Finishing Up Christmas...

Okay, so I put "to be continued..." at the bottom of my last post with the hopes that I would remember to take some pictures at my in-laws house and post those on here as well, but I forgot to take pictures!! Oh well, here's what I got!

1. A mug tree! (It's so cute, it's cast-iron and has 6 really big mugs to go on it)
2. Picture Frames that actually match! (I've REALLY been needing these, and they're also super cute - a black border with brown on the inner border)
3. Some cute stuff to decorate my kitchen (it says "Cafe" and it's made out of wood, it will look awesome on my red wall once I get shelfs for it, but for now it makes a really cute center piece for my table, then there's also a cute dish for serving appetizers or breads or something that I just love)

Then Jon got...
1. A 2-burner propane heater for ice fishing (Yay! Now I'll be even more toasty warm inside our tent!)
2. A gift card to Game Crazy so he can get more videogame stuff (eh.) <---Just kidding Josh, it's awesome!

It was really fun being over there and being able to watch all of the nieces and nephews open their presents (they are just so dang cute!) and being able to see Jon's family and stuff. Anyway, that was the end of our Christmas, now for some stories that happened slightly before Christmas!

First, my neighbor made some cookies for us, and her daughter Cameron (who is 7) wanted to come and give them to us (she's my partner in killing weeds and spiders). So she came over on Christmas Eve, only she didn't quite make it to the door. I heard my dogs barking outside, and after a while decided to go get them to be quiet, only when I went outside I saw that they had Cameron cornered just inside my fence! She had her hands up by her face and was too scared to move, so I called the dogs over and put them in the house and went to go help her. That poor girl had tears just streaming down her face and I'm asking her if she's okay and if the dogs tried to bite her or anything (luckily they didn't!), and she holds out the cookies and says, "My m-mom m-m-made these f-for you...M-m-m-merry Chris-(sniffle)-tmas". It just broke my heart, I felt so bad! Especially since she usually comes over to play with them! I've never seen my dogs act like that before, I mean sure they bark, but usually it's at people who aren't scared of them so they back off. I've never seen them bark like that at a kid before. I'm sure Molly was just wanting to play and was giving in to the influence of Ricky, but I think that Ricky forgot I was home and was trying to "protect" our house. It's a good thing they're both lap dogs and couldn't really do any harm, but I still felt bad. Don't worry though, Cameron was okay and she even invited me over to see her Christmas presents a few days later. :)

The other story happened the Tuesday before Christmas. Jon and I decided to go ice-fishing so he could try out his new powered ice-auger. So we got home from work around 2AM, went to bed around 2:30-2:45AM, and then woke up at 3AM (at least that was my schedule, Jon just didn't sleep because he was too excited). Once we were driving and heading towards Scofield I started to doze off. Well, around Provo area (this is about 4:45AM) Jon is cruising along at about 65 or so with the cruise-control on, when he hits some black ice! The roads were perfectly clear before that, but suddenly there it was! So he says something (I can't remember what) and it wakes me up to our truck swerving over all three or four lanes of traffic while Jon's trying to get control of the truck! As we're sliding, I'm preparing for us to crash, especially when we were turned and facing/sliding towards the center barrier. As I'm going through my mental checklist for the impact (I had a neck pillow which was good, seatbelt, I was bracing myself by holding onto the door, but then tried to relax so that the crash wouldn't hurt as bad...) we turned again and faced oncoming traffic! We had done a complete 180 before we stopped sliding! Luckily, traffic was still clear back behind us, so Jon had time to get the truck turned around and back on track. I was still in shock while Jon starts doing one of those laughs that you get after you almost die and saying how scary that was and stuff, and we started to slide again! Don't worry though, this was a tiny slide that Jon in his amazing driving skills was able to pull out of, but I still freaked out and started crying and telling Jon that I didn't want to slide anymore (keep in mind that I had been sleeping, so my mind was all over the place!). He got me calmed down and we quickly realized that we hadn't said a prayer before leaving, so we hurried and said one right then, definitely letting our thanks be known for protecting us already! I'm just so glad that Jon is good at getting out of slides like that - if it had been me I would have just crashed! Plus it wouldn't have been as bad if we hadn't had the cruise control on, that's what got us out of control in the first place. But we're okay now. :)

So with those fun stories and the fun drive through Sardine Canyon on Christmas day (it was a white-out for a bit, but we made it!) it was a very eventfull holiday. Let's just hope that New Year's goes by without incident! :) Happy New Year everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Hooray for Christmas! So for the last few years for Christmas, Jon and I go up to my parents house for Christmas Eve (my whole family is still very kid like on Christmas morning, it's so fun!) and then we go to his parents house later on Christmas day. So, I've taken a bunch of pictures of my cute little Christmas decorations at my house, our Christmas presents, and pictures of Christmas at both parents house. Enjoy!

