Feliz Navidad!

This year was our first Christmas as a married couple and it was definitely a memorable one! We definitely spoiled each other, and had a really fun day. Until we got sick, that is. Connor wasn't feeling too well on Christmas eve but he was okay during Christmas day. It was the day after Christmas that we both got sick. Connor with the stomach flu, me with a cold. No fun. But regardless, Christmas was a fantastic and memorable day. Merry Christmas to us! (And to you all too, whoever reads this.)

Underneath the tree on Christmas Morning

Our Stockings. I LOVE Whoppers!

Connor LOVES detailing cars so I got him a professional car polisher.

Apparently I forgot to get the pads (or something) though, so he can't use it yet.

(How did I not know! haha)

We got a Wii! So fun. We've already spent many hours playing.

Particularly Super Mario Bros. A classic.

Happy Birthday, Baby!

This month we celebrated Connor's 27th birthday! I asked Connor what he wanted to do on his actual birthday, but he said nothing. I convinced him we needed to do something, so per his request, I got a mint and chocolate cake from Leslie's French Pastries. So good. We celebrated with just us and our friend Ami Jo. It was a fun little night!

All we had was a 2 and a 6 from my birthday so we just used the 2. Good enough. :)

Doesn't he look thrilled? :0)

Disneyland Top 10

This week Connor and I went to Disneyland (for the second time this year) to celebrate his birthday! Here's our Top 10 of what we enjoyed most.

10. Seeing the beautiful Christmas decorations.

(This picture came out kind of blurry.

I guess I have to be pickier with who I ask to take photos...) :)

9. The perfect and beautiful 70+ degree weather.

8. The delicious Dole Pineapple Stand by the Tiki Room. If you haven't had it, you must.

7. Going on the matterhorn. It was closed when we went on our honeymoon.

6. The World of Color and also the fireworks show. So cool. I especially loved the Disney snow.

5. Seeing Santa's Reindeer.

4. Joe's Italian Ice. Amazing. We got the Joe Latti (italian ice with soft serve in it). I'm wishing we had gone back another time before we left. Next time we're there, we are definitely going back.

3. Our super crappy hotel room. Ramada at Anaheim Convention Center. We got a really good deal, but still not worth it.

2. Deciding at the last minute to leave Disneyland a little early and drive home all night long because we couldn't take our crappy hotel room any more.

1. Celebrating Connor's Birthday, of course! Happy Birthday!!!

(I made him wear that button all day, which he was thrilled with, of course. Haha.

He did get quite a few "Happy Birthday's" from Disney employees

and a couple of others. But he was more excited about getting compliments

on his Senfeld shirt.)

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree!

After much debate, we decided to go with a fake Christmas tree this year. Not as fun, but we have plans to go out of town and so we didn't want to have to have anyone come water it while we're gone. Anyway, here's our finished product. We like it. :)

**Clarification** When I said we were going out of town, that did not mean that we were going out of town for Christmas. Just between now and Christmas. (Is that better, Eric?) :)

Another First

So this week seems to be the week of firsts. The first time keys were locked in the car. And today, the first time that my car got stuck in the snow. Literally. Stuck. I arrived a little late to church this morning thanks to the fluffy white stuff. Our church has almost no parking, although usually I can find a space. However, due to the snow, people often forget how to correctly park in a parking lot, and so I was forced to park on the street.

Connor stayed home sick today so it was just me all by my lonesome. When church was over, I came out and walked through the deep snow to my car. I got there, turned on my car, tried to drive forward, and nothing. Uh oh. Then I tried to go backward, and I was able to move a little bit. Forward, backward, forward, backward. Anytime I would get relatively close to the road, my car would literally slide in the opposite direction.

After several minutes of trying, I gave up. I called Connor and told him I was stuck and needed help. He came with a shovel and literally shoveled me out. He's so sweet. :) After several minutes, he finally was able to help me break free.

(I want to know, why did no one from the ward who saw that I was stuck in the snow offer any help? It was pretty obvious.)

