Two Christmases

Wow, I am one spoiled girl! I got to have two Christmases this year, and it was fantastic! Dustin and I celebrated with my family the weekend before the actual holiday. We felt very blessed to have my parents, grandma and bother and sister join us for church, lunch and way too many presents on Sunday. I think it was a little hard for my brother since we were mostly the ones getting gifted, but we got to hand out our gifts to everyone,too.

As you can see, we get pretty excited about presents in my family.

Dustin and I definitely got the best gift of all--a Wii! I have been obsessed with the Wii ever since playing it at my sister's house this summer. I love, love the boxing game and will kill anyone at it. I'm also happy to report that my tennis skills are improving enough to sometimes beat Dustin and not get totally creamed. Unfortunately, I don't think Wii tennis skills translate all that well into real tennis...

We spent the actual holiday in good ole freezing-ass cold Vernal with the other half of our family. All the kids were home this Christmas decking the halls with our holiday PJ's (thanks Tami!) and hanging our stockings with care.


We also all got matching fleece pullovers. Aw...how sweet!


I got to cook my first turkey all by myself, and it turned out pretty well. I'm so lucky to have people who let me experiment my cooking on them. I love hanging out with Wallis' and especially playing card games with them. The sibling rivalry really heats up and I couldn't even worry about winning--I was more concerned about walking away with all my fingers intact and not peeing my pants from laughing too hard.

Wow, look at those ears. Yes, these are my real ears and no, I'm not one of Santa's elves.


Also, the best present next to the Wii and being with family....

I got my braces off!! Whoo hoo! Now I can eat all the popcorn I want and not have people hand me the kid's menu when I go out to eat (but maybe I'll ask for it anyway because I like to color).

Hope your holidays were merry and bright, too!

Really, Rudolph?

This morning on my way to work, I saw a car decorated as a reindeer. Not kidding. It had big fuzzy antlers sticking out of the front windows and a red nose on the front bumper. Just call me a mean little Grinch with all the sweetness of a seasick crocodile, but that's not holiday spirit, it's tacky...and probably a safety hazard.

Lady Marmalade

OK, so don't make fun of me, but I'm totally turning into Little House on the Prairie or something! I am so excited about my activities of the last weekend that I just have to share. On Saturday, my sister and I spent the entire afternoon doing two things: knitting! and making marmalade! In case you were wondering, marmalade is an English-style fruit preserve, usually made with citrus, or in my case, pineapple (yummy!).


We used two huge pots for all the ingredients. If you look closely in the first picture, you can see the orange peel and cinnamon (don't worry, you pull those out at the end). It had to cook for like two hours and we had to get up from our knitting and stir it about every 2 minutes. It smelled so AMAZING, which is a good thing because I have to repeat the whole process this weekend. After all our hard work, it only made HALF of what is was supposed to in the end! So I'll be putting on my Christmas music and busting out the knitting again to complete my little home on the range. If you need me, you'll have to contact me by Pony Express messenger and make all inquiries for Lady Marmalade--that's me (only no prostitutes, just jam!).

Ewwww...

Two things:
First, I actually was craving chocolate milk yesterday. Gross. I hate milk--my maximum milk consumption is about 2 teaspoons in my green tea every morning and other than that, I never drink it or eat it, even on cereal. And don't even talk to me about chocolate milk because normally I think it's a big fat waste of chocolate. I'd rather EAT my dessert than swig it down. It just sounded SO AMAZING yesterday when I saw it at the grocery store. However I refused to buy it purely upon principle.

Second, Keith Urban has produced a song that I enjoy. Normally I think he is super ridiculous and sounds/looks like a woman. Plus I'm pretty sure we wear the same size pants...and the same style, which makes me gag. Check out his song "Sweet Thing." Maybe it's just me, but I think he sounds less pansy-ass than normal and it's got a very catchy chorus. Ewwww...who am I? I will try to keep both impulses under control, but if you catch me listening to that ridiculous song or imbibing any disgusting dairy drinks, please reprimand me promptly.

Happy Monday

Well, it's never really a happy Monday, so here are some goofy-ass pics to make your day a little more fun. When D and I were in Vegas a while ago, we visited Madame Taussaud's Wax Museum, which was a major dissapointment. There weren't nearly enough famous "people." I kept wondering who the heck everyone was. Whatev. Just so you don't have to spend the $50 (rip off!), here are the highlights:

Two feisty redheads:


My rockstar baby:


I don't know what that face is supposed to be...

I heart Tim McGraw!

This is my "I hate W" face--just for you mom!

I don't think that's helping...

OMG! While at the gym yesterday, I witnessed the girl on the machine in front of me seriously crack open a Pepsi while she was working out. And...there was a jumbo candy bar perched on the display, too. What are you even doing?! It was so bizarre. At least she didn't have like a box of doughnuts of something. Then I would have had to go steal one.

Words we make up

One of my all time favorite games is Scrabble. I’m good at spelling and vocab, and before I met Dustin, I always won. We don’t play very often, but when we do it’s always very fun. We like to play until absolutely all the tiles are used, and we usually refuse to turn in our tiles for new ones. This mostly results in some ridiculous words and word cop-outs, like adding an “s” to the end of a word. Here’s our latest: adding an “er” to the end, i.e. “taxer”—one who taxes, “axer” one who axes. What? That’s a word right?
Here are some others that have come about without the aid of Scrabble:
Ranch Sauce:
(Noun) aka Ranch Dressing
This is Dustin’s creation since I think ranch is disgusting and would never eat it. Somehow, he thinks ranch sauce sounds more appealing than ranch dressing.

Skankily:
(adverb) Trashy, slutty. As in, “that girl sure was dressed skankily.”

Crunchy:
(adverb, adjective, noun, whatever) Used to describe any of several things or traits associated with being overly into nature, sporting activites and disregard for personal hygiene. Often applied to persons seen shopping at REI, wearing Tevas (with or without socks), sipping coffee in Sugarhouse, perusing the dried goods section at Whole Foods, driving a Subaru, or sporting dreads in a carefully crafted attempt to appear socially apathetic (belied by their $500 backpack). This one is mine, and I wasn’t even aware I made it up. I just thought it was commonplace.