The holidays!

I really love this time of the year!  My mom and I wrote all about the holidays and traditions over here.

This year the day before Thanksgiving we had a pie making party at my parents' house.

My nephews were there, my mom and dad helped, then one brother and sister-in-law came over.  I make 2 pumpkin pies and my first ever pecan pie.  I need a little more practice making pie crusts, but overall it was a success!  I think that next year I'll try to make a strawberry rhubarb pie (Tanner's favorite).

We spend Thanksgiving over at my great aunt Pam's house.  It seems that after eating, we always tend to get a little crazy.  This year it was a three person tower.

The Sunday or Monday after Thanksgiving we get together to make gingerbread houses.  This is probably my favorite holiday tradition. 

This year we decided to decorate our house in red and white.  We added a little garden in our yard as well.  Our cute little gingerbread house is now sitting on our piano looking festive.

Last night we had an extended family Christmas party.  My little brother played Santa! We all thought it was so funny that we decided to join in on the fun.

A few weeks ago I went to a boutique.  I saw a lot of cute things and left feeling crafty! 

I painted this little sign to make my desk area feel more christmas-y.

I also saw some cute headbands at the botique.  I felt like I could make them for a lot less than they were selling for.  They have wire inside, so they bend and shape to your head.  I feel like I have a hard time wearing headbands because they always seem to fit weird of slip off.  These are perfect!  I made a couple and really like them.

And... We got a new car!  It's a 2004 Mini Cooper. 

Easter Easter Easter!

This year we went to my mom's house to color Easter eggs.  It was fun to get to spend time with my family and get creative.  My nephews came and it was a big party!

 It's adorable how much my nephews love their grandpa!

Here's my favorite egg this year.

Another one I did.  Sappy, I know...

My oldest Nephew had so much fun choosing what colors he was going to do.

My youngest nephew wanted to do what everyone else was doing.  I thought this was extra cute because he's such a wiggly worm it was amazing that he sat there so still :)

And here's my sweet sis-in-law with nephew #3 (on this side) on the way!  I LOVE newborns, so I'm excited for him to get here in July.

After coloring Easter eggs we hid plastic eggs outside for the little guys to find.  His basket is empty because as soon as he found an egg he would open it, eat it, and leave the shell on the grass.

 I helped Brigham count how many eggs he had found.  33!  That's the highest he's ever counted and I got to help (that's the teacher in me, getting excited about helping a little person count)

 My twin brothers live together and I figured they wouldn't get an Easter basket, so last night I made them a basket when I made mine and Tanner's.  I dropped them off on their door step last night.  i hope they got them and nobody stole them!

Posting all these pictures made me think of the Easter when Tanner and I were dating.  We colored eggs with my roommate Tessa and our friend Josh.

 

And here we are this year.  Do we look like we've changed much?

These Are a Few of my Favorite Things!

In no particular order...

1) Bobby Pins: These are probably the best things ever made! I honestly so not know what I would do without them. My curly locks would have a hard time indeed without bobby pins. Miracle workers!

2) Family: I’m not going to lie. I think I have one of the best families there ever was. My oldest brother, he gave me an amazing nephew who is simply adorable! My twin brothers are so much fun, and some of my best friends. My parents are wise—so wise! And I am so glad I was raised by them and have had the chance to look up to them.




3) Friends: Oh, I’ve got some good one of these! Camille and I have been friends for YEARS {nearing 9 1/2 years now}. Chelsie and I started our friendship about 4 years ago. Derrick and I go back probably 5 years. I could name others as well: Afton, Steffen, all my old roommates, my family, my fiancé, and more… I have been quite blessed! I am surrounded my many people who love me and I consider myself so very lucky.



4) Tanner: Every single day I am thankful that I have him in my life! He really is one of my favorite things! Yesterday he said that his main goal is to make he happy—to make me smile and laugh. How splendid :o) He is SO good to me and means the world to me.



5) Good Jeans: You see, every body is different, and thus needs a different pair of pants. Life doesn't work like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants... It's just not like that. Chelsie and I tried that once and it just doesn't work. With the long legs I have, good jeans are hard to come by. Now my definition of good may be different than yours. One qualifier of a good pair of jeans is the length. I love a L O N G pair of pants. Now if I find a long pair of pants that also happens to have a little bit of stretch to them, have beautiful designs on the pockets, and makes my back side look good… Wow! That definitely makes it onto my list of favorite things!




