Christmas Week 2014

Christmas 2014 was a success!  We were able to spend it with family and that is always a treat.  Lindsey, Brenen, and Briggs were visiting from Virginia.  We soaked up as much time as we could with them! 

^^  We LOVE walking around and looking at awesome Christmas lights!  We also love looking ^^

 at houses and dreaming of our future home, yard, and pets. :)  There is a great neighborhood right next to our apartment complex that has the best light displays and they even have a competition between the houses in the neighborhood.  One house even had the BSU football team as part of their lights! 

^^ Shelby's version of elf on the shelf!  I found this guy in our Christmas tree ^^

 one afternoon...apparently it had been there for several days...I'm not so observant to details sometimes. :)

^^  It started snowing on Christmas Eve afternoon and everyone was so excited-especially ^^

 Lila.  Briggs on the other hand wasn't sure what to think of it. :) 

^^ On Christmas Eve afternoon we made Gingerbread houses...we had quite the city going on! ^^

  I thought that I had more pictures but I can't find them now...

^^ Lindsey and Brenen's finished masterpiece. ^^

^^ Christmas morning we woke up and Santa had come!  He brought us lots of candy ^^

as well as some great gifts!!!

^^ After opening Christmas gifts we spent the rest of the morning playing with our new ^^

 toys which included the Frozen songbook-Lila loved singing along to the songs as I played and Curtis even jammed out to some Frozen songs on his guitar!

^^ Shelby got an indoor basketball hoop for his office so we played a lot of knee ball to break ^^

 it in. :) 

^^ Or I should say everyone except Dad played knee basketball. He had knee surgery ^^

a few days before Christmas so he spent lots of time resting his knee and elevating it so he can get back to exercising and playing basketball soon!

^^ Snow on Christmas morning!!! Not much but we still count it as a white Christmas! ^^

^^ Briggs eating Christmas dinner before everyone else. ^^

^^ This kid is such a ham and so sweet...nothing like a cute, chubby baby. ^^

^^ Playing games and singing Christmas carols. ^^

                                                

^^ On Saturday we went swimming at a hot springs with my aunts and uncles on my mom's ^^

 side and their families.  It was so fun to see everyone!  Afterwards we had dinner, desserts, and games.  We also celebrated Briggs' first birthday a few days early since we won't get to celebrate it with him on his real birthday...

^^ Not going to lie-I helped him out a little to make his cupcake mess a little messier...:) ^^

^^ This was the first time in six years that all six of my siblings were around for Christmas.  ^^

Lots has happened in the last six year-missions, marriages, babies!  

^^ Proof that my Mom was around. :)  She's playing the piano and was always busy making ^^

sure that things were taken care of.  We are grateful for her!!!

We are so grateful for the Christmas season and for Jesus Christ!  Now on to New Year's and all the excitement of that!!!!  We hope your Christmas was as wonderful as ours was!!!

Thanksgiving Chain and other happenings

We love the Thanksgiving season!  As a family we are still getting holiday traditions started.  This year to count our blessings we decided to make a "Thankful chain."  Every night after family scriptures we each took a strip of paper and wrote what we were thankful for that day.  Our strips of paper slowly grew into a chain.  I specifically cut out Christmas colors so that we could hang the chain on our Christmas tree to remind us to continue being grateful throughout the whole holiday season!  Among the things that we are grateful for: Jesus Christ, Home, Running, Shelby, Car, Job, School, hot chocolate, and much more!!!  

I love being able to look at our thankful chain on our Christmas tree and can't wait to keep doing it every holiday season!

The actual week of Thanksgiving and the holiday was a little different for us this year.  Thanksgiving was my holiday to work this year and I also was scheduled to work that whole weekend.  So, we celebrated and relaxed together Sunday through Wednesday.

On Monday we went on a much needed date.  We walked around the Village and saw the cutest little outdoor ice skating rink...we are totally going back to skate one of these days!

We also bought our first pet...a beta fish which we named Mufasa. :)  Since we can't really get any other pets until we have a house with some sort of yard, this will be our only pet for a little while-the joys of apartment living!

Monday night there was an Ecumenical (Interfaith-don't worry I had to look up the word too :) Thanksgiving Service that our stake participated in at St. John's Cathedral in Boise.  I love cathedrals and was so excited to go!!!  It was a little different than I thought it would be and I didn't get the greatest pictures of the cathedral with my phone, but you get the idea.  Beautiful stained glass windows, singing with the great acoustics cathedrals provide, and very educational as far as learning about different faiths and cultures that are in the Treasure Valley!

We also decorated our Christmas tree prior to Thanksgiving.  We usually wait until after Thanksgiving but like I said, this year we had to be flexible.  Shelby went to Twin Falls to spend Thanksgiving with his parents and his siblings that could be there this year.  I'm not going to lie, it was torture for both of us...I spent some time with my family after sending Shelby on his way to Twin and on Thursday night I went to my Grandparents for a short time after work and ate their Thanksgiving leftovers.  I told Shelby to take some pictures while he was out of town but well, we have a lack of pictures. :)  Oh well, we hope everyone had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving and a great start to your December!!!

Now that this weekend is here...

...I figured that I should probably post about last weekend.  I was a wonderful weekend full of relaxation for the most part (minus the part where I spoke in church :)  It was just the weekend we needed since I have to work the next three weekends.  We got our first big snowstorm of the year.  It came earlier than we expected and I almost got stuck in Emmett after teaching my dance classes because of it!  It all worked out though and I only had to wait for about a half hour for the highway to open up after they cleared an accident up.  I prayed the whole way home...  I love the snow!  Expect for the part where you have to drive in it. :)  This was the view Friday morning from our balcony.

