Support our Holiday Heros

One of my favorite Friday's of the month, is the Friday when I get together with my gal pals for Card Making Group. We have been doing this monthly for over a year now and I always have such a good time laughing with my friends and making cute cards.

This month we made Christmas Cards; we make 10 of the same card and then everyone exchanges their cards at the end of the night. The goal is that everyone leaves with 10 different cards with the theme of the month.
We all made an extra card this month that we could send to our troops who wont be with their families during the holiday season. This is such an easy way to show our troops that we support what they are doing for our country! We also did this for our youth activity this week, easy and fun.
If you have time this week, I would encourage you to write a card or a letter to a "holiday hero" and send it to the address above by December 10. It is easy and it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside!

Altaira

Did you know that C is in a Boy Band? Sure, they don't do much dancing, their outfits are mostly from thrift stores, they are not performing on a big stage, and they don't have a huge fan base. What do they have? They have bird whistles, an ocarina, boom boxes on stage and some great
Ace of Base impersonations.
This is C's "Boy Band," aka new music improv group, Altaira. They had a show this week in Cambridge and it went pretty well.
You have MAD skills babe!

Wreath Making 2008!

Cambridge 1st Ward held its 44th Annual Wreath Making Party this week!
I brought along Charlotte, my adorable neighbor across the street, for our 2nd Annual wreath making experience. It was a wonderful night full of musical numbers, spiritual thoughts, a delicious dinner and of coarse wreath making. Wreaths are a big deal here in New England and I love to be a part of all the fun festivities.

Here is what my finished product turned out to look like this year. It looks quite nice decorating my front door!

Here is my sweet friend Amy who is moving this month; she has been serving with me in the Young Women's Presidency for the last bit and I am going to miss her so much! Thanks for your friendship Amy; good luck in Texas!

Happy Holidays!

33 Weeks and still counting...

Feeling large and not in charge!

Who's got the Holiday Spirit?

My job has this really cool holiday, it is called "your birthday holiday," basically you get to take your birthday off of work. Since my birthday was on Thanksgiving, and we had that day off already, I took the day after off! Oh how sweet a four day weekend felt! I have been saving all my sick, vacation and personal days for my maternity leave, and I was so happy to have some time off!
Christian and I spent the whole day together! We slept in a bit, visited with some friends from the University Village, shopped at Target. Then we headed to downtown Boston for the annual Macy's Tree Lighting Ceremony.

There was a little show with singing and dancing and all sorts of fun stuff. Santa showed up to switch the lights on the tree and all the Holiday festivities were in full swing.

Name that movie: "It's Santa, I know him!! I know him!!"

After we window shopped at the Apple Store, where Christian tasted a bit of heaven, we met up with Bonnie and Patrick for dinner at one of my favorite Italian restaurants, Maggianos! It was the best day off ever! I loved spending time with my hot hubby, getting in some shopping, hanging with fabulous friends and eating good food. Doesn't get any better than that!

Thanksgiving-ed Out!

The Thanksgiving Feasts have taken place at our house for the last 3 years! It always starts out Wednesday evening as we prepare some of the food. Christian always stays up way to late cooking pies, his favorite Thanksgiving food to prepare! This is his first apple pie he made and he is not pleased with how it turned out. Should have started out using your momma's pie crust!
Yes, his apron does say "Treble in the kitchen."

You may or may not know that I was born on Thanksgiving Day; this year my birthday fell on Thanksgiving again! I love having big feasts on my big day! McDuff was a big help in opening my birthday presents this year, I think he may have been more excited than I was when he heard the gift wrap and tissue paper. What a good helper he is.

This is my plate of food! So yummy! We had some friends over for the big day, the Hadley's, Andersons and the Burger-Reynolds. Everyone brought food which worked out great! EVERYTHING tasted so good!

There always has to be a little bit of drama at our house or things just wouldn't be normal. NO, McDuff is fine. Our sink on the other hand, not so much! The sink decided to clog as we were doing the Thanksgiving dishes this year- great timing!

This is what was happening down below, not good! Dishes stayed around until Monday night when the plumber fixed things up. Have I ever mentioned how much I HATE dirty dishes!!!

A special thank you to the Hadley's who brought me these beautiful flowers for my birthday, you two are so thoughtful! Thanks bunches!

We had a great Thanksgiving/Birthday with our friends! We ate yummy food, played silly games, and vegged out!

Thanks to everyone who called or sent Birthday message, I feel so lucky to have such wonderful family and friends!

Weekendness

I was one of those crazy TWILIGHT fans that bought my ticket a month ago to see the movie on opening day. This review pretty much sums it up for me! http://www.nurturingnarcissism.com/2008/11/that-crap-movie-i-saw-this-weekend.html
Even thought the movie didn't reach my low expectations, I sure did have a great time hanging out with my gal pals and laughing through those unbearably uncomfortable parts.
Four of us met up for dinner before the show and then met the six other ladies for the movie. Here we are (Bonnie, Marci, Jhordan, and me) waiting in the long line that I was sure should have been teenagers, but ended up being 90% women in their 20's and 30's.

Saturday was our ward Thanksgiving Dinner event that the EQ puts on. Christian was in charge of the event and it was a bit stressful, but I have to say it turned out to be a pretty successful event.

Our ward has lots and lots of BYU grads so we were sure to represent our UTES during the event! We played a fun ward game of jeopardy and our really awesome team won the game!!! It was only a sign of things to come with the big
BYU vs. UofU game.

We couldn't find anyone with the right cable station to watch the big game that evening, so we headed to a sports bar/grill. When we arrived we were excited to see a big crowd of Utes and Cougars watching the game together. We joined in the party and afterward took a picture of all the Ute Alumni! Yep, I only know 3 of these people, but found out that one of the guys in the picture is one of Maren's old boy toys from her days at the UofU. Small world huh?

Our little Ute family! It brought me so much joy to watch those Cougars get killed!

Go University of Utah!!!