Here is our cute little hand-me-down Christmas tree with our cute little hand-me-down ornaments.

Here's kitty playing "Scary-Jungle-Cat-Who-Attacks-Things-Very-Ferociously" under the Christmas tree. Luckily she didn't completely destroy it this year! :)

I decided that my house still looked very non-Christmas-y, so I added some tinsel to the windows....

And some bells on the wall. It ended up looking half-way Christmas like in my house!

This is our early Christmas present from my parents - my dad loves to have excuses to get new toys, and his best excuse is giving us the old whatever so he can buy a new one! :) So they gave us their old TV so they could get a new HD. This one is huge compared to our old one! It's 37inches!

Jon is soooooo thoughtful! I've been wanting a piano since I moved out of my parents house, and since a real piano won't fit in our house (we physically can't get it into a room without tearing down a wall, which I had no objections to, but Jon didn't want to), so this year he got me a digital keyboard. It's great because it has the weighted keys and touch sensitivity and the actual pedals, so it's a lot closer to having a real piano then we were before! :)

Here's another picture of the keys...

So Christmas morning we designated 7AM to be the present opening time. If we all look super exhausted in these pictures then that's why! Anyway, here's Jon and Phillip (above), my (my beautiful morning self) and Jon in our new Utah State hoodies! (We turned him into an Aggie!) Don't worry Hunter family, I got him a BYU hoodie too. ;)

Ha ha, we're both a little crazy looking in the morning aren't we?

I didn't quite get my camera fast enough to catch all of the chaos, but basically how we decided to do presents in my family is we divide them up and then on the count of three, we all open our presents as fast as we can, yelling our thankyou's as appropriate. Then we have one person designated as the "Garbage Collector". This year it was Julie because she was sitting in the middle, so we all got to throw our wrapping paper at her. She put it in the bag as fast as she could, but still ended up getting buried under a 2 foot mound of it! But this is her trying to clean up after we got our backup garbage bag. It's fun this way. :)

Here's some of our random presents that we got. We got the popcorn bucket with candy from my Grandma Daugherty, with some money to get a movie with. Then we got some floor lamps from my Mom and a bunch of movies from randoms. Fun times!

Then possibly the best present we got (well, that Jon got!) was Jazz tickets! I gave him four tickets so that he could bring a friend, then I also gave my parents 2 tickets so that we could all go together. I can't wait!

After all of this we all went back to sleep for a bit before heading up to the in-laws....

To Be Continued...

Great News!

So, my best friend in the whole wide world Katie has just informed me that SHE IS ENGAGED!!! I'm so happy for her! I just got off of the phone with her a few minutes ago, but we're already planning stuff. :) I did a little avatar of her in her wedding dress (okay, so she hasn't picked one out yet, but hey! At least it's a picture!)



Oh, isn't she just the prettiest bride ever! :) She's getting married sometime either at the end of August or in September. It's going to be wicked awesome, and she totally deserves to have the best wedding ever.

So yeah, I just thought that I would announce it because I am so excited! Katie has been my best friend since we were in diapers (it was easy since we're cousins!) Anyway, just wanted to say cheers to Katie and Ben!

Update On My Nothingness :)

So I'm over here at the in-laws house for our Sunday dinner (every third Sunday we go to Jon's parent's for dinner and get to see the whole family, it's so fun!) and my sister-in-laws were bugging me about not writing anything in here since Thanksgiving (which as an update, we ended up leaving work shortly after 5AM!) so here is my update:

First of all, I had the last 2 weeks off from work. HALLELUJAH! It was soooo nice to just relax! The whole first week I didn't do a thing. Heck, I didn't even put on makeup! I did have to go to work on Friday for a few hours to attend a training, and it was my classes last day so I popped in to say Hi.
Other than that I just slowly cleaned my house. Then that Saturday we had a party for my co-workers that was voted to be at my house. I've never really hosted a party before. Sure I can help pull one together and can help plan, but I've never had one at my house before. Luckily, Bab's did all of the planning and entertainment (thanks Bab's!), so when everyone got there we had Rock Band to play as well as a really fun game called Partini. We also did a pot-luck dinner, so there was little stress on me. However we didn't plan as well as we could have, and ended up with three main courses that were all drenched in cheese! We had cheesy enchiladas, tator-tot casserole and lasagna! Let's just say that while the food was all delicious, we were all really sick of cheese by the end of the night. Thank goodness for Ben bringing chocolate chip cookies to save us from a cheese overdose! I just want to point out that I work with some of the coolest people ever, and that they definitely made the party as fun as it was! So yeah, we played Rock Band until almost 4AM and then my carpol tunnel was hurting too bad so we had to call it quite. Plus I was barely keeping my eyes open while watching for the drum beats! Ha ha, it was way fun.

