2013: A Review

January
This was our first New Year celebrations in our own place. We had a lot of fun creating our own memories especially when this happened:

Larry got an amazing job offer and this was also when we found out my family was separating to new states. Great Up and Down start to 2013 for us.

February

 A good friend of mine got married in February and it was so fun to see how different Polynesian weddings can really be. We had a lot of fun celebrating with her on her big day. I also got my new job as Ops Specialist on my team this month (though I didn't technically start till later, it was good to know I got it and could look forward to it this month). Not Super eventful, but we were focusing a lot on wedding stuff back then.

March

Um..I found a cool new site and made up a new phrase ("Accountability Pants"). Apparently March is a slow month for me/us.

April

April also seems to be a slow one for us. I got addicted to Vampire Diaries (and still am to this day!), we got our wedding invitations to mail out. And I REALLY got into running and working out. This biggest thing though is my brother, Shawn, got married. We all LOVE Amber and Baby Will is the best new addition to our family (though he wasn't technically an addition at this point).

May

 

 

I got to have my Bridal Shower (thrown by my awesome Mom) that month. It was so much fun seeing everyone and seeing all the fun new house stuff we got :)


June

This, of course, was our biggest month! We got married and got to go on our amazing honeymoon! I already want to go back to Hawaii (just with more money this time haha). It's a day I will never forget!

We also celebrated 1 year in our Condo this month! We were on our honeymoon at the time, but I sure didn't forget :)

July

July was a pretty eventful month. First my brother came home and we had a fun time surprising mom with his homecoming (perfect timing, it was right before they had to leave for TN), second Baby Will was born (who is the cutest baby boy ever!), and third our Minnie was born (but we didn't get her until August) It was definitely fun welcoming all the new people (even if they've been a part of the family for a while).
We also had our first post-wedding outing to Park City. It was completely planned last minute, but I had SO much fun riding the roller coaster, slide, eating food, and doing the zipline (a bucket list item). Ending with some ice cream made it that much better :)



August

August was also pretty eventful, we got Minnie:

 We also got some Bucket List things crossed off (like going to see Three Days Grace, hikes, hiking attempting Kings Peak, and both of us finally having our guns):

Unfortunately, August brought us goodbyes to Mom and Will who moved to MS for his promotion. It's been sad to not have them around, but we have our weekly Skype calls with everyone and it's really brought me closer to Larry (I've heard that before, but didn't believe it till now).

September

The biggest thing in September was when we got to visit Cindy and see her amazing new house! We also did a hike and saw Bear World. It was a short trip, but I had so much fun on it! It reminded me just how much I love my family!

October

October was a big Traveling month. We were able to go to the Bahamas and do Disneyworld in Florida. It was a pretty amazing trip (minus the awful hotels!). We got to see some pretty cool sights in the Bahamas (including close up 6-ft sharks!) and I've ALWAYS wanted to go to Disneyworld! It got expensive and I'm pretty sure I'm still trying to get over how much we spent (I still really hate spending money these days because of this trip), but in the end it was SO worth the memories!

November

In November, my sister, Ariel, got married so I got to fly out to Indiana and help them celebrate. It was such a happy time and I'm SO glad I got another chance to hang out with my dad's side of the family. I swear our visits are never long or often enough, but I LOVE them every time they come up. I'm hoping now that everyone has moved out of state we'll get a chance to go out and see everyone more.
I also learned on this trip that Minnesota is WAY more exciting than I thought and their airport is SO cool, I want to plan a trip over there now to see Mall of America haha.
Larry also got his job offer in November so we found out he'll be working from home and got a nice pay "package" with the offer. One of the things that concerned us is how long it would take him to find a job and now we don't have to worry and it's a better opportunity than we could've wished for!.
And the biggest thing (for me at least) was Mom got to visit for Thanksgiving so we got to spend a couple days with her and Will. It was a pretty awesome Thanksgiving!

December

December has been full of decorating for Christmas, getting ready for New Years, visiting MANY relative for the holidays, enjoying my birthday, and just trying to take breathers when we can. The biggest thing to note is Larry got his wisdom teeth out so we've been working on him eating regular food and healing as quickly (but also safely) as possible. We've got some fun new games and toys to play with from the holidays. Tonight, for New Years Eve we're going to go see Christopher Titus at Wise Guys in West Valley so we're really excited to end our year on such a fun note (not to mention it feels like the first real adult New Years Eve celebrations we've done!)


