Turkey Day!

I was lucky to spend my Thanksgiving with lots of family. Kristy and her kids, Chad & Clara and my parents drove up from California. My Uncle Dale (Mom's brother) and my Aunt Teresa invited us to have dinner with them at their house in Springville and my cousin Lauren (who I am very close with) and her boyfriend were there. So it was a great dinner with great company. Later Brent came over and we took the Color Test. Brent and I are both VERY blue. Which is great. After taking the color test and going around saying what we were thankful for... I went over to Brent's families house and spent a little time with his brother (who came from Vegas) and his girlfriend Liisa, His two sisters and their families that live here and then his parents who drove from Colorado. Anyway... It was a great day and I am thankful for a lot and know that I am very blessed. So I will leave this entree with the lyrics from Josh Groban's "Thankful" because I love that song and I feel like it says it all. I wish there were more songs like this.

Somedays we forget
To look around us
Somedays we can't see
The joy that surrounds us
So caught up inside ourselves
We take when we should give.

So for tonight we pray for
What we know can be.
And on this day we hope for
What we still can't see.
It's up to us to be the change
And even though we all can still do more
There's so much to be thankful for.

Look beyond ourselves
There's so much sorrow
It's way too late to say
I'll cry tomorrow
Each of us must find our truth
It's so long overdue

So for tonight we pray for
What we know can be
And every day we hope for
What we still can't see
It's up to us to be the change
And even though we all can still do more
There's so much to be thankful for.

Even with our differences
There is a place we're all connected
Each of us can find each other's light

So for tonight we pray for
What we know can be
And on this day we hope for
What we still can't see
It's up to us to be the change
And even though this world needs so much more

There's so much to be thankful for

Sunday Dinner

Normally, Brent and I do Sunday Dinner together and invite another person or two. This particular Sunday (last Sunday) we were invited to one of our married couple friends house along with a few other to have a yummy dinner. We had so much fun. I can't tell you how many people have asked us to double with them. I don't think I have ever received this much attention dating someone. I love it. And I love that people want to double with us. Brent is a little shy... but I am trying to teach him to be more social... cause that is how it is going to be. So far... he has been enjoying it.
P.S. Brent went home to change after he saw what I was wearing and I told him NOT to match me. He claimed he was going to wear that anyway. Whatever...

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am thankful for everyone in my life. Thank you for all being wonderful. Hope you have a wonderful day, eat great food and remember your blessings.

Geedge's Wedding

My good friend from back home got married this last weekend. She looked absolutely STUNNING! She was just glowing and you could tell she is so happy and it was great to go and spend some time with some old friends from back home out in here in Utah. Brent came with me and Veda and got to meet some of my closest friends. He is just great and I love having him in my life. Funny story... my mom and Geedge's mom, Bobbi teach seminary together... so they tell each other everything. Before I could even introduce him to Bobbi she said "Hi, you must be Brent" he just laughed because he was not expecting that. Ha ha... Anyway, I am so happy for Geedge!

Scarf Season!

One night after work, my co-worker Ashley and my boss Rachel and I all went to the mall. I went with the intent of getting Christmas Shopping done... but that did not happen. We went into the store "DEB" and we all fell in love with these shirts that came with a scarf... so we all decided to buy one and wear them the next day at work. Which is totally middle school.. but whatever. We played it off that we did not do it on purpose, in fact that we didn't even know that we all had the same shirts and such and people actually believed us. It was pretty awesome. :o)

Lunch at the Park

Desiree and I work pretty close to one another, so every once in a while we meet up at this park next to where we work and we eat our lunches there. It has been really great since the weather has stayed nice. It is so nice to just get out of the office and visit with a good friend that i don't get to see all the time like I used to before she got married and moved out of the ward. I love that even though she is married she has continued to be a great friend. I really enjoy spending time with Desiree and hope that we continue our tradition for as long as we both work by each other. Love ya Des. :o)

Sierra's Birthday

Sierra turned three on Tuesday so Kristy made a cake and me, Brent, Blythe, Rob (Blythe's boyfriend) and Lex all came over and had dinner and brought some presents and just watched Sierra be so excited on her birthday. She is just the cutest thing ever. She says the cutest things and does the cutest things... I just can't get enough of her. Over all it was a good night. Here are a few pictures from her party.

