We Planted a Tree?

So, I asked Ben to take down our tree a few weeks ago and about 5 minutes later I could hear him laughing. No one else was with him, so I went to the entry to find out what was so funny... I looked out our front door and this is what I saw! He litterally planted our Christmas tree in the snow on our yard! WHAT? So, the next day we went to chruch and we probably had 4 different families ask us when we got a tree... or how they had been tempted to decorate the tree in our yard... or just tapped us on the shoulder and BURST out laughing!
O Ben... What a character! I suppose it will remain there until the snow melts because even now, 2 weeks later, it's still there! HA!!!

Cabin January 2010

So, last year Ben put together a weekend with some family and friends to spend some time at a cabin in Timber Lakes. We had a BLAST!! So this year Ben decided to do it again. We rented a cabin over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend... so from Friday night to Monday afternoon 15 of us enjoyed a relaxing, exciting, FUN weekend with always something to do! (Ben, me, Brandon, Shelissa, Brad, Bryan, Nate, Kristen, Kim, Jason, Berkeley, Jocey, Dave, Caitlyn, Jordan). It was a BLAST! We played card games, fuz-ball, rockband, watched movies ate junk food all day and super DELICIOUS food for dinner (Thanks to Kim and Jason), went snowmobiling in 2 shifts each day... all day and then came home to a relaxing hot tub! Best of all, this cabin was MASSIVE! There were beds enough for everyone, with room to spare.

Ben, thank you for putting together such an AMAZING weekend for all of us! I have heard only how wonderful a time everyone had there! And if all goes well, maybe again next year?? :)

I LOVE YOU!!!

So, Jordan also brought his HIGH-TECH camera and took TUNS of awesome pictures of us snowmobiling and playing in the cabin... I'll get those posted ASAP! :)

IT WAS NOT FUNNY!

This is... NOW... a funny story. The day after Christmas, Ben and I were looking for our camera to take it to a family gathering... Could NOT find it ANYWHERE! Didn't think much of it. When we got home later that night, we really gave a great effort in looking for it. NOPE. We went throught boxes and bins that I don't think we have touched since we moved in. NOPE. So I called my mom and asked her to check her home... it HAD to be there. NOPE. I went over and tore through her home MYSELF. NOPE. Took another 2 weeks of looking twice at everything I looked at... under the tree, behind furniture, in our Christmas stockings, for heavens' sake! NOPE. Jocey litterally raked through the snow on my parent's driveway to make sure I hadn't dropped it. NOPE. I am not kidding, this thing drove me in sain for about 3 weeks! THEN... Ben calls me at work and said he had a guy he had done some work for... he owed him... did we want the new model of the camera we once had? YES! The same battery, same memory card, same charger... we bring it home... where is the battery? The search again begins. Ben checks on top of the entertainment center... too tall for me to see on top of... CAMERA!!! THERE IT IS!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!??!! I now have this new black camera... new model of the blue camera I got for my birthday only 1 1/2 years earlier... that I LOVE, bytheway... and now I have to figure out what to do with my 5 minute old camera.
I'm not kidding... this about drove me crazy and then to find my old camera right after getting a replacement... KILLER!!! So, 2 cameras. I guess it's good to have a back-up. Maybe Bryan will want it for his mission or something... Hmmm....
I'm telling you... IT WAS NOT FUNNY!

More to come...

So there will be more info coming, but I don't have the time to update everything today... There is still SO MUCH (it seems)... probably not that much though... just takes FOREVER to update... and wait for pictures to upload... woa!
Anyway... it's coming, so please be patient!

Thanks!

What a GREAT Christmas!!

So, I realize that these posts are long overdue, but it's better late than never, right? Anyway, Ben and I did get a few gifts that we are really excited about! First of all, Spence and Amber keep putting pictures of all the AWESOME Disney puzzles that they've been putting together... They are all SO DANG RAD!! For Christmas this year they got one for me and Ben! I was so excited about it that as soon as I could I put my kitchen back together and sat down to put it together! Kristen, Jocey and Berkeley came over to help me get my start, and we got about 1/3 of it put together. By the of the 3rd day I'd been working on it, it was complete! I couldn't commemorate though, unfortunately, because I "thought" I lost my camera... I'll get to that story later... Ben put it back in it's box very carefully so I could take a picture of it when or if I ever did find the camera... Haven't had the time to do it a 2nd time yet, but I did for sure want to yell out a BIG FAT THANK YOU!!! to Spence and Am. This was way above! I love the puzzle and want you both to know how much it means to us that you would do something so great for us! We sure miss and love you guys!!! :)

Next, is a puzzle from my parents... another Mickey puzzle. I know what you all SHOULD be thinking... Man, this girl is nuts about her Disney puzzles... I will be the first to say, you are absolutely RIGHT!! :) Thanks for knowing me so well. :) Anyway, I haven't had as much time to put this one together, so yes, as of today, it is still in the works on my kitchen table, however, in my defense, this is one of the hardest puzzles, becuase it's made out of thousands of small Disney frames from different movies... The black, especially, is HARD! But don't you worry, I'll get it!

