Overdue Thanksgiving Post

Thanksgiving was a good time this year! Jared's dad and Brother Justin came to visit us and ate Thanksgiving dinner with us. After the BIG bird was eaten and we couldn't fit into our clothes anymore, we played some games all together as a family, such as Apples to Apples and my favorite, Guestures. It was a blast watching my mother trying act out "gangster" and my older bro, Eric guessing pimp and prostitute, as she blushed..HAHA! I LOVE this time of year where we can all be together and have a good time as always!! Some of the many things that I'm grateful for around this time of year are:

An amazing Hubby

the best Family in the world

Great friends

ChOcOlAtE

Our Heavenly Father

The gospel

Temples

Those who are fighting for our freedom

Puppies and cute animals

The mall

Decorations, and scrap booking memories

my mom's cooking skills

and the list goes on and on.....

Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday for us to realize how blessed we are and to be thankful for everything we have.

So following the day after Thanksgiving, Jared and I went down to the Hotel that Justin and Chuck were staying at to pick them up for breakfast and thought that they told us they were staying in room 310...but it turned out that they were in the next one down in room 312! Well, my hubby thinks that it would be funny to pull a scene from Tommy Boy and knock on the door and say "house keeping"...so I did in my most unattractive voice possible, and who answers the door? Not them! Some crazy lady with a Russian accent! Lol...I felt so dumb that I just kinda ran down the hall with my tail between my legs while Jared explained that we were sorry, but that we had the wrong room!!! Hahaha...oh what fun times we had!

This last Saturday, my family got into the Christmas mode and we went up to the mountains in Idaho and chopped us down a big tree! It was such a fun experience :) We even saw some crazy squirrels just like in the "Griswold's Christmas Vacation" movie. After chopping down our tree, we headed back to the car to eat some home made cinnimon rolls my mom had made and some yummy Stephen's hot cocoa! It was the perfect day. We did realize very fast however, that we will definitely need to buy some quality snow gear and clothing living out in the snow! Running shoes just don't cut it anymore when you're hiking through snow!

Decorating this 12 and a half foot tree was quite the experience! I've never had to use a ladder to decorate a tree before! But the finished product was oh so worth it :)

I'm so stoked for Christmas this year! Celebrating Christ's birth, watching the snow fall out the windows, cuddling up with Jared next to the fake fire, drinking hot cocoa, the yummy smells from Bath and Body Works and holiday food is the BEST! :)

I hope that you ALL have a fantastic Christmas!!

We're going to Boise ID! Lol...Where's a map?

For the past year, Jared and I have been sooo anxious for Jared to get accepted into this super awesome lineman college in ID (Northwest Lineman College). This past week, we just found out that he got accepted for Spring semester!! We're so stoked! Rocky Mountain Power (the company that he wants to work with and become a power lineman for) said: "if you get accepted into NLC and finish with flying colors, you will be able to have an excellent opportunity with our company." (or something like that) ;)

We feel at peace that things are starting to get kicked into gear with life and careers and such and to finally get out of "limbo." I'm excited for the adventure ahead of us. Although it will probably be a crazy time, with lots of hard work and lots of long hours and such, it will be so worth it! I'm so proud of my Bubba :)

Next up...babies?

Where did all the time go?

Saturday was a special day. My oldest niece Katelyn got baptized!! I am so proud of her! It just makes me a little sad to think that she's 8 already and is already old enough to be baptized!! I remember holding her when she was little, and gagging while changing her poopy diapers! Does time really have to go by so fast? I still remember thinking how silly "old" people sounded when they talked of how fast life goes by and to just enjoy every second! Boy was a wrong. It DOES fly by. We just have to love every second of it. The good, the bad and the ugly :)

So anyways, enough of me feeling old, it was a great baptism. She looked like a little doll in her little white baptism dress. She was soo happy when she came up from the water, feeling shiny and new :) It was fun to see family and friends there supporting Katie. What a blessing she is in all of our lives!

I'll post pics soon!

Teething

So my little nephew is really unhappy right now because of those darn little teeth coming in. He's such a good and mild- mannered baby...but when it comes to teething, I'm pretty sure no baby is happy!

We fortunately get to see all of my cute little nieces and nephews every Sunday for dinner. A few weeks ago, my dad decided to cook up some elk steaks for Sunday dinner that my cousin John caught in his hunt. What made me crack up, was all of the kids reactions to it. They were so not excited!! Except for baby Evan, the one who's teething right now. He was just gumming that stuff right off. No worries, there was parental supervision and no choking took place :)

But here's a few pics of Evan gumming that elk steak that are soo stinkin' cute, I had post them :)

Fun at the Dew Tour!

This weekend was pretty exciting. Jared is a die-hard fan of BMX-ing and has been wanting to go to a show for a while, ever since him and his brother Justin went to one before their mission! So while Bubba was at work, I managed to buy tickets for the tour. Thank goodness... I hear they sell out pretty fast! The best part of the whole thing was that he didn't even know that we were going! It was all a surprise :)

Jared had a busy and stressful day at work, came home and went down stairs wanting to just relax...and what did he find on the bed? Yup! A folder with Dew Tour tickets in them!! Woo Hoo! I will never forget that face that excitingly looked up at me when he found out we were going..lol..I guess you can call it cheesy, but it melted my heart!

