Christmas in California: Part 1

So when I was younger, we borrowed the Encylopedia Brown video from the library. In it he concludes that a Civil War sword is a fake because it was inscribed with the First Battle of the Bull Run, which is a problem since the Second Battle had not yet been fought. The point you ask? Well, don't write this off as a fake just because I'm calling it Part 1 already.

It seems like so much has happened since we last wrote, that I will split it up for ease of posting.

We left on Thursday to visit Tracie's family in California. I had just gotten back from our Holiday party in Chicago (I'll save that post until next year!) on Wednesday, so I was expecting large crowds at the airport. Suprisingly we got to the gate with little problems, but I wish we could say the same about the plane. As has become a holiday tradition, we were delayed, so we arrived in CA just before midnight.
Friday we hung out with Tracie's parents and saw the second National Treasure movie (just like the first one). Saturday Will and Kristin drove in from Utah, so we got to see Sierra for the first time ever. She is quite the cutie, and we agree with Kristin that Ed and Joanna have the cutest grandkids! Saturday night Tracie and I went with Ed and Joanna to the Magic Castle.
We dressed up and had a nice dinner, and then we saw 3 magic shows. One was a very small venue, just the magician and 20 others. Tracie got to sit at the table and be his assistant. When I asked her if she could sum up the show, she said "I don't know where the coconut came from!" We also saw a big show, and a mathmagician. It was a lot of fun, and Will and Kristin were even nice enough to Tivo the game for us and watch it with us on Sunday morning. Let's just say it was nice to fast forward the commercials and between plays, although the ending was very stressful. A win is a win, that's all I can say. Sunday was nice, and Tracie and I even sang in the choir. That made up for missing the Christmas program here in Castle Rock. To be continued....

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Christmas is finally around the corner. We have finished most of our Christmas shopping. All that is left is me to go shopping for Troy. That should be fun and easy since he's gone for the next 4 days in Chicago. JP Morgan decided to fly out all the Compensation and Benefits department out to Chicago for their Christmas party and Troy had to leave a day early to attend a seminar for the Associates of the Society of Actuaries. (I think Troy would actually be proud of me that I knew what the letters stand for) So that leaves me at my lonesome for the next few days. Good thing I have Lexie here. This past week has been busy for Troy. He finished studying and took exam #5 on Wednesday. Lexie even helped study and may have even gotten a little bored with the material. Friday night, I hosted a Relief Society Enrichment dinner. That was a little nerve-wrecking but it turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. I even had everything ready to go on time. Saturday morning we decided to open our Christmas puzzle that we bought our first Christmas. I think we have made pretty good progress especially with Lexie trying to help. Hopefully I'll be able to get most if not all of it done before Troy gets home and we leave for CA for Christmas. Yay for sunshine and warmer temperatures. It has snowed quite a bit this last week and I'll be excited to not have to bundle up to leave the house come the end of the week. We want to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a fantastic New Year if we are not able to post next week. We'll be having to much fun in the California sun!

It finally feels like Christmas

Maybe it was the early Thanksgiving, the exchange of presents with my family, or the warm weather in late November, but it wasn't really feeling like Christmas. That changed this weekend. Although not really Christmas related, we went to Olive Garden on Friday night, and they did have holiday wrappers on their after dinner mints. Then we watched 'The Transporter' that night. The movie is all right, but the main actress looks exactly like Tracie!!!

Saturday we got some snow that started as a dusting, then quickly escalated to a few inches by Sunday morning. We also had our Ward Christmas Party Saturday night. Dinner was good, but the program was better, mainly because Tracie and I played killer shepherds for the nativity scene (no really, killer, we had headbands that made us look like ninjas.)

Sunday we had the Community Inter-Faith Messiah Sing In. We chickened out at the end from singing in the choir, but it was fun singing with the congregation, along with Aaron, Robyn, and her friend Emily.

Lastly, as promised, here are pictures of our Christmas tree. Hard to find the right lighting.

We also got three plates of cookies tonight. It's that time of year!!!!

December...already

Now that December is finally here, let's bring on all the Christmas decorations. Okay maybe not all, we just got our Christmas tree last night and it's still pretty bare but we got the lights up on the house and some decorations out. It seems like our whole neighborhood has gotten into the Christmas spirit and every single house in our culd-de-sac has lights up. Last Thursday, we went to the Blossoms of Lights at the Botanical Gardens. Tracie got some free tickets through Starbucks. It was very pretty but they didn't have any music playing so that was kind of a bummer. This weekend was supposed to be a very chilly one but we got lucky and didn't see any snow so Troy had the luxury of putting up the Christmas lights. We're hoping that every year we can keep adding more to it. Poor Lexie wished she could come out and play but it was too cold for her. But she is enjoying the Christmas tree and gnawing at the branches.

