It was a VERY Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!...

a little late but none the less we hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas. We had a great Christmas here in Colorado Springs with Scot's family. It was really fun to get to spend time with them and we both feel so blessed to have such wonderful families that we love so much. We took exactly NO pictures (lame) except for the annual Christmas Day picture that I make Scot take with me...

Oh and on Christmas Eve Scot made these super cute treats to take over to his parents house...Don't I have such a fun and talented husband?

Scot and I love this time of year, it reminds us of all of our blessings and how lucky we are and it brings us closer to those that we love the most. We hope you all had a Merry Christmas with your families and that you all have a safe and Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving Vacation!

Scot and I had a FANTASTIC Thanksgiving! I will spare you ALL the details since I took over 150 pictures but here are the highlights...

The week started out a little rough with Scot getting sick. He was feeling OK the night that we left but by Thursday he ended up huggin' the kleenex and clinging to the Nyquil for about 3 days...poor guy.

I woke him up in time for dinner on Thursday. He was a good sport.

On Saturday night we met up with my good friend Lisa and her husband Bryce for dinner at BJ's Brewhouse. It was really fun to catch up and eat good food!

On Sunday we left Sac Town for the journey down to San Diego. No trip to Southern California is complete without a trip to Pea Soup Andersons. I actually don't know why we put ourselves through it though. Let's be honest, the place is NOT good! Oh and why do they make those holes for your head so HUGE???

We stayed one night in San Diego and then on Monday we jumped on the ship for our cruise! There was lots to do on the ship so on the first day my dad and Scot played a couple rounds of mini golf while my mom and I TRIED to lay on the deck and read but it was wayyyy too cold!

One night during the cruise there is always an elegant evening in the dining room where people dress up for dinner.

Our first port of call was Catalina Island. Sooooo beautiful. Some port docks are not large enough to handle a cruise ship so they ancher out and you are tendered in. Here we are on the tender boat.

Here is our big ol' ship as we drive away on the tender boat.

One of the things we did on Catalina Island was go on a glass bottom boat. It was a blast. We were even able to feed the fish so they would come up closer to the boat!

Scot was hungry and I didn't have any snacks for him so I told him to eat the fish food. It's au natural. The really funny thing is that, that girls hair looks like the food is really coming out of the package. Ha ha ha ha.

Catalina Island is sooo dang cute. People that live on the island mostly drive golf carts so we rented one to see the island a little better. We had such a fun time even though it was insanely cold!

Our 2nd Port of Call was Ensenada, Mexico. We took this really fun tour where our first stop was to this old hotel/casino. They don't really use it for that anymore but they do hold a lot of weddings and parties in this large room behind us. It was a really beautiful place. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez used to come there and stay. Pretty cool.

Here is Scot in the square where we shopped for a little while.

After a 45 minute bus ride our next stop was La Bufadora or the Blow Hole. It's a natural phenomenon where water rushes in to these caves and when the pressue becomes to be too much there is no where for it to go but up so it explodes every 60 to 90 seconds. Something like that :).

There was also an open air market there which was really fun and you could get some neat things there. I may have gotten ripped off but I totally don't care because I got what I wanted and it looks real to me...

Here we are on the last night of the cruise at dinner with our waiter and his runner. We had the best waiter and runner on the ship! Their names were Embry and Emil. They memorized our names and joked with us. We loved them. For the first three nights Scot ordered the Chocolate Melting Cake for dessert but on the last night he decided to order the Apple Pie. As soon as he was done eating his Apple Pie Emil brought him the Chocolate Melting Cake because it was the last night. So awesome!

Time to go home. On the last day you have to be out of your cabin by 8am so we just went and sat on the deck with all our luggage. I look like I'm shooting myself in the face but I was actually wipping a tear. Ha ha ha.

After the Cruise it was pretty nice because we were able to drive back to Sacramento with my parents and spend a couple more days with them. We ended the trip with a visit to Zehnders. See THIS post for what that is. I heart cotton candy shaved ice. It makes me feel like a kid again.

This was a such a great trip! We hated to see it end!! Alright Mom and Dad, start planning for Hawaii!

Thankful

I feel like I have been so blessed in my life. Here are 26 things I am thankful for in addition to LAST YEARS list!

1. Prayer, I am so grateful to be able to talk to my Father in Heaven and know that he is listening whenever I want.

2. My Kindle. Could there be a greater invention?

3. Fabric. There are a couple reasons. It makes it so that we don't have to walk around naked and it brings me hours of sewing
entertainment.

4. Gum, it curbs my cravings when all I want to do is eat ALL day at work!

5. My husband who is going back to school to get his masters degree
so he can take care of our family.

6. My calling at church, it is teaching me and I feel like I am learning from it.

7. My treadmill. We have a love/hate relationship but it is good for me.

8. Pentel gel pens. I use these all day at work and they write so well and smooth. Bliss!

9. Email. I NEVER have to talk on the phone at work. It's Heavenly!

10.Airplanes. Even though the thought of a metal tube shooting through the sky at a zillion miles an hour is a little frightening, it's pretty amazing that I can see my family in California from Colorado in a matter of a couple hours instead of a 2 day drive!

11.Google. I Google EVERYTHING!

12.Those serving our country.

13.Our DVR. My security blanket. I can freely go to the store on Thursday nights without having to haul butt back home so I don't miss Grey's Anatomy.

14.Excedrin MIGRAINE! Enough said.

15.Being able to do service. I know I need to do more but I am glad that I am able to help those in need when the opportunity arises.

16.My 20 minute drive to work in the mornings. I can talk to my
Heavenly Father, reflect on the day ahead or just belt out songs
on the radio and pretend like I can sing better than Taylor Swift.

17.Cell phones. What in the WORLD did we do before cell phones? I
tremble at the thought. Seriously sometimes Scot and I walk around for 2 hours looking for each other at Target if I
leave my phone at home. Soooo annoying!

18.The Sun. I love everything about it. Warmth, growth, happiness!

19.The song "Fireflies" by Owl City. The tune just makes you
happy.

20.Calendars/Day Planners. I love making lists and writing down the things I need to do and places I need to be.

21.HUGE purses. I like to be prepared so I am always carrying around my kindle, at least two magazines, a day planner (see #20), lotion and body spray, calorie books, etc, etc, etc so I am glad that big bags are in!

22.Going Green! I love that people are so in to protecting our planet and not being so wasteful. I can't say that I have completely jumped on the bandwagon but I am glad that there are
people who care. I am working on it.

23.THIS blog. She inspires me.

24.Fax machines. Seriously who comes up with this stuff?

25.Those little nail polish remover wipe things. The funny thing
is that Cutex makes them but the Equate ones at Wal Mart work
WAYYYY BETTER!

26.January, to me it means new beginnings and 9am church, no more
1:00!!!

So there you have it, 53 things I am grateful for!

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.

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?