FELIZ NAVIDAD HAPPENINGS

Oh December! What a busy month you have been. I have been constantly on the go and I can not...I repeat...CAN NOT wait until Saturday when the R&R begins. Don't get me wrong I have loved (almost) every second of the craziness of "the season" and will most likely shed a tear or two when I un-decorate my house.


Busy month of December = no time for blogging.
With that here is what we have been up to...

1. Got the tree. It's a good one. Love the smell of pine. Looooove it!

2. Christmas Parties galore. This is the Edward Jones party. The girls got to rub Vaseline all over the guy's faces and then they had to roll their faces in Cotton balls to create the "perfect" Santa beard. Clayton WON! could also have something to do with the fact that the stubble on his face acted like velcro.

3. Oh Egg Nog. Some don't love you but we always will. Southern Comfort (the red carton) is the best and we have been drinking lots of it.

4. Dipping chocolates. lots of them. so many that I don't care if I dip another one for...well...at least 1 year. ps. If you are on the receiving end of these chocolates please note that yours will NOT look as nice as the ones below. Pretty sure they are still tasty though.

5. Drinking Hot Chocolate. With the lights off. With the Christmas Tree lights on. While watching a Christmas movie.

6. Lights at Temple Square. Perfect.

7. First Presidency Christmas Devotional. Again...perfect. It reminded me (again) that so many times I/we are so busy trying to make the season perfect that we forget why we even celebrate this season. Listen to it HERE.

8. Spencer Christmas Party. Can NOT officially start the holidays without it. As usual grams...you did a fabulous job. THANK YOU!

still waiting for McMurdie Christmas Party and 2 Andrew parties

9. Dinner at The Roof. over looking the lights. beautiful

10. Yogurt Stop. Not Christmasy at all, unless you count the peppermint flavor. Do not waste your time here. not good.

11. Forgotten Carols. 3rd time for me, 1st time for Clayton. I cried. Pretty sure Clayton cried too. Although if you ask him he might deny it.

12. Oh the Christmas movies. Elf (as usual LOVE IT), Scrooged (not a fan), Four Christmases, Fred Claus, 8 Hallmark shows and 16 more that are still on the DVR waiting to be watched.

13. Christmas shopping. Over and over and over again. Almost there.

14. Christmas Advent book. We have missed some days, but have loved the stories we have read. Special thanks to my mother-in-law for giving it to us!


Still looking forward to what is left to come...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS

CALIFORNIA 2010

This trip to Southern Cal was unlike any of our other trips. There was no beach time (I didn't even touch the water), no hiking, and NO adventures of any kind. What did we do? shopped. A lot. Too much. We wanted to get some Christmas shopping done, but didn't think that we would use so much time doing it.

Here are some lights (the high's and the low's)...


1. Reno Airport's food selection sucks

2. Old Indiana Jones looking dude playing air drums on the plane. He was jammin' big time. 1.5 hours of pure entertainment.

3. Went to Swell (on of our favorite online stores). There is no actual store to buy stuff from there, but at least we got a picture.

4. Found out that our favorite store in San Clemente (Killer Dana) was closed. We could go to the one in Dana Point, but it sucks.

5. Sprinkles. 'nuf said.

6. Session at the Los Angeles Temple. Been there twice before, but this is the first time we did a session. Absolutely beautiful. Had a lot of old school charm.

7. More sprinkles. This time original location in Beverly Hills. As you can see this makes Clayton very happy.

8. Southern Cal traffic. This is definitely on the LOW list

9. Lighting of the Bay in Newport. It took Clayton and I almost 45 minutes to realize that the furry looking thing that came with Santa was a reindeer and not a homeless dog.

10. Stumbling upon a farmer's market in Dana Point. If you know me at all you know that this made my day. fruit, veggies, breads and ... Hello rum cake!
11. Jamba juice every morning for breakfast.

12. Realizing just how many sushi rolls we can eat in one sitting. I'm too embarrassed to post how many we ate.


13. Gold minivan. we were drivin' in style. Every time we go to Cal we get either a minivan (even though online we request a economy car) or a Chevy HHR. This is not by choice.


14. December Nights at Balboa Park. This was by far in the top 4. Loved it. So many performers (musician's, dancers, etc), food from around the world, crafts, etc.


