Flashback: 2014

~January~
So we started our 2014 in a pretty awesome way: by counting down with Christopher Titus at Wise Guys. I will say that was a pretty awesome way to ring in the new year. I wish I could say we were doing it again this year, but there aren't any good comedians or shows going on right now. We also got our tickets to go see Brian Regan:

~February~
February brought on a new challenge and one of my favorite Valentine's Day celebrations. Larry really outdid himself and made it pretty amazing for me. I'm still not big on celebrating it, but he made me not hate it as much as I used to:

I also realized how much of a pack rat I became with magazines:

In addition, I found a reason to forgive Wal-Mart one month a year:

~March~
In March Larry took a trip to Chicago for some training in his new position. While it was a short trip, I missed him tons! However, between this post and the surprise he got me while he was away you can see why I wanted him near:

We also got a chance to see one of my favorite comedians, Brian Regan:

I'm actually surprised I don't have a blog post about that, but it was a really fun night. It had a nice dinner, a lot of walking around downtown in heels (on my part), avoiding some Salt Lake hobo from "detailing" our car for some extra cash, and lots of laughs.

~April~
April appears to be a bit busier with our free night out (thanks HEQ!), some new home decorations, the BEST Easter I've ever had, and some unexpected car troubles. Luckily the car troubles weren't anything serious and the rest of it was all fun stuff :)

Oh yes and the kitties were extra cuddly this month:

~May~
In May we had a really fun trip to Boondocks with my brother. None of us had been and I can't say I hated it, although I might avoid the batting cages next time haha. We also went to Memphis/Mississippi to visit Mom in May, which sure made me miss her like crazy. In spite of that we had an amazing time out there and I'm so glad we got a chance to see her new neck of the woods. I'm already planning my 2015 trip to see her :)

We also took Andy to NickelCade for his birthday, as requested, and came home with a ton of random winnings:

I'm pretty sure he loved it

~June~
June was a big one for us, we finally did the Dirty Dash, which has been on my wish list for a while. I had a blast doing this, even though I banged my legs up pretty bad. Larry talks about doing it again with his brother next year so they can actually run the whole thing and do the 10K (we only did the 5K):

We also went to go see one of our favorite comedians, Bill Burr (apparently it was a big year for comedians). On our way there we went to Hollywood Connections for a quick visit and had some major flashbacks to our really early days together:

We also celebrated (aka made ourselves so sick at) our first Strawberry Days with some coworker/friends of mine:

And lastly, we went to the Airshow with Marie, Jim, Skyler, Jena, and Cailyn:

Overall June was a really fun month for us :)

~July~
In July we definitely killed it with our first Fourth of July with real fireworks (we did an amazing show!!):

We also celebrated Williams First Birthday and getting my new bike:

What's more, Larry and Skyler hiked Kings Peak (all the way!) for the first time:

They both were sore for weeks, but he's already talking about wanting to do it again haha. While they did that, I spent some time with  Cailyn and Jena at the mall where Cailyn needed to try everything on:

Such a goofy little girl, she totally has my heart! One of the funnest parts (work wise) was when my company finally went public (HQY all the way!) and we had a fun party with some French toast, truffles, gelato, and mini cider bottles:

Watching them ring the bell at NYSE gave me the chills!

~August~
In August we went camping, just us in a tent, for our first time. It was a nice, relaxing trip. I also had another company party (our usual summer party) at Smith's Ballpark. I even won some prizes from a drawing they had:

We invited Jena, Skyler, and Cailyn to come along and I think it was for the best. It was a bit more fun having Cailyn there since it was pretty heavily family oriented. But being on the actual field was exciting for me. We also babysat Cailyn for Jena and Skyler so they could have their anniversary weekend to themselves and Cailyn was a hoot to have around:

We went to the zoo for the first time this month (usually it's much earlier so this is pretty shocking to realize to me) and saw all the new exhibits. They've done an amazing job improving everything, if only they'd re-do the Reptile house and bring back the hippos and penguins!

~September~
In September we had Cailyn's 3rd birthday party (where has the time gone??), celebrated Papa's birthday, and I finally got my big shopping spree:

It was a really good month for us (or maybe that's just me?).

~October~
October was probably one of the better months (besides the fact that that's when holidays start so it goes super quickly with all the fun celebrations). First off, I got a new promotion:

Larry and I celebrated ten years together (I can hardly believe it's been that long already). We got ready for Halloween, and took a trip to Cornbelly's:

It was an awesome month, with a lot of fun! I get more and more excited about Halloween as the years pass - just so I can help celebrate the way Papa would've wanted me to :)

~November~
In November my aunt Cindy had her third daughter (adorable Olivia), whom I'm just so obsessed with! She curls up against your chest and just melts you heart. Plus watching Anna and Abby love on her is just the cutest. We got a visit from Mom, complete with our usual trip to Susan's (Chinese food) for dinner. I got the best fortune:

Part of that trip included celebrating Thanksgiving (I'll leave my comments on that alone), where I discovered I LOVE watching the parade and I think I will continue doing that in the future. After Thanksgiving is our usual Christmas decorating:

Which just brings me to my favorite month/time of year...