2 in a Row

Troy and I flew over to Utah on Wednesday morning. That morning we woke up to snow; the first snow of November but it wasn't too bad getting to the airport. We ended up just hanging out with Troy's family that day since he and I were both sick. Thursday morning we did Christmas with his family since we'll be in California this year. It was a lot of fun and I would have to say that his parents' gift to Troy was pretty creative. They made us a ladder out of sticks then gave us a gift card to Home Depot. We will definitely put the ladder to good use within the next week or two with Troy putting up our Christmas lights! Thursday afternoon we headed down to Uncle Tom ('s cabin) and Aunt Pattie's house for dinner. It was all delicious and as usual, I definitely ate way too much. Friday, we were on the hunt for a sectional and hoped to find one in Utah. The hunt was fruitless but at least we got to hang out with Troy's little bros and Grandma and Grandpa Burt. Saturday was a action-packed day. We headed down early in the morning to Will and Kristin's for Sierra's baby blessing. Afterwards we met up with the rest of Troy's family at the Creamery for some lunch before the game. The game was a lot of fun and it was great being back. We had pretty decent seats even though it was in the shade the whole time, brrr!!! The good news is that we were high enough to see all of the action, especially the flyover to start the game, the bad news was that we couldn't see the replay screen and we were too far away to storm the field. Afterwards we went to the Spaghettti Factory for dinner and then stopped by the Wu House Cedar Hills. It was a fun to see so many friends and family, but entirely too short of a weekend. We are definitely excited to see all of Tracie's family in December.

Troy's side note on the game: I'm sure all of the Utah fans will complain that officiating cost them the game. While I won't defend the veracity of the calls, I will say this, the first one came on second down, and the second one on the next play. While they certainly helped, they only thing they really did was assist in the Cougars scoring sooner, which benefitted the Utes. Admit it, the game was lost on a 49 yard bomb on 4th and 18 from the 12 yard line. Don't blame the refs for your losing pain.

Castle Rock Times - Thanksgiving Edition

Front Page
The big news of the week is the fact that we are one week closer to seeing our families over Thanksgiving!!

Entertainment

Saturday night was the 72nd annual Starlighting festival in Downtown Castle Rock,

hosted by Gary Shapiro of 9news!! We headed downtown at about 4 in the afternoon. We actually had to return some books to the library, so that was the first stop. Lucky for us they had a free trolley to take us back downtown. We then picked us out a spot that gave us a good view of the stage,

and ultimately a great view of the star on top of Castle Rock when it was all lit (lighted?) up. We then watched the fireworks display and walked around downtown window shopping at the boutique stores. The weather was great and we will definitely be going back next year. It is a fun tradition that makes us grateful that we live in such a cool town.

Business
In business news, I moved cubicles at work. My new cube has a window that looks out to Market Street and has a little more space. A co-worker moved right next to me as well, so we thought that it would be approriate for us to throw a cubicle warming party on Friday.

She provided the apple cider and I brought the Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It was a fun little gathering.

Sports
We watched BYU dominate Wyoming on Saturday, and we are eagerly anticipating the BYU-Utah matchup on Saturday. I think it will be a good game, but I'm pretty sure I know who will win. Any guesses as to who that will be?

Ho Hum week

So, there's really nothing to report of the happenings last week. Troy went to South Carolina for work for a couple of days but forgot to take a camera with him. We did find out that he got a nice bonus because of the "merging"/acquisition of his company with JP Morgan. That was really nice. I went to another stamping party on Saturday and we made Christmas cards. I'm super excited to send them out. Troy also got free tickets to the Nature and Science Museum so we went Saturday afternoon. We were hoping to go to the IMAX showing of the Titanic but the tickets were all sold out so we ended up watching something on blackholes at the planetarium. I didnt' really watch a lot of it because it made me a little queasy but it was nice and short.

Lastly, I thought I'd post something about Lexie. She is such a funny quite. Apparently she has a thing for boxes no matter what kind of predicament she gets herself into. Hopefully you like some of these pictures!

And, yes, that's Kleenex box stuck on her head!