Last, but absolutely not least! is this fabulous TV, which will one day be hung on the wall above where it now stands and will eventually be covered with a double sided mirror. This will make it look like a mirror when the TV is off, but will allow the picture to show through when it is turned on. We are SO excited about it!!! Ok, let's be honest, I'm the one usually in the kitchen for long periods of time... I LOVE IT THE MOST!!!! HAHAHAHA!!!!! :) Really though, this has been such a great Christmas! We were able to spend so much time together and with our wonderful families! Ben, thanks for making it such a memorable Christmas!!! I LOVE YOU!

Christmas Eve

Also every year, my dad's side of the family gets together and my Grandma treats everyone who can make it to dinner at the Olive Garden. Afterwards, we return to her home and open gifts that she bought us. This is a picture of everyone who was able to make it this year.

Christmas Eve Eve

In my family, we have a tradition to have a Christmas party 2 days before Christmas... Ben and I haven't been to that party since we got married so this year we made sure that we were there. It was a lot of fun seeing all of my cousins that I rarely see (Melissa lives in Arizona and Cami and Jason live in Idaho). It was really great to see you!!! :)

Anyway, my dad always takes a big family photo. It's fun to see how large our family really has gotten over the years! (And this isn't even everyone... Missing Spence, Am, Logan, Addy, Uncle Karl and Aunt Vicki, and Hayley and Nate. WOW, what a group!)

Christmas Party with the Duffin's

We, of course, also had a party with the Duffin's! Ate some yummy food, decorated some yummy cookies, and of course opened some great gifts! We each got a funny T-shirt or hoodie from Kathy (I believe Bryan helped pick some of them out)... they were all dang funny!

THANKS AGAIN KATHY!!! (We all knew that Brad was the favorite at this party!)

Christmas Party with the Cottrell's

We decided this year that since eveyone always has so many Christmas parties... we should join in! Since we have such a beautiful home to share with everyone... especially when it's all decorated for the season! We couldn't resist throwing a few parties of our own.

So here we are with my family. We ate yummy soups for dinner, then we decorated cookies and then we opened family gifts by the fireplace... it was PERFECT!! I hope that everyone had as great of a time as Ben and I did!

We plan to make this an annual tradition going forward! Thanks again for coming! :)

Temple Square

Porter, Kate, Ben and me went to Temple Square to look at the lights a few weeks ago. It was really beautiful! Not as many lights as I remember seeing as a kid, but still had a few of the big trees covered with orange and red lights!
We walked around for maybe an hour until our butts felt like they were gonna drop off from being so dang cold! Afterwords we went to Crown Burger for dinner... YUM!!
Anyway, it was a really good time and nice to see the lights again. It's been 5 or more years since I've been.
Thanks Porter and Kate for being such great friends and for spending so much time with us! We really do love you guys!! :)

The Santa Hat

I don't have much to post, but that this is the greatest Santa Hat I've ever seen! I love especially watching Grandpa bound to the tunes!! Thanks for the laugh Grandpa!!

Christmas Morning

This year was a little different than in the past. Usually we wake up and rush over to someone else's home to open gifts, but this year we were able to spend Christmas morning at our own home! It was very nice!!

Ben's parents also did things a bit different. They gave us our gifts to open at our own home, so coupled together, this is what we started out with.

Kathy and Carolyn took me shopping with them a few weeks ago to find something that would help finish off the beautiful room they painted. We were in great need of a nice big lamp that would fit our room, and after a few hours of searching through several great books, we found the PERFECT lamp! Merry Christmas to Ben and me! :) So this is a close up and a put together view of the lamp! Thank you again for the lamp! We love it!!

OUR TREE!!!

I'm sorry Amber, this is the only picture I took of our tree! But I just talked to my dad and he's going to burn some for me... as soon as I get them I'll update this post! But just to give you an idea, we got a tree that was SUPER tall this year! If you stand at the top of our stairs the top is about eye level! Probably 17 feet tall!!! AND it's BEAUTIFUL!

Of course this was not our first choice tree... we had a mishap when getting our tree... funny story.... We snowmobile every year to chop down our tree as you know... well this year we got a tree picked out and loaded up... we pulled into our driveway about 2 hours later to unload it... O yeah! It was totally missing! So we went back up the mountain the following day and found an even prettier tree than the previous one!! It's tall, it's full, it's PERFECT!

Special thanks to Ben's parents for staying up so late with Ben and me to help decorate it! I found that a big beautiful tree makes all kinds of more work!! So the help was very much appreciated! It only took the 4 of us... 3 to 4 hours to decorate!! :) THANKS AGAIN!

New Book Shelves

This past summer, Ben went to Idaho to build some simple book shelves with his Grandpa Zollinger... 4 trips and 6 months later, this is what he returned with! They are MAGNIFICENT! And match our other Oak furniture PERFECTLY! Thank you so much Ben and Grandpa for building these beautiful shelves for our home! :) I love you both!!!