Temple Square 2009

We met my family and the Workman's at Crown Burger on Monday night to have dinner and see the lights at Temple Square for family night.

The tabernacle

The group, minus my dad
The lights are so amazing! I can't believe how intricately wrapped in strands all the branches of the trees are.

My family, Botts didn't make it because they were sick, and Don...he's in France on his mission.

The Red lights are my personal favorite

Reese, as always, was so content the whole time! She loves being dragged around to experience anything and everything!

This set up, with the nativity scene on the reflection pool and the lights shining down from on top of buildings, was beautiful!

Reese being a big girl and walking toward the crowd.

I love Christmas time. I love that everyone is a little kinder and more generous. I love spending large amounts of time with family and I love remembering our Savior's life. Here is a good quote from President Monson from the 1st Presidency Christmas Devotional this year:

"With the pure love of Christ, let us walk in His footsteps as we approach the season celebrating His birth. As we do so, let us remember that He still lives and continues to be the Light of the World, who promised, 'He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

Eric, Reese, and I wish you all a VERY Merry Christmas!!

Pigtails

My little sister talked me into trying to put Reese's hair in pigtails. It worked, until she went down for a nap and rubbed the rubberbands and clippies out.

Snow Day

Over the weekend we had Camla, 3 girls from my ward, and Eric's friend Jeremiah up so we took them all sledding. It was Reese's first time. She loved it! At one point she hit her nose (hence the owie on her nose in most of the following pictures and posts) and she started crying but while crying pointed to the sled, so I put her down on it and she stopped crying. Tough girl!
There is an amazing sledding hill up the street from us so we snowmobiled up to it and had a blast!

Increase in Mobility

This cute little stinker is walking! She's been taking a few steps here and there since she was probably 8 1/2 months old but today she finally got the guts up and has been walking in between things all day on her own (even when she thinks no one is watching.) I can't believe she is actually walking! It's sad how fast she has grown. She has finally figured out what she is capable of and is so proud of herself! Congrats little babe!

Change of plans

I bought some Christmas M&Ms at the grocery store. Eric's office is right next to Reese's room, so I now have her play pen set up in our laundry/workout/food storage/tool room :) so that she can have naps while he works. She wanted to play instead of sleep when she'd hear Eric on his phone or sneak a peek of him through the crack of the sliding doors that closes off her room from his office and then just be too giddy to fall asleep. So when we got home from the grocery store I laid her down for a nap in her play pen. Then I got to work on making some yummy m&m chocolate chip cookies. Well I got everything into the bowl except the flour. Problem is, I only have 1/2 a cup of flour in my canister (I need 3 cups for my recipe) and the additional bags are in the room Reese is sleeping in, in the cupboard blocked off by her playpen! Great! Good planning. So, change of plans, here are some pictures of Reese's first time meeting Santa. The stare down. Reese never cried, she never smiled, her eyes just wandered all over Santa's face, beard, and outfit. Supposedly this Santa is the Coca-Cola Santa but hires out in Heber when he can because he lives in the Heber Valley. Pretty Cool!

A family in our ward owns a fast food restaurant called "Dairy Keen" in Heber and they always host our ward family Christmas party. We of course had to sit with our favs the Naffzigers :)

And Reese had to see all her friends!

We have a LOT of snow at our house right now. Thankfully I only HAVE to drive down to Provo once more (for the last final of my college career!!) Speaking of, I can't believe I'm actually done with classes. I just have one last final this week and then will finish up my internship and then come April, I'll be walking in my cap and gown holding a diploma! Didn't think this time of life would ever actually come and I'm really happy (and a titch sad) about it all!

Reese is obsessed with brushing her teeth. She has a kid toothbrush, which she loves, but if she spots one of our spinny toothbrushes she goes crazy until she gets it....
and I can't resist!!!

Thanksgiving Weekend

This year we had Thanksgiving at my family's house. It was delicious as always. On Thanksgiving night, Eric and I went to New Moon, I LOVED it! I'm not a huge movie critic, I'm quite easily entertained, and I really like the Twilight series, so to me, it was a fantastic movie! I don't think Eric LOVED it, but he was a good sport and I think he enjoyed himself. After the movie we went to Denny's and got 10 pm dinners. I'm not sure why we were so hungry - it being Thanksgiving and all.

