We Elfed it Up!

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I especially love J's "What?! I'm hot!" look he's got goin' on! Hahahaha! And I am "just happy to be there." (as always, right, Jenna?)

O Christmas Tree...

Christmas is my favorite holiday! I love the trees, the smells, the lights (I love twinkle lights), the food, the snow, the cabin, but most of all the family.

We got our Christmas tree! I was so excited...it's beautiful! My sister-in-law helped me put it up and decorate it and yes, it's fake, but everyone who sees it asks if it's real! We still don't have a star to put on top, so we have a red, plastic cup. (I know that sounds funny...but it needed something...it looked so weird up there without anything!) We didn't have a tree last year so this was a most welcomed addition to our Christmas festivities this year!

Isn't it beautiful?! There are other Christmas decorations up that would not be up without my sister-in-law, but I still need to finish it so I will put up pictures when it's finished!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Thanksgiving and All That Ensued...

I had an awesome Thanksgiving! It was so fun to have Jason's sister and her family here for the week. I absolutely adore her children. Little A is the best with our dogs...I loved how she followed them around the house bossing them around! And they loved it too...they don't get near as much attention when she isn't here. She is the sweetest little cuddler. She is just so dang cute I wish I could keep her forever. Little D is way good at playing his Nintendo DS and I love sitting and watching him play. He loves that too. O...and he kicked my butt at Yahtzee. That kid has quite the roll! Little C...no words can describe how much I love that little boy. He is the happiest baby I've ever seen in my life! He just chills and plays and eats! I love it when he eats...he is way messy, but he gets so excited! He waves his little arms up and down and I just love it! I miss all of them and can't wait till we sell the heart-shaped potato on e-bay so they can move here!

Little A and Little DLittle C

During Thanksgiving week, Big J and my hubba bubba built a window seat in our bedroom! I am so excited...I admit, I doubted how good it would look, but it's awesome! We are going to paint it and put curtains and everything up soon so I will post pictures of before and after for you all to see their handywork!

We had a bit of a turkey fiasco on Thanksgiving. We put the 14-lb turkey in the fridge to thaw out by Thursday. All the websites said that would be enough time. Can you see where this is going? We pulled out the turkey to get it ready to bake and...yes...you guessed it...it was still frozen. So we sent our husbands on an expedition to find us a thawed out turkey...on Thanksgiving. Mission Impossible??? Not for our other halves! They found us one, the last one, but it was a plump bird, rounding out at 21 lbs. So all the directions said it would take about 3 to 3 1/2 hours to cook it completely. 6 hours later, we decided to just eat our dinner without the turkey. 3 hours after that, it was cooked. Now, we have about 30 lbs. of left over turkey. Gotta love turkey wraps for the 100th time!

Other than that, Thanksgiving was awesome. We got to see the rest of Jason's family on the webcam in Oregon (excluding Sara and Taylor)! That was really fun! I got to see my other niece and nephews and it made me so much more excited to see them at Christmas time!

Here we are buttering up our little man!

Here is Janessa waiting patiently for the turkey to get done!
Here is our friend Celia helping out in the kitchen!
Craft time! (This is us practicing our "1-2-3 Look Up!" Smile...hence the cheesiness) That's Big J in the background...he is one of the funniest people I know pretty much and he got us new tupperware!!! :D
This is my absolute favorite picture. Uncle J and Little C chillin' after a long day of fun.

The Invasion of the Little Black Bugs Otherwise Known As...

TICKS.

My house is infested with engorged ticks at the present time. Anyone want to guess what engorged is referring to? Well I will tell you...it means they're full of blood. They've already had their Thanksgiving feast and are just chillin' in their food coma which means that technically they're not supposed to be a problem as far as biting goes (thank goodness), but they are horribly annoying, pesky things that keep crawling up my wall and filling my head with thoughts of ticks all over my body causing me to itch and inspect myself, my husband, and my dogs, over and over again. The past two nights, my husband and I have shared a twin bed (wow...I am SO grateful for my bed) because they made their first appearance in our bedroom...on our bed. So I lysol-ed that sucker and now our room is clean. But alas, the pesky little buggers followed us into the guest room that was going to be S & J's room when they came to visit.

Luckily, my hubba bubba has connections. His cousin actually runs a pest control company and so we'll be able to take care of the problem quick. They are coming at 7 in the morning tomorrow to get rid of them. We already checked our dogs and "Frontline-d" them so we should be good to go by tomorrow evening!

Thanks to a friend of mine, I learned that to kill ticks you put them in rubbing alcohol and then flush them down the toilet. I have found that I am a very vindictive person. Those little guys don't stand a chance anymore.
I was put in a really bad mood because of all this, but we went to sacrament today and the talks were on Joseph B. Wirthlin's talk "Come What May, and Love It." Wow...hahaha...so now my attitude is, "Now I know what to do if I am ever invaded by these alien-ish creatures again, and at least I have a house to be infested with ticks and a husband with constant vigilance to take care of the problem."

The Twilight Lost Script and Other Upcoming Adventures...

