Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!

We hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas full of family, fun and food! We sure did! We wanted to share what we have been up to this December.....

Lights at Temple Square are always a must in December! They were beautiful!

Just another shot of some lights and scenery

Another pretty shot....

I thought this would be a cool shot but I could not hold the camera still so it is a little blurry but I thought it was cool

Such a beautiful place!

Ahhhhhh, how cute....

This is at Ryan's family Christmas party. It was so much fun and so many people showed up. This pictures is the boys trying to have some musical talent. They were hitting those chimes to the song Jingle Bells I think it was. Let's just say, we girls were laughing really hard watching these great guys attempt this.

Ryan is really focussed and didn't want to mess up. He did great!

Here is Grandma G and Zander. He just got his present from Great Grandpa Waite. Five dollars in coins. He was really excited. In fact, so excited that he started eating the bag they were in.

Here is our pretty Christmas tree we had this year. We were really excited for our new ornaments that we bought last year. It turned out really pretty.

Our table centerpiece for our coffee table.

Our fun stocking! And some other Christmas decorations. These Christmas decoration shots are for Melissa who stated she liked to see pictures of decorations.

This was in our windowsill. I thought it turned out really cute.

Here is my Christmas village that I have started collecting. Every year Ryan buys me one more to add to my collection as a tradition. It is getting big!

Ryan opening his stocking Christmas morning. He got some cologne in there. He ended up getting three different types of cologne. He should be smelling good for a while.

Here is a classic face of Ryan's. Isn't he cute?

Dave and Ashely got him an X-Box game. It is Cabella's Big Game Hunter. I will not watch him play it. Thanks Dave and Ash, I appreciate you buying him a game where he enjoys shooting animals! How will I ever repay you.......

Here is my gift from Dave and Ash. It was very special. It is a Willowtree figurine titled "Hero". It is a story that might take a bit, but just know that it was very special to me. Thanks guys! Ok, do you see the step stool in the background? This is an inside joke! To make a long story short, my dad noticed when he was here that I am very short and a lot of my bowls to cook are in a tall cupboard and I kept having to get my stools and climb on them all the time. So he called me up last week and said my gift was waiting at Home Depot. What could it possibly be I asked myself? Well, when I got there it was a stepstool. What a thoughtful gift! Ryan and I laughed really hard. Thanks dad, I love it and I have used it a lot already!

Ryan go this shirt from me. I really like it.

Here is another X-Box game from me.

I got some clothes from Ryan

I am finally talking Ryan into wearing those good looking sweater vests to church so I got him one. He will look great in it! If only he liked the tie I picked out with it, oh well, he liked the vest so that was good. We went and exchanged the tie for one he liked so we all won in the end.

Here is cute Tikku! We are babysitting her for Nekku who is in Finland. Tikku had fun helping me open presents.

Ryan got me some attachments to my Kitchen Aide. They are awesome! Making Sour Cream Potatoes takes half as long now! I love this gift!

This is what happens when you always shop together for Christmas presents. No Surprises!!!!

This is one of my favorite presents I got from Ryan. Some UGG Boots. Don't worry though, we definitely had gift certificates from my work to help buy these!

This is our gift from Santa this year! Ryan couldn't wait to put it all together. It is pretty cool.

This was Ryan's favorite gift. A watch. Surprise Surprise huh? This thing is huge!

Ryan and me on Christmas day before going to dinner with my family. Do you see how he is trying inconspicuously to show off his watch? What a dork!

And of course, our traditional matching sweats we get every year! Ryan is sure a trooper to do this but I think he liked them this year. He has worn them a lot! I thought I did good. Next year is his turn, what will it be?????

Well, we sure had a wonderful Christmas this year. We had dinner at my Aunt Alison's house which was great! It was fun to be with family and laugh a lot! Then one of the best parts of the day was talking to our missionary Jason! It was great. We talked to him for like two and a half hours! He sounds great and says he is doing awesome and is loving it out there. We ate lots of food and treats and just hung out all day! We hope your day was magical as ours was! We love you all and wish you a Happy New Year!

Giving Thanks for family and miracles...

Hey All! We hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving and we wanted to share with you a little of what we were up to during the holidays...

Our Thanksgiving miracle was that my dad came and visited us! My brother and I were so elated to have him and be with him during the holidays. Thanks so much dad for coming out! It was great to see you and we are glad that you were able to meet Ash and Ryan. We loved having you and hope you come out again soon!

Here is a picture of my brother, dad and me. Don't you think my brother and dad are twins? I am not kidding you. They act, talk and think exactly the same. Like father like son I guess. Now it finally makes sense where Dave comes from. This will be Dave in thirty years.....