~December~
December is the greatest! I'm not sure why exactly, but I absolutely love Christmas time and getting gifts for family and friends and celebrating all the wonderful-ness that is this time. Although I think every driver around this time could disagree on the wonderful, happy parts I'm still saying it's amazing. December started off with us going to our first play together. Next Larry finally shaved his No Shave November Beard (we had a lot of fun taking pictures of the phases):

It was followed by my amazing birthday (I am really going to have to pull out the big gun for Larry's next year after how well he did with mine this year). This was followed by some days that I was feeling extra thankful:

 

We also found out we'll have a new niece or nephew next year: my brother Shawn and his wife, Amber, (William's parents) are pregnant again!! I love babies.

We had an amazing Christmas eve dinner and a lot of fun making our first turkey:

And Christmas Day:

We also had the Wilson's annual Christmas visit.

2014 was definitely a year to remember. Every holiday (except Thanksgiving) was my most favorite one I've had. I can't wait to make even more memories in 2015 with our trip to New York and everything else that's to come. I will say I have high hopes for this next year since 15 is a special number to Larry and me, so hopefully it lives up to the hype!

Happy New Years Eve and here's to an amazing New Year :)

Annual Wilson Christmas Visit

I really wish I had pictures to go with this post, but we had so much fun visiting with my dad's side of the family that pictures were the last thing I thought about! I know we always end up having fun and laughing a lot, but I forget how much fun and how much laughing goes with these visits.

First off, they came over on Saturday and met with our floof for the first time (everyone of them seemed to love it as much as we do). We sat and talked and talked for hours before finally realizing we had gifts to exchange. I will say I was pretty nervous about some of their gifts because I felt I could've done better (there's always someone - or some people- I feel I could've done better on their gift and this year it was half of the Wilson clan). Luckily they all seemed pretty impressed with their gifts so I felt relieved (if you guys were faking it, you're really good at it and I'm VERY appreciative of that!). I'm learning that prank boxes are even funnier and better than I realized (Will got this one and Don got this one and both of them LOVED the boxes much more than their real gift it seemed). Oscar even decided to come out and visit with them for a bit, which is so unlike our cats! After that we went out to dinner at Training Table (only one of the best sandwich places in Utah!). We had plans to go to the Zoo Lights, but the night got away from us and we decided to go to Mauna's (my grandma's on my dad's side) house to play cards and visit some more. I will say I absolutely have a blast playing cards with them because my aunt Becky and uncle Jim will join in and we just joke and laugh and joke and laugh all the time (I'm pretty sure Larry and I are mostly just laughing at all the jokes, but that's all we need). When we got home from all that Larry kept telling Oscar how he was such a good boy being so friendly and giving him loves, hopefully that will make the other cats want to visit whenever anyone else comes (even though that's pretty rare).

Sunday we didn't see them until later because they had church and we had loads of laundry to do, but again it was visiting, playing cards, dinner, and some more gift exchanging. I was so happy that Mauna and Becky's family seemed to love their gifts - we don't normally do gifts with them, but I found things that just made me think of them so I decided I had to get them. I got Mauna a cute frame from Quilted Bear with a picture of Larry and me in it that she wouldn't stop smiling about and hugging (I'm SO not complaining here by the way) and I got Becky's family a corn hole/bean bag game (they couldn't stop talking about how they were excited to take it camping, which made me totally light up inside). I love love love gift giving!!

Monday I had to work so we didn't visit with them until later again, but it was our usual card playing and hanging out. The last nights are always so hard because this time we knew we had to leave early so we weren't up too late for work the next day, but I always want to stay until they kick us out (although that has yet to happen). Luckily there was talks of them coming out in July for a family reunion/camping trip so I'm really looking forward to that happening. They'll still be out for Christmas, but at least we'll get two visits next year :)

Christmas 2014

I've posted it all over, but I'll say it again here: this Christmas was one for the books. Everything went to plan, nothing caused issues, we got to see a lot of our families, we got A TON of cool, fun stuff, and it was just overall awesome!

