A Couple Weeks of Christmas

I decorated for Christmas right after Thanksgiving this year. I absolutely love Christmas and Christmas decorations! I bought a lot more this year, so I had to get tub #3 to hold it all when I put it away. (Yep, I wait until New Years to do that :) ) I put Christmas lights up outside the house, also. I did it all by myself, Kelly pretty much just held the ladder for me. I grew up helping my dad put up the lights, and doing it from on top of the roof, so that's how I did it. (our neighbor called me brave. :) )

It's not much, but I'll have more next year! I think next year I'm going to add some color to it. 

This is my parents house. See where I get it from?

Kelly and I went to my parents house in Mountain Home, which is about 45 miles south of Boise for Christmas the weekend before the 25th. I had to work Christmas Eve and Christmas, and my sister Natalie's son was going to be at his Dad's for Christmas, so we figured it would be easy to just do it the weekend before.



My 2 1/2 year old nephew, Joey knew what the presents were all about, and he was ready to open them! He was so cute, his phrase for the night was "ooohhh no!" and he would say it when he opened a present. We got him a little people farm set, and when he tore the corner of wrapping paper off (all you could see what just a tiny bit of the box) he said "A guitar!" LOL He's definitely got some personality!

Kelly got an argyle sweater from Natalie and her fiance, Adam  I got some stuff, too, but I picked them out myself the day after Thanksgiving and took all but a shirt home with me, so that I would have something to open. :)

Natalie got the dogs a present, too. We took it home so that they could open it themselves.

They actually got all the wrapping paper off and opened the box of cookies themselves! They even ate a couple before we took it away. It was great!

 I tried to get Maggie and Clyde's picture under the tree, but this is the best I got.

Maggie's a good girl though. She stayed for a nice picture. :)

I did feed them under the tree on Christmas though. :)

(Notice we don't have a tree skirt or any presents under the tree? Yeah, we have a puppy!)

We went over to Kelly's aunt and uncle's house on Christmas Eve and Christmas, and since I had to work both nights, I just left from their house and went to work on Christmas Eve, went home Christmas morning, got 4 hours of sleep, then we went to Kelly's mom's house to open a couple presents. His mom had gotten us a washing machine a couple weeks ago when ours broke, so she just picked us up hats so we could open something.

Kelly's family doesn't take many pictures, so I felt weird taking pictures. I took a couple, but one is of Kelly's cousin's baby, and I'm not sure how private they are about pictures on the internet, so I'm not going to post the cute little guy.

Sorry this is so picture heavy - I really need to post more so that this doesn't happen! I hope everyone had a great and blessed Christmas celebrating the birth of our Savior. Have a great New Year!

Thanksgiving Weekend

So this is how my weekend started on Wednesday. Driving from Boise, Idaho to Logan, Utah on roads that looked like this. (This picture is from my cell phone). It was never really very dangerous for me, luckily, and I was following my parents the whole way. There were times we were only going 20mph, and then times when we were going 65mph, it just depended.
 

 

We finally arrived at my Grandma's house in Logan and visited with my Grandma, my sister Natalie, who takes care of my Grandma, her 2 1/2 year old son Joey and my oldest sister, Alicia (her 7 year old daughter, Emma was in New Jersey with her dad). The next morning, on Thanksgiving, we always wake up and watch the Macy's parade, and look through Black Friday ads, while dinner is being prepared. 

Even Joey got into looking at the ads. He was telling us what he wanted. (he doesn't want any Barbies...)

Then we ate a yummy dinner! From right to left is Adam (Natalie's fiance), Joey, Natalie, Me and Alicia

 Joey loves his Great-Grandma :)

My mom, sisters and I are big Black Friday shoppers, so we got up at 4:30am and got to Shopko a little after 5am. Alicia lives in Phoenix, and it was 12 degrees that morning! (but, it was -12 degrees Thanksgiving morning! Needless to say, we stayed inside, lol) So it was really cold for her!

Love the view from Logan! (I also got my first taste of Chick-Fil-A! YUM!)

Look at our loot!

Friday night we went and Saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Even my 82 year old Grandma came! She's read all the books). We sat in the in the 2nd row, and it was close! I've only seen the first couple movies (I know - GASP!) and so I didn't really know what was going on, and I eventually fell asleep (whoops...) But, I do have to say, I think I'll get caught up in time for part 2.

Joey loves popcorn :)

On Saturday, I really wanted to stay, but I needed to get home because I had to work Sunday night, and I wanted a day to relax before work. So that afternoon I left to head home, and caught some pretty views. 

This is the Wellsville Mountains, which is part of the Wasatch Front

I drove home and didn't really hit any bad weather, and then I got to Mountain Home (where I grew up), which is 45 miles away from Boise. The snow was coming down really hard, so I thought I'd stop and get some more gas, just in case. I couldn't even find the exit! (and I'm from there!) Finally, I was able to find the exit and get off the freeway, and as I was putting gas in the car, I decided to go to my parents house and wait out the storm. (it was dark, if it was daylight, it might have been better) I called my mom, who was still in Logan and told her I was going to hang out at their house for a little while. I went to the house and ended up just saying the night, and I left the next morning. This is what the road looked like to Boise.

 

It wasn't horrible, but I was glad it wasn't snowing like the night before.

I got home, unpacked my stuff and tried to relax before having to go to work that night. I had to work 5 nights instead of the regular 4, and it was hard! I ended up having to stay late a couple of the mornings because of more snowstorms. We got a lot of snow in the past week and a half! I'll post about that later! :)