For all of you "Twilighters" out there, you need to read this and go through the slide show because, well...it's HILARIOUS!!! I laughed for hours. I am still laughing actually! Bahahaha...anyways...here is the link:

Twilight: The Lost Script

We are going to the movie tonight, and I've heard mixed reviews, so I am keeping my expectations low and hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised! I hope it's good because I am dragging my husband to it, and I want him to like it. Actually, I just don't want him to think I like reading books that are stupid because I spend a lot of time reading and I love these books.

For all you who have not read them, I haven't met one person who didn't like them once they read them, so maybe that's some food for thought for future reading...It's an easy read, geared toward young adults, so you can get through them fairly fast. For me, they were a "can't put down" read, so I finished the first 3 in about 2 days...you may want to allow a healthy chunk of time for reading these puppies.

I am SO excited for Thanksgiving! My sister-in-law and her family are coming on Sunday to spend the week with us and I am so excited! We are going to have a blast! She is extremely crafty so I am hoping she can give me some fun pointers on decorating my house! She has already given me some cute ideas for crafts, but I have to get my butt in gear and actually do them!

I will post pictures of Thanksgiving in a later post (hahaha...because it hasn't happened yet)! Speaking of pictures...

Jason and I decided that our Christmas present for each other would be a new camera! We are SO excited! We got a Canon EOS Rebel XSI (I think that's the official name) and with this camera, I feel magical. Like, I feel extremely professional because the camera is extremely professional. I can't wait to take pictures of all the fun stuff we haven't been able to take pictures of because we haven't had a decent camera! J is WAY excited too! He LOVES taking pictures, so I am really happy we were able to do this because I love seeing him so excited about it!

Sushi for a sweater...

On Tuesday night, my wonderful hubby and I went to dinner with our dear friends Jenna and Curt! Can anyone guess where we went?? By the title of my post you could probably infer that we went for sushi at Kona Grill (Happy Hour=half price sushi, pizza, and appetizers). I do not like sushi, and yes, I've tried it. Previous to this dinner outing, I had tried sushi 6 times and each time was a different type of sushi, so all of you who use the line, "Don't knock it till you try it," I can knock it all I want because I think 6 times is a fair amount of trying.


Anyways, Jenna and I had a moderate amount of food to satiate our appetites sufficiently, but our husbands gorged themselves. My husband in particular, cannot control himself whilst around sushi. He gets this look in his eye that says, "I am a king, and I will stuff myself like a king because it's half price sushi and I can have as many Atlantic Rolls as I want!" Curt, I believe is the same way because he, after eating about 3 rolls and an appetizer of pot stickers, ordered 3 more rolls for him and his wife, even though she clearly said, "I'm good," when asked if she would like more. The 3 rolls come and Curt is so full he nearly split his pants, so he makes a deal with his wife, the basic terms being, "You eat 7 pieces, I buy you a sweater." Being inspired by this little deal I decided to try and strike up a deal with my hubby. So I pipe up, "I will eat one piece of sushi J if you buy me a sweater," and I was completely serious. You must understand, my husband loves sushi and naturally wants me to love it so we can go eat it more. This deal appealed to that sense and he considered it. Then Jenna decided to sweeten the deal for him a bit by saying, "She'll eat THREE pieces of sushi for a sweater." Immediately, he agreed, and I was on yet another quest to successfully devour THREE pieces of sushi. One time during a past sushi-trying endeavor, I actually started gagging because I didn't chew enough and the seaweed was one big long piece trailing all the way down my throat, so now...I chew. A lot. So in goes the first piece followed by about 2 minutes of chewing. Down goes the first piece. I finished the other two (surprisingly without gagging).
Having earned my sweater and Jenna having earned hers, and being so conveniently close to a shopping center, we went on our quest for some sweaters/sweatshirts, but the ironic thing about shopping is when you aren't looking you find exactly what you want, and when you are looking, there's nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. So THREE pieces of sushi later and I still don't have my sweater. I don't think I'll hold him to it though. I thought that was really sweet of him to agree to such a one-sided deal and honestly, I know he would've bought me a sweater anyways, even without eating the THREE pieces of sushi. He would bend over backwards just to make me happy. He is just really selfless like that, and I realized (for like the gajillionth time since we've been married) that I married the best man in the world.

Happy Birthday, Elder Natertot!

It's my brother's birthday today! He is 21 and is a stud, basically.


This is him showing off his awesome new tie for us. Anyways...Nate is one of the best brothers in the world. When we were younger, we were tight. People thought we were twins, but not only were we tight in physical features, but he was my best friend. He is an amazing skateboarder. He likes to have everything clean except his room which got him the nickname of Mr. Clean. He is one of the hardest working people I know. He can be quiet, but he is really funny once you start talking to him. He will climb anything and everything.


This is him being a monkey man, yet again. The palm tree is really tall...don't let the picture deceive you.
And here he is again, in a tree, I am assuming getting breakfast or something.


From the white shirt, tie, and name tag, you can probably guess he is currently on a mission. He is serving in the West Indies Mission. He spent the first 6 months (I think) in St. Lucia, a beautiful island in the West Indies. Since those first six months he has served in Guyana in a couple of different areas and is now a Zone Leader for one of the zones there. He is an amazing missionary who is working hard to bring the gospel to those who have not been able to receive of its blessings yet. I am grateful for his example and for being such an awesome missionary. He gets home around April 2nd and I am SO EXCITED to see him!


LOVE YOU ELDER! Happy Birthday!