I would say the only down part is the kitties woke me up at 6:30. I would've gone back to sleep, but I saw yellow and red lights flashing in our room and had no idea why (although my sleepy brain thought maybe it was Santa, once I woke up I really wondered). Then I threw open our drapes to see:

Finally! Some snow, and to wake up Christmas morning to this was just the best wake up call ever! No way could I go back to sleep after that. I got up, went online, and texted my mom a bit then around 7:30 I realized I waited long enough and Larry had slept enough so I went in and bugged him for half an hour to get him up. We finally got up and opened the gifts my mom had shipped over (we knew we'd be talking to her throughout the day so I figured I should know what she got us). After that we got ready and headed to Marie's for breakfast. The drive always takes us a little while, but the food is always so yummy! We ate, opened gifts, and visited for a bit. Then we headed over to my grandma's to do lunch with her, my aunts, cousins, and Andy. This was probably my highlight because my little cousins just flipped their lids when they saw our gifts to them. Abby even shouted out "best Christmas EVER!" when she saw hers. Anna kept telling me how we got her a never before seen doll for hers and seemed pretty excited. After we ate we Skyped with Mom for a little bit, it was so nice seeing her and being able to spend this day with her (even if it was from afar).

After that I wasn't sure the day could get much better, but we came home and got to open our gifts (while playing the Netflix fireplace screen and turning on the heater...I'm so clever haha) and that was pretty much the cherry to my day. The kitties loved the bed we got them and the toy balls. We also got them a wheat grass growing kit, but those will take a while to grow to see how much they take to that. I surprised Larry with a WiiU (He'd been talking about wanting one since at least August) and he made sure to crack into that quickly and start playing. I got tons of books, movies, and decorations for the house (yay!) so I'm set for a while. I also found out I'm the best at getting copy-cat presents, I would say like 5 of the ones I got others ended up being duplicates of some sort, but it's okay because most were fine being duplicates and those that weren't I was able to get return labels printed off quickly. Oh yeah, the best part? The snow was falling all day and pretty much followed us around Utah!



This was the end of the day.
If you look closely you can see the flakes
Falling a little (next to the car)

I am so happy with how Christmas went this year. The only drag is knowing we have to go to bed at a decent time for work tomorrow, but oh man am I looking forward to this weekend! The Wilson's will be in town and we'll get to visit with them (I always look forward to their trips out here and playing games at Mauna's!). I guess that means I have a lot of cleaning to get done between now and then so I better get going.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE !!!!

Christmas Eve 2014

Christmas Eve this year sure kicked some past C.E. butt, I had so much fun getting things ready. First off, I decided I was going to make our first turkey dinner this year - I've always wanted to try it out and since all my sisters and/or sisters-in-law seem to have done one of their own I felt it was time for me to know. So we spent Tuesday night getting the brine cooked, seasons mixed, and Larry even helped clean the turkey and remove the gross parts. It was so nice, I felt like it was more our first turkey dinner than just mine.

Random Pics from around the house today (clockwise from top left):
1 more day(s)!, Our Christmas tree all lit up and pretty,
my lovely Chris Pinetree (get it? Haha), and all our Christmas snacks
And sweets we have!

This morning was even better, Larry had to work so I watched a couple movies (It's a Wonderful Life & Love Actually), texted with family, played with the kitties, drank more homemade hot chocolate and tidied the home a little. Then at 3 he was done working so we started the turkey. I won't lie, I was nervous it'd get screwed up and we wouldn't really have a dinner and I'd never know how to finally make a turkey. After that I took a shower and started A Christmas Story (such a cute one!), before that ended the turkey was done and I finished up the sides. Larry was so helpful getting the food ready, I set the table and then took like a million pictures of everything haha

I think even just smelling the turkey kicked in that tryptophan effect ha ha so after eating I've felt like I could just pass out at a moments notice. But I'm not ready for Christmas Eve to be over with even if I am ready for Christmas Day to be here. Luckily Larry agreed it was as yummy as I thought and was nice enough to share it with the kitties (only Minnie seemed to care that much). I swear she's not my favorite (I love them all equally), but she's the only one who was in the picture areas today, like this one:

I was playing with her all day where I'd make her come by the floof and then play wrestle with her and so when we went to lay down to watch our show she sat there waiting for us to play again and her cute little face was too hard to resist taking a picture.

I will say as much as I miss my family who aren't close to us, I'm getting used to it being Larry and me and I've absolutely loved celebrating together. We sure make a good team and I love our little life together with our three kitties in our cute little home. I love that we can still talk and have nice little conversations and I still learn new things about him.

Reasons My Husband is Awesome - Birthday Edition

So I haven't been big on birthday celebrations for the last several years, but man this year sure changed that around! Larry made this year the best birthday I've had in a long time.

