Award-Winning Chili!

We made award-winning chili! Our ward had a chili cook-off and we got the "Honorable Mention" ribbon! AKA 4th place, we were pretty dang excited about it!

Bear Lake Birthday

To celebrate my 24th birthday, we spent the weekend at a resort in Bear Lake. It was one fabulous birthday!We thought we would maybe go snowmobiling, ice skating, or skiing, while we were up there, but it stormed all weekend. So we just enjoyed the weather by staying inside.
Our drive up Logan Canyon was an adventure. My husband put chains on and then took chains off our tires twice, and was never grumpy or cranky once, ...dang I love that man. I was kinda freaked out cause of the icy conditions, but we made it to Garden City safely.
Once there we went swimming and hotubing, roasted marshmallows and made smores. Watched movies, slept in late, and just relaxed for 2 whole days, it was simply wonderful. For my birthday dinner we went to Cafe Sabor. For dessert we had fried ice cream, and holy cow it was sooo delicious!
The perfectly formed license plate ice mold.

Kyle found this awesome huge icicle, and then pretended it was his sword.

A picture I took from the car as we left town.

And a special thanks for all the birthday wishes via text, facebook, cards and calls. It made for one very special birthday and one very happy birthday girl!

Valentines Cake

For Christmas Kyle gave me a cake decorating set. We pulled it out and made a cake this Saturday. We decided to make a Valentines cake for the upcoming holiday.

These are the hearts cut from fondant
Kyle making the "dam" around the cake before we fill it with chocolate pudding. We made buttercream frosting to cover the cake.

The finished product!

Saturday night we had a dinner date with our friends Lesa and Chad. We had the cake for dessert and it turned out delicious. We were so proud of ourselves. Later that night we watched Julie and Julia, which made me get even more excited to cook! I think Kyle is really going to like this phase I am going through.

Ducks and Winter

This is so fun! My mom called me and told me to write the following four lines down:

A C D E D B D ducks
L M R not ducks

O S A R C D E D B D wings

Y I B M R E D B D ducks

At first I was confused, but then my mom read it to me with the proper voice inflections. I thought it was so dang cute and funny, we just giggled about it. My mom and dad saw it in a cafe' they went to over the Christmas holiday. Try and figure it out, if you need some help see below.

It should sound something like this:

Hey! see the itty bitty ducks?

Hel* them are not ducks.

Oh yes they are, see the itty bitty wings?

Well I'll be, them are itty bitty ducks!

This reminded me of this funny old saying my Dad always says, and in the spirit of winter, here it goes:

Spring has Sprung

Fall has Fell

Winter is here

And it's colder than...

usual.

HAPPY WINTER everyone!

Temple Lights with Ricky and Julie

Christmas Festivities!

This is going to be one GIANT post, but I have so many great memories I need to get down in words - so here it goes, *Deep Breath*:

Our Christmas Tree: I was so excited to get a Christmas tree this year I convinced Kyle to let us get one the weekend BEFORE thanksgiving. There ended up being 3 main problems with this.
1) We did not have a truck to haul a Christmas tree in.
2) Only a few places had real trees before thanksgiving.
3) Christmas trees die.
But despite the presented problems Kyle and I rented a truck from Home Depot and drove to Lowes (Home Depot didn't have tree's in yet) and picked out a beautiful tree. In the end it was a fun little adventure, and the tree was a fire hazard waiting to happen, but beautiful and fabulous smelling none the less.

Ornaments, a Christmas Tradition: Like many family's, Kyle and I adopted the tradition to get a special ornament each year. Last year we spent Christmas in Arizona with my family. I bought the ornament below last Christmas at a little store in the town my parents live. It has one of our wedding pictures, because it represents our first Christmas as a married couple.


This Year we bought two new ornaments. The one below is to represent buying our first house, which we did August of this year. This ornament represent getting our puppy, Cash.

Christmas Treats: As a kid my mom would often make this holiday treat, I have been craving it for years now. Kyle and I attempted it this year and it turned out delicious. Ask me if you want the recipe.

Christmas!

My Christmas post: it is basically A BUCKET LOAD of pictures and random explanations. Enjoy!

My Husband and Puppy on Christmas Eve, both in argyle, can you say precious!
Kyle got a balloon Kit for Chrismtas, more to come on this later.

Games played included break the ice, cooties, bottoms up, and mario kart.

A big pile of Easter (cough, Christmas) Grass, thrown on Bethanie's head.

We had Cinammon Rolls from Grandma Toblers in St. George. Kyle's parents brought them all the way up so we could have them Christmas morning.

Dallen and Asher playing the fishing game:

Making Christmas Cookies

One of the cutest pictures, EVER:

Santa's cookies:

The tree, all ready for Christmas morning:

The guys, being funny as usual.

Our little Cash in a Tonka truck.

Christmas morning!

I made the guys marshmellow shooters for Christmas, and then made them pose so I could take this picture, hehe.

Dallens "Specially" wrapped gift for Dad:

Kyle's family spent the Christmas holiday at our house this year! It was so fun! We basically played games, watched movies, ate food and stayed in our pajamas all day, talk about fabulous!

Right before bed on Christmas Eve Kyle's Dad read the book "Twas the night before Christmas," to the whole family. Our nephew that is 3 years old said a couple things that were so cute and funny. When his dad read the line "When out on the lawn there rose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter" our nephew gaspsed and said " What was it papa? was it a creature?" then when Dad Fletcher was reading about the reindeer our nephew said matter of factly " You gonna kill those reindeer huh Papa" we were all suprised for a second and then couldn't stop from giggling. (Don't worry, no reindeer were harmed at our house that night).

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, and to all a GOOD NIGHT!