Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! We just got back from our fabulous Christmas vacation to Sacramento, California although we didn't really spend a whole lot of time there. We had a great time and enjoyed spending time with family and friends! So here is how it alllll happened...

Part 1: San Fancisco with Jared and Jenni

On Tuesday we were able to spend the day in San Francisco with our friends Jared and Jenni. They were great tour guides and took us to all kinds of cool places that even I haven't been to in all of the many trips I have taken to San Francisco which was really awesome.

We started out by going to Union Square and looking at all of the stores that I will never be able to afford but love to admire in all of my magazines such as Betsy Johnson, Tiffany's, Dolce, Prada...OK you get the idea.
Then they took us to this great pizza place in Little Italy where we had by far some of the best pizza we have ever eaten. Here we are walking down to the restaurant...


After we had stuffed our tummies we went up to a place called Coit Tower. It was built as a memorial to the firefighters and was designed to look like a fire hose. You can get some really great views of the city from this point.
If you look closely you can see the Golden Gate Bridge to the upper right of the picture...

We also went to Baker Beach which was really fun. It was pretty cold though so we didn't stay there too long.

Here is Scot with "The Thinker"

Another really cool place they took us is called the Sutro Baths. It used to be a public indoor swimming pool built right on the water but it burned down so now all that is there is what was left after the fire but it was pretty neat to see.
And finally we went looking for Uncle Jessie and Michelle but we didn't find them so luckily we were able to stop by their house...
And that was pretty much our trip to San Fran in a nut shell. Thanks guys for being awesome tour guides! We had a great time!

Part 2: Christmas Day at Aunt Pam's

We had a wonderful traditional Christmas Eve at my Aunt Pam's house where we ate clam chowder for dinner, visited and opened up Christmas jammies. Yay! Here are a couple pictures of my dad and Scot playing pool.


Part 3: Christmas Day at Grandma and Grandpa's

So we really didn't take very many pictures on Christmas Day which wasn't very smart. We did get a couple of shots with my cousins though...

Christmas Day was wonderful of course. It was great to be with family and catch up.

Part 4: Dillon Beach and Bodega Bay


As part of our Christmas gift this year my parents booked a beach house at Dillon Beach in Northern California. We had a fabulous time relaxing, playing games, working on projects (I will post those later), walking down by the beach and just hanging out.

On the first day we got there Scot wanted to go down to the beach and put his feet in the water so my dad and I went down there with him. Scot loves the ocean. He loves looking for cool things on the beach and getting his feet wet. We all warned him that the water was going to be freezing but he still wanted to do it. As we were walking back to the house a sneaker wave got him all the way up to his rear end and I think that's when he finally realized we were right, the water really was cold!
I just like this picture...
There were some really cool rocks to explore...
The next day we drove in to Bodega Bay just up the the road from Dillon Beach. If you have ever seen the Alfred Hitchcok movie "The Birds" this is where that is filmed so that is Bodega's claim to fame I guess you could say. There were TONS of seagulls there (HUGE ONES) dive bombing us which I absolutely hated. I had way too many poopy run ins with seagulls in high school so I don't really like those birds too much. Here we are at "The Tides"...
And you always have to get your picture taken with the whale head at "The Tides"...
We went back down to Dillon Beach later that day to explore some more. Scot found his very first sand dollar. It was a whole one which is fairly hard to find so I was impressed...

And finally here is a group shot in front of our rental house. It was just a cute little funky old beach house built in 1940 and we loved every bit of it.
We are so thankful for this time of year that we have to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Even amidst all of the crazy and tragic things happening in the world at this time we still have so much to be thankful for. We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and we wish everyone happiness in the New Year.

Buttons, Wonderul Buttons...

