Christmas Posts 1

So this year instead of hauling our Christmas down to Farmington/South Jordan, Dan and I decided to have early Christmas.  So we treated the 23^rd as our Christmas morning.  We were maybe very spoiled this year.  Dan bought me the Nikon D90 which I’ve had my eye on forever.  I already had a lens from my other Nikon so that worked out nicely.  I got Dan a climbing rope and some quick draws.  Plus then Santa brought us some other great things like the extended blu rays of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, an external hard drive, and a web cam which Dan has now turned into a video baby monitor.  Ya, we were spoiled.

Our Cute Tree

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 Super cute pictures of us with my new camera.  Obviously I was paying attention to getting things in focus...

 Our haul.

Friday night we went down to my parents house for a quickly thrown together cousin party.  However the only cousin that ended up coming was Justin and his wife Megan but that's okay because we like them.  My older brother Jonathan was in town from Colorado with his wife Jen and their totally cute kids Jonah and Anna.  Plus my younger brother and sister were there and my parents.  Sadly my older sister and her family couldn't come because they would just have to drive back and forth again the next day.  

We had so much fun though!  We played Pounce which is the best game to play with big groups.  It got so intense that nobody was even sitting down anymore, the table kept being scooted around--twice it smacked Jonathan's kids in the head, everyone was screaming enough to upset the babies who were also being being ignored quite a bit, Jameson inflicted pain on several of us by jumping to get his card down in time, and my dad intentionally hit Dan in the face because Dan got his card down before my dad twice in a row, plus we hardly ate any of the treats because we were so busy.  Though we were being accused of always cheating at games by Jen and Jonathan, (and though they're not really sure where they got that idea) Dan and I kicked butt with no cheating involved.

Oh and don't worry that Dan is such a nerd, he later took the score sheet and graphed it.

It was such a fun night.  It may have been my favorite thing we did the whole time we were down that way "Christmas Breaking".   I think we need to do it again soon.

The only picture I think I have from that night.  That's Jonah in my lap.  This was obviously before the game got out of control.  Love him.

Some December Happenings

So December brought some most excellent things.  

We of course made some gingerbread houses with some friends.  We got kits this year which we've never done before but they definitely did not mean cutesie-ness was happening.

This is Jake's slaughter house

 Kyra did some sort of artsy house, the roof is supposed to be falling off.

 Dan's western shoot-out

 And my little guy was having a 'shroom nightmare of bears and other such weirdness while up on his roof.

 Also in December, Dan made his first big purchase and bought himself a new car.  Though technically it is under my name as I had previous (very good) car credit.   Which I find to be hilarious and Dan, not so much.  But Dan had been driving his Camry since he was about 16.  He had been looking at cars and talking about it for months so we found an amazing deal on a 2010 Xterra with only 9,000 miles on it and decided to go have a look at it just to see, pretty soon we were buying it.  Dan hadn't thought we'd really be doing any buying that day so actually got a little sentimental when we were suddenly cleaning out his car to trade it in.  I've seen Dan get sentimental about never times, so it was interesting.  As soon as we drove off in his new car though, the Camry was gone from his mind.  

The Xterra is so perfect for him and it makes me want it a little bit, except I would never be able to handle the gas mileage after driving my Honda Fit.  But everything else is great.  Dan bargained in an auxiliary outlet, a key-less entry remote, and a ball for towing.  He's good like that.

When first realizing he had to say goodbye

 He's constantly losing his water bottles.  We bought him three new ones from December of last year until July.  We found three when cleaning out his car.  Which is remarkable as Dan is very neat and well organized.

He decided he was posh because he found his ticket to The Louvre in the trunk.  Who knows how it got there.  This is his posh face.

 His sentiment, saved for cars and computers.

 

It's nice looking huh?

 My barely visible tummy.

We also bought a crib in December.  My top two choices were both over 500 bucks so I settled for choice three which was about a fifth of the cost.  I can deal with that.  Dan was real great and set it up for me.  He even pretended to look confused for pictures.  So manly.

 It actually only took him about 20 minutes to set up.

 Then he decided to pose with his knife because he's a weirdy.  Maybe to fend off any bad people from getting Beaky.  Unfortunately this particular knife broke when we used it to break into the Bronson's house on Christmas Eve.  (That's another story)

Some November Happenings

So a few things from November...

Our friend Grizz hosted a murder mystery at a cabin in Bear Lake.  I was so out of my comfort zone.  I am awkward to begin with, then put me with a bunch of people I don't know, pretending to be some stock broker lady... Ya....