All in all 2013 was really good to us, we got married, got to celebrate one year in our condo, did a lot of fun summer activities and ate a TON of food during the holidays. We said some goodbyes, got a few new additions and just had fun as much as we could. I'm SO looking forward to 2014 and hope we can make it an even better year.

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!!!!

December Catch-up/Christmas Stuff

So December has been a crazy and somewhat busy month. We had MANY Christmas' to celebrate with family this year. Let's recap what we can (something are going to be represented by pictures):

First Christmas:

We did the annual Cameron Christmas Party. Larry's Mom's side does a party usually the weekend before Christmas where we eat, play bingo for our gifts, and visit with the family (usually followed with pictures). It's a tradition I've come to really look forward to. I've rarely seen his mom's side of the family and it seems every year there's a new cousin to be introduced to. Lets also say that I proved to Larry how great I am when it comes to my sixth sense of knowing when people are pregnant or about to be engaged (I'm SO good at guessing it they were only like 3 months along and I knew).

Christmas #2 and 3:

Christmas 2 and 3 brought a TON of driving for us! We had plans to go to Shawn and Amber's to visit with them (along with Colby, his girlfriend Ashley and, of course, baby Will-who I just can't get enough of!) and do an early dinner (a VERY yummy baked potato bar!) and then after spending a couple hours there we would go to my Grandma's and do our Christmas with Cindy and her family. However halfway to T-Ville I realized we left my purse back in Heber (quite the drive back), but figured I'd pick it up another day because it was dark and VERY snowy. After we got to Grandma's we figured out our house keys were in the purse and so we HAD to go back. So we spent like 2 hours at Shawn & Amber's, 30 minutes at Grandma's and about 3 or 4 hours just driving, it was scary. But it was so fun to see Baby Will's reaction to his gift (the pic above Amber sent me, so cute!) and I was pretty excited to give my Grandma's gift to her so it made it pretty much worth it (her gift coming later).

Christmas 4:
There aren't really any pics for this one, but it was actually ON Christmas day. Larry and I drove up to his Mom's new house in Syracuse to see it for the first time. It is SO cute! They did good on house hunting. She showed us around and we reminisced for a little and then she fed us a yummy breakfast casserole (that, I won't lie, I thought I would really hate, but it was really good) and we reminisced some more (I got to see a report card of Larry's that definitely wasn't his norm that's for sure). Once back home, we opened our gifts and then got on Skype to chat with Mom, Will, Grandma, Cindy and other family members about what we got and what we've done and what we'll be doing for the rest of the day. It was so nice seeing everyone (even if it was on a computer).

Christmas 5 (yes there were really this many):

This one was this past weekend with the Wilson's. They came down to move Ariel and her new hubby (so weird!) back to Idaho for college and so we got to visit with them yesterday. It was a fun day of catching up, telling stories, and playing games (we've become big board gamers!). I've never played Taboo before and I have to say it was one of the more fun games I've played. Girls beat the pants off the boys! Then I went over to my Grandma Wilson's to play Apples to Apples (and a card game called Golf) with them. It's always SO much fun playing games over there because we always laugh so hard. This time we got someone to spray water out of their nose! Seriously! Haha

Other things to note this month:

Larry got the rest of his wisdom teeth out this past Saturday (they pulled two a couple months ago and then decided to pull the other two before the end of the year) so he's been taking things easy. It took 1 1/2 hours to get just ONE tooth out and they rubbed the side of his mouth so raw it literally looks like a layer of skin came off. It's so red and swollen, I felt so bad. Last time I didn't go back with him and I decided to this time and it was one of the hardest things to watch. Luckily he chose to watch Tangled so when it got real bad I would just watch with him. There were numerous times I wanted to push the dentist away and say "never mind, we're good, he'll grow into them!"

The 18th was my birthday...that's all there is to know about that day. I got a nice treat at work and Larry took me out to dinner (Yummy Texas Roadhouse!!!) so that was that.

I got to hang out with my brother, Andy, on the 24th which was fun. We went to lunch at Zupas, walked Valley Fair Mall (not for any real reason as you can't actually buy anything worth anything at that mall), and then went to see Anchorman 2 (I'd pass on it if I were you).

