A Trip Down Memory Lane

So I just took the most amazing trip to Rexburg, Idaho. It was quick, but well worth it. I went up there with Kristen, Todd, and his wife Elizabeth. We went up for the Rexburg Temple open house. They had a special open house before the regular one for all the people who worked on the temple. Todd got us tickets because his architecture firm are the ones who designed it. All four of us were up there at the same time in 2001 so it was kind of like a little reunion for us. I forgot how much snow they get up there! This is the pool at our hotel. Brrr.....

And here's some snow they piled up in a car wash. They also pile it up in the middle of all the roads...so weird!

The temple is really pretty. The open house was cool. The best part about it for me was that I ran into Elder and Sister Hopkins from my mission. They were a senior couple that I got really close to in my first area. I hadn't seen them for over 2 years so it was pretty sweet running into them. My camera got a pretty good picture of the temple with snow falling. Thanks for the awesome camera Bran! I love you!

And this picture is just for you Emily. Todd pulled into a gas station to fill up and when I looked up I saw that we were at none other than the infamous Horkley's! Kristen and I bought 50 pieces of penny candy inside (the laffy taffy's were gone...sniff sniff). Sorry to one-up you on this one. You talked about Horkley's on your blog but I have a picture! Ha ha! For those of you that don't know, Horkley's is a sweet gas station that was close to our apartment. We went there probably just as much as we went to school. Emily and Megan always had to fill up on their Dr. Pepper and Diet Pepsi (am I right?), I bought lots of laffy taffy's there, and they had movies you could "rent" for free! It was so sweet!

Oh yeah, Christmas came and went. It was cool. We had a nice relaxing long weekend. We saw three great movies over the course of the weekend that we recommend to anyone. Stardust, August Rush, and National Treasure 2.

Christmas Traditions

The one Christmas tradition that me and Brandon have done for three Christmases in a row now (seems weird we've known each other that long) is going to see the candy windows on Provo Center Street. We made it out last week on Friday night to go see the candy windows. They actually weren't as good as last year, but they're always cool. Here are a few pictures of the best ones.

And a picture of us of course. :)

Another tradition we have (except I'm not sure if we did it last year) is to go see the lights at Temple Square. We went with all of my family when we had a family dinner up in Salt Lake and it was a ton of fun. It was the perfect night because it wasn't too cold.

Steph and Holly...yes, I know I look like a marshmallow. :)

Ian REALLY wanted Brandon to hold his hand.

And a tradition we hope to have in future years is riding the Polar Express train in Lindon. I don't know if we'll get tickets every year but this year we got hooked up by Brandon's mom with some tickets and it was so awesome! These rich people in Lindon just set up this whole Polar Express experience and it's totally free! They won't even accept donations if you wanted to give something. We sat in the garage and watched part of the Polar Express on a huge screen while we were waiting for our turn. Then the first part of the ride was going to Santa's workshop where we sang some songs and took some pictures. Then the rest of the ride focused on Jesus Christ and they had some awesome pictures with lights shining on them and some religious Christmas music playing. It was sweet! We loved it.

This has been the best Christmas ever! Mostly thanks to my awesome husband. I love you Bran!

The Perfect December Saturday

Last Saturday we did quite a few things in celebration of December. We started out the day with our ward Christmas party. Me and Brandon are on the activities committee so we had to help out a lot but we still enjoyed it. We had a Christmas breakfast and of course did packages and letters to the missionaries. Here's Brandon writing a note to the missionaries.

After the ward Christmas party, we all went and saw Enchanted, which is such a GREAT movie! We loved it. We even missed the first part but that just gives us an excuse to go and see it a second time! :)

Saturday night we were supposed to go to Emily's for a Ricks Roommate Reunion dinner but with all that crazy snow, we just stayed home and made gingerbread houses with Jason and Shannon. We also made homemade Sonic drinks with a snow cone maker and everything. They were really good! (Props to Jason and Brandon who thought of the idea all on their own and actually bought everything we needed for it, including fresh limes and lemons and frozen strawberries! We were very impressed.)

And just to give you all a laugh (and show you how much me and Brandon are still kids at heart), here's a picture of what our gingerbread house looks like right now, less than one week later.

Before:

After:

The BEST Surprise Ever!

Okay, so this may not seem that cool to some of you, but it was the BEST surprise for me! I could explain why it was so cool for me, but in order to avoid a post like the ones I hate to read, I'll spare you the details. Last night when I got home from work Brandon had surprised me by going to the store, buying a Christmas tree for us, and having it all set up. It was awesome! I'm so much more excited for Christmas now. I know this isn't a great picture...and we still need to go buy some decorations...but it's still our first Christmas tree and I love it. :)

And let's see. What else do I need to write about on here? I never posted about Thanksgiving because we don't have any great pictures or anything. We had Canadian Thanksgiving with Brandon's family in October and then for the real Thanksiving (just kidding...sort of) Brandon's parents were in California so we got to spend the day with my family. We had Thanksgiving at Bryant's house and then we all went to the movies. We saw Dan in Real Life (except for the first 15 minutes that we missed) and then when it was over we went into the Bee Movie where everyone else was and watched the end of that. We'd already been to see it earlier in the week. We slept over at Bryant's house and pretty much just spent the weekend laying around and being lazy. I was actually ready to go back to work when Monday came. Here's a picture of us after we had just stuffed our faces full of food.

Last week we went up to Midway and stayed in a resort. It was a quick trip on a Thursday night. We went with Bryant and Summer and their boys and Kristen. It was really fun. They had a cool pool that we swam in and we just played games and relaxed and slept in the next morning of course. This is us standing outside of the place.

And a picture of Brandon standing by a random natural hot pot that was out there by the parking lot.