Last week I just did Christmas shopping. Oh, and I bugged Baby Brother Jeffrey for an hour and a half to have him help me label songs that he burned for me (he gave me 8 CD's and none of them were labeled!) That was fun, my Baby Brother is the coolest. On Saturday we had our Nielsen Family Christmas Party. I love our family Christmas parties, they are so much fun! Plus since I have a handful of cousins who are just babies, I just have a blast playing with them. I spent most of the night playing with little Zane and Gracie. They are so stinking cute! I'll have to see if Jen (aunt, not sister-in-law!) will send me some pics so I can post them (wink wink).

Now for the actual exciting news - Jon applied for Pharmacy school this month! Yikes! He applied for Southern Nevada University, so if he's accepted, then we'll either be moving to Nevada (at least it's warm!) or we might stay here in the valley because they recently built a branch here in Salt Lake! I really hope we can stay, because then we can stay in our house for longer. If not, then we're sort of SOL. But yeah. He's not taking any classes this next semester, he's just going to be studying for his PCAT to take in the spring. I really feel like our lives are finally moving forward!

So yeah, that's me. Nothing really exciting, but hey! At least I'm writing something! :) I'll try to post some pictures after Christmas, (this time I'll remember to bring my camera so we can get some fun ones!)

Thankful

So, in light of Thanksgiving, and since I'm stuck here at work at freaking 4:30AM (I got here at 2PM, btw...), I've decided to list all the things I am thankful for. :) Now, if this were a complete list then it would never end, so I'm just going to mention the ones that come to mind right now. (Keep in mind it's very late and I'm very tired, so if some of these seem silly, then blame it on that!) ;)

1. I am thankful for my wonderful husband who is just so darn perfect!
2. I am thankful for my house
3. I am thankful for my dogs, even when they leave me little stinky presents...
4. I am thankful for my fat cat, especially when she attacks my toes when I'm sleeping. :)
5. I am thankful for my sexy car, because I feel like a million buck when driving it.
6. I am thankful for my job, that sometimes keeps me here until all hours of the night/morning. Even if I don't get paid overtime, it's still nice to know that I have a steady income that I can count on, and I do get a lot of satisfaction out of it.
7. I am thankful for Cherry Coke. Moreso for the lack of it since I've stopped drinking it.
8. I am thankful for Gatorade in the vending machines, because they help me stay away from that delicious elixur of life, drink of the gods, that sweet nector that is the Cherry Coke.
9. I am thankful for comfortable tennis shoes. I felt guilty when I bought them because they were so expensive, but 5 years later and they still look practically new, and I'm happy about that choice.
10. I am thankful for pumpkins, for they allow me to make pies.
11. I am thankful for turkeys, because I can eat them.
12. I am thankful for pigs and cows for the same reason.
13. I am thankful that no one really reads these posts, because I don't think I'm making a lot of sense.
14. I am thankful for those who do read these posts, because we get to laugh at me later.
15. I am thankful for my Mom and Dad, because they freaking rock.
16. I am thankful for my testimony and faith, without them I'd be lost.
17. I am thankful for both mine and Jon's families - I think that combined we have the coolest family ever!
18. I am thankful for my pillows, blankets, and bed, because right now I really, really miss them.
19. I am thankful for the internet, because I can post crazy stuff like this and everyone can read about my insanity.
20. I am thankful for my highschool friends - even if we don't talk much, we had some pretty awesome times
21. I am thankful for my wedding ring - it's really pretty.
22. I am thankful for my BFF Katie, because she is by far the coolest person in the world, and she does my hair for cheap and I just freaking love her! (Though I don't think she reads this...)
23. I am thankful for my sister
24. I am thankful that Baby Brother Brian is serving a mission, and that Baby Brother Jeffrey is in marching band!
25. I am thankful for people who don't send stupid forwarded emails that threaten death if you delete them without forwarding them first. (I deleted three today, so if I die then I blame those that send the stupid emails).
26. I am thankful (some days) that Jon and I are able to enjoy being married without the stress of kids. Even though I would love for the time to be right for children, it's nice just focusing on us for a bit longer.
27. I am thankful to all my sister-in-laws who have kids so I can get my "baby fill" through them.
28. I am thankful for my contact lenses so I don't look so dorky in my glasses.
29. I am thankful for rainy days so I can appreciate all of the sunny ones
30. And last, I am thankful to know that Jon and I are going to be together forever and ever and ever and ever and EVER! I love him so much and I'm most thankful for him above all, which is why I'm starting and ending with him. :)

Well, that's what I'm thankful for. It's now 5AM (I was working in between writing), and I think (and hope) that I'm going home soon. For those of you who are waking up now to feed your kids or excercise or whatever it is you do, you are crazy, as I don't think that 5AM should exist. Okay, I'm going now. I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving, and may your blogs be more interesting than mine! :)

M.