What We Did For Christmas. . .

I can't believe how fast the holidays came and went! We had a fabulously busy time! For those who are interested... We spent Christmas Eve with my family. Grandma and Grandpa cooked their traditional dinner and Tay, Greg and I all shared the same bed, as tradition. We stayed up late playing games and being silly. Taylor tried to get everyone up at 7 to open presents. Since no one can say no to her, we did. It was a lot different this year not having everyone there, but we all had a blast. After we finished opening gifts, we went to the Jensen's. (they still have young kids and Taylor beat them up by almost 2 hours!!) After some more exciting gifts we went back to my dad's for brunch, a 4 hour phone call with Myles... who is doing awesome by the way, and a nap. And finally we enjoyed a wonderful Christmas dinner at Greg's parents.

Here are our random pictures from Christmas time!

This last picture is in Utah. There was a good foot of snow. It was so pretty!

A few days before Christmas we went to Utah to attend my Grandma's funeral. It was the first time I had been to a funeral and it was awful, but at the same time so beautiful! The cemetery was so peaceful. It was up on a hill and was white and snowing. I couldn't have imagined anything more heavenly. I miss my grandma and am so greatful for her example and influence in my life.

SnoW DaY!!!

It snowed! I wasn't particularly excited when I heard we were going to have a storm. For those who may not know me that well, I have two fears: spiders and snowy roads! When we lived in Rexburg I had a job in Idaho Falls. I would seriously cry to and from work on snow days. Those drives made me sick! Luckily Greg grew up in eastern Idaho where it snows all year round and has taught me some pointers. But hey, the snow is beautiful and it really makes it feel like Christmas. We live in the foothills so it dumped a ton of snow on us. Everyone came out to play! Simplots Hill was packed with sledders. Of course I had to go play in it too. Greg was sick so he just watched from our window. I did make him come out to take pictures with me. He's a good sport. :)

Our Creek. It's so pretty! And there is an adorable bridge that crosses it. It's the reason we baught this apartment.

How Romantic!

Bella wasn't too sure about the snow.

My cheesey pose for Greg.

The Beginnings of Winter

Our First Christmas!!!!

We are getting excited for Chirstmas this year! We have had a lot of fun decorating and getting ready for this holiday season! It is our first Christmas together since we have been married and a year since we were engaged, so it is pretty freaking exciting! We have purchased all of our presents and are pretty much just waiting for the big day to come around. Whitney and I are going to continue on a Clifford tradition with Taylor this year (because she is pretty much the only one around) of sleeping in the same room on Christmas eve so that we can wake up together on Christmas morning. It will be fun! We are also excited that we are so close to both of our families. Spending the holidays with them will be so much easier because we can simply go from one to the other.

Whitney and I in front of our Christmas Tree!

Our first Christmas tree! We even have presents under it! How exciting!

We got hungry while decorating.
The pretty garland thing Whitney put up. She is quite the homemaker (whether she likes it or not). I guess the whole Young Womens program works! Call the Prophet!

My Hero!

My father is my hero! He is my example and has taught me everything good. This past year has been hard for my family, but especially for my dad. Through it all, he has been the ultimate teacher. He has shown nothing but love, forgiveness and compassion. Thank you dad for all that you do! I love YOU!!

Random

As I'm sure the few of you who read our blog have figured out, we are not very consistant with our blogging. I found a couple of unpublished posts just sitting here. So... here are some pictures of what we have been up to since our last post.

I love Halloween time, and I love looking in all the shops! This is what we found....

There was a huge rainstorm one day that flooded the creek right outside our apartment, so we went and splashed around.

I made Asian food and we had a "Chinese Night" I was so excited to finally use my dishes from China, and the food was of course fabulous!

Yea for Sisters!

It is so incredibly beautiful here in North Boise this fall and we have been enjoying the season! Since we have moved back to Boise we have had many opportunities to hang out with our families. Especially Tay and I, and have we had fun!!

We have gone to concerts....

Cyrina gave us tickets to Sarah Evans.

Secondhand Serenade.

We've entertained family....

Our cousin Paige.


Grandma taught us how to can apples...

Grandma teaching and telling us what to do.

The ancient apple pealer. It was our great great grandmas..I think. It was entertaining.

Grandpa making sure the equipment worked. It didn't.

Dad uh... supervising?

Grandma didn't really like this idea. She thought we were going to bruise the apples. We did.

