Our Annual Christmas Party 2012

Every year we have a Christmas party where we invite our friends and kick off our Christmas break from school the right way. This year was no different, so last weekend we had our annual Christmas party. We ate yummy in my opinion, it was yummy food, played a variety of games, had a gingerbread house competition, a Christmas photo booth, white elephant gift exchange, and a lot of fun chit chatting with friends!

Favorites from the night would be:

• Matson and I completely failed at gingerbread house making. First, I pull out the icing pack out of our packaged gingerbread house kit or in other words a "no effort necessary" gingerbread house and I had to actually make the frosting, I am talking like go add water and mix it all up ok, call me lazy. So I was ticked. Fail number uno. THEN, I pull the gingerbread house pieces out and I break a piece. Double fail. But I still had faith in our skills. Lastly we gave up completely once our roof was just sliding off like 10 times in a row. So we made an awesome pants roof (made from Frosted Mini Wheats) with no house underneath it. Triple fail.
• Reading the guesses people guessed on how many peppermints were in a small jar. There were 38 and I read votes of 16 all the way up to 90. Why was that so funny to me, especially when I am the worst at guessing things like that too?
• When our friend J* opened his white elephant gift thing it was a Star Wars lightsaber and whipping it out in the air to then find out it was not a lightsaber, but a set of airport ramp agent/worker flashlight wands. You know what I am talking about...those were a hit!
• The guys won Couches way too many times (an awesome highly competitive, memory like game between the ladies and gents). It never gets old when someone messes up a name or yells out a name that isn't even in the bunch.

I failed at taking pictures of the night, we were just doing too many activities! I mean I didn't even get a picture of our gingerbread house fail. The night was super fun and we look forward to next year's party!

The winners, my bro and sis in law, of the Gingerbread House Competition 

Our friends the H*'s won best roof (sorry you can't even really see the roof). 

Christmas Party Photo Props: Oh Happy Day!

Christmas Photos 2012

A couple weeks ago Matson's sister took our Christmas photos for this year. We got some good ones and I thought I would share! She is very talented and worked super fast for us to get the back to us so I could hurry and order our cards! Thanks T*. Make sure to check out her photography website and blog!

Remembering Christmas' Pasts

As this new Christmas season starts I can't help but to think of Christmas' pasts. I can still remember all of my family's wonderful Christmas traditions, especially since we still do most of them (I'm talking like 25 year olds running around to see what they got in their stalkings). I am the type of person that likes to celebrate everything and make it the best that it can be. Decorations, gifts, specific recipes, and other traditions were and still are very important to me at Christmas, but the one thing that is most memorable to me is the time spent with family and friends. Like the time spent choosing gifts together, sledding together, giving Christmas to those who are less fortunate, watching our movies, and playing family games. For me it is these times that stand out to me from Christmas' pasts, so for this year that will be my focus - spending time with Matson, our families, and our friends.

Christmas 1992 - Santa brought bikes for my brothers and I!

Matson and I when we were dating - Christmas 2009

Christmas Party 2010

Christmas 2011 at Rockefeller Center in NYC

Hold on Tight Spider Monkeys

As I previously mentioned in my last post about our Cancun Thanksgiving Trip, we were able to go and spend a couple hours with some spider monkeys at The Jungle Place. The Jungle Place is a sanctuary for spider monkeys. They take in injured, diseased, or malnourished monkeys and take care of them. Because of this, the monkeys are very use to people and the time you spend with them is their play time! It was a blast and so worth the crazy drive and long time it took to find their location.

It was an amazing experience. The monkeys are amazing animals and it was so fun to just play with them and they love to play with you too! They pull on everything and try to grab everything they can, which is why you see that most of us had our flip flops off and nothing in our hands - no shiny things including bobby pins or any jewelry. My favorite monkey was Victoria. She was this little, spunky one. Matson sat on the edge out to their play area so all the monkeys would just swing right on to him.

Pulling on Matson's shirt. 

A lot of the monkeys just wanted to snuggle up to you.

Thank you Mom and Dad! It was such a great experience!

A Mexican Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we spent it with my family in Cancun, Mexico. It was the best time for a vacation - right after my month practicum in an Elementary school in Heber and right before finals for the both of us. Matson and I really enjoyed it. Usually we just relax our days away there, but this time my dad really wanted all of us to see Tulum and we also got to play with monkeys one morning (post coming soon all about the monkeys)! We also play a lot of tennis, volleyball, and other games!

We celebrated John's birthday (a couple weeks early)
at Bubba Gump's where they sang a ridiculous song
and made him dance.

We saw the new Twilight.

Mikado at the Marriott Casamagna.
THE best dinner!

Matson playing volleyball.

Dinner at Chili's with everyone.

Me at Tulum 

The beach at Tulum was gorgeous. SO pretty.

Thanksgiving Night. My sister's hubby was sick and missed.

My dad has this silly thing where he likes to try to kiss
the guys in pictures...He won't start until you have already counted to 3.
Matson was playing along.

At our last dinner we were sitting there and our waiter told
us there was a croc! They fed him some yucky chicken.

Funny stories for my own memory that were hilarious at the time but will probably come off as a complete yawn to you all.

• While playing Rook and after seeing the "kitty" I said, "Man, you got some good ish in there!" Then my mom in a completely serious tone said, "Wow. Good ish." I busted up laughing because my mom just said "ish." It was hilarious.
• Matson was singing in our hotel and my dad heard him and started singing along. My dad has a horrible voice. My mom and I were just staring at them singing and somewhat more like barely harmonizing together. After they finish their little tune my dad said, "We could be Nysnc or One Dimension." I thought, "One dimension? What is that? Some old band...oh no! He meant One Direction." I then said, "Dad...do you mean One Direction?"

Thank you Mom and Dad! We had the most wonderful Thanksgiving vacation.

Read about our Cancun Thanksgiving 2011

GG's Funeral

Two weeks ago we attended Matson's GG's (or Gorgeous Grandma's) funeral. Although I did not know GG for more than 3 years, I still feel very close to her and I feel as though she is my own Grandma. Funerals are hard and this was especially hard for us both since this was our first grandparent to pass away (my dad's dad who I maybe saw 3 times in my life passed away a few years ago, yet I had close to no relationship with him). The hardest thing for me was to see Matson's Grandpa lose his wife. I love Grandpa and feel as though we have a special, fun relationship. He is always calling me his sweetheart, teasing me, and over the few days we were with him for the funeral, he continually was asking me to just love him and telling me, "all I need is love." My heart breaks for him and I cannot imagine what he is going through.

 

The flowers from all the grandchildren.

 Even though the last little while has been a hard time for us and our family, we were able to stay positive through laughs and memories of GG and from our little nephew's cute smiles throughout the weekend. It is amazing how much joy and happiness one little boy can bring so many.

We love you GG and we know we will see you again soon!
Read more about GG here.