We went to SLC for the Dew Tour on Saturday. I thought we would be able to sleep in a bit that morning..but my little boy was sooo stinkin' excited to see the pro BMX-ers, that he woke up at 6 am!!!! Usually I'm the first one up, but he definitely showed me up this time! The only time I have guts to willingly wake up that early is when we're going to Disneyland! ;)

So, we got there around 12:30, and were just in time to see those guys do what they do best. Tricks! The tricks that they pull off on their bikes are literally AMAZING!! I've watched BMX on the t.v. but it's nothing like it is in person..lol, I guess it's the same with just about anything. But it was my first time going to a Dew Tour. It was nuts! :) We got a lot of free stuff too, which is always a fun time!

I'll download some pics of the BMX adventure when I can find my camera plug!

When the Dew Tour was over, we walked a few blocks over to a place called the "Blue Iguana" for dinner!! Mmmmm-mmm! It was so good! Thinking about all that yummy Mexican food now, is making me pretty dang hungry, so I'll stop thinking about it ;)

To end, I'm so grateful for a fun and loving husband! I may not know everything about all of the sports he likes and hobbies, yet..but I'm having fun every day learning more and more about him! :) I'm thankful he's so patient with me too. He pretty much rocks! Thanks babe!!

Anniversary weekend= Partay!

On Father's Day, June 21st, Jared and I celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary! It was a lot of fun and quite an advernture!! We left Smithfield on Saturday and came back on the following Wednesday. So we start driving through Utah..and the weather's pretty nice right? Haha..we figured out very soon, when we drove into Wyoming that we were going to have a very wet, 2-night camping trip!! I felt sorry for my husband having to put up with my complaining. Number one, I hadn't been camping for a while, it was pouring rain and before we left, my sister was giving me the heads up on bears attacks...and things that I wasn't too excited to hear about before a camping trip! (I still love ya sis...we made it out alive). But I sucked it up and we set up camp at a place called Flagg Ranch. I was so happy to hear that close to our camp site, there were showers and flushing toilets, and even plug outlets to dry our hair!! Our tent worked fantastic too! Jared didn't tell me before we set up camp that the last time he camped in the rain, he woke up soak n' wet! I'm glad he told me after we were all done camping and on our way to the hotels. Silly Boy :) I seriously think that camping makes relationships stronger! You really have to rely on each other for survival ;) Ok...maybe it's not that crazy...but it brought us closer together, between spraying each other with mesquito repellent, trying to keep each other warm in our sleeping bags and doing all of that fun stuff!

The day we left our campsite was a nice sunny day. Go figure right? Haha...So on Monday morning we decided to go fishing. We had fun just hanging out with each other and goofing around. We didn't catch anything, but in a way I was glad. We didn't have to gut them! It was gorgeous out on Jackson lake. So nice to see sunshine!!

Since nothing was biting, we decided to take the fun to Jenny Lake. It's soo pretty up there. It's nestled right against the ever so famous Teton mountains! We rented a kayak and paddled around for a while. And I'm so glad Jared didn't tip us because the water was freeeeezing! He was just about to when he felt the water himself and freaked out!! Lol...it was pretty funny.

Following the Kayak adventure, we took a little walk on one of the trails over there. We decided to stop and ask this cute little older couple to take our picture. Well, right after the man takes our pic, he saw a momma moose and her little baby "calf," as they call them right behind us. It was sweet! Last year when Jared and I honey-mooned up there we didn't see any "wild-life" really except for some buffalo like "100 miles" away! So we took tons of pics of the humongo mama and her little baby :)

We also a trip up to "Old Faithful." We walked around some of the natural geysers and hot pots, went out to eat at this yummy place called....(I don't remember) but they had the BEST corn-chowder!!!!! mmmm-mmmm. I can still taste it now! :) As we were leaving the Old Faithful Lodge, there were a family of Buffalo right outside of the Hotel!!! I couldn't believe it! They were soo stinkin' close! I was a little freaked out since people in the past had been gored by buffalo. So, Jared and I just took our pics and ran!

That night, we had to make sure we were at the Bar-J chuck wagon dinner by 5. So, we checked into our hotel at 4 and cleaned up from our nasty-ness from our camping trip. Then on we went!! If any of you haven't gone to Wyoming and seen the Bar-J, you need to! It's soo much fun!! They are a group of 5 guys, true blue country boys, that make steaks, ribs, chicken and beef right at there ranch. They put on a very entertaining show, and have an amazing talent for harmonizing! We took some fun pics of them performing :) And although I've had my blog for a little while now, I'm still trying to figure everything out. Haha...I'm very blog-retarded and need to learn how to post pics with my entries! So you'll see them eventually! Please be patient ;)

Jackson Hole is so much fun! When we were there, we couldn't believe that we were at the same place last summer for our Honeymoon! Time really does go by fast..so we've just got to enjoy every minute.

Our last day there, we walked around all of the cool shops that Jackson Hole has, took pictures and stuffed our faces with yummy food! My husband was very patient with me, thank goodness. I think we literally went into every shop in downtown Jackson!

It was so hard to come home after all of our fun, celebrating our 1 year anniversary together. But it was nice to come back to civilization. I'm so grateful and happy for the amazing and loving husband that I have! Jared is a huge strength to me. Every day with him is an adventure :) I can't wait to see where we are in life next year and the year after that and so on and so forth! I know he will make the perfect daddy to our children. And I'm very excited to see where life takes us from here! :)