"best of" christmas 2013

• Christmas shopping date at City Creek!  I love living 4 minutes away.
• We sent out Christmas cards for the first time.  
• Quinn fit in perfectly with my woodland creatures Christmas decor.
• Humongous, as in 7 feet tall, gingerbread house at the Grand America.
• We saw The Hobbit.  It was ok, not my favorite.
• Lots of Christmas classic movies including White Christmas, Elf, Christmas Vacation along with the cheesy Hallmark romantic holiday comedies that I kind of love.
• Christmas Adam celebration with just us two.  We went out to dinner then opened presents from each other.  Dustin got a new blue suit. He totally surprised me with a little blue box.
• Santa came to my grandma's on Christmas Eve!  Sadly I was *not feeling well* and missed him. ;)
• Skyping both of our sisters!!!  Shayna in Ukraine, Korinne in Idaho.
• Christmas get together with some of my best friends, and their husbands, and precious babies!
• Lots of time spent with each other and our families.  

guess who? 

(yes i was santa! i was volunteered! no one else wanted to do it! the littles never knew it was me though haha)

last year                                                                          this year

i LOVE these girls!

dustin turns 25

September 23rd was Dustin's birthday.  He turned a whopping 25 and we celebrated all weekend long!  Friday night some executives from my company were in town from Chicago and they took us out to dinner at the Market Street Broiler!  We had never been there before and the sea food was amaaaazing.

Saturday, Dustin had a halo party with his friends in Provo and they played till 2am!  Guy bonding time.  It's good for them.  

Sunday we went over to the Harpers' home and had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle themed birthday party!  Dustin loved the turtles when he was little (and still does) and his mom went all out!  Scott made his famous garlic burgers on the bbq yum.  My family and a few of the neighbors came over for the party!  This was also the night we were introduced to "The Fox" video bahahaha.  

Monday we went to the Pie for dinner with our brothers and some friends - they had a live musician in there and he was really good!  After dinner, we had some friends over for cake and ice cream.  I made a "better than sex" cake - Dustin's favorite.  Everyone wanted to meet Quinn and she was the highlight of the night as usual.  

Happy belated Birthday honey!  You are my favorite 25 year old!  I love you forever and I am so happy you are 25 so we can rent a car on our upcoming vacation. :)

lake powell

Life lately has been busy as usual so I am way behind.  So go back with me to last month... Over labor day weekend we went to Lake Powell with the Harpers, my two brothers, and friends.  We had some trailer & wave runner mechanical issues so it took us 11 hours to get there and about the same amount of time to get home but we had a fantastic time while we were there.  We stayed in a hotel and then just spent all 3 days on the lake.  The weather was gorgeous, I think we had rain once for about five minutes.  We did a lot of surfing, tubing, wakeboarding, kneeboarding and swimming.  

We LOVE Lake Powell! Hopefully next summer we will get to go for a week!

24

I turned 24 in Texas!  Woot woot!  My birthday was on a Saturday which was kinda a bummer because that is Dustin's loooong day of work selling alarms (9am - 9pm).  But it was still a really great day.  Emily and I met the guys for lunch (sushi yum) and then we got pedicures and frozen yogurt!  After the guys got home from work (around 10pm) we went to Wing Stop for dinner.  The next day we went to South Padre Island one last time and Emily made me a pink birthday cake!  We also celebrated again when we got back to Utah - we had a luau for all the August birthdays on my mom's side of the family.

This birthday was infinitely better than last year's because last year we were in the car all day long driving home from Texas, and then I was sick that night, and then the next day we had to move into our new apartment where we didn't have hot water for a few days.

It was sooo nice just coming back to our apartment with all of our stuff there just as we left it.  Not having to worry about finding a place to live, or moving all of our stuff was a million times less stressful than last summer. We (or rather I) have been having fun rearranging things and redecorating our little home, so maybe I will post some pics soon. We totally love the area, ward, neighborhood we are in and will be here at least until the spring when Dustin graduates.

Anyway, I love birthdays and getting older, and I am excited to see what 24 brings!

sushi lunch

wing stop with the browns for our late night dinner! we love the lemon pepper & honey bbq aaaand the drink machine where i can get cherry vanilla diet coke :)

our last trip to south padre island, with whataburger of course.

birthday luau with the fam