Christmas

To me my favorite thing about Christmas, is Christmas Eve. There is nothing better than getting together with family and friend. Not only do I have the best family in the world, but we all love eachother, and I can honestly say all of my cousins are my best friends. They are amazing!!! Anyway....every Christmas Eve we go over to Gramps and Grandma Bob's house to open presents from Grandpa Harold. He starts shopping the day after Christmas and starts shopping all the best sales, and he is the sweetest old man anyone will ever meet. This year he got me a "Cozy-Up" and a necklace. A "Cozy-Up" is the same things as a "Snuggie." It's pretty awesome. My cousin Krista got one too! they are quite amazing. Than after hanging out for a little while we head over to my house to read the Christmas story from the Bible in James. It was a lot of fun, we read some stuff from 3 Nephi, and some cute meaningful little stories. The best is just hanging out with the family though! I love it more than anything! After reading the stories we played in infamous Instruments. We added a new instrument called the "Groupie." Funniest thing ever when Uncle Brent was in that chair, we couldn't stop passing it to him, him just dancing was sooooo funny! The game winded down and everyone left. My family opened up our pajama's and everyone went to bed. Me and Dan went to Midnight Mass with my cousin Jenna and her friend. I like learning about everyone elses religions, it gives me a better appreciation for others.
Today, on Christmas, we opened up our presents and than we went to Grandpa Kenny's and Grandma Marion's for breakfast with all the Stuart's. I am really excited about one of my presents, its going to be a Mezuzah Pendant Necklace. In Jewish culture they have Mezuzah's that hang on the outside of your house, and when people say it, its supposed to remind them that they the house and the people in it are dedicated to God. It's pretty cool. So they have it in a pendant form, and I'm excited to wear mine. I also got a new laptop :] Really exciting. I love it, usually I know exactly what I'm getting, but I was really suprised to get that!!!

temple square :]

So not this week, but the last one, I went to temple square three times in one week. That's more than I have ever been in my whole life! I remember going twice before in the last eighteen wonderful years. Temple square is pretty cool, I love it all year round, not just around Christmas time when you get to see the lights, but there is a special spirit there.

Monday November 29th my college ward went down. We took two of those big tour buses, and went to The Spaghetti Factory, had dinner and than went to Temple square with everyone for our Christmas party. It was a lot of fun! I really love my college ward a lot! It's so nice to be going to church with your peer's and to know that they are going through the same stuff you are going through.

[me mitch and melissa]

[yeah i'm a shepherd]

[my homegirl melissa and I]

[some fun people in my ward!]

[just some random guys i got a picture with]

Than that Wednesday, my friend Nathan was like hey do you want to go to temple square with me and my brother, and I said sure! So we went down, and it was freezing! We spent most of the time inside one of the visitors centers and ended up getting kicked out because they were closing. So that was interesting to get kicked out of temple square.

[nathan. zac. me. ryan]

[while i'm a shepherd, ryan is a sheep]

[i dont know what they were doing]

[picture in the visitors center]

[zac was doing some thing wierd...at burger king after temple square]

Than on Sunday me and my family went down to the Christmas Devotional and got some awesome seats thanks to my aunt Cindy. We sat just off to the right and like nine rows back from where they were talking. Can I just say I love President Monson, he is so amazing! I met him once and he said I had beautiful eyes, I heard he has a photogenic memory, so I wonder if I saw him again, I wonder if he would remember me. But the devotional was great, I wasn't really in the Christmas mood until than, and now I'm all excited for it! Even though I hate the snow, I do love this time of year, everyone is so happy!

[me and dan in the conference center]

[best siblings in the world]

[mumsy and popcicle]

[our family is together forever]

[so us three had those headbands]

[michelle and dan had hoods]

[and my dad was a loser with the beanie.]

[pretty cool nativity set]

temples

So me and my family had the opportunity to go to the Draper and Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house! how lucky are we that we get to live in a place where temples are so close to us. I was so excited to go because I have only been inside the baptisimal part of the temple. I was so grateful to see the inside! It gave me a better understanding of the temple, and the spirit there was surreal! I hadn't felt a spirit like that for a long time! I am so excited to go there some day!

The Weltmans!

Some of our great friends from Arizona came up to visit us this summer! It was so much fun having them here, they are some of the funniest people I have ever met! My parents met Freddie and Susan through trade shows, and than they have three kids, Jordan, Daniel, and Abby, who are inbetween all of us kids. So we are all around the same age, and get along so well! Freddie, Jordan, and Daniel came up to visit, while Susan and Abby stayed home for a concert. When they came up, we tried to be the best hosts we could be and show them around Utah. We took them to Park City and Salt Lake. In Park City we went to the Olympic Park and walked around and saw some people doing the skeleton on the bobsled track, and than we were lucky enough to see some people go off of the ski jumps. It was so cool, they had a nice show. We also toured the museum and saw how things went on during the Olympics. We went and did the Alpine Slides, those are always a blast! It was a lot of fun!

[just about to leave for Park City, Jordan decided to lay on us]

[watching the bobsled]

[Daniel, Me, Jordan, On our way up to the Alpine Slides]

[Katy, Freddie, Michelle, Daniel on the way up]

After we went to Salt Lake and did the whole Temple Square thing and shared a little bit of our faith with them. We also went through the state capitol and got to see the beautiful architecture there! Jordan was watching the food network and saw this restaurant that was featured on a show and he wanted to eat there. Its called the Red Iguana, I've never heard of it, but they are famous for the Mole. It was alright. It was SUCH a long wait though! Like an hour just to get a table and than it took forever to get the food. If we didn't have to wait so long, it wouldn't be that bad. On there last day they wanted to go to the Family History Center, so we went and after took them to lunch to my favorite burger place, Crown Burger. They liked it a lot, and I did too!