Dan however, was great and so fun.  He was some military leader slash religious man from some tiny make believe island nation.  He was hilarious, had a wonderful costume he put together, and he made it great fun.  

Oh and worst part of the night?  When I had to get engaged to some equally awkward boy there that we do somewhat know.

Thanksgiving also happened in November.  The mind reels, yes.  We spent Thanksgiving at the Bronson's house.  It was just Dan and me, his parents, his little sister, and his grandfather.  But Renee still put on an amazing display of food.  Enough for leftovers for days.  It was great.  And oh boy, does she ever make some great rolls!

Dan helped his mom carve the turkey.

 And then became a zombie...

Also at the very end of November Jimmy came home!  I already wrote enough about him but it's been fun to have him home.  He's not the usual awkward returned missionary.  He still seems like my normal little brother.  I've missed his funny texts throughout the day so I'm glad those are back.  Plus he came and visited my classroom a week or two before Christmas and my kids loved him.  He's a funny kid.  I have no pictures of his return though as I somehow managed to forget a camera that day.

That was about it for November.

Beakey

So you may be familiar with a story about myself, a church softball game, and a shattered eye socket.  If not, I'm not going to rehash it except one small part.

So I had to go in for surgery to get a plate put into my face.  It was all very exciting.  I had to be there at about six in the morning and there I was with Dan sitting next to me in this little room lying on a bed waiting to be taken into surgery.  They did some routine tests on me beforehand and then a cute older lady nurse came in to talk to us before the doctor came in.  The following conversation went something like this...

Nurse lady: "So the doctor and anesthesiologist will be in shortly to talk to you about your risks and what they're going to do differently because of your pregnancy."

Me: "Um... Excuse me, my what?"

Dan: Silence

Yep.  

Then the doctor and anesthesiologist came in and advised me that risk was minimal and I should do the surgery anyway and then wheeled me away leaving Dan in a tiny room all by himself for a few hours only minutes after learning his wife was going to have a baby.  Poor guy.  (Oh and of course the nurse was mortified that she'd let us find out the way we did.  She had thought we already knew.)

So yes, we are having a boy in April.  I am nearly six months along and Dan refers to the child as Beakey.  Don't ask.  After the initial shock, we are excited and happy.  The kid is a kicker and Dan decided he will teach him to tap dance instead of be manly.  But for now we really love feeling him move around in there and are preparing to name him something nerdy.

New York

So I kind of stopped writing about anything at all so I'll update a bit...

For my birthday this year we went to New York.  I haven't been back since I lived there so that was fun for me but it was even more fun to be there because of Dan.  He loved it!  He had been there before but he was much younger.  The instant we got off the subway from the airport he was so excited.  He near instantly decided we needed to live there.  I told him as long as we could afford a nice place with enough space, so basically if we have millions, then we could live there.  We were there I think for five days and we had lots of fun.  We were sad to leave.

This is Dan being George Bush, I think, at the UN building

 This is as close as we got to anything to do with Ground Zero.  It was closed to the public the day we went down that way.

 Spookiness at a really old cemetery.

So Dan had to see the Dinosaurs

We were being fatter/lighter on other planets at the museum.

We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge

 We tried unsuccessfully to get into The Book of Mormon musical a few times but it was actually fun just to enter their lottery system and watch people get their names called.

 Dan and his House apparel.

 We were super creepily excited to be at Rockefeller Center.

 Dan accidentally dressed as Indiana Jones.

 Serendipity

 The only show we actually did go see was How To Succeed In Business with Daniel Radcliffe.  We liked it even more than expected.  It was such a fun show.

 We really liked just sitting in Central Park and watching people

 Or being weird.

 We would play chess on Dan's phone to be cool.  No clue why I was making a sad face.  Probably because I lost every time.

 I was being the pigeon woman from Home Alone 2.

Dan's favorite thing we did.

 

 We went to Occupy Wall Street

 Everything appeared to be business as usual

 Though we did run into Michael Moore.

We found the occupiers several blocks from actual Wall Street.  There was actually not that many people there and mostly they were just sitting around playing bongo drums and such.  I feel there were more people gawking then occupying.

Our last few hours there I had managed to get us tickets to Letterman.  I had to get my name on a list and then answer a trivia question when they called.  It was lots of fun.  We actually got to sit right up front on the aisle.  Honestly I think because we looked better than old people if it showed the audience which is funny.  Oh and my dad was super jealous.