Christmas Village and Christmas Tree

I took some pictures of my decorations so everybody could see how cute they are. And also how my obsession with my Christmas Village has grown. I just started it last year and it's already too big. And I love it!
Our little Christmas Tree. I put the lights on last year for the first time ever and put on about 8 strands of lights. So, I refused to take down the tree and just stuck it in a closet.

Here's the entire village. For those of you who saw last years village, you can tell it's expanded. A lot. I don't know what I'm going to do next year!

The rest of the pictures are close-ups of the houses and people.

Thanksgiving Finally

Well, I decided to finally tell you about Thanksgiving. We had Thanksgiving at Colleen and Arlyn's house. This year, our good friends Dustin and Merideth joined us. It was a full house with them and Ken and Michelle here as well. Dustin brought over his X-box and his flat-screen computer monitor, we brought over our X-box and TV, and we had fun playing Halo and Guitar Hero all day long. The food was good, with yummy turkey and ham, rolls, salads, and much more. For dessert, we had a dessert for every person. We had Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Cheesecake, Caramel brownies, Pumpkin cake, chocolate chip cookies, apple pie with ice cream and that's all I can think of. We were eating dessert for days! I made my first ever pumpkin pie. Even the crust was from scratch. Here's a picture, I was proud:

It was a good break from school and we enjoyed having Ken and Michelle and their two kids here. For the first time ever, I went out on Black Friday, stood in lines, and braved the madness. It was a good, relaxing weekend with lots of yummy food!

Bands Of America

Don't fall over in shock. I'm posting.

Quite a few weekends ago, the American Fork High School Marching Band had the opportunity to compete in Grand Nationals in Indianapolis. This is THE high school marching band competition of the year. Unfortunately, they don't do the competition like football, where the best of the best compete and then go on to Nationals. It's more of "whoever can pay the money and get their entire band out to Indiana can compete and we'll choose a winner out of them." It puts the bands out West at a disadvantage: they can't afford to come out here every year.

Well, the band came out to participate and my little sister came with them. My parents flew out as well, so we got to see them. (Indianapolis is only about 1 1/2 hours away from Cincinnati.) My parents actually flew into Cincinnati, we picked them up, showed them around for a few hours, and then we drove to Indianapolis and spent the weekend there.

I had some pictures, but I don't know where they went to. They're on Facebook, if you're that desperate. The band played great and Mallory was awesome. It was a lot of fun to see what the other bands were up to and the cool things they did.

The band didn't make it to finals, but did place 14th out of about 90 bands. They had a good experience and can now go back and dominate Utah. (They've placed first in the state for the last 16 years!) We loved that the band came out so that we could see my Mom and Dad and a little bit of Mallory. Thanks for letting us bug you all weekend long!

Texas Roadhouse

Man, I'm behind on my posting. Carl is studying big time (another big test on Tuesday), so expect some posts this weekend. First up, is Dustin's birthday.

Dustin's birthday was a few weeks ago and to celebrate, we all went out to Texas Roadhouse and then to Britney and Brock's. Mmmm...good food. I got chicken fingers. I think they even beat out Arby's chicken fingers, which is saying a lot coming from me. Carl wasn't too fond of all the peanuts, but he didn't die or have an allergic reaction, so we're okay. (They put buckets of peanuts on all the tables and you eat the peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. A mother's nightmare!) Here's to pictures to record this historic event.

Here is Britney, Merideth, and baby Tanner. Isn't he cute? And no, they are not a happy family, they just happened to be sitting next to each other.

Here's the other halves: Dustin (the birthday boy) and Brock. Don't they look just happy to be there? Maybe our food was taking too long and they were hungry...

Next up is Tessa and Duffy. Don't they make an adorable couple? When Duffy isn't suffocating Tessa, I mean. And no, Duffy is not his real name. And no, I can't tell you his real name. I heard it once, in church, I think.

Here's the gang back at Britney and Brock's house singing happy birthday. I think we terrified little Tanner out. He started crying. I guess we didn't have such great voices.

I can't decide if he's blowing the candle out or going for a mouthful of cake. I'm guessing the mouthful of cake, because that's what I would do.

Happy Late Birthday Dustin!

Multi-Talented

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a cool blog. It's this mom who has this ability to do her girls' hair awesome. It's made me really want to have a little girl so I can do their hair. Here's the link if anybody wants to go look at her creative genius: http://shedoeshair.blogspot.com/

Well, a couple of the hairstyle looked like they would work on my hair. So, I decided to try one. Needless to say, I couldn't get it to work very well. I think my hair was too long. Carl finally stepped into the bathroom and asked what was taking me so long. He finally ended up doing my hair for me. Yes, you read that right. Carl did my hair. He learned lots of cool things, like how to put a bobby pin in and how to curl hair. Here's a picture of the end result.

Doesn't look too bad, does it? We ended up going to a branch Halloween party that night. We dressed up real creative like and went as a doctor and a nurse. In our defense, we didn't remember it until that morning and so just threw some costumes together.

This last weekend, we went to Peoria to the blessing of Ken and Michelle's baby. She's only a month old and is as cute as could be! I loved holding her, she was such a snuggly baby! We had some yummy soups and lots of yummy desserts. I didn't take many pictures, in fact, this is the only picture I took up there.

In case you're wondering, those are baby socks on Ken's ears. Kind of improves him, don't you think?

P.S. If anybody knows to hide a link into a word, let me know please!

Yes, Another One...New Shoes!

Well, I'm behind on my blogging, don't want to study, and I'm watching election results. Although they've already declared Obama the winner, which I think is kind of funny, because the polls in Alaska haven't closed yet. Makes me wonder if I lived in Alaska and I hadn't voted yet, if I would still vote...

Anyways, that's why you're getting a special treat: Another post from me!

A few weeks ago, I was at a seminary inservice. Yes, I do teach seminary. Scary, I know. I teach homestudy and I only have one student, but it's a lot of fun. But back to my story.

I was at a seminary inservice, which was about an hour away. When it was over, I got a call from Colleen asking it I wanted to go to Ikea with her and Arlyn, because Carl and Trav were going golfing that day. (Ikea was close to were I was at) I've been wanting to go for a while, so of course I went.

The only problem was that I was in church clothes, complete with heels. I do not suggest going to Ikea in heels. Wasn't very comfortable AT ALL! About halfway through Ikea, I was informed the plan was also to go to Jungle Jims (a huge grocery store where you can find anything) and Metamora, Indiana (basically a little town full of boutiques). I said I would love to go, but I wasn't sure about the shoes. Colleen had a solution for that. A quick trip to Famous Footwear (ok, the trip itself was quick, the search for the store wasn't) and our problem was solved!

Aren't they cute? I love them! Carl calls them my "Brynn shoe's". I was much more comfortable in these shoes and didn't look too odd in my skirt and tennis shoes.

Look A Like

Every year, Colleen does a Halloween piano recital which the kids get to dress up for. They come in all of their costumes and play lots of cool Halloween songs. Colleen also likes to show off the musical abilities of her boys by having them either play the piano, sing, or play the trombone, depending on what they can do. She claims it's to show that there is other things you can do with music and also to show what happens when you practice, but I think she likes to brag about her boys. (What mom doesn't?)

Well, this means that we have to find a costume for Carl to wear. This year, Carl decided to dress up as Travis. The results were, well, slightly disturbing.