time if I had been a bit more diligent. But I still think people should congratulate me. And I should congratulate anyone who has read all previous 99 entries. So, congrats! I'm glad this blog idea was a good one on my part and I shall continue to keep everyone up to date on our antics and my random thoughts.

It really is fun for me. It also helps that I have so many things to take pictures of here. I just feel the need to share everything with everyone because you have no idea how much I wish you all were here with us. Then you could experience everything for yourselves and realize it is as amazing as I make it out to be.

Once I realized that my 100th post was coming up, I knew right away what I was going to write about to make this blog really special.

About two weeks ago, my friend Michelle's mom passed away. She hadn't been doing well for awhile and Michelle let me know two days before she passed, that she was back in the hospital. She had been in and out of the hospital for the past year or so but I knew that this time it was more serious. Of course, I didn't want to think the worst so I just kept her in my prayers.

The morning I found out, I was getting ready to go to work and decided to quickly check Facebook to see if Michelle had left me any news on her mom's condition. After my computer freezing a few times and me restarting it, I was able to get on literally a minute before I had to walk out the door. That was just enough time to see a comment my friend Kristin left for Michelle about how wonderful her mother was.

I was in complete shock for awhile. No one close to me had ever died before. Well, besides my dog, Sasha but that's something entirely different. It felt very weird that someone I knew and cared about and had done so much for me in the past, could just be gone. Just like that. It still feels very surreal.

That day at work I had to start training one of the new girls. I fought tears back numerous times throughout the day and hated that I hadn't had time to call Michelle or even be sad the way I wanted to be. I ended up having to tell the new girl (Stephanie-who's totally rad by the way) what had happened in case I just lost all control and broke down. I didn't want to freak her out on her first day. Luckily, I was able to (barely) hold it together all day at work.

By the time I was in the car though, after Dustin picked me up, and I started to tell him what happened, I couldn't hold it in anymore. Michelle's mom was such an amazing person. Throughout high school, I spent a lot of my time at Michelle's house. That's where all the sleepovers and VMA parties were. That's the only place I watched scary movies, in the dark, holding hands with Michelle in complete terror, just to almost crap my pants when her parents swung the door open to reveal themselves wearing crazy wigs for God knows what reason.

Her mom cared about all of Michelle's friends as if they were her own. She's sewed my clothes, dyed my hair, and drove us everywhere. Even if it was a concert out of state. Dinner at Michelle's was always a great event for me because Michelle laughs at everything I say and her parents were just so laid back and fun. And man, was Mommy O'Brien sarcastic. Maybe even more than me.

She was extremely creative too. She made clothes like it was nothing. One year, Michelle and I took a "clothing and textiles" class at school and I couldn't believe how hard it was. I still have a pair of Harry Potter pajama pants where the crotch goes down to my knees. I have no idea how I did it. Mommy O'Brien made corsages for 6 of us girls, including Michelle and I, for prom. She used fake flowers and each corsage matched each of our dresses perfectly. They were amazing. I still have mine.

I remember for graduation she made Michelle a scrapbook of high school. A friend of ours was looking through it and said, "This is seriously the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life!" To which I smartly replied, "I don't know...puppies are pretty damn cute." Then Mommy O'Brien smacked me upside the head. It's stories like this that make me laugh and then bring me to start uncontrollably sobbing when I tell them to Dustin.

Here's another one. Michelle was having a birthday party and had invited a bunch of people I had just stopped being friends with. And when I don't like someone, I don't hide it. I arrived after everyone else, I don't remember why. When I knocked on the door Michelle's mom answered and before letting me in said sternly, "I have no-bake cheesecake inside. BE GOOD." And I could tell from her face that she meant for reals. She just knew me that well. And just so you know, I was good. I sat quietly off to the side and waited for my cheesecake.

I have so many things that remind me of Mommy O'Brien. A bracelet she gave me for graduation, recipe printouts, my sewn Breakfast Club shirt, numerous cards from various occasions. What I thought about the most though, was how I didn't make time to go see her when I was in NY in May. She was too sick to go to the wedding but sent a card with money anyways. I never even got to tell her thank you for it. I feel completely guilty about that.

Another thing I kept thinking was, if I was feeling this awful, I couldn't imagine how terrible Michelle must be feeling. And then I would start bawling all over again for my friend's loss. And THEN I would start thinking about how terrible her dad must be feeling. I just could not control my thoughts that day. Or the next day. I wasn't able to call Michelle until two days later when my phone finally decided to work.

I called with the intention of consoling her. It ended up being the other way around. I was crying over the phone and SHE was telling me that it would all be OK. I'm such a horrible friend. But I know her mom would only want us to think about the fun and hilarious times we had with her. And I try to do that but that's what makes it so hard to embrace the fact that she's gone. There won't be anymore fun and hilarious memories to make.

