My "First" Thanksgiving

So obviously it wasn't my FIRST Thanksgiving but it was my first time hosting Thanksgiving. I was really fun and it worked out nicely that we were able to have both our families over. There were 16 of us all together which is a lot to me! It went smoothly, for the most part......I must have counted and recounted in my head how many people were coming. When it came time for dinner, everyone grabbed their plate (we did it buffet style). Our nephew Kaden said he didn't have one. Hmmm. That is weird. Oh well, I got him out another one. As we all started sitting down, I noticed the table was looking rather full and there were still a few in line. I counted once again. Oh crap! Then it hit me. All the times I had counted, I had forgot 2 special people. Me and Eric! Grr! So I was 2 place settings short. Now if I would have let it, it could have been a disaster but thanks to my very wonderful (and understanding) family, we worked it out. Don't worry that our dads had to sit up at the bar and use my purple utensils. Ha ha. They were great sports. And it turned out great! I guess it couldn't have been to bad because I have been hired to host Christmas Eve at my house as well! I am very excited for this one! Anyways, here are a few pics. Nothing to exciting, I just wanted to always remember my "First" Thanksgiving! :)

My lovely table setting for 14. NOT 16. :(

Not bad for my first turkey. It tasted pretty yummy too if I do say so myself! Yeah, it would have looked better on a beautiful platter with garnisments and such beautifully placed around it but give me a break people. Baby steps. Maybe next year......

My hubby carving the turkey. Nice work babe!

I hope everyone else had as wonderful of a Thanksgiving as I did! I am so thankful for my family and for all of you! Oh yeah, and remember those Chirstmas lights that were put up 2 weeks or so ago? Yeah, they still are not on. Turns out our electrician wired the outlet for our lights but forgot to install a switch to turn the dang things on! His assistant (meaning Eric) is probably partly to blame as well. Oh well. So as soon as we get the switch wired and hooked up, we will be in business! Don't worry that in the process of running some wire for the switch my hubby drilled through the wire that runs all the outlets in the living room and hall way and we had to switch modes and repair that first! Sheesh. It is always something. But you know what? I love it!

Happy Holidays!

I have been where Edward has been!

Remember this..........

I was here and guess what!! So was Edward. Turns out Multnomah Falls is in the movie Twilight. I feel so special. Too bad he wasn't there when I was there. I am not obsessed or anything (maybe a little) I just think it is really neat. This place is gorgous and now I love it even more!

A place for everything and everything in its place.

A couple weekends ago we had a very productive Saturday. We put up our Christmas lights (don't worry, they will not be turned on until after Thanksgiving. We just wanted to get it done while the weather was still nice.....) and we also solved a HUGE problem. Well it was huge to me. You see, we had all the wires for our TV and everything ran through the wall so we could hang the TV up and you wouldn't see any wires. Well, we decided to wait on the HDMI cable because for the 25 feet we needed, it would cost us about $200. So this is what I got to look at all the time......

Tacky, eh?! Yeah. It had to go. So as I was browsing the internet one lovely afternoon, I found 25 feet of HDMI cable for, are you ready???? $16 with free shipping!!!! I of course bought it and decided that for that price I was willing to take the risk of it not working. It arrived super fast and we went to work fishing the wire through the wall. It was a little bit of a challenge but with a little fish tape, string and a vacuum hose, we got the job done. Oh yeah, before we went through all that work, we made sure it worked and it worked like a champ! Ready for the "after"?

Ah, much better! Don't you think?

Elder Tribett!

My little bro has been on his mission in Florida for 8 months now and he FINALLY sent us pictures other than ones from the MTC. No I am not joking. The only good part is, he has been really working on loosing weight and so since we have not seen him in SO long, we can really see the results in these pics! I know a lot of you don't know him but for those of you that do, can you tell a difference?? He would probably be so mad at me for posting these but I am just so proud of him and I think he looks SO good! You will notice his hair is a little shorter than the average missionary......shortly before these were taken, it was the World Series and as you may (or not) know, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays made it! One of the games happened to be on his P-day and him and his companion happened to need hair cuts, so they decided to take advantage of this opportunity and shave thier heads into mohawks for a few hours in support. I am guessing they had to cut their hair a little shorter than normal to get rid of the mohawks. Silly boys. Anywho, here is my wonderful little brother David!