Anyway, that wasn't fun. Hopefully that doesn't happen again. If I hadn't had to teach today I probably just would have turned around and gone home, to be honest. However, it was all for the best and I'm pretty lucky to have such a sweet husband to come and save the day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This has been a memorable Thanksgiving for us. Aside from being our first Thanksgiving together (as a married couple), it turned out to be an interesting day. I successfully made a chocolate cream pie, sweet potatoes, and pink stuff (cool whip, cherry pie filling, and crushed pineapple). That's the most that I've ever made for Thanksgiving. I was pretty concerned about the sweet potatoes, but thanks to my mom's help they turned out pretty well.

The exciting event of the night was when we were about to leave. We went outside to put the food in the car and Connor turned the car on so that we could warm it up a little since it was like 15 degrees outside (unfortunately, not exaggerating). Connor left the key in the ignition, locked the car, and took his car remote with him as we went back inside to say goodbye to everyone. Well, when we returned to the car, the remote wouldn't work. The light was flashing on the remote, but we could not get the door to open. We tried to change the battery, but that wouldn't work either. After about 15 minutes, I called the local police to see if they would come open the car for us. Well, apparently they don't do it unless there is an animal or a child in the car. So then I tried to call a 24 hour locksmith (dreading how much this might cost us), and no one would answer. We even called the emergency line, and no answer. Then Connor had the idea that we should call our insurance company 'cause he thought they would cover it. Great idea! I called Progressive (nice plug for them) and since we do have Roadside Assistance on both of our cars, it was completely covered! Yay!

They told us that they would be there in about 30 minutes. It did take the guy a little longer to get to us, but it is Thanksgiving. Poor people that have to work on Thanksgiving. He came and had the car open within a few minutes. It was SO COLD outside but it was interesting to see how he got it open. We gave him 5 bucks for his help and coming out on Thanksgiving. Thank goodness some people work on Thanksgiving because we would have been in big trouble.

This Thanksgiving I am grateful for many things. I have a great husband, family, friends, job, etc. Life is good. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Virginia

This last week Connor and I went to Virginia! It was really fun to go back and show Connor where I grew up, and spend some time with my family. Connor had never been to that part of the country so we went around and saw some of the local sights as well.

We went to Arlington National Cemetery where we saw my Grandma Byrd's grave, along with some other really neat things. The Changing of the the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns was really interesting. They have that all coordinated so well, its amazing.

Connor loves Seinfeld so I thought it would be fun for him to see the Seinfeld Puffy Shirt that's on display at the Smithsonian. So we went to the Museum of American History and it wasn't even there! They had taken it off exhibit. I was disappointed that it wasn't there, but we still got to see some cool things.

Me with Dorothy's ruby slippers. I loved the Wizard of Oz when I was a kid.

Actually, I still love the Wizard of Oz.

It got dark around 5:00 so we got to see a lot of the sights at night which was really pretty.

We got some nice photos.

Some nice mennonite girls took this of us at the WWII memorial.

You can't tell, but we are standing in front of the Utah part of the memorial.

In front of the DC temple. It looks like my hair is doing something crazy,

but its actually the water fountain behind my head.

Since jetBlue flies directly from JFK to Salt Lake, we decided to drive up to JFK from VA instead of flying there with a 12 hour layover. We decided to rent a car and drive up. It was a really nice drive until we got to New York and got stuck in all the lovely New York traffic. It's hard to see in the photo the full extent of the traffic. I guess it could have been worse, though.

It was a really nice trip. I just wish I had gotten a picture with my mom and grandpa in it as well. Oh well. Maybe next time!

Happy Nine Month-iversary!

Today Connor and I have been married for 9 months. It's amazing that the time has passed so quickly. I'm sure that if anyone's reading this who has been married for much longer than we have will think that's not much, but it's big for us! :) Anyway, here are some of my favorite photos of what we've done over the last 9 months.

Technically this one was taken before we got married, or even engaged, but I really like it.

Wedding Day

Leaving the reception.

Honeymooning

With our easter baskets

Connor had a UFDA (Utah Funeral Directors Association) convention at the Energy Solutions Arena and we were able to go down on the court and play around a little.

