Thursday, December 29, 2011

to my friends...


I am so thankful to be apart of this wonderful blogging community! I started the blog to "journal" the life of me and the hubs, but it has turned into so much more than just a hobby. I've "met" so many bloggers who have been such an inspiration, met bloggers in real life, and made tons of new friends!
A couple weeks ago I received the best box of goodies from a bestie blogging friend. I had a really hard time with winter last year so Jessica decided to brighten this winter for me :) The crazy girl loves winter! And I love her craziness, haha. Anyway, it just really touched my heart that she would be so sweet and creative to share her winter loves with me. It got me thinking about the kind of friend I am. I want to be better.
So here's to saying goodbye 2011, it's been a great year! And here's hello to 2012, where I will definitely become a better friend to my real life friends AND my blogging friends :) And hopefully becoming a better person all around!

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Christmas recap

This year we spent Christmas with Eric's family and we had such a great time! We ate, we talked, we ate some more, we opened tons of gifts, ate tons more food, laughed, ate, played with the kids, ate, and napped. I love Christmas :) I didn't take one picture but I assure you that it was a fun time for all! And good grief were we spoiled!
I love that my family knows the way to my heart... FOOD! Since I signed away all my gifts for the year I wasn't expecting anything but Eric surprised me with jerky! 2 bags of jerky that are bigger than my head! Be still my heart. The man loves me! And my in laws gave us the Bosch version of a kitchen aid, yay! I can't wait to get mixin' :) Eric got his first ever leather jacket and I got beautiful pearls. We were spoiled with home decor, movies, games, treats, and 72 hour kit supplies! Eric thinks I'm crazy to be excited about the last one but I was serious about getting my 72 hour kit put together :) Thank you to our awesome families for the spoils and love!
The best surprise of all was finding out that Eric didn't have to work on Monday! We hit up the after Christmas sales. I mean who doesn't love scratching, elbowing, and kicking a few people just to get some half priced ornaments?!


This is Eric's "our tree is going to be so ugly next year" look. Charming
Mom, doesn't his jacket look good? Thank you :)

We ate at Cafe Rio. Blessed Cafe Rio.

Ummm.... yeah. Best nachos ever!

We attempted to go see Sherlock Holmes, along with the rest of the city. We'll shoot for that another time. Instead we vegged at home the rest of the evening.


It was so great to just be together. Christmas was definitely good to us this year :)

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

our Christmas Eve breakfast & matchy shirts


Eric chose where we went to breakfast this year. I specifically said no I-Hop or Denny's so he picked the closest restaurant to them :) All I can say is that you shouldn't be surprised if we both have heart attacks this week.

not pictured: a plate of pancakes. Ridiculous.

I'm already looking forward to our Christmas Eve breakfast next year! And Eric's not choosing the restaurant ;)
For our matchy shirts we decided to go with some cute button down tops. That's about the only thing they have in common, but that's ok! Right?

Photobucket
I told him to pop it like it's hot in these pictures because let's face it. Hubs is hot stuff.... mhmm ;)
Photobucket

So, how did we do? I love our shirts but I'll definitely start looking for matchy stuff much earlier next year!
I hope you all had a Merry Christmas full of love and family fun!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

our Christmas date

Photobucket
Photobucket


Temple Square always has beautiful Christmas lights so we thought we'd have ourselves a little Christmas date.
We shopped, we ate, then walked around to see the lights.
Then it started to snow.
You would think that should've made the night very romantic.....
but a million people + snow = 1 very ornery husband.
So I didn't get all the pictures I wanted.
And the pictures I did get I don't really love.
But that's not the point.
Christmas is only a couple days away.
Spending this time with my husband and loved ones while celebrating Christ IS the point.
And that's exactly what I plan on doing :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

our first ugly sweater party...

...and we didn't even wear ugly sweaters! This was kind of a last minute party so I didn't have long to search for sweaters and I just couldn't find any. But hey! We tried.... I wore a sweater of sorts :) And Eric definitely tried to get a laugh out of his.
I think we did pretty good, despite the fact that we aren't wearing ugly sweaters :) What do you think?
We had such a FUN time at the party! The hosts (my bestie Jaicee) spoiled us, and we made new friends! We loved checking out everyone's sweaters, ate the yummiest food/treats, watched some football, and attempted to make gingerbread houses.

 I'm totally making a sweater for Eric next year! I mean, look at how happy they are about these ;)
Photobucket
Our house pretty much sucked... it fell apart right after we took this picture :(

I love the Christmas season! I just wish it would last a little longer, and life wouldn't be quite so crazy, so that we could enjoy it a little better!

