Sorrynotsorry about the whole never posting thing. I’ve definitely been a slacker the past couple months…but I do feel like I have a valid excuse. The past 2 months have completely flown by. I can’t believe it’s January and I can’t believe we’ve welcomed in a new year! Blows. My. Mind. I’m hoping to get my butt back into gear with regular posts this year…and I figured I’d kick it off with just a general update on life these past couple months.
1. Thanksgiving is my Number One favorite holiday and this year did not disappoint! My brother and sister-in-law and their baby came for the festivities and we seriously had such a great time. We all pitched in to the meal making which resulted in one pretty epic feast. In fact, I was reading one of my favorite food blogs where the author and some readers were listing their Thanksgiving menus, and as I read I kept thinking that our menu was 10 times better. And since it was a small crowd, things stayed blessedly casual (read: not stress inducing).
2. Are any of you guys big Black Friday shoppers? The only time I’ve ever really taken advantage was a couple years ago when I bought my camera safely from my living room couch via target.com. But for all intents and purposes, I’ve never braved the crowds on the infamous day. But this year, Linda suggested we go…and with the whole Black-Friday-really-starts-on-Thursday deal, I wasn’t too worried. We waited until about 7 pm before we took the plunge. We thankfully missed the crazy opening rush, but it was still very busy. We ended up only getting stuff from Kohl’s. And while we waited in line for probably over45 minutes, I felt like we got some pretty good deals and, overall, I think I’d do it again.
3. Having family in town, I thought I’d snag the extra hands to snap some family pics for us. Poor Wendy was absolutely freezing as soon as I took her out of her carrier. So while she’s screaming in almost every picture, I still love how the pictures turned out…because that is my screaming baby, folks.
4. Soooo…any Gilmore Girls fans out there? When Ben started school up, I started watching the series for the first time. Ben teased that I wouldn’t have the baby until I finished the series, and lo and behold, I went into labor the night after I watched the last episode. I was excited for the resurgence-A Year in the Life-and I watched it as soon as I could. I felt like they had one goal in mind while making these episodes, and since they had 6 hours to fill, they had a few too many random/unnecessary side stories in my opinion. However, they stayed true to the Gilmore Girls quality and I was so glad they made sure pretty much every character had an appearance. Also, Emily Gilmore’s story was basically my favorite thing ever.
5. When we went to Alaska, we stored all of our stuff with Ben’s mom’s things. Somehow, when we moved to Flagstaff, several of our things went MIA. We’d go to look for our frying pans or our Camelbaks and come up empty handed. Unfortunately, when we went to pull out our Christmas stuff we realized we had a tree but we were short all our ornaments and other decor. Super sad day. But I realized we had an opportunity to start collecting ornaments in a different color scheme and got pretty excited. Our first Christmas married, we bought a ton of ornaments in sage green and light blue. While I love the colors and the ornaments we have, I’ve occasionally wished for more traditional decor. With only one box of ornaments, it didn’t compare to the totally decked out tree we normally have…but dare I say I liked the results a little more???
6. The Sunday before Christmas we had Wendy’s baby blessing (a post on that is forthcoming). My brother and brother-in-law came down to go hunting and they surprised me by bringing my dad too! He came for the blessing and then drove Wendy and I back up to Springville so we didn’t have be alone while Ben was out hunting. It worked out well because we were able to spend Christmas with my family and then go on to Idaho to see Ben’s fam.
7. Being in Utah so close to Christmas meant I was able to go to the Lifferth family Christmas party. It has seriously been so long since I’ve been able to make it to one of these family functions and I was so excited to go! I didn’t get any pictures at the actual event but rest assured that it was awesome. The food was delish and it was so so good to catch up with family. I did not have enough time to talk to everyone I wanted to! There was an ugly sweater contest, so you can bet we went in our holiday finest.
Pa and Linda both won something for their ugly sweaters, and I made Pa’s so I pretty much won too;) The pictures aren’t great but dad’s sweater is a log fireplace complete with hanging stockings. Linda’s got a bedazzled pic of her husband Eric, who’s sporting a rather hideous mustache and chops. It was a hit!
8. I was so excited to get some pictures of Wendy with Ben’s grandparents. These are priceless to me 🙂
9. It was also great to let Wendy meet her cousins. Ben’s side was especially 😍😍😍over her.
10. On our way back to Arizona, we stopped again at my parents’ to break up our trip and ended up staying an extra day because Utah county got some crazy snow. I used the extra time as a chance to take advantage of my mom’s sewing room and made Wendy a little shirt. It didn’t turn out suuuuper great but I had a blast making it. There’s something rewarding about starting and finishing a project in the same day. It got me all excited about getting my sewing on and my mom allowed me to raid her stash so I can make more baby clothes!
Good end to a good year:)
pineconesandcactus.com 