This is when my mission president and his wife got home and we went to their homecoming.

In front of a pretty waterfall in Oregon.

This was one of our bridals/groomals. I just really like this photo.

Happy Nine Month-iversary to us!

Happy Halloween!

For our first Halloween, I really wanted to go get pumpkins from a pumpkin patch for us to carve. But, that didn't work out, so we tried to go to a store and get some pumpkins. Not easy to do on Utah's Halloween (the 30th, since Halloween is on Sunday this year). So, after going to 4 stores we ended up at Wal-mart and we found some small pumpkins for us to carve.

We got home and carved our little pumpkins, which wasn't easy to do. When I was a kid we had a pumpkin carving knife that was much easier to work with. We should really get one of those. :)

Here's our final result:

Oregon

This week Connor and I went to Oregon to visit my grandma and my aunt.  It was a really fun trip.  Oregon is such a beautiful state and we really enjoyed seeing the sights for the couple of days that we were there.  It was also so nice to see my grandma who hadn't met Connor yet.  My grandma has Parkinson's Disease so we didn't get to spend too much time with her (she gets tired a lot), so the rest of the time we saw some beautiful scenery, and ate some incredible food.  Here are some hi-lights.

Connor and I like to watch a show on the Food Network called "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" and so we looked up online some restaurants that had been featured in Portland.  We decided to go to Arleta Bakery and Cafe for brunch one day and they had some amazingly good food.  The picture above is the biscuits and gravy that I got and they were so so so good.  Connor got the french toast which was really good too but I personally think I got the better dish.  :-)

We also went to visit my Grandpa Nelson's grave.  He died is 1966 (as you can see) so I never got to meet him.  He is buried at Willamette National Cemetery.

We went to see the ever so beautiful Portland Oregon Temple.

We also went to the Oregon Gardens which was just beautiful.  There are 80 acres of developed gardens and it was really beautiful and interesting to see all of the different gardens.

Here is the train from the Children's Garden.  If you look closely, you can see the caboose lying on the its side next to the track.  Connor broke it.  :-)

Us before we left the Gardens.

After we left there, we went to Silver Falls State Park which has a bunch of water falls.  We only saw a couple of them, but it was also really beautiful.  I love how Oregon is so green.  It's so different from Utah...

I don't know if you can tell, but thats a waterfall behind us.

And of course the hi-light of the trip was visiting with my aunt and grandma.  Since they live so far away I don't get to see them very often and it was great being able to visit with them.  My poor grandma has had Parkinson's disease for as long as I can remember so by this point it's hard for her to get out of bed and do much.  But we were all able to go on a drive together around Portland.  I saw the house where my dad grew up in, and some of the areas where they used to play in.  We were able to spend some time together, we went out to lunch together one day, and they were able to get to know Connor.  It was really fun and very worthwhile.  It was truly a great trip.

The apartment with the blue door

So I've been wanting to paint the door to our apartment for a long time.  I think my idea sprung from "Notting Hill."  Anyway, so today as I had most of the day off, I decided it was time to fulfill my plans and add some pizazz (is that a word?) to our fabulous apartment.  It was a messy project.  I am definitely not a professional painter, and I got paint on my face, hair, arms and the bottom of my foot (I accidentally stepped on the cap of the paint can...hehe).  Anyway, after about 4 hours and a couple of coats it is finished.

Here's the before and the after.....

And here's one of my nasty foot... :-)

Today's Tasks

In an effort to improve our apartment, I decided to paint a chest that I've had for years.  It used to be gold and today I painted it black.  It's not perfect, but it's better.  It could have used another coat of paint but I ran out.  Regardless, it's definitely an improvement!

Here's the before and after:

It really doesn't look this bad.  I think the gold shines through more because of the flash.  Maybe one day I'll give it another coat.....

Also, today Connor finished his last final for the semester, so I decided to make him Pineapple Upside Down Cake as a treat for him.  This is the first time I've made Pineapple Upside Down Cake and it wasn't half bad if I do say so myself.  :-)  Connor definitely seemed to like it.