I'm glad Michelle's coping with it and I hope I can deal with it eventually. It seems wrong somehow to try and be happy sometimes but it's getting easier. Mommy O'Brien was such a amazingly caring, funny, strong woman and I'm sure she's touched so many more lives than just myself. I'm glad that Dustin got to meet her at least once so he could see how awesome she was. She's going to be missed by so many people but we were so lucky to have known her.

Did you guys know....?

That if you click on one of my pictures, you can view it much much bigger? I highly suggest you do so. Except with the ones of my face. I wouldn't appriciate that so much.

But the beautiful beach and palm tree pictures? Go for it. You'll be glad you did.

Unless everyone already knew they could do this and have been since the beginning. The pictures from my new camera show up a lot bigger when you click on them, then of the pics from my old poopy camera. Just so you know.

Labor Day Weekend Part 2

Are you ready for the second part of our Santillan Labor Day weekend? My slow computer finally is. It took far too long to load up all these delightful pictures.

So. Day two! Even though we were super duper tired from the eventful day uno, we still dragged our tiny hineys outta bed pretty early. And we started the day off right with a trip to the NCO club for a breakfast buffet. The words "breakfast" and "buffet" in the the same sentence together is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Just add the word "dessert" in there and I'll be the happiest Tara in the land. And the fattest.

But the buffet was pretty impressive for club food and we even went back the following weekend because it was just that good. Plus, they have one of those pianos that play on their own, playing Beatles tunes the entire time.

The drive to Ocean Expo Park was pretty dang long. We'd been wanting to check out the aquarium foreverrrrr so we were pretty psyched. It's the second biggest aquarium in the WORLD, folks! On our own tiny island of all places! And they couldn't have picked a more gorgeous location for it. I'm still shocked and overwhelmed sometimes by how beautiful it is here and how lucky we are to actually get to live here for 4 years.

Ocean Expo Park is a large area way way way up at the northern most part of Okinawa. It includes the aquarium, a lovely beach area, an oceanic museum, an old style Okinawan village, the Tropical Dream Center, and a giant garden. We didn't see as much as we would've liked because it was still super hot and we were already tired when we got there. Above is what you shouldn't use to cool you off when it's super humid. It would've been perfect in dry heat though.

The pathway to the aquarium!

Have you met Dustin? He really loves sea turtle and tortoises. I mean LOVES them. No lie.

Oh my goodness. Just look at that! I can hardly believe it and I was there! You can see one of the resort islands out there with it's big mountain...of love.

That's the dolphin tank and the beautiful East China Sea.

Hello other island. We will visit you one day. Maybe for an anniversary. The hubby and I have been talking about it and we know we can get a pretty rad discount on base for your resort.

Our tickets and map! Dustin let me be the girl whale shark. But I had to fight him on it.

The amazing touch pool.

There was some weird tropical creatures at this aquarium that I'd never seen before.

"Let's make out. Num num num."

Jelly fish look harmless to me. What's the big deal with them anyways?

That's a fish! Do you see his eye??

Weird starfish.

GIANT lobsters! Literally bigger than my Jack Russell, Ariel. They probably could've eaten her.

Sea cucumbers.

I love these guys.

I thought this one looked like Slimy from Sesame Street.

The only aquarium in the WORLD to have a whale shark. And this is the biggest aquarium tank in the world as well.

It was pretty crazy. And there was a restaurant in there where you could sit right next to the tank and eat your soba!

I like this guy.

Soon we had to venture outside to get to the turtles, manatees and dolphin show. I just about melted from the humidity.

Hey little turtles! Dustin and Tara would like to snuggle you guys.

"OK, whatever Sea Pig."

Here's part of Emerald Beach.

The dolphin tank. They had normal bottle nose dolphins but also some kind of much bigger dolphin that looked like whales. It was pretty weird.

See the whale-like dolphin? He was very smart.

They like topiaries here.

We did shortly visit the Oceanic Museum but it was small and I wasn't allowed to take pictures. I think when it gets cooler out we'll head back up to Ocean Expo Park and see everything.

After we ate lunch we went to Fruitsland that was actually right next to Pineapple Park. I had no idea. Basically you walk through a kind of forest of fruits. Had it been spring, we probably would've seen a lot more than we did. But it was still pretty nice.

There were some bananas still growing.

And some crazy dragon fruit.

At the end of the tour there's a little cafe with fresh juices, smoothies and crazy huge desserts like this one. A huge bowl of shaved ice with fresh mango and dragon fruit in some kind of syrup. It was soooo good and perfect for how hot it was that day. Also, it was the cheapest dessert on the menu at about $10! Totally worth it though.

The perfect way to end our day, I think.