Okay, and one last thing, when I woke up on Saturday morning and saw all the SNOW outside, I was so excited! I don't love snow, but there's something about that first big snowfall that just makes everything feel like Christmas. My favorite is when the snow stacks up on the branches of all the trees. I think it's so pretty!!

Family Pictures

So we got family pictures taken a couple weeks ago and thought we'd let you all have a look at them. Other than that, I got absolutely nothing else to say right now other than that we're excited for Thanksgiving this week!

I've been tagged...twice

Okay, my excuse for not posting lately is that I've been really busy at work. I really have. And I love it. It makes the time go by so much faster. My sister-in-law Emily tagged me awhile ago and I kind of ignored it and then my friend Jen tagged me too so now I guess I'm supposed to write some random things about myself. I don't know if I'll have six, but anyway...I'll just get started.

1. One of Brandon's favorite things to do is to scare me. He always runs ahead of me and waits around the corner or at the bottom of the stairs or something to scare me. And he gets me every time. :) He loves it and I guess I love it too. (What choice do I have really?) Anyway, sometimes he puts pillows under the covers on our bed to make me think it's him. Usually I can tell it's pillows but I'm still scared because I don't know where he's hiding. So here is a picture of one of his best scams ever. Yes, I realize it's totally obvious in the picture that these are just pillows under the covers but it was dark when I walked in the room so I thought it was him. I thought oh, that's cute, he's all the way under the covers. So I actually went to the foot of the bed and I was going to lift up the covers to rub his feet. Well, right at that moment when I lifted up the covers, he jumped out from the side of the bed and totally scared the crap out of me. I gotta give it to him, he's good.


2. Unlike many other people I know, I babysit 23 grown men for a living. Well, that's what it feels like anyway. And as babysitting goes, no matter how much they pay you, sometimes it's never worth it. But for the most part I enjoy my job. I have to admit it is the most flexible job in the world and I'm really lucky to have it. I don't even have to tell anyone when I take a day off. I just leave. It's pretty sweet. I also go in and leave whenever I want and take as long as I want on my lunch breaks. Oh, in case some of you really don't know, I work for the radiologists at the hospital.

3. I love cleaning. I know it sounds retarded but I really think it's fun. Brandon has come to associate me cleaning the house with me being angry. I really do clean my house to vent. But I also clean it when I'm in a good mood, so you really can never tell. Sometimes I let it get really dirty just so I actually have something to clean up. And no, I won't come over to your house and clean for you. :) I know that's what you're all thinking.

4. I love vacations. Even quick weekend trips to the cabin. I realized that in just a year and a half of marriage, me and Brandon really have been quite a few places together. We've been to St. George, Las Vegas, a cruise to Mexico, Disneyland, the cabin quite a few times, Bryce Canyon, and we've both been on separate trips to California. Next summer we are going to Moab and hopefully Hawaii with Lincoln. He won the State Championship for soccer and they have Regionals in Hawaii in June. We're really hoping we get to go with him! Here are some pictures of the big win.

5. Me and Brandon play Yahtzee all the time together and a couple weeks ago I reached my alltime high score of 753! Ask Brandon if you don't believe me. I think I got 4 yahtzees. It was awesome.

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to go on to a number 6. I'm honestly not a huge fan of the tagging thing and for that reason, I'm not going to tag anyone else. But if you're someone who has been waiting to be tagged and would really like to write some random things about yourself on your blog, go ahead and say I tagged you. No one will ever know the difference.

October Fun!

We have done a few fun things lately in celebration of Halloween. We had a ward Halloween party last week on Wednesday. We're on the activities committee for our ward so we don't get to enjoy the parties quite as much as all the guests, but we still had a good time. Brandon signed up to be in the chili cook-off and his chili was the best out of all of them if you ask me.

Costumes were allowed but since we didn't have anything, we just went without. At the very last minute I remembered that I had butterfly wings from Ricks. (Emily, Kristi, and Lisa, that should bring back good memories.) So I ran home and put them on. At least it was better than nothing.

A couple days after the Halloween party we had a pumpkin carving party that Shannon planned. It was so much fun! We all brought Halloween desserts. Me and Bran had to crouch down so Haley could take a picture of our pudding graveyard dessert.

We had dinner together and then carved pumpkins. Here are some pictures of the pumpkin carving experience.

Brandon's skeleton pirate.

Steph's pumpkin.

One last thing we did that was really fun was play the Nintendo Wii. It was my first time playing. We hung out with my cousin Julie and her husband Steve on Saturday and me and Brandon did some virtual bowling, tennis, baseball, and other games. It was tons of fun!

Cabin Trip and Rocket Launchers

Brandon thinks I post on here too often but I think it's time for an update. We've done quite a few things since the last time we posted. Of course, we'll only talk about the ones that we have pictures of because probably half of you only look at the pictures anyway. So a couple weekends ago we took one last trip up to the cabin before we closed it up for the winter. It was just me and Bran, Bryant and his boys, and my mom and my grandma. We had a lot of fun. It was a little chilly but we still got out and went for a ride on the 4 wheeler. Brecken and Kai were so much fun to play with. They wanted me to wrap them up like babies and hold them. I think they're a little excited that their mommy is finally going to have another baby!

Here's one picture I got of the leaves on the way back down the canyon. It looked much better in real life.

The Monday after we got back from the cabin we went over to Bryant's house for FHE so the boys could use our rocket launcher. Brecken loved it and said, "This is so awesome. I want to do this all day long." Here's a picture of him loading it up.

Kai didn't enjoy it as much at first. The air compressor was a little too loud for him. He warmed up to it later but check out this awesome picture of him in the beginning. :)