Happy Thanksgiving!!!

We were able to have our driveway/garage etc. sealed on Monday before the snow rolled in! We new this was something we needed to mark off our check list before the holidays took over and the bad weather came! Next, my family arrived Wednesday morning!!! Chris and I have been looking forward to this arrival for the last month and we were finally together again! I have not spent Thanksgiving with my side of the family for 6 years so this was a real treat and than to have them come to our house was even better!!! I got to have the pleasure of having my mom at my side in the kitchen helping me with my first Thanksgiving dinner! Boy did I learn a lot and I could not have done it without her! It made the experience so FUN!!! Everything turned out fabulous and the family had a great time playing games and eating snacks while they waited for the big feast! Chris was in charge of the potatoes and cutting the meat! I really love that Chris is SO supportive and wants to be apart of everything I do! He did an AMAZING job on the potatoes! I will have to make sure he keeps this job for the years to come ;) We all played, ate and took naps while others continued playing board games lol before more family came over! Chris' cousins and family stopped bye throughout the day to see my family and/or our new home which meant a lot! Chris and I feel so blessed to have two wonderful and I mean wonderful families!!! To have our families be so supportive of each other has really made life a better place~

Thanksgiving day was just the beginning because the following day we all went up to see Ty, Jessi and their kiddos! I was so excited to see little Harli :) We ate leftover thanksgiving food for lunch and hung out with the little ones before everyone other than Jessi and Harli went to the barn to do some horse and/or pony riding!!! This I have to say was a MAJOR highlight!!! After it started to get dark and we put the horses away, we kept the pony that Hallie flew off of when he got startled which I still feel bad about :/ Non the less Hallie recovered enough to get back on for a little bit just in time for us to come up with a brilliant idea! Yes it was a Wester idea so it was something that we should not have been doing but we made our own little Wester Rodeo with the Shetland pony!!! It started with John getting bucked off when rying to ride it bareback and than we had to have him do it again for the rest of the family to see! It was so funny that of course the other boys just had to see if they could do it and who could stay on the longest before getting bucked off riding bare back! Of course we all pulled out our video cameras so we have some amazing footage if anyone wants to witness our eventful evening! Following the Wester Rodeo, we kidnapped Tyrel and stopped at Temple Square for the Christmas lights!!! This was the first for half of my family! It was very cold but so worth the memories spent with my family and again Chris was so so supportive to have 12 people now staying the night at our house! He was so cute and thoughtful, the night before my family arrived Wed. Chris stopped at Best Buy for a couple more t.v.'s to have in the other bedrooms so that the family could all have their entertainment throughout the week they were at our house :) He is so wonderful and sweet! I could not have been blessed with a better husband!

So that night we had the pleasure of having Tyrel with us so that he could be down here to take us all to the BYU vs Utah football game! He was so kind to let Fran and James join us and if that was not sweet enough, Tyrel hooked us all up with the Blazers vs Jazz basketball game after the football game which included all 12 of us plus all of Chris' family!!! We were all burned out with the four day weekend that we just spent Sunday sleeping in and me doing haircuts before my family decided to go up to grandpas before heading back to Oregon :( This gets harder and harder for me each time a sibling that visits or the whole family visits that I am a total sob fest for a week before I can begin to keep it together. As much as I love my family, I do not ever want to see them leave. I can't wait till the day they really do get to move to Utah! I think that is also why its hard...knowing that none of them want to go back :( Until next time, I love you all and I could not have asked for a better Thanksgiving break!!!

Birthdays, Decorations and a Niece!

The start of our busy holiday season is here!!! Friday we celebrated James' Birthday :) With thetransfer of his job to California and added travels, we have not been able to see him for 3 weeks so we decided that more than anything, James would wish to spend time with his family. With that in mind, Chris and I decided that we were going to take James and Fran on a double date for his birthday gift! He loved it and we did too! For dinner we went to Goodwoods in Draper the following Tuesday and hung out chatting catching up and playing games! We love James so much and it has been sad not having him home as often to welcome everyone into their home. James has a way of making us all feel so special, loved and missed even if it was a day since we last stopped by lol! To not hear him in the most exciting tone say, "Hey!, It is so nice to see you!!!" following with a big hug has been missed!