These were taken at this little boys' birthday party. Apparantly there was an entire petting zoo and pony rides! I love him so much and am so proud to have him as my brother. He looks SO good to me! All the suits and clothes he went with are now way to big for him so he recently went shopping at Goodwill and found his "dream suit". I guess it is brown with powder blue pin strips and it fits him perfectly. Ha ha. For those of you that don't know him or are curious, click HERE to see pics of the day he went to the MTC and see the difference! His secret?? The Abs Diet. I am going to try it out and see if I can get rid of my extra pounds! Seems to be pretty doable compared to other diets I have read.

He is sending me his camera card so that I can take all the pics off of it so be forwarned that there could be more David posts coming up! He is doing so good and is in the Clearwater area right now which is so pretty! Unfortunatley for him, his apartment is in a semi-questionable part of town but he is loving it!

Free Jewelry Anyone?

Click Here! To Enter to win a free jewelry set! Good luck!

You have got to be kidding me!

Last Christmas Eric surprised me with tickets to see Celine Dion in concert in Salt Lake. He knew I had been dying to go see her in Vegas so when he heard she was coming, he bought tickets. He had to purchase them a YEAR in advance. I was SO excited. Now a year later, the concert is this Friday night. Or so I thought. I just got this lovely email from Ticketmaster and I am fuming!......

"Hello, this is Ticketmaster Customer Service with an important alert for your upcoming event. Celine Dion, scheduled at EnergySolutions Arena on November 21, 2008, has been postponed. The new date is Sunday, February 22, 2009, at 8:00PM."

Are you freaking kidding me?! They are postponing it 3 MORE months?! And to make me even more upset, it is at 8 on a Sunday night?! Now that is convenient. I was getting so excited that it had FINALLY arrived and we were just making our plans and deciding when to leave and all that. I think this is a bunch a crap. Eric asked me if I wanted to sell the tickets. We had thought of this before because I know we could get a lot more than we paid for them but I decided I would rather go. Now I just don't know. I am so bugged that I feel like I would rather have the money to go shopping with.

I mean, who does this Celine Dion think she is anyways?! :) I don't care if you are a HUGE star, after making you fans wait a year, you would think you would be able to keep the date. And to wait about 4 days before the event to tell us? Can you sense my frustration?? She better have a good excuse. And maybe it is ESA with the problem but I don't think they would be dumb enough to reschedule Celine Dion. Maybe I should hurry and sell my tickets before she just completely cancels. Hmmm......now I am thinking.......

What would you do??? Sell them, send them back for an almost full refund, or suck it up, hope she doesn't completely bail, and go to the concert in February?

Slug Pug!

Oh my heck. I have been saving this one! When we were in Washington trying to find our way to the mall we pulled up behind this beauty and I read the license plate, thought it was lame, and then looked in the back window. Please click on this to enlarge it if you cannot see. Those are toy/stuffed pugs. Oh we were laughing hysterically! This is just great. A classic for sure. I wonder if that is the whole reason they bought this car. Some people....

Rose Marie's Bijouterie

My cousin recently started making and selling fabulous jewelry. I have had her button on my sidebar so some of you may have noticed it. She now has her site set up so that you can order and pay online. She does great work. Everything is high quality and very reasonably priced. Prices range from $5-$28 I believe. She sells earrings, necklaces, and bracelets and I believe she will even do custom orders if you have certain colors or ideas. Her email address is on my sidebar or on her website.

Please go check her out and pass the info on to anyone you think might be interested. Shipping is only $1.50. For anyone you that lives by me or may be visiting for any of the holidays, let me know. I have a bunch of her stuff right now and would be able to bring something to you so you would not have to pay the shipping. I am really excited about this and have bought a couple of her pieces for myself. Great gifts for moms, sisters, daughters or friends for Christmas! Go check her out and let me know what you think. You can order from her or check with me to see if I have what you want. Thanks girls!

Either click on the button on my sidebar or click here!

Boys will be boys......

On Halloween we went over to our friends house and just hung out. We had a lot of fun and they even made chocolate covered raspberries for us! Yum! We also had root beer floats. We were playing Around the World Ping Pong for a while but the girls got tired of it so it turned into just the boys. Well, of course they have to change the rules around and decided that for every 2 that you missed, you had to stand at the end of the table with your shirt up and let the other guys take 2 shots each at your back. It was actually pretty entertaining and I think you can tell from the pics who was the "loser".

Looks like a nice, fun, harmless game right?

Eric taking his beating.

Brady, Eric, and Jevan. The "aftermath". Yeah, that would be my hubby in the middle with all the welts. Jevan came out pretty clean. Wanna see a close up of the damage?