Birthday Week

So this week was dubbed my birthday week by Tracie, and she spoiled me a lot. On Tuesday Tracie made cupcakes. They were fabulous and I had just enough breath to blow out the candles!!
I dressed up for work. Thanks to Brittany for the doo-rag, it really completed the outfit. Lexie was also excited for Halloween and kept a keen eye out for the Trick-or-Treaters. We were actually really excited to stay home and pass out candy for the first time in our house (I'm sure that will fade over time). We got to hand it out for a little while and then we went over to our friends Jen and Gavin's house for a murder mystery party. I was J. Stephen Peek, attorney-at-law, the friend and confidante of the victim (I even have the business cards to prove it). Tracie was Elise St. Gershe, the young, attractive maid at the DuPre mansion. It was a lot of fun, and we enjoyed hanging out with the three other couples.

We quickly moved past the Halloween holiday and on to Thanksgiving. On Sunday we invited some friends over for dinner and Tracie decided to be bold and make her very first turkey dinner. It was delicious!! Luckily Tracie had some latex gloves which makes handling the raw turkey much nicer. It was a fun day and it was nice to stress test the kitchen, the double ovens, and the big dining room table. They all passed with flying colors, now we just family to join us next year for the real Thanksgiving!!!!

Happy Almost Halloween!!!

What did we do this past weekend?!?! Friday, for Troy's birthday, I got us tickets to the symphony to listen to Beethoven's 5th Symphony. I even got all gussied up and wore a lot more make up than I ever would. I even did my hair. I picked Troy up from work and we had dinner downtown at a place call The Palamino. It was delicious. We even got to see some downtown action right outside our window. We saw a cop on a motorbike totally take down a guy on a bicycle. After dinner, we headed to Boettcher Hall (I think that's what it's called). Luckily it wasn't too chilly so the walk wasn't bad. The symphony was great and we had awesome seats. Unfortunately, when we wanted to take a picture I found out that the batteries were dead. So no pics from that night until we got home. Saturday we ran a few errands and started our Christmas shopping. Can you believe it?! I can happily say that we have all the nieces and nephews done except for the twins but we'll get there. And I have to say that they're pretty awesome presents. We also bought a cupcake carrier. It's pretty cool. I'm making cupcakes for Troy to take to work but we didn't know how to transport them but they have one at Crate & Barrell and it carries 2 dozen so it all worked out. Sunday, we had some friends over for dinner and we made sugar cookies for dessert. They were yummy. Then Monday night, we carved our pumpkins. Our neighbors graciously invited us over for Troy's b-day then afterwards we came back here to carve. I think mine is the coolest. It's the goblin. The stencil said that it was a 2 pumpkin out of 4 on difficulty but I would definitely bump it up to 3. It took me FOREVER to finish it and the pumpkin wasn't even for me but for the little girl. Her mom said that she would appreciate 10 years down the road when she's carving her own pumpkin. Great!

Troy carved 2 pumpkins in the time I carved one. If you can't tell the middle one says Red Sox and has devil horns and a pitchfork.

If you can't tell, Lexie's in a slight predicament. She has her head and one arm through the handle. It took her a while to get out. Silly cat.

Pumpkins, Bowling, and a little white stuff

We actually had quite a busy Saturday after just staying home Friday evening to watch Disturbia (really just a more modern version of The Burbs). We slept in a little too long and missed the Annual Pumpkin Chuckin' contest. We'll give you a full report next year, but as a teaser, the winning entry went over 500 yards (yes yards, not feet!) We did get down to the pumpkin patch at the Grange to pick up our free pumpkin.

We then went bowling for an hour. It was a lot of fun, and we bowled really well. Tracie's high was a 134 (one pin from finishing off with a turkey) and mine was a 150. We then came home to watch the BYU game. We started watching sometime in the 3rd quarter and BYU was already up big. As you may have heard, it started to snow, and then it really started to come down in the 4th quarter. I knew that cold weather was in our forecast for today, but seeing it made me scared enough to wrap our sprinkler pipes. Good thing I did.

We woke up this morning to a little snow on the ground. I took this before church just in case it melted by the time we got back. Since we go to choir practice before church, we leave at 8. So 4 hours later we get back, and look what we have!

A lot of snow! All told we got just over 6 inches down here. Denver got maybe a dusting, and it was melted by the time the Broncos kicked off at 6. I'm sure it will be all melted by tomorrow, and the roads weren't bad, but it was enough to make us bust out the Christmas music.

Lastly our neighbors Joe and Patti had a friend stand them up for a lunch date, so we were forced to join them for steaks at their house Saturday for lunch. They also had a computer monitor that they were going to give their Dad, but he did not want it. So we bought it from them. It's about time we traded in our ancient monitor for a new flat screen one. It is amazing how much more space we have on our desk now!!

Tagged

After much pressure from friends, I have decided to enlighten you guys with some known (maybe unknown) facts about moi!

