Christmas in Utah- Days 6 & 7

On Wednesday, we had our Christmas party with Brody's family.  We had a yummy dinner, played Christmas Bingo and Christmas Charades and had our sibling gift exchange.  (This year we played a fun exchange game with gift cards.  It was so nice and easy, and just as fun!)  It was great to hang out with everyone and celebrate the season!

On Thursday, Brody and I went skiing at the Beav with my 4 siblings- Jess, Brad, Jake and Cam.  I love that Brad has a big truck so we could all go in 1 car and just throw all our stuff in the back and sit comfortably in the front.  The snow was good and there was a lot more of it compared to last year, it wasn't too busy or too cold-- so all in all, it was a great day!

Christmas in Utah- Days 4 & 5

Day 4- On Monday, I got together with all my friends from high school (minus Taci, we missed you!) for lunch and a little gift exchange.  It's always great to see all these girls again and catch up on each others lives.

Day 5- Tuesday was Jessica's family bridal shower.  Her colors for her wedding are red and turquoise and the theme of the shower was "Something Blue" so she wore this awesome blue wig and everyone was supposed to wear blue and all the food and decorations were blue.  It was so cute!!

I love the bottom right picture below- classic Jessica face and Brad's head looks like it's floating!

I made the cake for the shower and even though it was far from perfect, I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

Later that night, we went to my Uncle Gary's for a sleigh ride, dinner, games and to visit with my cousin Haley who's visiting from DC.

After dinner, Me, Brody, Brad, Jess and cousin Andy had fun playing up in their "kiddie" room.  There was a ramp down the middle of the room, so we came up with some creative ways of how to slide down.  Oh and then Andy found a creepy doll and we took a creepy picture of him with it.

After that, my family had a hilarious time taking a few Awkward Family Photo's.  We were laughing pretty hard when we looked at all these later.

And then a normal one, or at least we hope this one is normal.  We were in kind of a weird mood after taking all those above.

Anyway, it was a busy but very fun and entertaining day!!

Christmas in Utah- Days 1, 2 & 3

Originally, we were planning to leave for Utah on Friday (the 17th) after I was finished with work, but on Thursday, when we found out it was supposed to snow on Friday, we decided to leave a day early (so in other words, we left later that day) in order to avoid the icy roads.  So it was very last minute, but it all worked out and we were able to surprise everyone! That's always fun.

We're staying at my family's house for the first week, and Brody's for the last week.  It's been great being home with everyone again and with my sister's wedding on the 31st, it's been quite busy!  I haven't had much time to do posts, so I figured it would be easier on me to just take it a few days at a time.  So here we go.

Day 1 (Fri 17)-  Not much going on during day 1, since we weren't actually supposed to be here that day.  We just got all settled, cleaned our car, and got all our winter clothes out of storage.  But we were able to make it to Brody's extended family party that night, which we weren't planning on, so that was fun!  The best part of the night was when we were cleaning up and our 2 year old nephew Dylan vacuumed almost the entire room by himself!  We were cracking up the whole time.  

Day 2- On Saturday night, we went with my family to do our traditional driving around, looking at Christmas lights and doorbell ditching a treat and poem to the good ones, followed by dinner at Texas Roadhouse.

Day 3- Sunday we had the Bundy's over for a big Thanksgiving style dinner and lots of games.

It was fun to see the Bundy's again.  We just love their two little girls and thankfully, they love us too, especially Brody.  Below are pictures of Brody covered in stuffed animals, courtesy of both girls, Emma singing a song to Brody 6 inches from his face with no music and no one telling her to do that (she just went up to him and started singing! It was hilarious) and Lydia cuddling with her blanket on Brody's shoulder.

We played a lot of fun games including a candy bar guessing game, a Christmas song guessing game, Perfection, a memory game, dip dip dip, the clapping game, look up, signs, scum and sardines (we are a BIG game playing family, if you can't tell)

And for your further entertainment, here's a picture of Salomon the reindeer

Peppermint Party

This last weekend, my friend Meghann and I hosted another party with our Thunderbird friends from the ward,  this time for Christmas.  It was "Peppermint" themed and also an ugly sweater party.  We came up with some delightful peppermint flavored desserts and we were happy with how many people showed up.  Not very many people got into the ugly sweater theme though, but we were happy they came anyway.  It was a lot of fun!!

In my opinion, Meghann's sweater takes first place and could probably beat any other ugly sweater out there! We found it at Goodwill, and we were both dying when we saw it!! (I hope the person that owns it doesn't read my blog).  I kinda liked mine, I think I might keep it.

I'm so sad that my cake turned out pink.  I used my whole thing of red dye, but it only seemed to make it more of a 'hot' pink.  Oh well, you get the idea.  It was just an angel food cake with whip cream frosting and peppermint flavored sprinkles on the top.  I wanted something that wasn't too rich, since we had so many other things that were.