My sister Abby also shares the same birthday as Chris' dad so I usually pull aside to sing Happy Birthday to her by phone! This year is exciting because the family is actually on their way to Utah!!! Yep they are coming to our house for to exciting reasons. One to be hear for the birth of our little niece, Harli and to spend Thanksgiving with Chris and I!!! I am really excited to break in our new kitchen to cook Thanksgiving dinner for 11 people :0)

In preparation of having my family here this next week, Chris and I spent all of Saturday decorating our house for Christmas! Our most favorite holiday of the year!!! I have posted some of our decorations ;) This is an event that Chris and I love to share in together and we make it as fun as possible by baking cookies and playing our favorite Christmas tunes each year!!! It is funny how over the 3 years we have had being married that we have taken on specific jobs such as putting up the tree and then setting up the Nativity is Chris' thing while I get the little stuff put everywhere and then we both decorate the tree together :0) My favorite part is the warm cozy feeling it brings into the home with music on the savior and serving others with the spirit that we should all have all year long.

Nov.22, Sunday afternoon Tyrel and Jessi welcomed little Harli into the world which makes this baby number 2! Chris and I are so very happy for them and we are grateful all went well with the delivery! We can't wait to see her but we have to wait till they come home from the hospital. The spread of the swine flu has caused the hospitals to not allow more than two people to enter the hospital other than the couple who are expecting and they have to be over the age of 14 I think. None the less we are super happy for my brother and we still got pictures sent to us so we can see how beautiful she is!!!

First snow fall of the season ~

Our new snow flake Christmas lights only lasted a week in our windy area :( So sadly enough after seeing them all in our gutter, Chris and I decided to take them down, pack them nicely back in their boxes to purchase the standard Christmas light bulbs. We had a couple hours before my cousins baptism so we thought we had enough time to rush to Lowe's for the return to find that while we were searching for new Christmas lights that a snow storm or shall I say blizzard (with our Lehi winds) had started. I couldn't find any that I liked and the larger clips were sold out so we decided to opt out on them for now. The traffic dramatically slowed down with the weather conditions so by the time we made it back to our house to see if the baptism was still "on" and then change of course. I was left with only 30 min. to change and get up to Murray. Chris did not feel good about risking the drive and checked the freeway to find that there were two accidents between our house and Murray :( I was so sad and disappointed to not be able to support my Aunt Cindy and her youngest son who is 20 I believe be baptized.... This put a real damper on my day so I decided to go out anyway to at least meet up with Ashton afterwords. Chris would not let me go out alone so he came with but then we received a call from my Aunt to let me know that he had work at 5 and she needed to take him to get his haircut first. talk about bummer news! Not to mention that my older brother and his wife could not make it either coming from Ogden up North :( I wish still that we could have given him the support that family should offer but even more so I hope it was special and memorable day for my cousin Ashton as he continues down a wonderful path in his life.

The upside of Saturday was after we found out that seeing my Grandpa, Aunt Cindy and Ashton was out of the picture. Chris and I decided that while we were out, we would finish the errands that were needed. We were able to pick up my sister Abby's birthday gifts and the Christmas gifts for my family so that we could send them back with them when they are in town next week! The snow did make it difficult at first but it slowed down as we came closer to the later evening. Chris was also able to pick up a new game for the xbox which was just in time for a incoming call from his friend Spencer who is also a gamer :) Spencer and Nat then decided to come over to visit a bit before Natalie needed to go to work. They also brought over p90x for us to try! I am happy to say that we have already worked out more then last year.....which might I add was not hard to do since I only used my gym membership ONCE last year. So when it came back to renewing another year this week I decided to give it another try :0/ So far I am already on day 3 ha ha!

While the Whitchurch's were in California over the weekend it was perfect timing to have Spencer and Natalie come back for Sunday dinner following some card game playing and socializing (Chris' favorite)! Natalie then discovered that I am capable of doing hair so she decided to come back Tuesday for some blond highlights :) It turned out great and she loved it which always makes me feel good!

BLINDS!!!!

Here we are 4 weeks to the day living in our house and we FINALLY got our blinds installed. We did not know it would take a month to have blinds put up :( It did however take us a week before we decided on what blinds we wanted and then after canceling them through Home Depot when we found out it would take three weeks. We felt we should go with a referred friend from our new to be neighbors. When he came to measure our windows he did not have the selection or shall I say the exact blinds we wanted that we saw at Home Depot. I was willing to pick ones that I did not want if we needed to purchase them through this gentlemen for whatever reason but he meet up with us at work the following day to show us some additional options. We found the color we wanted but they were the wood wood ones and not the faux wood blinds. Therefore the price went up :( We decided to go with the dark walnut wood blinds everywhere accept the kitchen and the front door side window. Those we replaced with the white faux wood blinds. Well we were on track for a week in a half to find out that when that time came, he forgot to put a return address on the order. This caused the blinds to be put on hold and then mailed at a "rush". The "rush" still took 7 additional days... so it was a disappointment when we were rescheduled for a third time when we were informed of his prior commitments that occupied the following 2 days after they were delivered :(