Jason Maraz

Recently I have been having lunch with my good friend Desiree. She used to be in my ward but then got married almost a year ago. I guess we really became good friends when we bonded over dating the same loser. Anyway, she is just awesome and it is fun that we still get to hang out. So the other week we were having lunch in the park and she asked me what I was doing that night. There was probably a lot of things that I should have done, but she asked me if I wanted to go to a private Jason Maraz concert. This was really tempting, I really like his music and was really jealous that my roommate had gone to his concert the night before. How could I pass up a private concert? I told her that I would only go if I could find someone to come with me, but I didn't want to ask Brent because I had already made him miss school and work to come to California with me. But he just so happened to call right then so I asked and he agreed so we went. This, come to find out, was Brent's first concert (like band concert). It was awesome because not only did I like his music, but because it was a private showing at the saltair which is a great venue, we got to go for free (it was for Desiree's husbands work) and it was less crowded which also meant no traffic AND we didn't have to sit through a bunch of opening bands that we didn't care about... just Jason for a hour and a half, which also meant it was done earlier. So all in all, great show and private concerts are the way to go. THANK YOU DESIREE AND CHUCK!! Great night.
One last note. When Jason came back out for his encore, he played one of his songs on the radio "Lucky" which I love, cute song.... but it is a duet, which he did not have someone to sing with, so he pulled a group of girls from the audience. Desiree and I are actually good singers AND know the part and would have actually impressed the audience. The girls that were up there didn't know how to sing and just wanted a picture with Jason Maraz on stage. Really too bad... had we only been a little closer to the stage, maybe we would have had our few minutes of fame. Oh well.

This is Halloween!

I just love Halloween. I love the candy and all of the fun parties going on, but most of all, I love to dress up. I don't know what it is about it that I love so much, maybe it is because I have the Peter Pan syndrome and I don't want to grow up and I still like to act like a kid and play and pretend and all of that. Anyway... normally I go all out on my costume, but this year I was really not too inspired with a costume idea, and then I had a cute idea for my ladybug costume when that is what I decided to be, but then I did not have the time to put it together, so this was the very simplified version of my costume. Even still... I had a blast and I still got to dress up and have fun at our stake Halloween party. Kids are the best to see all dressed up though. My nieces and nephews are all so adorable and I love them so much that I included them in this blog as well. Kristy was excited because her girls, Reanne and Sierra finally wanted to be princesses for Halloween. Last year they were pirates and the year before that Reanne was a witch and Sierra was a bug, so Kristy was happy they wanted to be girly. Grant was a ladybug... like me. William was a little monster and Asher didn't really dress up, but I didn't want to leave him out, so I included a picture that Jamie and Dan took of him at the pumpkin patch which is super cute.




Then we got to dress up and have some fun at work. My costume was even MORE simplified for work. Why? Because I didn't want to get up any earlier to put that much effort into it. With that said... I didn't win the costume contest. ha ha. We did get some Halloween donutes for a little treat for our department and had fun seeing everyone dressed up for work. Apx is pretty fun.












One day when I went over to my sister Kristy's house, My nieces Reanne and Sierra were showing me that they got some Halloween Hand puppets. They decided that they would put on a puppet show for me and I thought it was just really cute. They were not even hiding behind the blanket, I love them.


All of these pictures at the bottom were taken at the Halloween party at this big barn out in Payson. They had a DJ and dancing, they had a little projector playing scenes from scary movies playing in the corner, some good food, hay rides and lots of friends dressed up. It was great. Since I am on the activities commitee I had to help set up the night before and the night of. Brent was nice enough so help me. This first picture is of the activities commitee and Brent that all bonded over setting up for this major event. We are standing in front of a big Halloween backdrop that we all set up and it was more complicated than it looks.
Brent and I found a guy dressed up as Hot Rod, from our favorite movie. I think Hot Rod is what bonded Brent and I together. We didn't know this guy, but we thought he was so awesome we had to get our picture with him.

