Christmas Time

This is going to be a long post, so beware! I really should do this more often so i don’t have to spend so much time blogging about so much stuff. Oh well!  

On the Thursday before we left for Colorado, our power went out, random. We waited for about 45 minutes and then it went back on. I checked my phone and I saw that one of our friends asked if we wanted to go to the cheap theater with them at 9, so I looked at the clock and it was 9:04. We decided to go anyway (the previews are always 20 Minutes long anyways, right?). So we started driving and then we noticed that it was really dark outside. It turns out that all of Rexburg all the way to Idaho Falls was out of power. The power had actually come back on for about 5 minutes and then went back out. We didn’t get to go to the movies and we thought that our power would be out once we got back home, but it wasn’t. our apartment was a beacon of light, the only place that had power anywhere, how lucky :)

So on Friday morning we were off to Colorado! It was a very long day. I absolutely hate driving long distances. I get very carsick and antsy, Hans usually drives most of the way. I only drove about 3 hours of the trip and he drove the rest. I have my own supply of Dramamine, and we both like it when I take it so I can sleep most of the way :) We got there at about 8:30 pm, and then we went to Cameron’s basketball game.

Saturday was the start of the traditions. We had our tradition of going to see Santa at the mall, AKA stand in line for hours so we can get our annual picture with Santa haha. Always, after that we go out to dinner at an unknown place. The kids try to guess where we are going, in the car before we get there. We guessed it! right be fore we got there….. it was The White Fence Farm, they serve a famous chicken dinner. (pictures are coming soon!) We had a little time in between the mall and dinner because they didn’t open until 4 so we went shopping and then we went to see President Todd’s childhood house (their family came with us to dinner)

It was the craziest thing! President Todd’s childhood neighbor, still lived there and we went to go see him. He is a crazy scientist, who has the dirtiest house, never been married, and he is a genius.

This is the inside of his house, piles of stuff (about as tall as me) stacked all over the house, with a little pathway to walk around.

This is him (the guy with the beard :)

This is his telescope in the back yard.

On Sunday we went to church and relaxed at home. We played some board games and then we did Ornaments! Another tradition my family has is that all the kids get a new ornament every year, having to do with something big that happened to them that year. So every year we get to hang up all of our ornaments and my parents talk about why we were given the ornaments each year. So Hans had the privilege of listening to my parents tell lots of stories about my younger years, which he thoroughly enjoyed :)

Sunday night was not enjoyable for me :( I got the stomach flu, I won’t go into detail, but I’ll just say that it was not pleasant. I haven’t recovered fully since then and I have lost too much weight, I’m hoping that thing will get better soon :(

On Tuesday for yet another family tradition we went to a movie. We went to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs at the dollar theater. We had to do all of our Christmas shopping for the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Wednesday night we went over to the Todd’s house to play games and watch movies. Sadly, i had to leave early because I felt really sick (really lame, something is wrong with me).

here are some random pictures throughout those few days:

This is Krista (she fell asleep when she was reading a book)

This is a dog that was sticking it’s nose through the fence and barking at us while we were cleaning the snow off the car.

I just have to say that I’m so glad that Hans and I both agree on the fact that we don’t like pets. We both think that dogs are smelly and gross. I have to apologize first to those who love animals in case they get offended, so I’m sorry! I just think that animals are so gross!  Dogs especially (because most often they are the pets). They have stinky breath, they bark for no reason, and they shed their fur all over the place (some not as much as others I know). We might have a fish at some point, and I like little turtles, but I’ll have to think about that because you still have to clean their tanks and the fish food smells bad.

I’m sorry to my children in advance, if they want a dog or a cat or something, because mom will not be getting them any! Even if they say they will take care of them, feed them, and clean up after them. Sorry! everyone knows that mom is the one that ends up doing that anyways.

Alright, moving on from my rant…..

I realized that a lot of my family hasn’t seen my wedding band since I got it, so I took a picture.

For Christmas Eve we always did a progressive dinner with our family in Washington. When we got to Colorado we have always tried to continue that tradition with the family friends we have here. We did it with the Bulloughs and the Todds.

The Bulloughs did appetizers and they were the Shepherds

We did salad at our house and we were the Angel, Hans talked a little about Angels.