Once the day came a whole month later, we were so thrilled to have our blinds that I did not care that we had to wait so long lol! I was able to pull down the news paper ha ha and we gladly helped bring in all the stuff to and from his vehicle...Not to mention breaking down the boxes and putting them in the recycling bin which he seemed to be overly grateful for! As he was hanging up the blinds we noticed pretty quickly that he purchased the wrong ones but we did not say a thing because we were afraid he would take them back! It was not a big deal other than we wanted the privacy ones without the holes but I or Chris said that we were going to complain because we felt like our house was finally "complete" in a way that we aren't in a fish bowl lol! All in all we are thrilled to have our blinds!!!

Our productive week...

I have been really bad about getting our address changed with everyone but I can finally say that I got around to it! Last Tuesday we received our intercom system so we have a doorbell and we can chat in between rooms now ha ha! The intercom I think has bee Chris' favorite thing to set up of all the tasks I have had him do such as the hardware on the cabinets which started out tricky last week but we finally got it rolling when we made a trip back to Home Depot for a VERY useful tool that cost $2 but it made ALL the difference for Chris!!!

On Thursday, I stayed late for work so Chris decided to make a trip to Lowe's near by which lead to the grand purchase of our outside Christmas lights!!! It was so fun to see what he decided on and we went with the icicle snow flake lights! I feel SO lucky to be married to someone who LOVES Christmas as much as I do! In fact, Chris was in the mood and we couldn't help but notice the warm night that night. We fell into our temptation to hang up the lights before we faced the biter cold weather. If any of you know me, I hate the cold. I have come to the grips of accepting the fact that I will always feel cold but I would not want to volunteer to be colder if I had an alternative so I think I am hooked! I have never experienced such a pleasant experience hanging up the lights! It made all the difference to make it SO enjoyable even though it may seem funny to have them up! :)

For date night Friday we went to Home Depot LOL :) and Costco for a Christmas wreath and an incredible blender that we were suckered into purchasing! Chris and I just could not believe that a blender could make ice cream and then hot soup right after each other not to mention the two of us are BIG soup, smoothie, dip fans along with being snack eaters over meal eaters! Chris has been non stop with the use of our new blender which is really fun. Who new that a blender would get HIM in the kitchen ;)

Yesterday Chris and I went to the design studio with Fran to help her pick out her interior choices for their house! On the way back, Chris and I ran some much needed errands and ended up finishing the night with our friends Derek and Stephanie! I took Stephanie to Tai Pan where I bought some beautiful plates and bowls with the help of Chris :) and then we ended the night with a movie!

Today Chris and I received a calling in our ward to be the Young Single Adult representatives! We are super excited for this opportunity and joked around the dinner table a bit with the idea of checking up on Aaron, Josh and Annie when their house is completed this Spring!

HaPpY hAlLoWeEn!!!

Our first Halloween just 2 weeks into our home with a trip in between equals forgetting to decorate and prepare ourselves for the holiday...YIKES! So Chris and I spent the Saturday taking care of errands and purchasing a BIG Happy Halloween sign that lite up so that people new to come trick or treat at our newly developed neighborhood! It worked enough to catch the attention of all the children living around us witch equaled out to 5 families ha ha but non the less it was super fun to see all the little children dressed up while we chose to be productive by putting on the cabinet hardware, well Chris did and he did wonderful! :)

Earlier in the day Chris and I joined Fran to look at one of the model homes they are thinking of building...Yep! This means that James and Fran decided to also build in the same neighborhood just down the street from us!!! Chris and I are super excited about this because we LOVE the idea of having them SO close to us with all the changes happening. The plan as of now is to have Aaron, Josh and Annie stay at the house here while they are going to school and of course have a home James, Fran and Britt can return to every month or so (if we are lucky) while James finishes his career in California till retirement can take place. It has been the only option that felt right so we are all trusting that it all works out and that their current home will be able to sell at the price they need. Anyway, so Fran flew out after this so Chris and I chose to finish our Halloween night over at the Whitchurch home to be with Britt. Annie, Josh and Aaron were also home which we did not expect but we were so happy to see! We ate Fran's famous taco soup and watched a scary movie of Chris/Britt's choice!!! I was of course scared out of my mind and kept my eyes closed during 3/4 of the movie so when Chris and I came home I watched a happy feel good movie so that I can go to sleep in ease :)

We hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween! We loved receiving a picture of little Hallie in her cute witch costume! I decided I need to make sure I do better next year and get dressed up to support Chris and his love for Halloween :)