Temple Square

Here are some Temple Square Christmas light pictures for your viewing pleasure.  And one cute one of my mom.

Merry Christmas - a little late

We were at my parents this year for Christmas.  It was so fun being home.  It was like my childhood years all over again.  Except that I was able to sleep just fine as Santa came and delivered gifts. 

My parents gave us a bunch of food storage which will be very nice to help us get started on something we should have done a long time ago.
Christmas afternoon, we drove to Salt Lake and Luke had a chance to talk to his brother, Jake.  He's on a mission in the Phillipines and comes home next October.  It was great to talk to him. 

Christmas night was spent at my Grandpa and Grandma Simms.  It was fun to get the family together.  Now that more of my cousins are at Utah State, we actually get together with cousins our age.  It was a blast.  
And Christmas would not be complete without some fresh powder.  There was so much snow on our car by the time we were ready to go home.  I love it!
Luke had to get out of the car and help it up the little hill to my parents house.  It was the perfect ending to a wonderful day.  Merry Christmas everyone.

The Mug Exchange

After 5 Christmas' together, Luke and I finally made it to the Annual Mug Exchange on Christmas Eve.  It is played the same as the ever popular White Elephant game.  It was at Jon and Anji's house in Salt Lake (my mom's brother).  Good times were had by all.  

Here's Grandma sporting her Christmas sweater while trying to decide which child she would make cry by taking their mug.  
It wasn't Luke... He felt very devious that he ended up with his mug that no one ever wanted... I can't imagine why???
Lindsey took home a mug that I brought - super cute.  And Tyler had a creepy jack-o-lantern mug.
Steve took home the other mug we brought and Kristin got a cool pencil-holder-type mug.
I got a cool blue goblet.  I was pretty excited about it.  The lady Steve's right is Shari - Anji's sister.  I noticed Steve's arm is around her (Don't worry Steve, I won't tell Kristin)
My mom loved her cute little snowman cup... Lindsey did too. Creepy!
Lindsey and I hanging out on cute little cushions.  If I had a wood floor, I would totally get these. 
Jon and Anji live in a cool old house in Salt Lake by the Capitol.  There are so many cool things that you just don't see in the new houses.  Such as this awesome old fireplace.  Love it.

Work Christmas Party

We had our work Christmas party on Friday at Hamilton's Steak and Seafood.  That part alone can tell you it was a good night.  Michelle, Michon and I created our own Party Planning Committee and had a lot of fun putting it together.  My boss graciously donated some money so we could get gifts for everyone there.  It seemed that everyone had a great time - or at least better than last year.  

At my table from left to right is Luke, me, Jared - one of the owners, his wife Jenn, Steve - the land developer/maintenance guy, his wife Jean, Wendy - Dave's wife, and Dave - partner in one of the construction companies. 
Steve ordered the most expensive dish - the 24 oz steak.  This is him finishing the whole thing!!!  And he still had room for dessert. 
From left to right is Richard - my bosses dad, James - my boss, his wife Sherri, Lisa - Jeremy's wife, Jeremy - the accountant, Michon - party planning committee member, and her husband Collin.
Hiding on the left is Jose - one of the construction guys, his girlfriend, Kim - Justin's wife, Justin - one of the partners, Austin - Michelle's husband, Michelle - party planning committee member, Eddie - maintenance guy for the apartments, and his wife Lydia.
On the left is Germain's wife Jodi, Jenn - Matt's wife, Matt - one of the apartment owners, Ernie - Deidra's husband, Deidra - one of the apartment managers, Blair - Tiffer's husband, Tiffer - apartment maintenance guy, and Germain.  Germain did his own little stand up comedy for us that night.  I had my doubts, but it was actually pretty funny. 
And that's pretty much everyone that I work with.  It's nothing compared to the TV show The Office, but we have some good laughs.  As entertaining as it might have been, our office "Dwight" didn't come. 

A week of Birthdays

We started out the festivities at work last Friday.  Jeremy celebrated his ... oh I almost revealed his age.  Anyway, we decorated the entrance to our office as well as...

His office entrance:
And his desk.  We have this awesome orange chair that no one wants, so we put a bow on it and pretended it was his birthday present.  He just put it in the corner and used his normal chair.  Too bad.
We went to Cafe Sabor with our office to celebrate and they made him wear the birthday sombrero.
And since Michelle's Birthday was the following Monday, we made her wear one too.  
Don't they look so happy that it's their birthdays???  We all benefited and got to share their birthday dessert.  Yum!

