San Antonio Adventures - Visit from Friends

We were so excited when the M* family told us they could come visit us from Fort Worth while we were in San Antonio! They are some of our dearest friends and we have missed having them close to us this last year. DANG medical school!

As I mentioned in my previous Gruene post, we met them there one night for dinner. After dinner, they followed us back to San Antonio and the family we were watching was so nice enough to let them come and stay in their guest room. It was so nice to catch up and chit chat with them all night.

That first morning their son, C*, and the little girls we were watching all woke up really early. Matson is not much of a morning person so I was usually the one to help the kids at the crack of dawn so that just gave H* and I more time to chit chat since she was up with her little boy. The girls loved C* and wanted to just play with him like a toy. Cohen was a bit shy at first but surprisingly warmed up quickly and cuddled with the girls while they watched a movie. H* was also so sweet to volunteer herself as the hair salon customer for the girls!

C* with the ladies!

More snuggle time!

The weather that morning was a down pour! It was crazy rain and so we decided to make my favorite waffles for breakfast for everyone. But by noon, the rain had stopped and we decided to head to Sea World. We enjoyed Sea World and then headed to Big Lou's for dinner. The BIGGEST pizza I have ever seen in my life. Besides a few hangry (hungry+angry) children, I think Matson was in heaven.

The kiddos sat in the splash zone at the whale show...SOAKED!

Big Lou's Pizza. Not our pizza, but there are even bigger pizzas than this!

Before saying goodbye to our friends on Sunday night we had a S'mores party where C* and the kids ate their treats, danced to some "oldies but goodies" music, and played night games! We were so grateful they could come down and play with us!

I know I told H* I would post this...
but it was the only one of us I got!

Downhill Backwards

A couple weekends ago we went sledding with some friends of ours. We love sledding and get rather into it. We got all our snow gear on and headed to Rock Canyon bowl, which is THE place to sled. I am talking groups and groups of college/high school kids sledding on whatever they find...cardboard, ice coolers, mattresses, and couches. We were unoriginal and just brought sleds.

Sledding brings out Matson's daredevil side (along with any other physical activity or motorized vehicle). We all had our own sled and went down a few times individually. Matson lost his hat and boot. Then Matson wanted us to all get in a chain and go down backwards. The whole rest of our sledding time we could only go backwards. It made it more exciting, I guess.

Every run ended with us tangled up or pig piled on top of each other and laughing hysterically, which made for a good time. 

We ended our night with hot cocoa and Matson forcing our friends to watch his favorite movie Uncle Buck. If you haven't seen it, you should go rent it uh..I don't think there is any place to do the verb of "renting a movie"...So I mean, buy it or TiVo it.  

Baby Stealers

During our break we loved playing with all of our favorite little buddies. I guess you can call us the baby stealers. I will snatch up any baby whose parents will let me! Anytime, anywhere.

Our little nephew showing off his standing skills for us!

Nothing like cuddlin' with a toddler. 

So if you need anyone to steal your baby, we are your people! Seriously.

Ice Skating Tradition

We went ice skating again this year. It was such a blast. And I definitely made a fool of myself again. I always start out ice skating like a little weenie holding onto the side and inching my way around. There's just nothing that looks good about falling on our bum on hard, cold ice. Slowly though, I realized I could do it. I wasn't the best ice skater on the rink, but I did it. Pat on the back.

Read about our Last Year's Ice Skating Tradition

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!

Halloween 2012

I spent my Halloween Day at the elementary school I have been in for the last week. I will be there a couple more weeks for my major. It has been such a great experience already and Halloween was much more exciting and fun celebrating it in elementary school again. We had a marshmallow fight, played Halloween bingo, frosted cookies, played ghost bowling (toilet paper as the pins), did multiple halloween crafts and all learning was Halloween themed.

