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!!