Thanksgiving Break 2011

This year we spent Thanksgiving with the Jensen's.  We had an amazing dinner prepared by Sue.  She always make delicious meals, but her Thanksgiving dinner is like none other.  We had turkey (of course), mashed potatoes, home-made stuffing (my personal favorite), green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, corn, and rolls.  We ate like kings and queens. After lunch we decided to go skeet shooting.  The weather was just about as nice as it can get this time of year, and we had a fun time shooting.  We came home and watched some football and ate some yummy pie.  There was pumpkin, and chocolate pie.  I may have over-indulged a bit.  Later in the evening I started working on some crafts that Sue had lying around (more details on those crafts later, but until Christmas they must be kept on the DL).  We left Payson around nine, and I went home to get ready for Black Friday shopping... 

...This year Walmart was opening at 10, and my friend Kristi and I wanted to get an early start.  We had no idea it was going to be the stupidest decision we would ever make.  Walmart was a nightmare, to put it lightly.  I always kick my self in the rear for going black Friday shopping, and after this year I promised myself never again...until next year :)  I got what I wanted though--a Shark Steamer (which I LOVE btw.  I mopped my whole house twice because I was having so much fun!)  After Walmart we headed over to Target.  We got there at 11:30, the doors were to open at midnight.  We were pretty far back in the line, but from where we were it didn't look like we were that far back-- that is until they opened the doors and started letting people in.  At that point I could tell that it wasn't just a straight line to the entrance, it was a line that swirled and snaked all over the place, meaning we were, in fact, a lot farther back that we thought.  Plus, because someone got trampled to death last year, they were only letting 15 people in at a time.  At that point we decided it wasn't worth the wait/hassle.  I went home, got some sleep, and woke up the next morning.  I wasn't after any doorbusters in the first place, and I found everything I needed!

Friday night we played Walleyball and basketball at the Orem rec center with the Jensen's.  I had a hard time dribbling and running at the same time, let along shooting, lol.  But nevertheless, it was still a fun time!

Nothing like a long weekend spent with family.  I definitely have a lot to be thankful for this year.  My health, job, family, and husband are just a few.  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! 

Whitney, Lorin, and Dan all lined up and ready to shoot

Whit, Dan and me. 

What a good looking bunch!

Love Him...

....Daniel that is.  He is the best.


Tonight I was swamped with homework--seriously about three hours worth of it.  With out me even asking he made dinner.  I was in on the computer when he brought in this plate of food for me: cheesy broccoli, mashed potatoes, and Swedish meatballs, and a little message:

"Love you" written in gravy lol 

Halloween

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays! I love dressing up and trying to find creative ideas for Dan and me.  Dan doesn't necessarily love it, but he goes along with it to make me happy.  Isn't he the best?? 

This year, after much deliberation, we decided to be mimes.  I think they turned out pretty sweet, and it was so easy!  Okay, when I say easy, I mean that it was not hard to put our looks together.  We bought the hats and gloves, but the rest we already had.  What was NOT easy was the face paint.  I thought it would be a piece of cake, but I ended up washing it all off and re-doing it at least three times!  My hands are too shaky and I am not much of an artist, but I think I did a good job! 

I dressed up with my friend Karen for a zumba Halloween party, and we ended up winning the best overall costume catergory.  I was suprised because there were so many great costumes, but very excited. We both got $35 gift cards to zumba.com, so I can't wait to order some new zumba gear! 

The hardest part about Halloween is finding an actual party/occasion to show off our costumes.  Dressing up is no fun if you have no where to go lol.  This year we had planned on going to a party with friends Friday night, but they ended up getting sick at the last minute, so instead we just hung out and watched "The Walking Dead" (BTW, it's awesome! I'm not really a fan of zombie movies, but this mini-series is really well done.  I totally recommend it!  We watched all 6 episodes in one night...slightly pathetic, I know!)

Anyways, Saturday we went to a party hosted by our friends Lindsay and Kyle.  We had a donut eating contest (which Dan beat me at...barely).  I ate way too much sugar and had a grand time visiting.  I found out that two of my friends are preggo, and I'm excited for them!