^^ Shelby ventured out to measure the snow on Friday morning and it was at 7 inches...when ^^

 he measured again a few hours later it was 9 inches.

Friday night we ventured out into the snow to go bowling with some friends from the ward.  It was fun and we even got to do a little cosmic bowling!

^^Saturday night we layered up and went to the Boise State game...thank goodness for^^

 hot chocolate and hand warmers...it totally brought back memories of New York winters!

^^Sunday we went to my parents house for dinner and roasted marshmallows over their^^

fire....this is how we do smores in the winter!

We sure do love our weekends and take full advantage of them when we have time all to ourselves!!!!  Happy Friday friends!!!

Thursday Treat: Huckleberry Muffins

Last week we went on our grocery shopping trip to stock up on food for the next few weeks.  We bought an count carton of eggs since we have been baking a lot more.  As we were unloading the groceries, one of the bag got knocked off the counter and onto the kitchen floor...and what do you know, over half of our eggs were cracked and damaged.  In an effort to save the eggs I began whipping up some muffins and threw some huckleberries into the batter that we had saved from our summer hiking adventures!  We ended up doubling the batch and still have muffins galore in our freezer. :)  Here's the yummy recipe which originally uses blueberries instead of huckleberries-recipe credit goes to my mom. :)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 T melted butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 T oil

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup sour cream or yogurt

1 cup buttermilk

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

1 cup blueberries (optional-fresh or frozen)

Stir together butter, vanilla, oil, eggs, and sugar, then add sour cream or yogurt, and buttermilk.  Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and add to mix.  Pour in muffin tins, filling 2/3 full.  Bake @ 375 degrees for 15 minutes.  

Note:  We used yogurt instead of sour cream and regular milk instead of the buttermilk and they turned out great.  Also, if you're craving some chocolate, chocolate chips would be a great addition to the muffins! :)

Enjoy your Thursday!

Gratitude for Jesus Christ

As I was leaving the hospital yesterday I had an amazing conversation with one of my coworkers regarding some of the situations that we dealt with throughout the day.  I love how some conversations just leave us lost in thought-this was one of those conversations for me.  I drove home lost in my own thoughts. 

^^ This picture reminds me of that conversation (photo cred: Greg Olsen art) ^^

At one time or another we all feel like the young man in this picture-lost, confused, scared-everyone has been there to some degree at one time or another.  The world we live in is crazy  Tragedies occur and at times we may think that we cannot get through it, that happiness will never be found again.  Now look at Christ's face.  I'm imagining that his eyes are saying "trust in me, there is hope in me."  I am so, so grateful for Jesus Christ and the hope that we have in Him.  He loves us and wants each and everyone of us to be happy-we just have to trust in Him and His plan!  So just a few thoughts for you on this Sunday...remember this my friends-God loves you!  Happy Sunday!    

Halloween Weekend

We started off Halloween week by painting pumpkins!  We didn't really have the motivation to pull out all of our carving tools and make a huge mess that would have to be cleaned up so we decided to stick with painting our pumpkins this year!  We painted a pirate which Shelby named Argyle...he is officially a member of the family. :)

For the actual weekend we went to Twin Falls to spend time with the Hyde family.  It was fun to catch up with everyone that we saw! We miss the small town feel that Twin Falls has. Within the first few hours of getting into town we randomly saw at least five people that we either went to school with or were close to through church...that just doesn't happen in Boise.:) We love Twin Falls and it will always have a special place in our hearts and of course we will always be back to visit since we have family there!

We couldn't be in Twin Falls without spending some time with Amy, Jesse, and baby Myla. Since it was Halloween we decided to go to Tubb's Berry Farm. It was so much fun! We went through both of the straw mazes they had, shot off their corn cannons and won prizes for hitting the targets, walked through the petting zoo, went down all of their fun slides, and went on a hayride. It was a perfect Halloween activity!

                                                       

We were kind of lame and didn't dress up for Halloween this year....although I did dress up the day before for our dance party.  We have lots of ideas up our sleeves for coming years when we will hopefully have little kiddos to dress up with!  After Tubb's Berry Farm we went to Shelby's grandma's house and ate dinner and watched Trick or Treaters come by for candy...we also ate lots of candy which was great! On Saturday Christie and I went to a baby shower for a family friend. Later that day we had a little party for the end of October/beginning of November birthdays.

Our niece taking a ride on her birthday present!

We love our families and are grateful for the time that we get to spend with them! Now on to November...which started off with visits to the dentist-maybe not the best thing to do the Monday right after a Halloween weekend full of candy and sweet treats! :)

How Shelby feels about the dentist!

Just kidding....that's how he feels about me taking pictures of him at the dentist!

                                               

Used Band-Aids-Yum!

We had Halloween parties at dance last week.  It was great to see what costumes the girls were going to trick or treat in!  We also ate lots of treats and played some fun Halloween games.  

^^ I told them to make silly faces and this is what I got! :) Half of the girls had already taken their costumes off by the time I got around to taking pictures because it was so hot from dancing.^^

^^ These three are so great...their competition team is going to be awesome this year! ^^

This was my all time favorite treat that was brought!  If you look closely the sign says "Place used Band-Aids here."  The nurse in me loved it so, so much!!!  Classic and next time I work on Halloween I'm going to bring this for all of my nurse friends!!!

Hope your Halloween was great and that you didn't have to eat too many used band-aids!!!