So I've been tagged and am supposed to write 6 facts about myself. When I tag you, you can write 6 facts about yourself and then tag 6 others (I may be re-tagging people because a lot of us have the same friends!).

1. I LOVE FOOD!!!!! Since I can remember food has been a pretty big part of my life. I absolutely love it. Freshman year, I out-ate a pole vaulter that said he could eat more than me. On my first date with Troy, I definitely ate more than him. He ordered lasagna and I ordered the same with some chicken marsala. He struggled to finish his plate and I had no problem finishing mine. Food occupies my thought a lot of the day. When I worked at the BYU Bookstore I would just look at the cookbooks to satisfy my hunger until I could eat.

2. Along with having a love for food, I have a small obsession with cookbooks. I love looking through them even if I rarely cook the recipes that are in them. I would say that I have easily over 30 books but thank goodness by itch to buy them all the time has gone down.

3. I love playing with wrinkles in about anything especially the corners on my pillow. I like playing with them so much that I have put a hole in a couple of my pillowcases.

4. When I first got my driver's license I put myself down as being 5'5" thinking that I was still growing. I was also very proud to let everyone know that I was 5'5". My last semester at BYU I was taking a Exercise Physiology class and we had to measure our height. I am definitely 5'4 3/4". That was probably one of my saddest days. I do still say that I'm 5'5" though because if you round up that's what I am.

5. Before I got married, I used to exercise regularly. Since I've been married...well you can say that the number of times I have exercised, you can count on one hand. I will say though, I think about exercising all the time. This last year I have had some people ask me if I have lost weight so I just want to say that thinking about exercising really works!!!!! That's my secret. I think about it daily but rarely do I do anything about. It's all about mind power!

6. Lastly...when I was a baby, I never sucked my thumb...I sucked my tongue. I know it sounds weird but I think many of you already know this. I would just roll my tongue in half then suck. Well, I still do it to this day. I've tried to stop but I guess you could say it's a bad habit. I do attribute my straight teeth to it though.

Anywho, I hope all of you have enjoyed reading this. If you knew these things about me I just wanted to refresh your memory. If you didn't know well now you do! Happy Fall Day!

Oh...the weather outside is frightful

Not really but we did have a bit of a cold front this weekend. Friday I didn't have to work so I got a little stir crazy around the house. Luckily Troy, Robyn, and Aaron are all good sports so we ended up hanging out downtown. We had dinner at a place called Dixon's and then headed over to ESPN Zone to play some games. It's always good to go if you want to exercise but not really think that you're exercising. We played the basketball game (as always), raced the horses, played fooseball hockey, rode some bikes, raced some cars, boxed, and drove a semi. It was a pretty fun night. Saturday, I went out with Robyn and Aaron to take some more engagement pictures. I think I took some pretty decent pictures considering I have no experience in that area. All I have to say is there has got to be one picture that they BOTH agree on. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Saturday night, we watched the BYU game. Every year, during football season, Troy adds some extra channels so we can watch the BYU games and then when the season's over, we discontinue it. He's so funny. Sunday was our first Sunday that we did not have to teach our primary class. If all the kids showed up we would have 15 kids so they decided to call another set of teachers. I told the primary president that I didn't want to split the class because it's rare that all the kids show up let alone 10 kids so we decided to alternate teaching. I think it's a good idea. Last night, we had a wonderful dinner with pot roast, carrots, salad, mashed potatoes, and rolls. It was delicious. Afterwards, we played 2 games of Scrabble. I must admit, I'm a huge fan of the game.

Autumn, Fall, Rocktober

It's crisp!! Fall is definitely in the air. If you had October 7th in the office pool for the first day that we would make a pumpkin pie, you win!! It went well with our hearty pork stew.

We planted our tulip bulbs yesterday. It was a lot of work to dig all those holes. I hope they look good in the spring. Thanks again to Tahitian Noni (Will and Kristin) for the bulbs.

Tracie had a stampin' up party yesterday at our neighbors' house. I think she really likes making the stuff, and it is a good creative outlet for her.

We have also really been enjoying the Rockies in the playoffs. It is cool to see everyone get into baseball, especially because this time of year the Broncos tend to dominate the sports scene.

Yesterday Tracie took some engagement pictures of Aaron and Robyn. I think they turned out pretty well, we'll see if Aaron and Robyn can agree with one that they both like (they are both really HM!)

We also enjoyed General Conference this weekend. It is nice to be able to watch it at home, and we even busted out the Primary Bingo games for the afternoon session. Elder Hales really came through!!!