Christmas in St. Louis & A New Year in Utah

The past two weeks of my life has been spent traveling.

Jared & I went to St. Louis to spend Christmas with my family.  Love them!

Regrettably, I forgot my camera so no pictures were taken.  Sad.

I spent 100 percent of my time with my family.  I went completely a-wall with the internet.  No facebook.  No blog.  No bill stuff.  It was actually pretty great.  {Although I'm sad that I missed getting together with a couple of old friends.}

Christmas was great.  We did all of our Christmas Eve traditions that we normally do {fancy dinner by mom, nativity scene, Christmas Eve gifting, mom read The Polar Express and dad read Jimmy Scarecrow} and my mom decided to add a new tradition because apparently we don't have enough.

This year we had a Christmas concert where everyone shared a talent.

I chose the order we had to perform in by doing eenie meenie miney moe.  It's legit.  Jason, Alyssa and I each played a song on the piano, Brandon showed off an art piece he made out of clay, Rachael played a song on her violin, Kristin and Bealer read a poem that they wrote "Twas the night before Christmas and at the Pope house..."  It was dang cute and I need to get a copy of it. :)  And Jared, being Jared, told a joke.  This is the joke he told...

A nursery school teacher says to her class, "Who can use the word 'definitely' in a sentence?"

First a little girl says, "The sky is definitely blue."

The teacher says, "Sorry, Amy, but the sky can sometimes be gray, or black."

A second little boy says,"Trees are definitely green."

"Sorry, but in the autumn, the trees are brown."

Then little Johnny from the back of the class stands up and asks,

"Does a fart have lumps?"

The teacher looks horrified and says, "Johnny! Of course not!!!"

"OK...then I DEFINITELY just pooped my pants!"

Yep.  That's the joke MY husband told at the Christmas concert, haha.  Everyone laughed.

Christmas day was equally fun with opening presents and traditions.

We had our donuts and egg nog or chocolate milk for breakfast like we do every year and then we all went upstairs to see what Santa brought.

Jared and I decided to have a small Christmas this year because we have a lot of other things we need to use our money for {baby}.

I bought him all the Star Wars movies on blue ray and a GoPro Video Camera for his 4 wheeler and he is in love.  He says I did good. :)

Jared bought me a Mandolin from William Sonoma

Not gonna lie... I'm pretty excited to give this sucker a try (:

He also got me my first mom gift!  He bought a heart necklace from Tiffany's and had it engraved with 'Mom'

I asked if I should wait to wear it until the babies came, but he wants me to wear it now, lol.  Do you think maybe he's excited to be a dad or something?

Out of the entire trip though, I think Jared's favorite part was setting up a new TV for my parents.  I had told my dad back in July that if he bought a new TV when we came out, that Jared would set everything up for him.  So a couple days after Christmas they all went out and bought a 60" Samsung LEDTV Smart TV with 3D.  Jared had the entertainment center assembled, the center speaker and subwoofer added and the TV installed and ready to use in about 3 hours.  He's awesome.  And that TV is freaking awesome.  One day we will have a TV like that :)

We flew back home on the 28th and it definitely felt too soon.  We had a ton of fun with my family and miss them already!

The day we left Jared's brother convinced him to go to Utah for New Years.  So at 5'o'clock, the day after we got home, we backed out of our driveway and drove to Utah.  We got in about 4 am.  Yuck.

Jared spent the day 4 wheeling with his brothers and I drove up to Ogden to see my bestie <3  I miss that girl tons!  It was great spending the afternoon with her and it was fun to meet her new little baby.  My friend is one cute mom I tell ya.

That night I got to meet my BIL's new fiance Kristy and her 4 children.  I love them already.  Frankie and Kristy are just like two teenagers, soooo in love and I love seeing how happy he is.  He definitely deserves it!  They'll get married in March and I can't wait.

We spent New Years eve hanging out at Ben's house and playing the ice game {best game ever}, although I had to go in TWICE.  In a row.  And I was the first one in.  Lame. haha  We left the next night to beat vegas traffic and got home about 2 am.

We did nothing on New Years day.

It was glorious.

in 4 days

In 4 days I will be in Florida!!!  With my family!  Minus Jared and Kristin, plus Grandma Pope.  I'm bummed that Jared can't go (he has too much work) but also excited that he can't go because I haven't been on a vacation with just my family in like, 6 or 7 years.  

It'll be like I'm a kid again. :)

We are going to Navarre Beach.

There it is!  A little island in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola.  My family stayed here once before and it was sooooooooo nice!  Since it's an island, there aren't a gagillion people all over the beach.  One of the nights that we were there it stormed and the next morning I went out and there were beautiful sea shells and sand dollars all over the place.  It was almost unreal.  I'm so excited to be going back here and especially excited to be spending time with my family!

favorites from the 4th

family time in utah

all last week jared and i were in utah with all of his brothers and sisters.  

all of them.  

all 8.  