Halloween day my sister came over because she wanted me to help her get ready for a party she was going to later that night.  She wanted to be a zombie, but not just any zombie--a "nerdy" zombie.  She had a whole story already planned out about how she died.  She was in the library studying, she climbed a ladder to get a book of the top shelf, but ended up slipping and broke her neck. She looked  freaky.

Dan and I went and saw Paranormal Activity 3 that night.  It was pretty freaky, and a lot better than the first two!  Anyways, enough rambling.  Here are some pics of our weekend:

Karen and me before the zumba party

Because of the white face paint my teeth looked so yellow, so I kept my mouth closed in every picture lol!

 

Dan and I at the party on Saturday...no, I'm not pregnant.  I blame my gut on all the crap I had been eating prior to the picture!

 

Add caption

My husband cracks me up!

Some of our zumba friends!

Zumba girls are very strong :)

She looks a little too believable...

Well that was our weekend!  I'm already brainstorming on what to be next year!

Biking Adventures

For Fall break Dan and I took a short overnight trip with Lorin and Jake down to St George to Mtn bike.  We had taken a trip down to St George a few weeks before to try out a biking trail we'd read about online--Bearclaw Poppy.  We had so much fun that we decided to come down and do this trail again, along with a new trail that also looked fun called Thunder Mountain.  We checked into our hotel then drove down to St George Saturday afternoon to bike Bearclaw Poppy.  It was even more awesome than the first time we did it because I was more familiar with the trail; I knew what to expect, and the trail is so well maintained.  It's almost like a ski resort in that they have they have signs that point to the easiest route and the more difficult routes throughout the entire trail. We got down once, and decided we wanted to go again.  By the time we got down the second time and back to the cars it was about 6:30, so we decided that was enough for one day and went to dinner at Golden Corral.

     Sunday morning we woke up excited to get to our next mtn biking trail--Thunder Mountain.  Dan got on the internet to find out how to get there only to find out there had been a landslide and because of this the road that leads to the trail was closed...bummer.  But we started looking for another trail that sounded fun.  We found Gooseberry Mesa.  It sounded awesome.  We printed out the directions and heading for the trail.  The directions said the paved road turned to a "gravel" road at one point.  The author's definition of "gravel" would have to mean: a dirt road with giant boulders jutting out all over the place, only accessible with a 4 wheeler or monster truck.  (Our little Nissan Sentra wasn't going to make it).  We got as far up the Mesa as we could before we realized we had no choice but to turn around or risk damaging our car and not be able to drive home.  We considered parking our cars and riding our bikes the rest of the way, but, according to the directions, we were still about 10 miles of strenuous uphill away from the beginning of the trail head.  I was not up for that!  By the time we got back into the town of Toquerville it was 1:30.  We searched for other trails, but we were afraid the same thing would happen--we would drive all the way out to where it was and wouldn't be able to make it to the trail head because of our vehicle! At that point we decided to head home. Regardless of Sunday's mishaps, we had so much fun on this short trip.  I didn't get too many pics, but here the ones I got:

Ready to ride.

Me, about to go down on of the "fingers of death" as they are called.

Lorin bombing down

Dan.  The pics don't quite show how steep some of these hills and drops were.

Jake

Will I ever blog again??

Hopefully some of you faithful followers were wondering this?? :) 

Well I have been a slacker, and now there are quite a few things I want to blog about.  But I will start with the most important thing... MY birthday!!!

October 13th was the day.  I woke up early to go to class ( I would have sluffed without second thoughts except that I had a midterm).  After school I met Dan at Village Inn for breakfast, and then we went shopping.  I took full advantage... give me a few hours, and the excuse "it's my birthday" and I can do a lot of damage! My sweet husband was patient enough to follow me around the mall without complaining once.

Later that night we went to dinner with Dan's family at Olive Garden.  The food was yummy, and we had a great visit.  Dan's stubborn parents insisted on paying for us.  They are so nice. Check out my awesome PJ's. 

Dan's dad picked them out, which totally cracks me up!  I was also enjoying a homemade cinnamon roll from my thoughtful visiting teachers.

 We celebrated with my mom and siblings earlier in the week.  My mom made my favorite dish, Lomo Saltado.  Que rico!  We then played Clue (which is impossible to play with cheating siblings lol) and opened presents. 