So here's the decorations we did for Michelle's birthday.  
We tried to give her the orange chair too, but no one seems to appreciate it.  I mean, look at that beauty!
Michelle was in our neighborhood cleaning one of the houses so the builders to show a clean house to sell.  I went over and got her kids so they would have less distractions while cleaning.  This is Cooper.  He's 3.  He had lots of fun with the toys and maybe a little too much fun with the Polly Pockets - he thought they were Barbie's.

I pulled out all the toys that my parents let me keep from when I was a kid.  They had so much fun.  Pace just turned one.  He loves to dump things out - hence the empty box and toys all over the floor.  It was fun to watch them for a little while.  
And this past Wednesday was my little sisters 21st Birthday.  We were going to go to Vegas, but since my parents decided to come up to Logan, we did a family lunch instead.  
Happy Birthday all you December birthday people.  

Nature 2

Here's some more of the beautiful surrounding of Northern Utah.

Nature

The scenery around Cache Valley is beautiful on some days.  The camera just doesn't do justice.  I know Cache Valley can be cold and miserable sometimes, other times I'm amazed with how gorgeous it can be. 

This on the other hand, is not beautiful:

Last Spring Luke gave me some flowers like these pictured below.  They miraculously survived and thrived in our basement apartment that we were in with minimal light and cold AC blowing right on it.  

When we moved to the new house, the flowers were more accessible to the cats and they decided to eat them.  Luke was kind enough to get me more miracle flowers and I brought them to work so the cats couldn't touch them.  

Obviously you can see what happened.  Actually, I don't know what happened because I can't get them to come back to life.  I did nothing different than with my last plant.  That's probably a lot of the problem - I'm really not a green thumb.  

It's too bad because they really had such potential.  

Hide-and-Seek

I love how trash can make cats happy. I threw this box on the floor before it went in the trash to see how the cats liked it. And we ended up with hours on entertainment. Monster hides inside and Mow-Mow would try to figure out where the black tail came from.
I love watching them find simple pleasures in trash - especially since it's a free toy.

I love fog

Fog is the coolest natural phenomenon, in my opinion. I love it. Luckily we live in the part of town that actually gets foggy. This is the view out rhe back window of our house.
In a matter of about 5 minutes it had clouded up this much. It was so much fun driving in it. It's good we have headlights.

This was the next day. Such a beautiful sunrise! I bet you never would have known that church was back there.

BLACK FRIDAY

I decided this year that I wanted to get up and go to a sale on Black Friday. I know... what was I thinking? I didn't even have anything in particular that I was shopping for. Lindsey, Tyler, Luke and I all went to Target at 6:00 am. We started in the electronics which was such a bad idea. I had an adrenaline rush for about 10 minutes and then I realized I was too tired to be up that early. It was fun, but unless I really need something that is a great deal, I probably won't be up that early again on Black Friday.

I got a short nap before heading out for more fun. The whole family headed out to a family party at my cousin Christie's house. We had a lot of fun seeing family that we haven't seen for a few years. My cousin Summer and her family was here from California and my cousin Troy and his family was here from New Mexico. Scott and Christie have a gas fire pit in their backyard - such a good idea - which we used to make s'mores. The little girls enjoyed eating them the most.

Although, it looks like Mike was having some fun himself.

They're on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley and it was beautiful from over there!

After our fun game day, we headed to Gateway mall to go shopping. We had fun joining the crowds in Salt Lake that were there for the Jazz game and the opening night for Temple Square Christmas lights.

While shopping, a question kept running through my mind...

Who decided that the 80's were EVER cool and decided to bring them back??? Seriously, this never looked good on anyone!

And while flourencents sure do attract attention, they also don't look good on anyone. This is another one of those fads that I will go ahead and refuse before it gets big. Hopefully everyone else rejects it too and we don't have to see it in stores anymore.

Once we were worn out of shopping, my mom and I went to my cousin Alison's house to make bead bracelets. It was actually really fun.

I made a bracelet call Wiggly Worm. It turned out really cute! The middle beads are matte and the edges are glossy. Being able to make something so cute made me feel crafty, even though Alison had to walk me through most of it.

Alison is really into beading and has a ton of necklaces and bracelets that she's made. It was so fun getting together with the girls and being crafty. Thanks Alison