Christmas

What a great Christmas! Josh and I were spoiled as usual and got lots of great presents. We got into CA on Christmas Eve and Mike picked us up since the rest of the fam was at grandma's house for dinner. We went and looked at lights, my favorite thing to do on Christmas Eve! They have the BEST court of houses that have amazing lights. We waited in a line of cars for about 20 minutes and that was only because we cut off the 50 cars behind us, otherwise it would have been an hour at least! Then we went home to meet the rest of the family and read a great picture book about Christ's birth. Of course during the book it was supposed to be spiritual but me and Ty were laughing as usual about stupid things like the dog farting and hacking up who knows what. And as it goes when you aren't supposed to laugh you laugh harder, this was definitely the truth. :)

Dovewood Ct awesome houses. They look even better in real life. I so want to deck out our house for Christmas some day. I'm still trying to convince Josh it would be a good idea.

Christmas morning came and 7am we were promtly woken up to talk to Elder Green #1 on the phone (Davis) who is in Minnesota, and Jan will be his year mark. He sounded like a true missionary and more serious than when he left, unfortunately. Then came presents. Then breakfast and got ready and drove to aunt Evelyn's house in Chico for dinner. We had a great time and loved the whole day.

Christmas morning. I'm wearing my new hat and scarf and jacket while opening the rest of my presents.

One of our favorite presents this year. Our first picture of Christ for our home! I can't wait to put it up.

Christmas dinner at Ev's house. There were lots of people.

The fam at Eve's house. Not the best pic of most of us, but it will do

The day after Christmas I woke up and went shopping with Carolyn and Grandma and had a blast just walking around looking for good deals. Seriously though, I have never seen an 80 year old with so much energy. She is amazing! The next day (Saturday) we went snowboarding, my first time ever. It was a great day on the mountain and I took some lessons and then hung out on the bunny hill with Josh and Mike the rest of the day while Ty was on the "back side" of Donner Ski Ranch where the big stuff is. I can now make it down the hill without falling, but still working on the turning part! Today I am very sore...but still willing to go again :)

A day after snowboarding for the first time and still smiling!

The very first time down the hill, before my lesson started. I actually made it down in one piece!


The gang that went boarding.

Don't mind the white thigh, but Joshie got a little owie on the hill.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas was so wonderful today and we were so lucky to be able to talk to the missionaries (josh's 2 brothers) today and enjoyed opening presents as usual. I hope you all had a great Christmas too and only 365 days until the next one!! :) More pictures and Christmas updates to come.

BLIZZARD!!

I woke up today to hear Josh scrambling around to find his snow clothes and telling me I had to get up early because there was so much snow it was going to take forever to get to work. So I stumbled out of bed, looked outside and realized, wow, that is a LOT of snow, he wasn't kidding. So I start to get some clothes out and get in the shower when I thought to check my phone just in case. Sure enough, there was the voicemail I was looking for...School was canceled, no work for me. But of course there are still finals for Josh so I put on my snow clothes and rushed outside to help Josh. We measured at the time at it was 11 inches just on top of my car and that isn't counting the 5 I pushed off yesterday and the 2 right before going to bed. so needless to say we were shoveling the car, the places next to it, and behind it to try and get out. Then Daren called and said all finals were also canceled, until after the break, which is Jan 16th! So phew, but of course we were having a blast playing and trying to scrape snow so we finished up and drove to the end of our parking lot, got stuck and promptly drove back to our parking spot. Of course we weren't prepared and had no food whatsoever, so we walked to the store to get breakfast and called the Harris' and ate at their house, with the Barney's and Andy of course also made it over since they live across the street. After breakfast we all watched a movie together. It was a wonderful day of blizzardy fun and relaxation!

6:30 am, shoveling with the dust pan

Can you see the car?!

On the way to the store, snow up to our knees!

Pooped after shoveling off the car

Last Weekend

I have been pretty busy lately so I didn't get to blog about last weekend! Friday I went to a Relief Society dinner which was very nicely decorated with trees and lots of lights and we got to pick from steak, fish or chicken for dinner and choose the type of salad and dessert we got also. It was SO good and very nice. After the dinner we had music that went through the life of the Savior. On the second song Josh and I were Joseph and Mary and walked around the tables and then onto the stage holding Summer as "baby Jesus". The music was awesome, but we had to leave early for my work party. (sorry, no pics of the dinner) The North Wall School party was at the skating rink and we did white elephant, ate food, and then skated.

Here is our Blades of Glory move

Dianna, Rachel, Melissa, Jenn, Tiffany, Me - Some of the girls I work with, my favorite ones! I work in the Pre-Toddlers with Dianna. It was her first time skating so she was hanging out with the wall most of the time.

Saturday we were going to check out the lights in CD'A but it was about 8 degrees outside so we just drove around Spokane looking at the best voted decorated houses from the newspaper.

Here is one of the lights we saw that flash to the music on the radio. The tree on the top sang along with it and was really funny

Hard to see, but this is one of the houses we saw that was decked out with lights.

It's Beginning to Feel Like Christmas

Friday night the school I work for had a Christmas Program. It was so adorable. Josh came to see me and took some pictures. Since my group of kiddies are a little small they were put into buggies and had halos on and held swaddled babies. It was so much fun and all of the crazy things that happen each day just went away and I remembered how much I love them.

Afterwards we went to a Nativity Program that is put on by our stake. They have the gym all set up with hundreds of Nativity scenes from around the world. When we were leaving we noticed that you could get a picture as a "live nativity" so of course we had to do it. Here we all are dressed up in the garb. I'm almost positive people wore silver shiny fabric back then. Daren said we look like we are in a JcPenney catalog with our poses, ha.

Thanksgiving is over and I have promptly put up Christmas decos and begged Josh to get our tree every day last week, but since finals are upon us we waited until Saturday and I finally got it! We decorated it last night and then had our friends over for games to show it off. It smells wonderful and looks so cute. It's nice because this year it actually fits in our apartment instead of taking up the entire living room! I also got to put up the Nativity that my mom got me last year, I love it!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was held in Highlands Ranch this year and I was SOO excited since it's the first time I got to go home since law school started. We had a great time, yummy food and lots of laughs.

Here is mom dad and Josh preparing the food. I helped a little...like setting the table, does that count?

Thanksgiving dinner, yum! I love that dad has his eyebrows up and is giving the peace sign, ha.

Pooped out after the big dinner. Although Sadie is awake and laughing because her dad just farted.

The first snow of the season and I got to see it!! I LOVE Colorado snow, its my favorite and makes me feel at home. Josh and I got to shovel, this was Josh's second time ever shoveling since he grew up in CA. His first time was last winter in CO!

Besides eating and eating some more I spent a lot of my time being entertained by Sadie and her sweet personality. She asked us about a million times if we wanted fries while wearing her McD's hat.

As Sadie left to drive home to UT she hugged Josh and said "thanks for playing with me Josh" She loves her uncle Josh and they had fun running around squirting everyone with their squirt guns.

Here she is face planting it after jumping around and flipping into the pillows on her big girl bed. This may look like it hurts, but she is so crazy and tough she just got right back up and did it 20 more times.

Thanks fam for a great holiday! I love and miss you all already.