24 years old...yikes

You try blowing out 24 candles while someone is blocking them...good thing I got a big mouth

the gang who celebrated, Dan was the photographer

Proof! I am still taller than my younger sister...as least for another few months or so.

my love

David hogged all the "tall" genes

Sillyness is classic

I hope to have more posts coming your way soon!

Fun Hikes

We have been on a few fun hikes this summer that I forgot to blog about.  One of them was hiking to Stewart Falls.  We did this hike last year, but went up a different way this year.  Instead of riding the Sundance lifts up we started at Aspen Grove and hiked up and back.  It was a nice easy hike, and Yuki loved leading the way.  She saw a few squirrels and chased them into the bushes.  She loved cooling off in the stream, and loved all the attention she got from the fellow hikers along the trail. 

Cooling off in the stream

She loves car rides just for this reason

We stopped at sonic on the way home for some Cherry Limeades!

Another hike we did is the Big Springs Hollow hike.  We have biked up this trail a few times, but were feeling lazy and also wanted to give Yuki some excersise to we decided to hike it.  It was fun, and we saw lots of funky bugs along the way.  We also saw a billion bees.  They happen to be one of my biggest phobias.  They say the best way to releive anxiety (phobia is a form of anxiety) is exposure...not sure it worked for me though!  

Water break=picture time

Some of the cool bugs we saw.

Dan having fun splashing Yuki

 

 

We made it to the springs!

She may look like a prissy dog, but nothing makes her happier than being outside and playing in the mud! 

Crazy Good Times

My sister Kelee brings out the young, carefree me (is there such a me???)

She spent Friday night at my house and we had a blast. We went to Los Hermanos Friday night for dinner, then went and saw Fright Night 3D...scarily awesome. But we didn't get to bed until around 1:30. I was ready for bed around nine! Kelee was laughing at "us old folks" poor attempt at staying out late and partying. I'm getting too old for staying up late!

Saturday we took her out to hit with our new ball machine. She hadn't really played before, but she picked it up pretty quickly and we saw a huge improvement in her swing in just the hour she spent hitting!

After that we got ready for the day--showered, and did each others hair and make-up. Then Kelee decided we needed to continue the tradition from years past and take goofy pictures. You see, about three years ago when Kelee came to sleep over we dressed up all crazy and colorful and spent forever taking random, goofy pictures. Ever since then when she comes over she wants to do it again. Sometimes I think people my age shouldn't be seen like this when it's not Halloween.

Retarded much?
To cool for normal poses...


One good picture out of about 50 attempts.

Yes, I am as crazy as I look.

She had just looked in the mirror.

Older sister-ness. You get it.


I'm not sure where we came up with half the ideas for these poses. I'll let Kelee take the credit for that :)

Dan escaped the madness by going fishing which meant Kelee and I were left to use the self timing feature on my camera. It ended up being a real workout (not just a fake one) running from the camera to the middle of the room to pose!

Love ya Kel, thanks for the fun weekend!

Tennis Tutor

I love browsing through the KSL classifieds, you never know what your going to find. I usually browse through a bunch of different catergories while bored at work, and I just happened to strike gold on Monday. I found an awesome deal for this tennis ball machine!

We have wanted to buy one since forever ago, but they are just to dang expensive. When we saw it, we knew we had to buy it. It is worth every penny.

The past few nights we have gone out and hit, and it's one the best toys we have spent money on. I have hit about 800 balls in the last two days. Talk about tennis elbow! It also has an oscillating feature that kicks your butt.

If any of you wanna go play or wanna hit with the machine, let me know :)

1st day of school

My next semester starts on Tuesday; It's definitely not an exciting thing for me like it used to be (yes I was one of those kids that always looked forward to summer ending and school starting!) That is until college....now it seems like school will never end!

I found some old first day of school pics that I wanted to share:

My first day of second grade:

My brother David and I. Boy my outfit was hideous!

It was also my first day at a new school (Larsen Elementary), in a new town (Spanish Fork), and a chance to make new friends.


My first day of college:

Betcha I didn't think I would still be at it five years later :) But what can you do?? The important thing is I'm still trying...at least that's what I keep telling myself!