We were able to celebrate Dave's 27th birthday with all our close family and friends. It was great to have them all over. (Even though we had to cram into my little apartment, it was still a blast!) That is our cute nephew Ty next to Dave just waiting to have that cake and ice cream

Here are some of the guests to Dave's birthday party.

Some more of our guests.

Here is Zander and me after eating Thanksgiving food. It was delicious! Thanks Mama G for the awesomeness of it all. Zander loves Aunt Meg!

This is me and Ty, Zander and Oaks sitting watching Elf. As you can see, Ty and Zander were much more interested in the movie than getting their picture taken....

Oaks smiling big for the camera. I have the cutest niece ever!

Ty, Oaks and I just chillin. If you are wondering, Ryan is the one taking all of the pictures. He never actually got in any of them.

We were very lucky to spend our Thanskgiving dinner at the Alumni House this year. We had such a big family eating together, we needed space. It was beautifully decorated for Christmas and was the perfect place for Thanksgiving. We were able to project movies and play video games. It was a blast!

Well, again we hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was definitely one for the memory book! Thanksgiving miracles happen! Never stop believing!

My AMAZING domestic ability.......

Ok, so here is a picture of my very first real domestic project! I pieced together all my old Aggie shirts and made a quilt out of them. This was a very long process and took a lot of patience but I finally finished it (with the help of Alisha and Mama G!, thanks guys, couldn't have done it without you). This quilt is HUGE! I just love it. It is not perfect but it is a quilt that I made. I hope you all like it too! Sorry it is turned, I couldn't get it to turn to download it but you still see how cute it is.....Enjoy!

Happy Halloween

Well, I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Late Halloween! I don't have really any pictures from our festivities. I was Tonks from Harry Potter. It was pretty fun. Anywho, I hope you all had a great, safe one and got lots of candy!

Family Vacation!!!!

All right, so as some of you know we took a little family vacation this past weekend. We pondered our options and thought New York would be fun, I have always wanted to see a Broadway Musical in New York, then Ryan was like Florida would be warm and the beach would be nice, I simply agreed. Then the Carribbean came into the picture. We could go on a cruise around and see many, many sights. But in the end, we decided we would make our journey 8 hours Northeast of here. That's right everyone, we went to visit Ten Sleep, Wyoming, population 308. Now there are many reasons why we chose this destination, but the main reason was, well, let's be honest. We could never afford those other destinations and we wanted to visit my brother and Ashley to see where their new home is and see their surroundings. So here are some pictures from our trip. The drive was not bad at all. I was dreading it but it actually went by pretty quickly driving there and back. We had a lot of fun seeing Dave and Ashley and their new home and meeting Dave's co-workers. It is definitely a memory we will keep with us forever! Please enjoy the pictures.....

We went to a Cafe called The Crazy Woman Cafe. Dave has been wanting to take me there because of the sandwich pictured above. He gave me no option, I had to order this sandwich and I was not one to argue. We all know I love spaghetti! That's right, this is a spaghetti sandwich. It was delicious! Now, it was way to messy to pick up like a sandwich so I had to use my silverware but it was fun to eat something different.

This is Ryan's giant burger he had at the Cafe. He said it was really good.

This is Dave and Ashely's new home. It is really cute. Very spacious and ver close to his work and downtown.

We celebrated Ryan's birthday up there with them. This is Ryan blowing out his candles.

Here is Dave and Ash lighting his cake. Dave was really excited because he bought the candles that don't blow out. It was like seeing a little school boy on Christmas morning :)

For an activity we carved pumpkins. It was really fun . I hadn't done that forever. Here are the pumpkins done in the dark. Kind of a creepy picture.

Here are the pumpkins in the light. Ryan's in the one on the right. He was really excited about his pumpkin throwing up.

Ryan doing work! He couldn't clean out his pumpkin guts. He said it made him sick so the wifey came to the rescue, I cleaned his pumkin out for him.

This is my pumpkin with the stars and Dave's pumpkin that says "Big Chief". My pumpkin was definitely the best. I have major pumpkin carving skills. I am thinking of doing for a profession. What do you think?

David forgot that he had to cut the hole at the top big enough so he could fit his hand in to clean out the pumpkin. So sis came to the rescue and did it for him. I think he just didn't want to touch the pumpkin guts!

This is Ryan's present from Dave and Ash. It is a cop detector. You would think we have problems driving too fast if someone is giving us a cop detector. I guess someday we will learn right?

This is the lake that Dave took us to. He wanted to go fishing. We were all excited to go on this little adventure but when we got there it was frozen over. So Ryan entertained himself by throwing these rocks on the ice and tried to break it. Oh the little things that can keep someone busy.

Dave and me at the lake. As you can tell, it was a little cold. Dave forgot about it snowing. It was pretty to see snow though.

Ry and me at the cold lake.