We also got this awesome desk and file cabinet for Larry's new Work Station for when he works from home. It's AMAZING!!

And we've become obsessed with playing our new Firefly Game. If you've seen the show, it's amazing. If you haven't, it's SUPER confusing. We LOVE LOVE it!

And now onto my awesome gift ideas I did this year (I was REALLY proud of my gift giving this year, aside from a couple people I felt I could've done better on, I'll make it up next year though):

For my Grandma:

My Grandma has gone on and on this year about how she doesn't "need" anything so to not get her a gift. It's really hard to get something for someone who has everything she wants or needs or has the means to get it and will. But I happened to stumble upon this on Pinterest and decided to replicate it with the grandkid's names. I was going to use extra tiles to put Grandkids along the bottom, but after designing a bunch of different ways to place the names (I believe there are 15 now!) I found a cute way to put Grandkids in the center and decided to highlight a little so it stood out. Many steps later here's the final result:

I will say she seemed to love it AND I heard a couple comments of "we should make something like that for our family." I think I did good on hers.

For some Family Gift ideas (for my dad's side and Cindy's family):

 

I decided to have some fun with these. I've come to believe that nothing brings a family closer than having a Game Night. Larry and I try and do them as often as possible, but it's harder with only two people. I found some age appropriate games for each family (so that ALL members could play at least one) and included some fun toys and candy. I got REALLY crafty this year (much more so when compared to my norm) and had some fun making tags and coming up with a fun little poem and everything. I can't believe I didn't lose my mind a little bit, I actually had a lot of fun and am looking forward to doing more things for around the house.

 

Overall Christmas was...much different than I'm used to, but we definitely made the most of it. I'm still of the mind that it is SO much more fun to give gifts than to receive them. Don't get me wrong, who doesn't love getting gifts, but I SO look forward to seeing people open their gifts when I'm that proud of them :)

I even got the first 3 birthday of the year out of the way so go me! Haha. Hope everyone else had a great Christmas, only 2 more days (well really 1.2 this late in the day) till 2014!! I'm going to try and post my "year end review" post tomorrow, but Larry got me a nice present and we're going to go see comedian Christopher Titus at Wise Guys (woot woot a real adult New Years Eve!).

Motivational #4

I was doing really good there for a while, not needing any more Motivational posts. I think I even said to Larry one night that I was going to stop them because I had reached the happiness level I had always wanted. But, man, have these past few weeks been full of rain for me. I decided I needed a little pick-me-up. This saying just rings really true to me right now, here's to hoping my rainbow comes soon.


But just to avoid the doom and gloom this may be perceived as, here's some pictures that make me really happy:

I just love these three so much

Christmas Gift Idea - Neighbors

So this year I decided to do a fun gift for our neighbors, I saw something about Caramel Apples being seasonal this time of year and thought wouldn't it be fun to make some for our neighbors? Well, Larry thought it was a bad idea since he doesn't think people would "trust" the gift; so then I thought well if we give them the items to make it themselves maybe it would be more "trustworthy". So I, of course, went to Pinterest where I found this pin and kind of went with it and added our own twist to it. We still need to buy our apples (happening this weekend) and print off our tags, but we got the kits mostly put together tonight and I have to say I get more excited to hand them out. 

 

Here take a look:

Minnie helping us clean our mess.
Yes, there are 11 total kits w/4 apples each!

The caramel and toppings:
Mini Chocolate Chips, Nuts, and Sprinkles

Here's the brands and sticks we got.

Here's our copy of the tags we'll be attaching
Directions to make the caramel and a nice greeting tag

I'm super excited to get them finished and out this weekend, hopefully everyone will be home and maybe, just maybe, I'll actually knock on their door to say hi so we can get to know them and have them know us. We have a few newbies in our building so hopefully it will make them feel like we're less strangers.

 

I'm actually pretty proud of some of my gift ideas this year, I've got a fun one for my Grandma, but I can't post that one till after Christmas - she might read this.  

 

Happy Holidays everyone!!

Christmas Decoration Time!!!

So I don't feel this does the right justice to our Christmas decorations this year, but it's good enough. I love decorating for Christmas, starting November 1 it's all I think about. I know a lot of people who decorated early, but I held off a little while. I did start listening to Christmas music mid November though, just to keep the season a little longer. Luckily I was able to wait till Larry could help this year, normally I put stuff up on Black Friday, but Larry works those. Last year was our first year in the condo and I did this all by myself and it wasn't nearly as much fun, so I waited till Sunday so we could do it together and it was much better.