 

We did the main dinner at the Todd’s house, they were the Wisemen, and we also played the white elephant game there :)

My mom won a hat, looks nice huh?

Also, when we were at the Todds, a family from our ward came to do Christmas Tree inspection, it was so funny! They rated the tree based on Christmas Spirit and such, and they even came with costumes. They came in, did their business, and left! It must be one of their family traditions :)

  

After the festivities we went home and opened our Christmas Eve present, a tradition. New pajamas!

 

Everyone in our new pajamas!

After a toast, and reading Twas the Night Before Christmas, We set out our stockings for Santa to bring our surprises :) Hans was quite surprised and pleased to see how big our stockings are! In fact, Cameron had a lot of fun trying them out :)

We also did the nativity scene (also a tradition) The weird face is because I hit my knee haha.

We went to bed and I got sick again (hence the bowl in some of the pictures)

Christmas morning!

Dad got mom a robe, and mom got dad a suit :)

Krista made me a Bracelet and earrings.

I got him Popular Science and Astronomy Magazines :)

So this is a really long post, and I have more fun pictures on my camera, but I left the charger back in Rexburg so I can’t upload them! I’ll put them on later when we get back to our apartment :)

So I Have a Story…

Something happened a few weeks ago that I was thinking about this morning, and I decided to write about it.

After our ward Christmas party we got a ride home from our friends Sarah and Jaren (since we still didn’t have a car). They asked if we needed a ride to the store because they needed to go anyways. Hans had a lot of homework so he said no, but I needed to get flashcards for one of my finals the next week, so I went with them. Funny enough, Hans ended up playing ping pong with Luke while I was gone anyways.. so much for homework :)

Anyways, so when we got to the store, I went off with Sarah and Jaren went to go look for something. Hans had asked me to look for a Harry Potter movie, so we went over to the movie section.

We saw She’s the Man and we started talking about how we liked it. She said that she had seen it on clean flix, I had seen it not edited, so we were talking about what we thought it had taken out. I told her that we had a clear play, and we started talking about movies and how they are getting bad.

Well…. there was a slightly older couple ( Probably 40-50 years old… so not really old) next to us that were eavesdropping on our conversation. Well the guy started talking really loudly about some movie he had gotten from clean flix that he watched and he had seen it unedited also. He started talking about how dumb stuff had been taken out of it. He said they had taken out a word (a body part) and he thought it was so ridiculous that something so dumb had been taken out. He said “What kind of society are we in even as LDS people that it not ok to say (that word)”.

Well, Sarah and I were so surprised and annoyed and mad that we left and she just looked at him and laughed as we walked away. It made us so mad and we started talking about how we would love to be in a society where those kinds of things were inappropriate to say. I realize some may not think that same way, so you don’t have to read this if you don’t want!

Something like this really makes me think. I can’t believe that movies and music are getting so bad. It is so hard for me because some movies are really good, except for a few parts, and they aren’t really needed! I always hope when I go to the movies that the movie will all be good, but usually that isn’t the case.

Now, I love movies and T.V. watching them is one of my favorite things to do, I’m always on the hunt for a good movie or show. So I’m very glad that Hans and I made the decision to buy a Clear Play a while back, and it is amazing!

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, I think it is a good investment! It’s just a DVD player that lets you take out whatever you want and if you want least medium or most filtering on each thing. Things like nudity, violence, profanity, and even mushiness! It’s about 50 dollars and when you buy it it comes with all the filters for movies up until now. Then you can get filters for new movies by paying I think about 5 dollars a month (I’m not sure about the exact price).

Also, for anyone who hasn’t heard of Hulu.com I love that too! You can watch any show anytime with almost no commercials, and you can skip what you want too!

Some of my favorite T.V. shows are:

House! (probably because most of the time I can understand what they are talking about, because I have been learning so much medical stuff!) I watch it on Hulu usually.

Im all about the old shows, like Fresh Prince of Bel Air

Full house

Sabrina

The Cosby Show

I also like Reba

And I love shows on TLC! Here are a few:

Say yes to the dress! Love it!

What Not to Wear

I also like 18 Kids and counting and all of the baby shows!