Ryan pondering the meaning of life. Isn't he cute?

Just another view of the pretty lake.

I will leave this picture to your imagination. You can just decide for yourselves what you think Ryan is doing......

Us at the top of the lake. This is where we went to have our picnic. It was really fun.

Another pretty picutre.

Dave trudgin through the snow to the picnic sight.

Here was a cute little old wagon that was on main street that Ryan was really excited about. We tried to get in it but it was chained off. Well, David says they don't have police in Ten Sleep so I guess we could have tried a little harder to get in.

This is their fairground/Rodeogrounds. Behind that is their Highschool football stadium. They play six man becuase they don't have enough people to play regular football.

Ryan thought he was funny throwing snow balls.

One shot of main street. That is where we drove in from.

Another shot of main street the other way. And yes, that's all she wrote. That is their town form one end to the other. You blink and you might miss it.

This is where Dave works. It is the nicest building in the town.

Here is a shot of the Crazy Woman Cafe where I got my awesome sandwich. It is one of two places to eat in town.

One of the bars on Main Street.

This is a sign telling how Ten Sleep got its name.

Ryan and me in front of Dirty Sally's. This shop was awesome. Ryan said he felt like he was back in West Virginia walking around this town. This is where I got my awesome Ten Sleep, Wyoming T-Shirt. Behind this building is a gentleman living in a trailer flying a confederate flag. Ryan flashed back to his mission. He said it was really weird.

Well I hope you all enjoyed your picture journey from out little family vacation. We had fun and hope you did too. I wonder where our next vacation will be........it remains a mystery. Stay tuned!

Homecoming Week!!!!

Well as most of you know, this past week was Homecoming for USU. It was a fun-filled week for everyone. On Friday Ryan and I went to the Homecoming Banquet at the Ballroom. Ryan was an escort for the winners for the Alumni Association so we got free dinner! It was really good. Then we went to a Young Alumn Mixer at Cafe Sabor and saw some friends. Then we went back up to USU for True Aggie Night which Ryan and his group are in charge of. It was a really fun night. Tons of people came out. And it was pretty clean this year too! We got home around one thirty in the morning and had to be back up by seven to help out with the parade. Ryan drove the Young Alumnus of the year in his cool car and I drove Matt Hillyard and Rob Hunsaker in another car. Then Ryan, Me, Alisha and Zander went and had a delicious lunch at Texas Roadhouse! Oh man, very delicious! I recommend that to anyone. Then we all went up to the football game with our friends. It was a really fun game and even more fun to see them actually play some good football. Zander got a little frightened by the big fireworks but overall, I think he had tons of fun! Here are just some pictures from our fun-filled weekend! We are just catching up on our sleep now.....

Zander had to take a little snoozer about half-way through the game. He got tired.
Isn't he adorable?

Here we are at the game waiting patiently. Again, isn't Zander adorable?

Here is a picture of the cool new helmet USU got for the players to run out of. It was pretty cool.

Another picture of the helmet...

Ryan loves to make Zander laugh. Zander was laughing up a storm. Ryan can make him laugh so easily. Zander loves his uncle.

Zander taking it all in

Again, Uncle Ryan and Zander hanging out. Cutest baby ever!

Here we are in our Aggie apparel! Go Aggies!

Eating delicious food at Texas Roadhouse. Zander loved all the neon signs in there.

Another picture of Uncle Ryan and Zan Man

And here is the car Ry drove in the parade. I told you it was nice. If only it was ours.....Ryan wishes. It was his bosses car. He was nice enough to lend it to Ryan for the parade.

Ryan took so many pictures of the car. You would think that he wanted to keep it?

My Anniversary Surprise!!!

So for our anniversary this year, Ryan surprised me with a lovely evening. He took me to the temple, then we went out to dinner and enjoyed delicious food then he blindfolded me and we ended up in this gorgeous room! That's right, he took me to the Anniversary Inn. He booked my favorite suite, Juliet's Balcony. It was beautiful! I was so happy. He really put a lot of thought and effort into this evening. I appreciated it so much. It was so nice to just get away from life and stress for a while and just enjoy one another's company. Here are a few pictures of the pretty suite. They delivered banana splits at night and in the morning, delivered a delicious french pastry with yogurt and granola with all kinds of breakfast drinks. I recommend the Anniversary Inn to anyone thinking of going. Thanks again Ry, love your bum!

This is the upstairs hallway leading to the bedroom and the bathroom.

This is the awesome, HUGE jetted tub.

And of course, the famous balcony!

Another view of the upstairs hallway.

This is the bedroom. This bed was so freaking comfortable. You just laid in it and your body formed to the mattress and let's just say, I was in mattress/bed heaven! I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning. And it was a California King! It was HUGE!