We slept over at my parents house and on Friday morning headed off to cut down Christmas trees and go to the sanddunes to dirtbike! Our cute Christmas Tree (pics to come of the decorated product)!

Reese and Grandma
Pretty Chelsea

Mom, Reese, and Aubrey

Some of the gang

Eli LOVES motorcycles a.k.a "Vroom Vroom" [even more than I loved New Moon :)]

Chelsea trying to lift Eric into the air

Reese and the oversized helmet that she was only able to keep her head up with for 10-ish seconds before gravity took over.

Reese thought riding the motorcycle was the best thing in the world - that's our girl!

She was quite fond of the brake line too.Reese and my aunt Kathy, who is practicing to be a Grandma sometime in the next 1 1/2 months - Yeah Melissa!!

I love that you can only see Chelsea's lower 1/2 of her face :)

Reese and Eric chasing Papa

Sad to get off the motorcycle.

Eli. He is such a doll!

Another turn, so exciting!!

It was a fantastic Thanksgiving break. I love the sanddunes and christmas tree cutting traditions. Thanks mom and dad for the yummy and fun Thanksgiving! And I'm glad we got Reese out on the bikes to see that she is our child after all!!

Anniversary Weekend

Eric planned the perfect weekend getaway for us to celebrate our 2nd anniversary. Thanks Eric for being so sweet and surprising me with such a fun weekend!

We lived the "city life" and rode trax to get from place to place. Trax is a pretty cool system, I never knew. It is fun to see the variety of people and listen to all the conversations going on around you. Our babysitters (my parents and siblings) were in Moab so Reese tagged along, and she was a joy. She stayed out WAY past her bedtime and was totally content and had fun. She is beyond amazing.

I met up with Eric and we checked into our hotel, The Peery Hotel. It is SWEET! It is the oldest continually functioning hotel in SLC, started in the 1910's, and has all this cool OLD furniture with inlayed wood and all. It was really pretty and perfect! It also had 2 rooms, which was fantastic for putting Reese to bed. It was beautiful!

After we checked into our hotel we went to Macaroni Grill and had a fantastic dinner. I forgot how wonderful Macaroni Grill is. I ate SO much, it was DELICIOUS! While we were eating our appetizers a group came in and sat down at the table next to us. Low and behold, our Bishop's wife with some other people from our ward, who had just gone to Disney Princesses on Ice for her daughter's birthday. What are the chances. We are barely ever in SLC together, and pretty much NEVER go out to eat at a sit down restaurant while there, and the one time we do, our neighbors are all there. Try to get away and you can't :) HAHAHA!

After dinner we rode Trax to the Gateway and did some shopping :) Then we strolled around town. There is this cute little ice skating rink in the middle of a park, there were probably 20 times the amount of people allowed to skate on such a small rink skating and there was music playing. The three of us danced to the music for a while until we got too cold. Then we headed back to the hotel.
We played around for a little while and tuckered Reese out even more (she was already beyond tired, but quite hyper). She LOVES her dad. She has become quite the daddy's girl lately. SO cute!

We enjoyed a nice evening with toasts and all!

The next morning we stopped at a little bakery called Mrs. Backer's Pastry Shop and got some VERY overpriced breakfast. We did a good deed by supporting a little business though :) Then we took Trax to Temple Square. We first went to the Conference Center and had a "tour", not a normal tour. We were the only ones on the tour so the missionary said we could go as slow or fast as we wanted. We spent a little time in the actual conference room, and then quite a bit of time in a room that has paintings of past prophets and apostles. It was really cool to put faces with names. I'd like to go back and spend even more time looking at the pictures. Then we headed up to the roof. There was A LOT of planning put into that roof. For example, the structure of the building is tiered and the plants planted on the different tiers match the plants that grow on the mountains nearby according to altitude. SO COOL!
Cool view off the top of the Conference Center.
It was SO wonderful spending time with my family without the distractions of work, homework, tv, computer, errands, housework, or anything else that tends to keep us busy. I completely enjoyed myself. It couldn't have been a more perfect anniversary. Thanks Eric, I love you!