E is for Elephant

So last night I finished my Elephant block of my alphabet quilt.  For those of you who don't know, I have been working on an Alphabet quilt for about a year and I finished the letters and now am to the object part of the quilt.  For each letter I am creating something with that letter to put next to it.  I have never really done appliqué before this quilt so it is kind of a learning process but is absolutely fun!  It allows me to be creative because I am don't have any form of pattern and I just get to make it up as I go.    Quilting is something that I can do while Mike is studying and since I am doing it all by hand, I have it by my couch and whenever I have time I can do some stitching or ironing the pieces into shapes.  Now I will just have to figure out the rest of the quilt shapes and I am sure that I will get better as time goes on.

Christmas in Utah

So every time I look at someone's blog I feel guilty that I have not updated mine, so here is the past month in one blog.  We will start with Christmas.  For Christmas we were able to go out to Utah for over 2 weeks!   We left on the 14th of December and spent the first couple of days with all the siblings and nieces and nephews  having our Christmas a couple of days early since Jen and Jake were going to Oregon.  It as a lot of fun to be with everyone and a couple of the little ones even remembered who we were!  Yea!  

Mike's Family caught up with us midway through the vacation and we went up to Ogden and Roy to visit family up there and I was able to experience a part of Utah that I have never been to before.  Got to love it when you see more Trucks in the parking lot than cars.  

Mike and I both ended up getting sick  so we were not able to do a whole lot outside, but Mike was totally okay with that since he prefers weather that is above 70 degrees.  We totally loved being with family and taking a long awaited break.  Below are a couple of pictures from our adventure and I'll explain a little for each picture.  

This is Mike's sister Melanie (an Audiologist) checking out our ears to make sure that we have healthy and clean ears.  I won the battle for cleanest  ears!   I do have to say that this was while Mike was sick so he has kind of a pathetic sick face on for a reason.   This was a sledding adventure with Kevin and Aubrey with Ty and Jordo too.  We had a lot of fun and eventually, Tyler did too after much convincing that sledding was fun!   This was "Shorty's Enchilada Diner"  crew.  We have perfected the art of Christmas Enchiladas Shorty's style with Grandma doing all the prep work (the biggest part) Mom cooking eggs without even breaking a yolk and I was taking orders and putting the enchiladas together.  We had everyone (30 people) fed in about an hour short order style.  I would say that I was quite impressed.  Dad and Grandpa were the Dish crew and as always do an awesome job!  

These are my Gangsta' Cousins who have all grown about a foot since I saw them last.  It is a bad sign when you cousins you used to babysit are almost graduating...man I'm getting old!

On that note, I had my birthday and had a great one!  My work game me flowers, cake, gift certificates and took me out to lunch.  Mike got me a way cute purse and I also got a duvet cover, 2 cook books and some money.  I loved it and felt very loved.  I do have to admit that I feel "old" now in the sense that I am not in the college age range anymore.  I actually have to be  a real adult now.  Man, who knew 23 would be the defining age.  

SNOW!!!!!

Well, we have been in Utah for about a week and have been thoroughly enjoying ourselves, but the only snow that we had was already on the ground. That changed tonight with a blustery snowstorm perfect for making snow balls/men... sticky-no sticky, no sticky- sticky (one of my Dad's many words of wisdom). Below are pictures of us in snow along with pictures of us with the snowman, the snowman by itself and a picture of Mike throwing a snowball at me. Yea SNOW!!!!!

Football and Parties

So, I have been totally slacking in the updating department, so I decided to post a few pictures that we recently took and will have a bunch more after this weekend.  This first one is of Mike and I at the Florida football game where it was actually cool enough to wear long sleeves!  It got down into the 30's the night before and I LOVED it!  We ended up getting really warm at the game, but it was worth it.  

This is a picture of my girls at Young Women's in Excellence right before they all started to laugh.  Each of the leaders did a project with a girl one on one, (not a very big YW group), and presented it that night.  It was so much fun to interact individually with the girls and we always have fun together. This is last night at Mike's Dean's Christmas Dinner Party.  The Dean throws a party at his house every Christmas and invites all of the students.  It is a beautiful log cabin and we were able to mingle with a bunch of Rx people.  It was delectable food and got to put some faces to names.  

Two Inventions that I have realized are hard to live without!

This week as been a big one; We finally got our new dryer and I got a new Mac as my work computer!  We have been living without a dryer and a computer at home for about a month now and I could not be more grateful for these two inventions!  I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to try and air dry clothes and especially towels in 98% humidity.  You might as well try and teach a rock how to fetch.  Needless to say, we are now dry and fancy free!  

Our computer cord died while we were trying to watch conference in October and have been without a computer, well basically without a computer for a month also.  If we held the cord in the perfect spot with one hand and tried to type one handed while holding the laptop on your lap... well, you get the picture.  So, it has been a great week!  To top it off, it has been a record setting week in temperature, it got down to the 30's last night.  Depending on who's opinion you are asking in our household, you will get differing answers.  I personally LOVE it and can bring out my other half of my wardrobe that I never get to wear for these precious few weeks that it gets cold.  YEA SWEATERS!!!