And we've played in the rain....

We have had a ton of fun being together, and one day we hope we will have the same rights as others and be married. Sick America. Go PROP 8!

Birthday Madness

Last Saturday was Greg's 22nd Birhtday!!! I was so excited to celebrate it with him. This was the first birthday that I have spent with Greg. I did all the fun birthday things, including decorating the house and breakfast in bed. His birthday was also our 6th month aniversary, Woot! Greg wanted to suprise me with doing sealings at the temple. I figured it out when he told me to get into dress. Later that evening we went out to dinner with our family and friends. It was a lot of fun catching up on the latest family gossip. We ended our evening out with a movie on my dad's big screen. I had managed to secretly decorate our room with balloons, candies, and glowsticks. It was awesome and he loved it. . . being the romantic I am. And what good is a birthday without a little corniness? I also added 22 love notes in some of the balloons, which, of course, he had to pop to read. It was great fun!!

The After Party.

MYLES!!!!

Every Sunday my family and I wait around the computer for Myles' letter. He has been gone now for almost 5 months!! It has been amazing to see how much he has changed. When he first went out, he HATED it. We all (jokingly) placed bets on when he would come home. He is a lot more positive now, and its so cool to see how much compassion he has for the people he is serving.

Here is a little part of last weeks letter:

"Well i will tell you a little bit about my week here, it has been interesting. we are working with this lady who wants to get baptized but she has to quit smoking, and not just cigarettes but Weed as well, and it is hard to teach her some times cause she told us that she hates my companion, and she said she like me cause she feels i relate to her better, i dont know how the heck i relate to her!!!! but anyway, we started the stop smoking program with her, and when people start it they have to give us all of there stuff. So when we went to take it from her, she gave us 9 bongs and a bag of weed, it was crazy, so me and my comp were walking down the street with a bunch of drugs on us until we found a dumpster to throw it in lol. Also with the program there is a list of stuff you need to buy, well she is poor so me and my companion decided to buy all the stuff for her, but my companion didnt help buy anything, so i spent my last $32 on it, but im not complaining, i will complain if she quits coming to church and doesnt get baptized though lol. we also told her that if she ever needed help with the program to just give us a call, so we got a call at 3 in the morning and so we got very little sleep that night, but she is doing well so it is all good."

I guess the $32 was worth it, She was baptized on Sat. This is their picture...

I think Myles is absolutely adorable! I am so proud of everything he has accomplished to be where he is. I, and so many others, could not be prouder!

Go Broncos!!

Greg and I have started our first semester here at BSU and are loving it already. For those who are curious, Greg is majoring in Business Law. He is working toward going to Law School... (fun for me) I am working on an International Health/Biology degree. We have both been very busy this semester and are expecting it to get busier. We are so excited to be back in Boise and to be a Bronco!! Here's to our education!

Boise!!!

We're back! We recently moved to North Boise and are loving it!!! The abundance of shopping, warm weather, a diversity in people, and family made us realize what we were missing out on in Rexburg.

We had a lot of help moving from Rexburg. It is AMAZING how much crap we have collected in just the few months we have been married! Greg's grandpa let us fill his truck and trailor with our stuff and then drove it to Boise for us. We were so greatful for his help! Greg and I followed with both our cars fully packed.

We were finally able to move into our apartment, but with out the use of Grandpa Jensen's truck it took many cars and trips to get all our stuff there.

We stopped at Craters of the Moon on the way to Blackfoot. (We were returning the hilbilly trailor.)

We have attented a couple of the hippie events that are often held in Boise. They are quite entertaining.

the OLYMPICS are COMING!!

I LOVE the Olympics! I am excited that they are in China and so are the Chinese! They have certainly been waiting! As you can see... This was from almost 2 years ago! (I can't believe it's been that long!)

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK






This last weekend Taylor, Janica, Bryan and Molly came up for a visit. It was very exciting, we love having visitors! On Saturday we dicided to take a trip up to Yellowstone. Taylor and Molly had never been so we stopped at all the gyesers for them to see. I had forgotten how many there are, but they are still beautiful. We finally found Old Faithful but by the time we got there we had just missed it going off and no one wanted to stick around for the next explosion. Sad, huh? All that way and we didn't even see the most famous monument of the park. Instead we headed back to the town and hit up all the shops. Overall we had a blast!