my favorite Christmas song

BOSTON

Brandan and I booked a trip to Boston!! we are going in January. Brandan will be taking a certification class for Final Cut Pro through Apple. Ethan and Laura live there too so we get to hang out with them! I can't wait!

flat tire

i got a flat tire on my car last week. if you look closely you can see the screw sticking out of the side of the tire, it's at about 11:00. the weirdest part about it was that the screw was poking through from inside the tire and it was on the side so i'm not sure how it got in there. anyways i was kind of helpless and Brandan came out and helped me with it. we had to get 2 new tires at les schwab. it was a bummer. but my car was about due for them anyways so it's ok.

Sun Valley

we went up to Sun Valley last weekend with Brandan's family. Ryan had rented a condo for his Christmas present to the fam up there, and they ended up upgrading us to a cottage instead. it was pretty cool, and no one wanted to leave the place so we ended up pretty much spending the whole time hanging out in the cottage. i would really recommend it, we had a lot of fun.
Brandan and I outside the cottage

the family at dinner

getting in from the hot tub

all of us in the hot tub

brandan, curtis and i did snow angels while hot tubbing. when they were still well intact the next morning, i thought i'd take a pic. from left to right, brandan's, curtis's, mine. it was soooo cold!

early Christmas surprise!!

when i got home from work yesterday, there was a package waiting on the counter, hand addressed to me and Brandan. i wasn't sure what it was until i saw the name of the sender: CLAY. it had to be my Christmas tree star! the one i dreamed up the week before and wondered if he would be up for making such a project. he was, and only a few days later, here it was. waiting for me. i opened it immediately and this is what i found.

isn't it so cool? this is it head on, i love it.

this is from an angle so you can see the 3D aspect of it.


and this is on the tree. i got the tree out as soon as i opened the package and was too excited to stop and decorate it before taking the picture. we have a really small tree so it looks big in this picture but i think it is absolutely perfect, and we'll get a bigger tree someday anyways.


thanks Clay! i LOVE it!!!!!!!

First Snow

1st week

i finished out my first week as a decorator at RC Willey yesterday. all in all it was a good week. everyone in my department is really cool and seem to be patient while i figure out what i'm doing. i think the hardest part is getting an idea of how to decorate something, and keeping the "creative juices" running all day. usually by afternoon i am a little burned out. i hear it gets easier as you go though.
other than that it was a pretty uneventful week. this upcoming week is also looking pretty normal except we are going up to Sun Valley this weekend with Brandan's family. that should be a lot of fun. and a couple of birthdays in my family. happy birthday Clay and Anthony! Brandan also has finals the following week so he will probably be studying a lot.
i have been working on some Christmas gifts too and other projects. most of them are surprises so i can't post any pics or anything but i will probably put some up after the fact. we still haven't decorated our house for Christmas. hopefully we will get that done this week too.