Christmas Inspiration

Last week on our way to see the Christmas music house in Draper, we took a detour. 

The picture is fuzzy. 

Aaaand we weren't prepared with warm clothes. 

But it was a pretty cool sight to see literally every twig on this tree wrapped in lights. 

 Christmassy events have started to fill in our schedules.

My office has a tradition of volunteering at Candy Cane Corner each year.

 It's a small store full of donated items like clothing, toys, shoes, socks, gloves, books and the list goes on.

All seems right in the world when I look at the piles and piles of donations that people drop off to help others who may not have a Christmas otherwise.


We spent the afternoon organizing the donations throughout the store so people can easily pick and choose gifts for their families as they browse the store.

It was a little kick in the butt to remind me that Aar and I have so much.....

And that we need to take time to help others.

Sure we pay our tithing.

And Fast offering.

But there are other ways we can help too.



Yesterday the sweetest lady bore her testimony in Sacrament Meeting.

I don't know much about her, except for what she had shared.

She is from Africa, has 4 small children, and is trying to save up money for her husband to join them here in Utah.

I have seen here working as a clerk and Walmart, and she said they changed her shift to the graveyard. She's been having a hard time paying for everything, and just when she saved enough money for her husband to come to America, her sister stole the money and used it on herself.


She mentioned she has a hard time getting out of bed and moving on. But she trusts that God has a plan for her and will keep moving forward.

There weren't many dry eyes in the congregation.

She is such an inspiration and reminds me that I can do hard things.

Christmas Skating

 Nothing is better than Christmas in the city. 

Trees are l-i-t everywhere. 


Decorations line the street windows. 

And hot chocolate is always welcome. 

Oh and the Gallivan Center ice rink! 

I love this cute little rink in the heart of downtown. 

We spent last night skating in the cold. 

Of course this Southern Utah boy stillllll does not own a coat. 


....Wondering if he ever will. 

A Bama thanksgiving

There's nothing like enjoying 70 degrees Thanksgiving weekend. 

We had such a fun Thanksgiving... minus the flights. 

It took Aar and I 12 hours to get to Birmingham, not fun. 

We flew from SLC>Phoenix>Charlotte>Birmingham through the night and into the morning. I was pretty ornery by the time we made it to Charlotte. And by the time my parents picked us up in the morning, they decided it was best not to talk to a seat full of sleep deprived grumpy kids haha. 

Luckily we perked back up pretty quickly and Aaron, Spence and our friend Jake played at the ward Turkey Bowl for hours. 

We made it home and my dad made crepes for us all. 

Swiss cheese, ham, nutella, raspberries and more.... so good. 

Showers, naps and games continued until we were off to dinner at our traditional place: Ross Bridge. 

Peppermint shakes and red velvet cheesecake was some of our favorites.

But the turkey, stuff and potatoes was pretty great too!

It's so hard to get him to take a picture, let alone with a normal smile....

After dinner we played Scum for a few hours before Spence and my Dad went Black Friday shopping.

I love the way we do it- leave at 11 or midnight, after all the crazies have hit. We always go to the outlets, and this year, the weather was perfectly warm. We hit JCrew, Charming Charlie, Tommy Hilfiger, Banana Republic and more. It's so hard not to get carried away.

We woke in the morning and the day seemed so long. It was still Friday! We did so more shopping, ate some BBQ and saw Mockingjay.

Saturday we were off to Atlanta to watch David's team the Bulldogs.

Perfect weather and great seats.

And they won!

Also, my Dad noticed Georgetown Cupcakes opened in Atlanta. We trekked all the way across town just to get cupcakes. They are the absolute best cupcakes we've ever head, and so worth the trip!

We wrapped the night up with the best snow cones- juicy fruit and strawberry daq, psych!(a new game on your app, similar to balderdash, so funny!), more scum, cookies and pie.

It was such a great trip. 

Now back to life of trying to sell the house, budgeting, cleaning and all that fun stuff.

Weekends to Remember

Aaron's parents were in town over the weekend. They are always so sweet and want to take us to dinner. They always let us choose, so this time we choose to go to the Garden- on top of the Joseph Smith Memorial building. 

The view was perfect and dinner was delish. 

They also bought us all 6 Star Wars, since Aar hasn't seen them and we are going to the premiere pretty soon. Needless to say Aaron wasn't too interested, and I don't remember the movies being so slow.... I guess that's the millennial in me eh? 

Long story short on Saturday I accidentally locked myself out of the house. No one was going to be home in at least 4 hours... and I was stuck in the small hallway downstairs doing laundry. Of course my phone was locked inside. So I had to walk over to the neighbors and borrow their phone to call the locksmith. $150, and a half hour later I was in the house.... It was thee worst. 

On the bright side, we are going to Alabama this week. We got the crappiest flights, ever, but we'll get their eventually haha. 

I pulled out the Christmas decorations a bit early. I got tired of the fall decor, and Aaron was watching football all night so it gave me something to do. 

Also check out this sunset. Amazing! 

Pazookies

Spence and Lexi may have introduced me to the greatest thing on the planet... pazookies! or cazookies... or whatever you wanna call it. 

We went to The Chocolate in West Jordan, where they half bake cookie dough, pull it fresh out of the oven and top it with vanilla ice cream. 

It's amazing. 

Well last week they came over with cookie dough and ice cream and we made our own pazookie/cazookie. 

And it was just as good. 

We scarfed it down. 

So now I'm obsessed with the idea. I bought some cookie dough and made 2 batches over the week(don't worry I shared).

I made it for Jake and Mary Saturday night. 

They loved it... obvi. 

And Spence, Lexi and I devoured the leftovers Sunday night. 

This poor boy was sick, so we didn't want to risk his germs spreading on our beloved pazookie... 

Poor thing has had a fever for 3 days. 

He'll get hot, and then cold, and then hot, and then cold. 

So finally we went to the doc. 

He's still miserable but hopefully the medicine will start kicking in. 

I sure hope so because he tosses and turns all night long. 

And I end up on the couch, and we all know couches are not good for backs when you sleep! 

Life in November

Our nights are free these days and we are so confused how to use the extra time. 

So we started back at the gym..... and I am SORE. 
I haven't been consistently for a long long time so basically any movement is kicking my butt. 

We had an offer on our Provo house, but sadly it fell through. So we are praying someone will be interested quickly. 

I feel like summer was just last month. But the snow says otherwise. Winter is here
...along with leaves heaping up on our lawn and snow in the mountains. 

Europe video is done, but FB and Youtube won't let me post it because of the songs I used. Still trying to find away around that. And it's too big to post on Blogger. 

Continuing to travel frequently for work and occasionally fun. This month it's Denver next week and Alabama/Georgia the following week for Thanksgiving. 

Please enjoy this picture of Aaron in my new hat. Basically how he feels when I spend money haha. 

Goodbye October

Goodbye October.

Hello November. 

Our Halloween wasn't very Halloween-y at all. 

But we still had fun. 

We mini golfed at Mulligan's. 

Ate at the OG... aka Olive Garden. 

Sipped some Fiiz. 

Shopped at City Creek. 

And had zero tricker or treaters at our house.