Here is my button tree creation that I finished up last night. I saw the idea in a magazine a while ago and decided to try it out. It is just a styrofoam cone that you find in the craft/floral department at craft stores or Wal Mart (the green kind are the best). Then you need straight pins from the sewing department and a bunch of buttons (probably around 600ish varying upon what size you make)! I got my buttons from Archivers which is a scarpbook store. Most scrapbook stores sell bags of buttons.

I had so much fun working on this little guy. It was very theraputic and we all know I need a little therapy once in a while...

So if you are looking for something fun to do when it is so stinkin' cold outside (-9 degrees here in The Springs this morning...BRRRRR) try this! It very easy and goes pretty fast!

P.S. The lighting is pooptastic in these pictures and they are super grainy, maybe if I knew how to work the camera I could fix that but since I don't...

Does anyone else hate it when...

... their husbands get on the freaking ROOF??????
Because I DO! Just look at how happy he is up there...

But the end result was worth all of the nervous reckedness...

Yay for beautiful Christmas lights and this beautiful time of year!

Happy Thanksgiving and Twilight!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! A little late yes, but happy none the less! Scot's sisters and their families were all here for Thanksgiving this year which was so much fun! We love getting together and spending time with them! Among other activities (see Katie's blog) one of the things we did was to go see Twilight on Friday afternoon!
I was a little unsure about whether or not I was going to like it. I had heard mixed reviews about it so I was kind of on the fence. Honestly I don't really know a whole lot about who is a good actor or actress and if the filming was good, I just know what I like and I LOVED IT! Obviously they had to cut a lot of things out and a movie doesn't give you all of the detail and emotion that a book can but I thought the movie was great. I thought the characters were cast well and I was thoroughly entertained and that's all I really care about.

After the movie we went back to our house for Pizza because it is so close to the theater. The boys also had a tie swap which was fun. They picked ties from their closets that they don't wear anymore and brought them and they all swaped ties...

I hadn't taken any PICTURES while they were here so we did a little photo shoot before they had to go home that night.

Here we all are:

I guess we were feeling a little cheerleaderish...Here are the sisters and brother (shouldn't Scot be on the bottom?) I love this picture! So cute!:

And this last picture is just...ri-donk-ulous and funny...here are the IN - LAWS (- Christian who couldn't be there) we were just feeling silly...and cheerleadery again (see above picture):

GO TEAM!

I am thankful for so many things this year. I know I act extremely UNGRATEFUL most of the time but I have so many blessings in my life. Here are 27 of them since Thanksgiving was on the 27th (clever, I know) in no particular order:

1. My Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ
2. My wonderful and caring husband
3. My families (both my own and Scot's)
4. My job, even though I hate it 99.999999999% of the time I am grateful to have it
5. A house. We were very blessed this year to get this home.
6. Food to put on the table each day
7. Books, I love to be able to get lost in a good book!
8. Good friends, lots of them are far away and I don't see them very often but I am thankful for them
9. My sewing machine, my newest friend. Love it!
10. My car, who without I wouldn't make it through some of these Colorado winters
11. The Gospel
12. My Camera, I love pictures to scrapbook and I love the memories they hold
13. Gas prices being so low, it has been a life saver these last couple weeks
14. My iPod, it totally gets me through my day at work
15. Mine and Scot's education
16. Clean water for cooking, bathing and drinking
17. Pajamas! I would live in them if I could
18. Vacations!
19. Eternal marriage and the knowledge that families are forever
20. Toothbrushes and toothpaste
21. Ice Cream - especially Peppermint
22. My new white down comforter thanks to Black Friday!
23. A garage so I don't have to scrape my car windows
24. Temples
25. California - Elk Grove in particular. It is where I grew up and learned and played
26. Wal Mart - we have a love hate relationship. It saves me lots of money but NOT lots of time
27. The Red Box. I love the Red Box. I would WAY rather spend $1 on a movie instead of $5. Booo Blockbuster....and Hollywood Video...Boo.

We hope everyone had a wonderful THANKSGIVING!

We loved seeing you guys! We miss you already! Come back...K?