Christmas!

It is that time of the year again and everybody is excited for Christmas. Thanksgiving was spent at my parents' house, partly because it was the year for a Messenger Thanksgiving and partly because Wesley had to work. How lame is that!? Only the technical support people had to work, not billing or on-site technicians or anyone else. I was not very happy. I am even less happy that he has to work on Christmas day. That is the worst! Anyway, the day after Thanksgiving is when all the decorations go up at my parents' house. I was there to help due to Wesley being at work. We didn't actually put up our tree and decorations until the day after the day after Thanksgiving. We don't have a lot of decorations, but we do have a tree. It has white lights due to Wesley's insistence. My family's tree always had colored lights, but his mom insists on white lights and so he did too. Oh well. I still love it. There are a few ornaments on it that I brought from my parents' house, specifically ornaments that I had made or been given. I think our tree is so pretty!

The tree skirt and presents didn't go up the same day the tree did. I had to go find a tree skirt and the presents will slowly accumulate. I am actually done Christmas shopping, but I haven't wrapped anything yet!

Our tree is too tall (or our ceiling is too low) to have a star, so instead I put up the Christmas spider that Aunt Lucy gave us last year. Wesley thinks it is funny because I really don't like spiders!

We are so mean to poor Wyn! I have a mini stocking and we were bored so we decided to put her in the stocking and hang her on the tree. She didn't like it much and kept jumping out. She is so small and fast that it is hard to take good pictures of her!

I didn't have a nativity set and was fairly distraught about it. I was actually pretty jealous of the beautiful nativity Brother Allred made for my family. I found this traditional set with the words painted on them and thought it was adorable. Plus, the price was great!This time of the year is so wonderful and we are so absolutely blessed. Happy Holidays, especially to our loved ones!

Sick of Being Sick!

Wow! I swear the sick season just started and I have been sick so much already! I am sick of it. First I get a sinus infection, then Wesley gets it. Then he gets the flu and then I get the flu. This is so lame! I really don't want to be stuck at home! I love teaching and I want to be at school with the kids. Instead, I am stuck at home because they don't want any sick people at school, and I am bored out of my mind! The worst part about the flu thing, for me anyway, is that it lingers in my sinuses. I can't sleep because I can't breathe and then I am grumpy because I haven't slept and I haven't been breathing. It is absolutely miserable! Grrrrr. I have been constantly cleaning my house with lysol and with bleach to kill the germs but they just keep coming back. This is so dumb. Can we just skip the sick season, please?

Our Newest Addition!

So last week Wesley and I were out on a Friday night with not much to do and so, in an impulsive moment, we decided to purchase a pet! Yay! Neither Wesley's mom nor mine were huge fans of pets, although my mom was a little more lenient (likely due to the fact that my dad had had pets growing up and so he supported the kids' desires for pets) and I had had a couple of pets. My very favorite pet that we had was a dwarf hamster named Gimli (from Lord of the Rings). Our impulsive moment was slightly propelled by my telling Wesley that I wanted to get a dwarf hamster. We went to Petco in Orem and were looking at the cute little hamsters. I showed Wesley what a dwarf hamster was and he said okay, we can get one. Yay! We had to buy the food and the fluff and a water bottle. and of course I wanted a cute little house, and he wanted to get a wheel for the hamster to run on....and on and on. My parents, or actually my brother who is on a mission, had a tank to use as a cage, so all we really needed was our hamster! We thus brought home Eowyn (another name from Lord of the Rings), whom we call Wyn, a female dwarf hamster. It took her a couple of days to get used to us and her new home, but she is so cute and lots of fun! We bought a ball for her, which mostly she just preens in, but sometimes runs around and Wesley has great fun creating mazes out of old shelves for her to run around in. She isn't very smart, as shown by the fact that she often dives off of our hands and can't stay on our arms as well as by the fact that she flips herself over sometimes when she is trying to dig her way out of Wesley's mazes. Still, she is adorable and we love watching her, especially in the evening when she has way more energy than we do and we can hear her squeaky wheel going in the living room (all night long!).This is her lovely squeaky wheel. I picked bright yellow to go against our annoying wood panels.