5 sisters and 3 brothers.  

plus all the nieces and nephews.

monday and friday we went to the sand dunes.
monday was just adults.  friday was everyone.
tuesday we all just hung out.
wednesday we went to the orem pool.
then we attempted a bbq - but it was pouring rain...
so we went to in-n-out.
thursday we hiked the 'y' & had our bbq
saturday my sister & her husband came down.
we went to lunch & saw transformers in 3d.
saturday night we went to stadium of fire.
david archuleta is overrated.
brad paisley is sexy.
the fireworks were cool.
sunday we had a family day
shot off a ton of fireworks.
on the 4th we saw my grandma
i met my 44th cousin, annie, named after grandma
we shot off hundreds of fireworks at bens house
i drank red bull
tuesday we came home.
the only bad thing that happened?
jared's ipod was stolen out of his truck.
i think we're officially out of our bad luck street.
fingers crossed...

Sushi, Disneyland and the Beach

So my parents and youngest sister Alyssa just came out to Cali this past week. :)  It's my brothers and sisters spring break and Rachael went to Italy and Brandon went to Florida, so Alyssa got treated to ME.  They came in super duper late on Friday night and what's the first thing we did?  We hit up In N Out.

Saturday we mostly relaxed and hung out and then my parents took us out for sushi.  Mmmmmmmmmmm.  It's been too long since I had sushi.  I wish Jared liked it! 

So THEN my dad bought me some new fishies for my fish tank.  We have a 75 gallon fish tank that has been sitting empty for like 2 months.  Jared wanted to get rid of it, but it still has water in it so too bad for him!  We got a blue fish and named him Nicodemus, an Orange fish that we named Orange Fish, and orange fish that we named Nemo, a tiny little fish we named Buddy, and a white fish that has a black spot that we named Spot.  Nicodemus and Buddy died within a few days so we got another blue one and named him Sparticus and a black fish that we named Toothless.  We also bought 4 ghost shrimp, they are freaking awesome because they are transparent so you can see all the food they eat. :)  I love our new fish and even Jared likes them.

On Sunday and Monday we went to DISNEYLAND!!!  It rained all day on Sunday, but we had ponchos so it was still super fun.  Monday it rained a tiny bit in the morning and then cleared up for the rest of the day.  It was so much fun to hang out with my 13 year old sister at the happiest place in the world.  Everybody was tired around 9:00 so they all went back to the hotel and Alyssa and I stayed until the park closed. 

Tuesday we went to Huntington Beach and had lunch at Ruby's at the end of the pier.

My sister is so dang cute!  It was so much fun having my parents and her here.  They left on Wednesday and I was sad to see them go... but I get to see them again in just a few days for Kristin's wedding! :)

Oh yeah, I got my dad and Alyssa hooked to Jalapeno cheetos while they were here, haha YUM!!!

And Alyssa may as well have had an IV pumping red bull in her she drank so much.

Day 21: Something that makes me happy

Riding sea doos in Lake Powell while staying on a houseboat.  This is definately something that makes me happy. :)

 

This was probably one of the most fun trips Jared and I have been on.  Hopefully we'll get to do it again!

Weekend Getaway

Last weekend Jared and I really needed to get away from it all.  So we did.  We left Thursday night and headed off to Glamis for a blissful weekend of riding four-wheelers.  As we got farther and farther from home we could feel ourselves letting go of all the stress we had been carrying around with us for weeks.  That night we slept on an air mattress in the bed of his truck and it was the best nights sleep I've had in two weeks.  I think that's saying something.  Friday was a perfect day for riding and it was so much fun just being with each other.  Just the two of us in a big desert.  Well... there were other people of course but Glamis is so big that you don't really run into other people that much.

Day 5: A picture of somewhere you've been

There's this place in the middle of nowhere called Glamis.

It's all about camping and 4 wheeling.

 Food tastes better here.

And there are some of the most beautiful sand dunes you will ever see.

We love it here.

You should go sometime.

The duck mission

While I was in STL a couple of weeks ago I went to the grocery store with my mom and Alyssa.  So you know how at the entrance of grocery stores they have those 25-50 cent machines that you can get candy or toys from?  Well... we saw one that dispensed little rubber ducks.  We decided to get one and when we pulled out the little plastic bubble there were duck STICKERS inside!!  We didn't even realize that there were stupid stickers in the machine.  So now we were on a mission.  We were going to get a duck. 

...

2 dollars later we got recycle duck.

He is feeling very accepted in his new duck family



And he can't wait to see Alyssa when she visits next month.

Trip to the Lou

Last week I got to take a 'business trip' back to STL to work with my padres for a few days.  (I've started working p.t. for my dad's business to help with the financials.)  I left bright and early on Wednesday morning and got there around 2 in the afternoon.  Wed. Thurs. and Fri. I mostly worked.  However, on Friday, I went and got my hair did.  And I super love how it looks :)

On Saturday my whole family and I went out and played.  We went to Old St. Charles where they were having an ice carving competition and we got to watch some blocks of ice take on some amazing shapes.  Here are a few of the ones we saw.

There are some super cute shops down there and we went into a few of them and found some really great deals on some cute things.  Overall it was a very productive and fun trip back home.  I love my family and I miss them already!  They need to move closer to me so I can see them more often! (fingers crossed)