Are you kidding me?! He still had marks on his back almost five days later. They might have been faint, but they were there. See what I mean? Boys will be boys.....

Christmas in November!

So last year Eric's mom invited me to go see The Nutcracker ballet in Salt Lake. Her and a group of her friends had season tickets and one of the ladies could not go to this one so Suzy took me. I had never been and I LOVED it. My hubby has an excellent memory and surprised me the other day with these.....

Season tickets to the Ballet West ballets at the Capitol Theater in Salt Lake! Oh I was SO excited!!! Some of you may think I am weird but I love this kind of stuff. Ballets, plays, musicals.......LOVE THEM! Well, the few I have been to anyways. After I was done freaking out and saying thank you, I asked, "So your mom asked if I would be interested and you said yes?" I was wrong. Come to find out, he asked his mom about it in the Spring! I was so impressed. Nice work babe. The first ballet is a week from this Saturday and it is The Tempest. If anyone has ever been, let me know what you thought. I am going with Eric's mom and some of her friends. We all have season tickets together. Merry early Christmas to me! He said it is actually not part of my Christmas, just something he wanted to do. What a sweetie. I have a fabulous hubby! I love you! xoxo

Rock Band Baby!!

The last night we were there we went to Jill's house and played rock band. It was a blast. We even got my mom and aunt to join in. Good times!

I love how her tongue is sticking out.

Such concentration. For anyone that knows my mom, you will know that this is pretty big for her. She is not very technologically inclined. ha ha We had fun and I am glad she gave in to peer pressure!

Aunt Darla jammin out.

Court on vocals, Kelly on guitar and Darla on drums.

Yeah, I suck horribly at drums!! I think my high was like 60%. Go Brooke! We had a great time.

Megan's Wedding!

So the whole point of our trip was to go to my cousin's wedding. It was a great night. She looked amazing. Here are some pics:

It was held at this neat place called the Arista Ballroom in Portland. I loved the entrance.

Oh, what? You are supposed to wait until the camera is done flashing before you move it? Silly mom.

Me and Court just after the wedding.

Again, cuter one on my sister's camera. What is up with that?! Me, my mom (Holly) and my sis.

Again?! Seriously mom. ha ha

I know this is way dark but the flower girls are my cousins little girls. They were so cute! They are twins and were always either holding hands or linking arms. They also kept flashing "I Love You" signs to their mom. It was fun to watch.

Her is the bride! I love her dress. I told her it reminds me of Belle. Who, by the way is my favorite princess.

We had such a great time. I can't wait to go back. It is so green and pretty there. I am not sure if I could live in Portland but Vancouver, for sure. We had so much fun hanging with family that we don't get to see very often. Thanks for having us!

Rehearsal Dinner

The night we got there was Megan's rehearsal dinner. It was at a Thai restaurant and since Megan is a vegetarian and her hubby is vegan, I tried some new stuff. Might not ever try it again though :) Most of it was good. Just not so much the fried tofu. ha ha

Cheers! Yeah, funny story, they never brought us our "virgin" drinks so we decided we would drink what ever was in these pretty little flutes on the table. We were thirsty! No it was not alcohol but we sure felt dumb when it was "toast" time and we had already guzzled our spritzers. Ooops! What can we say. We are just a bunch of hillbillies from Utah! :) We did wonder why no one else was drinking theirs......

I promise we were not drunk. Just having fun and my mom and aunt were taking ridiculous pics of us. You should see some on Court's camera. ha ha

Mom, Darla, Uncle Blair. Coconut ice cream was dessert. Yummy!!

Multnomah Falls

This place was gorgeous! I am so glad we stopped. It is just outside of Portland.

I just thought this old sign was pretty neat.

Yes, we are weird. Don't worry about it. There were others that turned out cuter and not blurry but I was sick of waiting for Court to get me her camera. I had already waited long enough! :)

So pretty! We have been in the car for like 7 hours now. I would say we look pretty good considering! Court (my sis), me, Aunt Darla, and mommy.

If we would have had more time I would have loved to walk up to that cool bridge. Maybe next time! I saw pics of what this place looks like in the winter and it was like a winter wonderland!

I recommend this stop to anyone! They also have a cute little shop and restaurant. The whole place was just so neat! We even ran into some missionaries there!

Trees galore!

Again, sorry for the glare. Pics don't turn out so good when taken through a window of a car going 70 mph. But this was pretty neat to see. These are all pics of a ginormous tree farm. There were trees as far as you could see. (Almost)