Of course there had to be another ladybug there. I didn't know this girl, but she wanted her picture with me since we had the same outfit and same wings and everything. She was nice. This is the second year that I had the same costume as someone else.
KAICIA!! Our band is all in the same stake (Besides Nat the dummer). We all saw each other at the party and had to get a picture together.
Just wanted a picture with my good friends that I love so much. Nicole and Emily will be my cruise girls for life! Speaking of... I would really like to go on another one.

Corn Maze

There are things that I like to do every October. One I have already blogged about, carving pumpkins, two, I will blog about, dressing up for Halloween. Three I like to watch Nightmare Before Christmas. And last but not least I like to go to a corn maze! I don't know what it is about them that I like so much, but I do enjoy it. We went as a ward for FHE to Hee Haws in Pleasant Grove and had a blast going through the corn maze and seeing the huge pigs and bunny villages and so on. I was kind of hoping that we were going to go to the corn maze at Thanksgiving Point though. The reason being is because the shape of their corn maze was David Archuleta! Ha ha.. how awesome is that? I guess while you were going through the maze it played all of his songs that he sang while he was on American Idol. It kind of makes me laugh how much I have actually blogged about David Archuleta. I promise that I am not obsessed. Anyway, the corn maze was great even though we didn't go to that one. It was Brent's first time and I think he enjoyed himself. :o) Sometimes the corn monster jumps out of the corn and scares you in the maze. That is what this picture is of. They kind of freak me out.

No Place Like Home

Two weekends ago, I was so excited because I was able to go home. What was the occasion? Well... I had two free tickets to Disneyland that were park hoppers that needed to be used before November 15th. When we got to Disneyland, I found out each park hopper ticket is like 100 bucks for the day! So naturally we would not want to let those gems go to waste. It just so happened that my mom had not used her free tickets either and neither had my sister Jamie. This made for a very fun trip. My mom gave her free ticket to Brian, I gave my extra to Brent and Jamie gave hers to Dan and Asher got in for free because he is under three. We ALL got in for free, which was amazing because otherwise we would have forked over like 600 bucks. Since we did not spend any money to get into the park, we decided to spend the extra money on food and ate at the Blue Bayou, which I LOVE. But besides me it was everyone's first time eating there. In fact, not only was it Asher's first time to Disneyland, but it was Brent and Brian's first time as well. I myself have been to Disneyland every time of year... except for the fall. Turns out they deck out the whole park in pumpkins. I loved it. We went on all the major rides and watched the fire work show, went over to California Adventure and went on a couple rides, one of which was Tower of Terror, which I had never been on before... because I hate the feeling of falling, and what do you know, that is what you do on this ride. But somehow they all convinced me to go. I may have left bruises on Brent and Brian, I'm not sure, but I was grabbing pretty tight. I think I would be ok if I never went on that ride again. But at least I had someone to hold on to. Oh ya, Disneyland is where Brent finally decided to hold my hand. I guess it really is a magical place after all. ;o) I could go on and on about how much I love Disneyland and how happy it makes me to be there.. but I will stop and just post pictures instead. Conclusion, it was an awesome trip.


After getting soaked on Splash Mountain. The whole right side of me was wet, that was it. Took a while to dry, but well worth it.





Another thing I love about going home (besides being with my family) is going to the beach and watching the sunset. There is just nothing else quite like it. It is just so relaxing, watching all the colors in the sky change, feeling the breeze in your face, listening to the waves crash and smelling the salt from the ocean. It really just calms me and I can really relax and think. Brent really enjoyed it as well, he had not been to the beach since he was a kid. So over all, it was a short, but awesome trip. Being home just makes me happy, and I love sharing that with others.