The week started off bah humbug ish - my theory is it was due to the absence of snow (it was the 18th of December, why would there NOT be snow at that point?), but the day definitely turned my spirits around. Here are just some highlights from my birthday:

• Tons of Facebook reminders made the morning start off right.
• I decided to dress up a little, just for the heck of it, and I think that also helped make it a good morning.
• I really wanted snow from Mother Nature, so the storm, albeit as brief as it was, we had was just happiness at the window for me :)
• Getting text messages from my family were just about the best (the one from my cousin was my favorite)
• Being embarrassed by my work with the Birthday Song, complete with a spinning chair (I had my hands on my face at this point so that part I could be making up haha)
• Getting my own personal brownies as my birthday treat from work (I LOOOOVE brownies!)
• Getting scared by Larry when I got home (all in good fun, it was actually hilarious!)

The staged area Larry set up for when I got home

The awesome birthday balloons and cute little tree Larry got me. Along with a snowflake in my card saying my gift is what I always wanted: a shopping spree :) (also the fact that he made the snowflake is just so special to me!).

• Going out to Dinner at Zupas. Larry offered to either make dinner or take me out, so I chose Zupas :)
• Coming home and watching Christmas Vacation. Larry isn't big on Christmas movies (he thinks they're a bit cheesy) so the fact that he sat down and watched one with me meant the world! Almost as much as the snowflake gift card in my card :)

 

See? Cute little snowflake!

• While it got sad after a while, we found out the cats are DEATHLY afraid of balloons! It's the craziest thing to be scared of, but all of them don't like them, Oscar and Minnie absolutely hate them. So of course we chased them around a little bit. Once I saw how traumatized they were I stopped and gave them loves and a treat, but the beginning part was hilarious to me. All the color balloons are now deflated and they still hate them haha.

So overall, like I said, it was one of the best birthdays! I got snow from Mother Nature and (partly) from Larry, I'm getting a shopping spree, I got some funny cards, a lot of people showed they thought of me and it was so nice. I'm definitely going to have to start making up for Larry next year.

Oh and I posted this about 35 minutes ago:

Anyone who was expecting an amazing blog post since it took me over 30 minutes...I'm sorry. Haha.

That Time Larry Did the No Shave November

So this past November Larry did the whole No Shave November thing, only he didn't stop at the mustache, he did the whole thing! Normally I'm not a huge fan of facial hair, but I think he pulled it off really well (I may be biased though haha). Well he was itching very much to shave it all off finally and I decided to document the different "steps":

We had a lot of fun with these shots, if you couldn't tell. He's officially all shaved up and cut his hair, but I didn't take those pictures because his razor stopped working halfway through so he had wait until he got a new one. He's so silly though, I loved taking these pictures and seeing him with the different "facial hair styles". Gotta love the ones who make ya laugh huh?

Speaking of hair, I was playing around with mine (I like doing that lately) and I really liked how it turned out one night:

Ignore the cheesy bathroom pictures :)

Hopefully I'll have some fun holiday posts coming up, but other than my company party (which was a BLAST this year!) and hopefully soon-to-be light seeing that's all I have so far.

That Time We Went to a Play

So a while back I decided I wanted to go to a Holiday-related show/event and I originally wanted to see a TSO concert, but when I looked at tickets I only saw the Wednesday at 4 show (which obviously wasn't going to work with our schedules). After that disappointment I got to thinking about how I had always wanted to go see a play at Desert Star Playhouse and after looking at their options we decided on the play "How the Grouch Stole Christmas".

The Marquee

Last night we went and I have to say it was a better experience than I expected. We made sure to reserve a table for 2 near the front and it was the best possible choice for seating, just look at how close to the stage we were:



This isn't zoomed in at all either

The food wasn't too bad, the singing was pretty amazing, the acting was hilarious (they tried to have comedy for all sorts of audiences), and there was this piano player that had some serious skills! The only part that I didn't like as much was when they came into the audience, I became so afraid they'd make me sing and NO WAY was I doing that, but luckily they passed by our table (which goes to support how great of a spot we got). The seating was a little tight, but it wasn't too bad the way they had it set up and now that I think about it today the audience part was actually pretty funny (one of the performers got way into singing "Let It Go" and knocked her headpiece off and you could tell she got a little embarrassed but it was hilarious, my cheeks literally hurt from laughing so hard).

The bottom left was our table, Top left was a poster they had up of the show
Top middle was the entertaining piano player section (to our left, right side of the stage)
Top right was the extension of the stage for this play. Bottom Right is us :)

Overall it was a really fun experience (I want to say Larry laughed more than I did during it) and I'm glad we went. Hopefully next year we can do TSO, but we've had an fun time celebrating this year so far. Only 19 more days till Christmas now, I should be finishing all my shopping today so yay!