[waiting for the Red Iguana]

[At the delicious Crown Burger]

It was so much fun just to hang out with our friends. We usually see them around Easter time in Arizona and have Passover with them, which has always been fun. But it was good to have them up here, and I hope they come again!

Trying to Catch Up! Lets start with TEXAS

To be completely honest, I totally forgot about my blog, I forgot I even made one. So I am going to try my best to catch up I'll just post some stuff from this summer that I remember the most.

Me and my dad went to Houston this year for NCTM, it was pretty fun. It was my first time going to Texas, so that was fun. But oh goodness was it HOT AND STICKY! Wow, I had forgotten what humidity was like.
The day we got there we set up the booth and than went out and were tourists for awhile. We decided to go to NASA, that was pretty interesting, kind of fun. We went on one of the tours, and it took way longer than expected. But I learned a lot more than I thought.

On our way to NASA there was this store off of the freeway called Cavender's Boot Store. I was kind of being sarcastic when I said DAD I have always wanted a pair of cowgirl boots! So on our way back we typed it into the GPS, and were suprised to see that Cavender's was like a McDonalds or something, basically one off of every exit! So we went into one of the stores and I found so many pairs I wanted, but it came down to these cute ones! I love them and try to wear them as much as I can, because they set me back a little bit. But anyway, the picture is of me and my boots and a robe that the hotel had for us. I have never been to a hotel where they have robes! I was so excited, its the little things that I love more than anything!
The worst part of this trip was the last day of the show, and we I was busy with customers, I kept glancing over at the booth across from us and noticed that one of there salesmen kept staring at me, I was creeped out. He looked like he was late 20's early 30's, and need I remind you that I am 18...I'm a little baby compaired to him! So later in the day while I am talking to a lady he comes and gives me a note. In the note it said something like "Hey I think you are beautiful, How about going out sometime" I was so freaked out, I ran over to the other side of the conference center where some of our friends were and told them about it, I couldn't tell my dad because he would freak out on the guy and cause a scene. So I told our friends and they thought it was the funniest thing, I wasn't so amused. So at the end of the show, we were cleaning up, and he came up to me and asked if I had got a chance to read the note, I said yes and that I was very flattered that he said that, but that I was only 18, and I lived in Utah. He was really embarrassed I could tell. But it was prettty funny anyway. I told my dad later and he said it was probably a good idea that I didn't tell him there.
Overall it was a really fun trip. I love spending time with my Dad when its just me and him.

PROM

[SO THIS WAS A POST THAT I WAS GOING TO POST WHEN I FIRST GOT MY BLOG AND I FOUND IT IN MY DRAFTS....SO I DECIDED TO POST IT...PROM WAS IN MARCH, SO ITS BEEN A LONG TIME. ANYWAY...ENJOY]

So prom was really fun this year. I went with my best friend Connor Kendrick. And yes, he is only my best friend. Nothing more :] Well we started off going to breakfast at Jeremiah's in Ogden. It was really yummy, it was like an upscale Denny's or Village Inn. Good Eats. Than we were going to go on a hike to Waterfall Canyon, which I wish we would have done that...but everyone else in the group didn't want to. So we ended up going to Nickelcade. Which was actually quite enjoyable, we got so many tickets! Woot Woot!
Than came time for the formal part of the date. I was all ready and my dad looked out the back window and saw my little cousin in our back yard playing with our Great Dane, Aspen. I called her inside and asked her if she liked my dress. Deania said yes, but I have dress at home that is pretty and pink and is big and goes down to here and I look so pretty in it. Than my mom asked her if she liked it again and she said: Actually, I like mine. It was sooo funny. Than we sent her back home around the block. Than Connor came and picked me up and we went to someone's house and there waitng for us was a Hummer Limo. Pretty cool beans if you ask me. It was so much fun. We were getting pictures outside it and it was so windy and ruined my hair. Oh well. Than we went to dinner at Rickenbaukers. It was alright, I got Ahi Tuna. But it was not worth the money. Luckily I didn't buy... After dinner we got back in the Limo and went to the dance. It was so much fun. I loved it so much. I just love dancing in general. We got all of our pictures, I hope they turn out good. I have a streak of bad dance pictures.After dancing most of the night away, we went back to houses to change and than off to a hypnotist. He basically did all of us at the same time. I didn't really get hypnotized because my ADHD was kicking in. But he got to this point where he was talking about how he put super glue on our eyes and everytime we tried to open them they superglue would just get harder and stronger and we couldn't open our eyes. I really couldn't I was trying so hard! It was crazy! This girl got really hypnotized though, he described a roller coaster ride and she was on it for sure. It was so much fun though. After that we went back to Connor's house and had treats and watched us being hypnotized. It was so funny to see some people. Than he took me home. Overall it was probably one of the best dances I have been too. I loved it!

I'm sorta new to this thing

Thanks to my cousin Alyson I am now a blogger. She just showed me the ropes of the blogspot. Well this will be kind of fun. Life is amazing, I love it. Even when life gets kinda tough I have to realize that I am so blessed. I just need to get over whatever is going on and move on. Life is too short to be sad and mope around all the time. If you smile everyday at least once you can't help but have a good day. That's what I feel anyway.

Well if anything exciting pops up I will let everyone know. Smile and have a cookie! :]