6) Fireworks: These are magical to me! And it seems like they never love any of their mystique or magic at all to me. I believe I could watch fireworks every day of my life and not tire of them. This is part of the reason I love the 4th of July so much.

7) Christmas: “It’s the most wonderful time of the Year!!!” Yup, they had it right! I cannot put into words, my love of the holiday season! I love it all: the feel, the smell, lights, hot chocolate, decorations, presents {giving and receiving}, Christmas trees, how much happier everyone seems, wrapping paper, music and everything else. It just makes me so very merry! Sometimes I feel like I live from Christmas season to Christmas season!




8) Popsicles: So tasty! I have always loved popsicles. I think that one reason that love has deepened is due to my intolerance of lactose. Most popsicles are free of dairy and that is just one more reason they are so delightsome. One of may favorites are Otter Pops {in fact I once ate 50 in 3 hours…} And I think that right now my very favorite is the watermelon popsicle {real watermelon with real seeds!} that you can get at ‘Fior de Mitchocan’ the little Mexican store on Horne. Tasty, tasty, tasty!

9) Lists: These keep my life organized and help me make sense of things. They’re also just fun.

10) Lip Gloss: I collect this stuff. I adore this stuff! Camille and I enjoy getting lip glosses from all the different places we go. We know every type of lip gloss applicator. A few years ago Camille and I got together and counted how many lip glosses each of us had. I believe she had around 130 and I had 120.

Smorgasbord

There was this one time I got engaged and then didn’t write a blog for over a month—that was this last month…

Well, I suppose it’s time to get my act together and write again. Now, I’m a funny person, and there are a lot of things I could write about, but I’ve decided {as the title denotes} to write a little bit about everything. I’m just going to let you guys know what I’ve been up to in my more-than-a-month absence.

1) THE MOST recent thing was learning the correct way to spell smörgåsbord. ‘Tis a funny word with an oh so funny spelling. Now I learned this word about 15 years ago when watching Charlotte’s Webb, yet it was not until today that I learned how to spell the word. For some reason I always thought that word ended with a ‘g’. That, however, is not the case…

2) Going to Washington D.C. I needed some adventure, so 3 of my roommates {Tessa, Amanda, and Erin} and I went to D.C. Why? You may be asking… Why not! Well, it’s always been a dream of mine, and we got a SMOKIN’ deal, so I couldn’t afford not to go.







3) Moving home. That’s right. The lease at 5 East Hillside expired {if that’s the right phraseology… like they can go bad like milk or something…}. Well, due to my sour lease, I had to vacate the premise. I decided that the choice that was the most wise was to move home for 5 months until I become Lindsey Layton. So my sister and I are now like a couple sardines squished into a space much too small for either of our liking.


(Here's the inside of 5 East Hillside. This is just one of the many good times we had there!)


4) Family Reunion. As I type I am on a train in California. Every year {for the last 10 at least} my mom’s side of the family comes to San Diego and stays in beach cottages. I simply LOVE the beach! There’s something so soothing about the sand and waves. ‘Tis good for the soul!

5) Planning a wedding. Making decisions is something I do not do well. So as you can imagine, it has been harder than anticipated… GOOD though! The last couple days I have been working on my wedding video and that is coming along quite nicely {in my opinion [and I guess that’s who’s opinion really matters…]} Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the video so far:









6) Planning my trip to Texas. I’ve never been to Texas before, but on Friday that will no longer be the case.

So there you have it—my smorgasbord of a life this last month!

Gregron's Birthday

For those of you who don't know, this is Gregron:










Gregron and I are extremely close. I feel comfortable saying that the two of us could be called best friends... I have been known to say that I "love him more than any human child {Save Brig}". Some people don't think that is okay, but they just don't quite understand the intricasies of our relationship. Call me weird, think that's strange, but it is what it is...










Gregron recently had his first birthday, and like any good owner and best friend, I threw him a birthday party. We sarted out by all writing something that we loved about Gregron, and putting it in a bowl. We then passed then back out--making sure that no one had their own paper--and read them off in robot/computer voices. It was basically amazing!

After that it was cake time! We sang happy birthday and then Gregron blew out his OWN candle. How, praytell, did a computer blow out his own candles, you may be asking... Well, he's just that incredible! ...Okay, I shut him, and the air from that blew out the candle... but you have to admit, that's really RAD!










And here's a picture he took as he was blowing out the candles.










Happy first birthday Gregron! It has been an incredible year! I can't wait to see what the next has in store for the two of us!