 

I've decided that our two shelves are going to be my "seasonal" shelves, so each season, holiday, or random occasion I'm going to try decorating them in those ways. I actually started it with Thanksgiving, but didn't take any pictures of it...next year.

 

I've got about 90% of my shopping done, I just have a few things that I'm waiting for the stores to stock up on before I can finish, then I'll be wrapping like crazy. One of my favorite parts of the season is seeing gifts under the tree. Not because they are gifts, but because it makes the tree just look more full and balanced.

 

Kitties are already having a fun time with the new stuff in the house, especially Minnie, it being her first Christmas all the ornaments have become toys for her.

 

'Tis the Season to be Jolly and I've just got a bucket full of it over here :)

 

Hope everyone else is having as much fun as we are

Happy Turkey Day

Oh how I just love the holidays!!

Thanksgiving this year was probably one of the better ones I've been a part of, it was so simple and relaxing for us, which made it that much better. We got to spend quite a few hours at Larry's grandma's and hung out with a small part of that family and catch up with his mom. Then we went over to mine and got to hang out with everyone on my side. I didn't take any pictures this year, my camera is currently full of pics from Florida and I need to get a new memory card or just delete those ones and refill with Holiday stuff.

Anyways, It was so nice seeing Mom and Will, even Shawn, Amber, and Baby Will came over. It was SO nice playing with the baby, his smile is just the most infectious thing ever! This year, like last, I had Friday off, but Larry didn't so I went back over and just hung out with Mom, Will, and Andy. We met up with Grandma and Larry for lunch at Zupas...YUM! Then we went walking around the mall and Jordan Landing a little bit. They left yesterday to head back home, as did Cindy and the whole Perkins clan. That was the least fun part of this weekend.

I didn't take a picture of these decorations up,
But this is most of what we had for T-Giving

This year I've narrowed down my Thankful list to one that encompasses all: Today's Technology (this is a repeat of my Facebook post, but I'm putting it here too). I'm SO thankful for technology for the following reasons:

1. It has given Larry so many job opportunities, which has helped our future.
2. It has helped extend the fur babies' lives, helping them stay healthy and live longer.
3. It has helped me stay connected to my long distance family by doing Skype calls each week/month.
4. It has made it so family can come together, whether it's for the holidays or for weddings.
5. It has brought me more family over the years, if it weren't for technology I don't think I'd be in contact with my dad's side of the family, and I don't think I could be any more grateful for that!

I'm sure there's more to be happy with, but that's my biggest ones.

 

So to everyone out there: Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Years!

Rant for the Day

So I'm driving to work today and a certain news station (which will not be named here) comes on the radio with an "ad" for two stories they'll be covering tonight. The two stories they decided to share were: Why you shouldn't take second helpings on Thanksgiving and Is Facebook envy affecting your happiness. This got me to thinking. My first though being "Really?! That's what the news is covering now?"

 

I have to say I've gotten into the habit of avoiding reading the news because it's either really depressing or the most ridiculous news ever. I'm sorry, but I don't want to hear about my neighbors being shot in the middle of the night and then hear about how Facebook Envy could affect my happiness.

 

Why don't we cover advances in science and medicine, I see tons of posts going around about people who are dying from cancer or who aren't catching things quick enough. I hear the tests for early detection are beyond being even kind of affordable, but why? Why make it harder to live healthier?

 

Or how about we try and restore some faith in humanity and cover more topics of people who are helping out and making it more public as to where you can go to help out, Thanksgiving is coming up, the time to be thankful for what you have (that's NOT materialistic) and to spread that.

 

People should not HAVE to post this:

We should make it more public instead of having a 5 min segment between the depressing and joke news.

 

If you want to know where to help more this holiday season you can follow any of these links:

 

Help The Homeless

 

The Food Bank

 

And help our furry friends and the Humane Society

 

 

Thanks for listening and for any help you do give!

Luck ain't got nothin' on my man

Let me tell you something, Larry is a lucky, lucky man! It's a little like this:

Ha ha, but no seriously. He's told me throughout our whole relationship that he's lucky. Anytime he waits until the last minute to buy the next big thing (if he was ever into the next big thing), or anything along those lines, I'd tell him he better hope he finds it in time, his response is something like "I don't need hope, I'm lucky!" To which I respond with an eye roll and a "yeah, whatever."