She looks so fat when she sits! I think she is actually fatter now than when we bought her a week ago. She eats so much!
She love to burrow down in the fluff! She has burrowed in three different corners now, but her favorite is the one behind her wheel.

So, I have been loving the colors of food! During the summer, there are so many colorful ways to prepare meals. I know, I am kind of strange, but when I make something especially pretty, I like to take a picture of it and now I am going to share my random food pictures with all of you wonderful people who actually look at my blog! I invited my husband to help me blog, but he really didn't seem that interested (as in he said "yay" in a very sarcastic tone). That is sort of okay with me because it means that occasionally I can put up pictures of him that he may not appreciate all that much and I have control over what pictures of myself go up on my blog. :)So this is the marvelous fruit salad that I made. To be honest, some of the fruit was not quite as good as it often is, but it was so pretty! It had watermelon, red and green grapes, nectarines, peaches, blackberries, and blueberries. It was yummy but huge. It took us nearly a week to eat all of it!
This I made tonight. Our garden is producing an abundance of squash and we don't really know what to do with it all. I have lots of things to do with zucchini, but not a lot to do with squash. We also have lots of tomatoes. So, I threw them together and it looked pretty but needed something green. Therefore, I added green peppers! So pretty and SO YUMMY!This is not quite as pretty as the others but it still looked cool in the pan and was very yummy as well.
Now you have seen some of the yummy and pretty food we have eaten this summer and also something of my random mind.

Pan Dulce!

So, I have been craving pan dulce, or sweet bread forever, but since my sweet husband loves it too and can no longer eat it, I haven't purchased any because I didn't want to make him feel bad. Yesterday I was out with my siblings and they were getting ice cream and there just happened to be a panaderia next door. I couldn't resist any longer. I ran over and got some of my favorites. I was sad because they didn't have any with anise in it, but I did get some of my favorites. Eating pan dulce, of course made me think about Mexico and some of my favorite people. I can't believe it has been over a year since we got home. I miss you guys! And I miss all the yummy Mexican food that was so cheap there and is either not available here (like Manzanita Sol!) or is more expensive!

My Dad

As this last weekend was Father's Day, I just wanted to say how awesome my dad is. He has always been there for me. He is always willing to help his family, even if is the most inconvenient time for him, or if what we want is not so easy. He is always helping friends and family with computer problems, moving things, or anything else they need help with. This can include driving out to Michaels with the van to get our Christmas tree because Mom decided to take the Honda, digging in the tent trailer for a denim quilt (the one we wanted was of course on the bottom!) or rearranging the sprinker system a million times until it works that way Mom wants it to. He is dedicated to his calling as the executive secretary and serves to the best of his abilities despite it sometimes taking him away from his family. He works hard to provide a living and has good friends among those he works with and associates with.

My dad is the best dad in the world. He loves his family and he loves the Lord. Best of all, he shows that love through word and deed.

I am especially lucky because in addition to having a fantastic father, I got a great father-in-law as well!

Life is Good

Sometimes the repetitiveness of life can make us think that our lives are stuck, that we aren't moving anywhere, that we are boring. I've found, espcially through writing letters to missionaries (first Wesley, now Natalie and my brother), that there is always something interesting going on in our lives, even when we don't catch it at the time. For example, I am now working as a secretary for NuSkin while the regular secretary is out for surgery. I really don't do much at work. I basically get paid $10 an hour to read my book, play on the computer and occasionally answer the phone. I work 9-5 M-F. Pretty repetitive right? It is, but nearly everyday, there is something that happens that makes the day more interesting. The other day, I was sitting there reading, when we got half a dozen boxes delivered. The only markings on them said NuSkin. There was nothing to help me determine where they belonged. I called Benji (another secretary who is upstairs) to see if she could help me. Nothing. We called half a dozen different departments to find out where they belonged. We finally figured out that they belonged to the productions manager who had gone home two hours before. This really doesn't seem like that interesting of a story, but while called those people, I had a brief conversation with each one. I have only been here two and half weeks and yet I already know a bunch of people as well as a little bit about each. If you keep your eyes open, you can always find the progression and the blessings in your life, even when you feel like it is dull and repetitive.