Meghann made these delightful chocolate bon-bon's with a Hershey's peppermint kiss on the inside.
(sorry for these blurry pictures, don't know what the deal is).

We also had peppermint Oreo's dipped in white chocolate

Pretzel's dipped in white chocolate and rolled in peppermint

And a hot chocolate bar with marshmallows and peppermint sticks

And just lots of peppermint in general!!

Here's all the people that came (well everyone that would fit it the camera frame anyway, there were some people in the kitchen too).  We had a Disney movie playing in the other room for all the kids.

Some of us stayed after and played rock band!

Oh, and then Brody got talked into climbing down this tree from the second floor apartment we were in.  The tree had no branches to step on, so I just pictured him falling to the ground and breaking his leg, but he didn't even hesitate and it was no sweat at all for him.  Luckily he was fine.

Anyway, it was a really fun night and I'm glad we were able to celebrate this wonderful season with some yummy food and great friends!

So excited!!!

We get into Utah this coming Saturday (5 days!!!!) and I am so happy about the forecast for the next few days after that.... Snow EVERYDAY!!! I can hardly wait!!!

Sat
Dec 18

Few Snow Showers

39°
34°

30%

39°F

Sun
Dec 19

Rain / Snow Showers

38°
21°

30%

38°F

Mon
Dec 20

Rain / Snow Showers

37°
26°

30%

37°F

Tue
Dec 21

Snow Shower

35°
28°

30%

35°F

Wed
Dec 22

Snow Shower

40°
28°

60%

40°F

It'll be so weird going to that from this:
Today

Dec 13

Sunny

81°
45°

0%

81°F

It'll finally feel like Christmas is REALLY here! I'm so excited!!

Busy, Busy, Busy

The last few weeks has been busy ones.  Most of the 'busy'-ness was just getting ready for things like Thanksgiving and for our 'visitors' to come (which I had to keep quiet because some of the visitors themselves weren't aware that they were to be coming here. I love surprises!).  But we did also do a few fun things in-between.  Here's a quick re-cap with more detailed posts following:

Tuesday:  had dinner with some extended relatives visiting from Utah (Aunt Von, Uncle Rick and Cousin Andy) at cousin Jordan's house.  Had a great time seeing and visiting with them, as always!

Wednesday:  got off work early (yipee!) Started prepping for Thanksgiving

Thursday:  Thanksgiving!!

Friday:  Saw Harry Potter again (still good the second time), and spent a good chunk of the day putting up Christmas Decor (one of my favorite things!)

Saturday:  Drove down to Mesa with Dan and Meghann to see the Temple Lights and go to dinner.

Sunday:  Prepped for our visitor's and had a day-early birthday party for Brody

Monday:  Brody's Birthday!!!

Tuesday:  Fun with the visitor's!


Continue scrolling to see pictures and details (in order of most recent)......

And our special visitors were......

....... My dad and brothers!!!  As an early Christmas present, my parents gave Jake and Cam each tickets to go to the Monday Night NFL football game between the Cardinal's and 49er's which just so happened to take place 15 minutes from our house!! It was a surprise and they didn't find out about it until just a few days before, which is why I couldn't release their names (in case they just so happened to read my blog, which I doubt they ever do, but I just had to be safe!).  So they got to miss a few days of school, fly down to warm(er than Utah) Arizona, go to the game and spend the next day with me and Brody.  Could there be a better Christmas present for two teenage boys?  I think not.  Plus, it was sort of a present for me as well, since I got to miss a day and a half of work and hang out with the fam.

They got in on Monday around 4 and just had time to drop off their stuff and get a quick snack at our house before I dropped them off at the game.  They were gone most of the night so while they were away, I made cookies and had dinner and watched a movie with Brod for his birthday (which was that day).

On Tuesday, we slept in, had breakfast, went to the mall, had lunch, went rock climbing, had dinner, played a game, watched a movie and had popcorn and orange julius's.  I meant to take more pictures, but it just slipped my mind, so I only got some of rock climbing (well I got lots, actually).  So if you're real bored, take a look.....

Cam

Jake

Even dad took a turn! (I was impressed)

They left early Wednesday morning (by early I mean 5:00 AM) so it was just a quick little trip but still a lot of fun.  Short but sweet!!  It was great to have them here and I'm glad they could stay with us for a few nights.

Brody turns 26!!

 Monday, November 29th was Brod's birthday.  We had a small party with some friends on Sunday and had cake and ice cream.  On Monday after his evening class (per his request) we ordered Chinese take-out and watched a movie.  It wasn't the most exciting birthday since he went skydiving a few weeks ago for his present and spent most of the day in class, but I tried my best to make it special anyway. 

My cake was also a little boring, mostly because I wanted to practice my writing-with-frosting skills.  So I tried to make up for it with the candles.  Brody did request the mountains and 'grass' on the side, which was probably the easiest thing he could have picked since any line I do is squiggly anyway.

Thanks to our friends, for helping me make his day more exciting!!