Candy Corn Craft

After school, Matson and I quickly got changed into our Halloween costume. It was seriously the easiest Halloween costume we have done yet. We both wore suits, Romney buttons, he wore a mask, and I wore a wig (same wig as the time when I was Heidi Klum). Super easy. Especially the suit I had just gotten from my Grandma for my birthday...it was a little big but the red was perfect!

Mitt and Ann Romney

And I will let you know...a lot of people greeted me by saying, "Look! It's the first lady." Not quite...but that's cool! Matson loved his costume. Many people just wanted pictures with us - "We gotta get a shot with the Romneys" - so Matson felt like a celebrity.

Just cruising around with Mitt for the night.

The people I nanny for have a Halloween party every year and since I haven't seen them for a week (due to working in a school for my major) we decided to go. All the little kids and cousins at the party did not like Matson's mask at all. Little A* in her sweet little voice kept saying to Matson, "I don't like your mask." Matson would ask her if she was going to vote for him and she would reply, "Nope." Too cute.

Buzz Lightyear was still not into Matson's mask.

We then went to our church's little trunk or treat party. All the kids there would walk up to our car, look at Matson's costume, and immediately start slowly walking backwards. They did not like his mask. I agree with them...it's a little creepy. One of the little boys in my primary class came to our trunk to trick or treat and I said, "Hi bud!! Do you know who I am?" He had no idea and as soon as I took my wig off he said, "Hi teacher!" Apparently blonde hair makes me look like a whole new person.

At the trunk or treat with one of my primary kids. He wouldn't smile.
Halloween is suppose to be serious or scary?

We ended our night by visiting our families and enjoying some treats. I got some good playing time in with out little nephew. He was dressed up as a little shark.

Matson's brother was a secret service guy so we had to snap a shot with him.

Matson and our little Halloweened out nephew.

Past Halloween Posts:
Halloween 2010
Halloween 2011

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?

So we saw the Katy Perry movie, Part of Me, and dang it was so good. I am no where near a "Katy Cat" but I was so into this movie. I would watch it again...maybe not pay the full price but I would totally watch it again right now.

I am loving these documentary movies slash concert movies that show you a little bit of these performers' lives. It makes them seem like real people. Like how it shows her crying and sobbing (while not looking at the camera) in her tour dressing room seat. It seriously tugged at my heart. Or later in the movie after her and Russell do divorce, she says how she had this own fantasy for herself and that she wanted a relationship that would last forever. Then the producers say, "So you miss him still?" and she responds by saying with tears, "Yes, I do." She is very sweet and genuinely interacts with her fans a lot.

Us at the movie last Friday with some of our fun friends!

In all seriousness though I am falling into these celebrity's traps and giving them even more money, but it was good. I found it very interesting and would recommend it to any Katy Perry fan, even if you just like one song of hers. I love the humor in it (like the part when her sister dresses up like her and dances on stage with her or when they go to the cat tea cafe place) and you leave feeling like you kind of know her!

If you saw it...did you like it? What was your favorite part?

Bon Voyage

Some of our friends are leaving us for medical school this month. So before they left I really wanted us all to get together one last time. SOOO I threw them a "Bon Voyage" party. The theme was just nautical red and blue. We ate, played games, swam, lit lanterns, and just truly enjoyed our last moments with our friends.

The Invite

I made a watermelon boat!

I love C* (on the left) in this. Too cute.
Plus it was cute that the two little boys were kind of matching!

Water volleyball. 

Only down part about the whole thing was mother nature and her summer storm of rain and wind. The guys of course played hours of basketball to end the night while us ladies played games. Then they had to have Beto's (yuck, not my favorite so I went along for the ride).

They almost look like they aren't enjoying their food.

We are really going to miss all our friends moving away. And obviously you can tell the little boy C* is going to be truly missed! It has been so much fun to see him grow up right by us and I will miss seeing him! Plus, we will miss our other friends who are having their baby soon and we won't be able to meet him until December. Sad day. But it's ok in 8ish years we will all have our families and children and be able to create memories then whether it be back in Utah or we meet up for little reunions!