It took me a long time to see it, but it's true. The latest proof: Larry works at a job (OMG I know), and for about two years now we've known that job was going away. You see, CVS bought out his company and was slowly eliminating all the departments (since there aren't really any CVS pharmacies out here). Luckily they were offering this pretty nice severance package to those that waited till the end. Me, being a planner and knowing Larry's skills, experience, and education, figured it wouldn't take him long to find a new job and was okay with him waiting till the end. He, however, just said he'd find something with no worries because he's lucky. This brings us to almost two weeks ago when CVS reps came in and said they loved Larry so much they just had to have him on his team. They offered him a job right on the spot to their offices in Chicago, Larry told them we weren't interested in relocating to Chicago, so they told him they'd make it a stay at home job! They are giving him a raise and offering bonuses and everything! So now, starting Jan 1, he officially has a new job, no "job hunting" required and starting sometime in March he'll be doing it from our office here. I mean, this job is almost too-good-to-be-true, but it is! I'm not sure how he does it, I swear he has some sort of magic charisma that works on everyone! I just hope to ride his lucky coattails the rest of my life ;) ha ha

So congratulations to Larry, my babe, the hubs! You done well and I'm so happy for you!
For those wondering (because this has come up) this does NOT affect any baby plans.

Another Wedding to Celebrate

So this past weekend I got to fly into Indiana to celebrate my sister, Ariel's, wedding day. Well really it was her reception, they did the actual wedding part on the 1st of November and, as much as I REALLY wanted to be there for both I could only go out there for one and we decided the reception would be better. It was really pretty the way we got the church decorated; I wish I had real pictures to post of it, but I got caught up on the fun of it that I only have "getting ready" pictures of the church so they aren't as special, but I figure pictures of them were cuter ;)

It was a lot of fun meeting a whole bunch of new "bonus" family members. I swear each year my family gets bigger and bigger, but I'm not complaining one bit.

Some of these pictures are from their engagements and the others are from the temple on the 1st, but it gives you a good gyst of what they look like together. He's so sweet with her, he basically worships the ground she walks on and she is so cute all bride-y. She definitely soaked up the celebrations for them and she looked so pretty in her dress. They definitely work well together and I'm happy to have a new brother-in-law.

I realized this will have been the 6th wedding I was a part of or went to (or was in) in a, like, 15 month period...whew! I'm tuckered out!

So Congratulations to the newlyweds! I hope the transition to the next phase of life goes smoothly for you guys and I'm so happy I could be a part of part of your big day (no that wasn't a typo).

Halloween Post

So I have to say, this year I was REALLY pumped to celebrate Halloween (I think this is a big step in healing!), I made plans a month in advance as to when Larry and I would go get costumes and a pumpkin. I went around stores in late September to look at decorations I wanted, took tons of pictures of all of it, had a craft night planned with Jena to do Halloween crafts and even started making a Pinterest board for Halloween stuff. After seeing how one of our neighbors dressed their doorway up:

You can't tell me that's not cute.
The banner says "Happy Haunting"

I thought I could do something like that, I was SO ready for it this year! And then somewhere along the lines I somehow missed all of it and ran out of time, or something. The furthest I could go with Halloween this year was pathetic:

Pumpkin for work
Soap dispenser for home
Aside from painted nails, this was seriously all I did.

Let's just say when your parents do their house like this:

You suddenly have these high standards for your own. The problem of it all was we planned everything for after our trip and by that time we were so done spending money that we really didn't want to do more of it. I did get my craft night with Jena, but I wasn't able to finish everything so I figured I'd finish it this year and put it up next year (I'm already starting to get ideas for next year).

The good of all this, however, is that I still got to do my favorite part: Watching scary movies while cuddled up to the hubby and handing out candy to Trick-Or-Treaters! So while this year was a bit of a letdown, hopefully I can make up for it next year (or for Christmas!!! Ha ha).

Oh and guess what (I can't believe I forgot to mention this already), but my sister, Ariel, got married! I can't believe it! But I'm so excited for them, and now this week I get to fly out to Indiana to help celebrate at her reception. I'll try and bring back lots of pics! Happy Holidays everyone (Yes, we're already there this year!).