P.S. Head over to Tatiana's blog to check out my guest post. I got a little serious over there and talked about an experience I had that was SO hard for me. It's always scary to be so open about something so personal on the internet... so I'd appreciate lots of love, not hate with the comments :)

Monday, December 19, 2011

he's home!

My younger brother as been living in Chile serving an LDS mission for the past 2 years, and he finally came home on Tuesday! Sadly, we weren't able to make it down to St. George until the weekend. But we had a fun little reunion once we got there!
The boys went shooting all day Saturday, Alycia and I bummed around town with my parents, we got to hangout with extended family, and we definitely ate until we were sick.... all.weekend.long. We also visited the Temple to see the lights and listen to the nativity message. Such a perfect way to remember the meaning of Christmas! 
Now you see the reason we were sick.... YUMMY!
Not a good picture at all but it's all the grandkids (minus 3)
Clearly Eric does NOT want to be taking a picture... but when he realized we'd been picture sniped he was much happier.
 we had a hair braiding train :)
There are no words....

I love my family! I'm so glad I got to spend a happy, fun, sunny weekend with them! Oh, and WELCOME HOME Derrick :)

P.S. I have a question for all my blogger savvy friends.... why in the heck are my posts on separate pages now? I have them programmed to show multiple posts on one page, but starting last week they only have 1 post per page (including on the mobile device format) It's driving me crazy, and I have no clue how to fix it!?!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

in case you didn't see...

I know I used this as a guest post for Christina, but I figured for documenting sake I'd post this on my blog as well :) She asked me some great questions about Christmas and our traditions and it might be fun to show our kids these answers someday. Or it might not. I guess we'll see sometime far, far into the future ;)

How long have you & your man been a couple?
We've been married 3 1/2 years but have been together through 4 holiday seasons.


How do you go about visiting all the friends & family around the holidays?
My parents and my in laws live in different towns so we just do every other holiday. This year was Thanksgiving with my parents and Christmas with Eric's :)
 
How long before Thanksgiving & Christmas do you set up decorations? 
I pull out my Halloween decorations October 1 (I don't want them up any sooner, I try to hang on to summer as long as possible, haha) and November 1, I take down Halloween and put out the rest of my fall decor. I've waited until December 1 to put up Christmas BUT this year I'm decorating as soon as Thanksgiving is finished, regardless of the fight my Grinch (aka Husband) will put up ;)
 
If you can remember, what was the very first tradition you two started?
 Because Eric and I have been alternating between our families for the holidays, we haven't had much of a chance to start our own traditions. I'm really looking forward to the day when we start celebrating Christmas in our home, with our children, and having our own special traditions.
Some traditions my family has that we plan to carry into our little family will be reading the Bible story of the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Eve night. Another tradition I love is that we would go out to eat for breakfast Christmas Eve morning. This tradition was started because my dad needed to get the family out of the home so that my mom's Christmas gift could be delivered, so he took us out for breakfast! The next year my brother's and I were expecting Christmas Eve breakfast... so it turned into a tradition :) And the last tradition I plan to carry over is to have our big, special Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. I do NOT like spending my time in the kitchen, so Christmas day I want to be relaxing and playing with everyone else instead of cooking the dinner. Instead we munch on snacks and left overs all day long!
The tradition that Eric and I HAVE started is we buy matchy shirts and wear them on Christmas Eve. I love the idea of pj's, but to be honest, we don't wear pj's (haha) so we figured we'd get more use out of shirts. I think this will be really fun/challenging to do when we have kids!
our matchy shirts
 
When do you do all of your gift shopping for Christmas and what sorts of things do you gift your significant other?
Every year I have the goal to buy Christmas gifts through out the year... but of course that never happens. I start scrambling in November :)
Eric and I do stockings for each other which has been really fun to do each year! (Some years we also do gifts, other years we skip them to buy something big. This year it will be a computer!) I always buy gifts geared specifically for him, that can't be used on me. We share enough already, right? I get him a movie (one that HE wants, that I would not buy any other time of the year, haha), a gift card (Cabella's, iTunes, etc) roll of quarters (I hate it when he wastes money on car washes, but he loves to wash his truck) cologne (ok, so I do benefit from this one, haha), and anything else I can think of that is just.for.him. 
If you guys have any ideas of gifts you get for your men.... PLEASE share :)

P.S. I participated in an ornament swap (I know, so many swaps in one week. I was really trying to get into the Christmas spirit when I signed up for these, haha.)
 
I was paired up with the darling Ana and she sent me this beautiful ornament. The colors match my tree decor perfectly!
 Thank you Ana! I love it :)