A movie I just saw recently with some friends was Confessions of a Shopaholic! Girls, if you haven’t seen it you should!It is PG and it is such a good movie… I’m definitely going to buy it :)

Well, sorry for my rant! I’m working on my Christmas post but it is taking forever, it’ll be done soon, for those of you who want to read it :)

It’s the end of the semester!

So we are very excited for Christmas and to be finally done with our classes! I know it’s final time and i should be very concerned about my tests, but I’m way too lazy and I’m trying to actually care, sadly… it’s not working.

They say, when it rains, it pours. I think that is true for us. We cannot for the life of anything, figure out what is wrong with our car. The battery keeps dying and it is completely dead, and cannot be charged by anything. We have gotten a new battery, bought a battery charger, and tried to jump it, but nothing works. So we took it in to get looked at and they say that nothing is wrong with it. That is a lie!! For a while we could just jump it, but it kept dying, and now it can’t even be jumped. So we have had friends look at it , but now we are taking it to some guy that supposedly is very good, so we are crossing our fingers and hoping it will work. If not, we might trade our car in and get another one.

Other than the car problem, our ceiling is still leaking (they haven’t fixed it yet), and we found the other day that our bookshelf is broken because the guy stepped on it while getting into the attic to fix the leak, hmm.

BUT, the funniest story of all is about our carpet. Hans got a 50 pound bag of potatoes from his work, and he put them in our trunk. Because Rexburg is so cold, after being in there for 3 days, they completely froze. So Hans brought them in one night (after trying to jump the car) and he set them on our carpet (I’m sure you can see where this is going… ha). I thought that they might melt onto the floor but he said it would be fine. So the next day I came home from class, while Hans was at work, and I smelled something really gross. I looked around the entire Apartment  and I couldn’t find anything … until I walked over to the potatoes…. dun dun DUN! They were all mushy and gross. So I picked them up (SO heavy!) and I put them outside, at the same time dribbling rotten potato juice across the carpet and all down my pants :( Later that night Hans scrubbed it with some water and we left it. BAD IDEA!

It started smelling so bad the next day, so when I came home I scrubbed it with soap and water and I almost threw up right there it smelled so bad. Then I got a bunch of towels and i threw boiling water on the carpet with soap and I tried to soak it up. I repeated this process a bunch of times until almost all of our towels had rotten soaked water on them. Later that night we decided that we needed to get some carpet cleaner or a get a vacuum that would shampoo our carpet. The sad thing was…. we didn’t have a car (and currently we still don’t ). All I can say is that I’m grateful we have friends. We called Sarah and Jaren who are from Rexburg and asked them for a ride to the store, but luckily Jaren’s family had a Carpet shampooing vacuum and they let us borrow it! Currently, our apartment still smells a little, and for some reason even though the carpet is finally dry, there is a huge dark spot on it… I don’t know what we are going to do about that…. my mom said, “well, you live and you learn!” and i told her “ yeah, but i’d rather learn from other people’s mistakes.”

So moral of the story, learn from our mistakes, and don’t put frozen potatoes on your carpet! :)

We got a Christmas tree! very exciting, it is small, but cute.

I put pine cones around the bottom

I thought this was a cool picture, I don’t think Hans thought so though….

We have been on the ward bowling team this semester, and it just ended this week so we took a group picture. It was fun to be able to do that with our friends.

I am pretty bad at bowling, my high score is about 60. Hans is good, but they take the top 2 boy scores and the top 2 girls scores. Most of the time, Sarah and I were the only girls there, so even though I was bad, I still got a top score. haha!

Our friends Scott and Leann got us a Christmas present, it was a mat for our door. They got us a heavy one that wouldn’t blow away, because the one we had before was from the dollar store and we had to put rocks on it so it wouldn’t.

our old mat (with rocks) :

Our new mat from Scott and Leann! :

I made a Christmas wreath:

After i made my wreath, i got together with Leann and Sarah to make some wreath’s with them. We like to get together and have girl time, while our husbands go and play video games together :)

We had a ward Christmas party, and someone special surprised us :)

In a ward where there are only 3 children, 2 of which are babies, this was a pleasant surprise :)

Well that’s all I have for now!  Merry Christmas! Hopefully I’ll write again before Christmas.