Couldn't get enough of the homemade tamales. Clayton also tried a hot dog thing (can't remember the name) from Sweeden or Switzerland (also can't remember which, but let's be honest is there any differnce between the two countries?). One of my favorites were the chocolate covered strawberries rolled in oreo's on a stick. And last but not least ... do you know what "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" taste like? We do.













Good thing the guy who took this picture got our who bodies instead of the WHOLE TREE!


15. Decorating Gingerbread cookies. Also at December Nights. I have decided that I decorate cookies like I carve pumpkins...fast and without thought. But I love doing it. I couldn't almost hear Clayton saying "could you please put a little more effort into decorating your cookie?"

16. Hearing Clayton say EVERY TIME we passed a Kettle corn stand (and there were A LOT) "Get your kettle corn. Not too salty, not too sweet".

17. The sauna

18. "well that Lindsey Lohan has really messed up her life" Said Clayton randomly in attempt to pull me up out of my funk. It worked.

19. The drunk driver. After watching him swerve (one time almost hitting the baracade on the freeway) and then actually witnessing him hit a car we knew it was time to get Jack Bauer on him and call the cops. Ok so Jack Bauer wouldn't call the cops, he would catch the guy and interogate him, but that is beside the point. Clayton followed the guy until we could read the license plate number to the cop. It was so very exciting.

RUN IN

So there I was...coming back to my building from getting the mail. I opened the door and noticed that it was blocked by a large body of people. They stepped aside for me so that I could walk through their circle to the other door. A gentleman opened the other door for me and said "Don't worry you are among friends." I looked at the gentleman that said that and ... it was Elder Jeffrey R Holland. I was so excited that the following conversation blew out of my mouth.



HEIDI: oh, oh, oh... Can I shake your hand (imagine me saying that all giddy-like)???
ELDER HOLLAND just laughs and sticks out his hand
HEIDI: you just made my day.


And...I EXIT.


Classy Heidi, classy.


I. Am. Officially. A. Dork.


But a dork who has shook the hand of an apostle!!!

MEET CINDERELLA (of the male kind)

AND THIS IS HOW I GET MY HOUSE CLEAN...

Duties included:
- straighten up living room and kitchen
- vacuum living room (12 seconds was his record)
- wipe down cupboards
- wipe baseboards
- vacuum and clean windowsill
- scrub 2 TOILETS
- dust
- clean/scrub down bathtub
- take out trash
- basically anything else I told him too

I can now see why people have children!

ps thanks Kace!

DEAR BRENDA

Dear Brenda,


Yesterday you got mad at me because I hadn't updated my blog. How was I supposed to know that you used my blog as your lunchtime entertainment? That you like to read about the adventures of Heidi and Clayton as you eat your tuna fish sandwich (with relish). I guess "how I was supposed to know" isn't worth dwelling on, as much as how I will remedy the problem.


Let me tell you about last weekend ok? Friday night while you were home doing feet (btw - when can you fit me in?) or watching some NASCAR race, Clayton and I were joining the Harry Potter to watch the latest movie. Now you know that I am not a Harry Potter lover (don't worry I'm expecting hate mail from probably everyone who reads that last line), but I love my husband and he does enjoy Harry (not like that you sick-o!) so in order to achieve my self proclaimed status of "Wife of the Year" I got us tickets. We went, we watched, we left. It was too dark and depressing for me. I like my movies with fluff and hearts and love and rainbows ("so bright! so vivid! what does it mean?"...if you don't get that check out double rainbow guy on youtube). However the C-man seemed to enjoy it. Oh yeah and by the way...going to a theater with assigned seats is the ONLY way to go. Forget this waiting in line for a seat crap. Assigned seats are a beautiful thing.

After the movie we checked out another new frozen yogurt place. Yes I know these places are so popular that they could rival 7-11 in store quantities. We tried out Farr's Fresh in Ogden. There was one thing about this place that was different than the others. In addition to self-serve frozen yogurt they had self-serve CUSTARD and self serve ICE CREAM! Brilliant. I really liked it and would list it as in my top 5 favorite Utah FroYo places. However, I did eat more of the custard and the ice cream than the yogurt so I did leave feeling a little more guilty...just a little. Or maybe my guilt had something to do with Clayton's small cup of custard/ice cream/yogurt and my GRANDE Mt. Everest sized cup of custard/ice cream/yogurt. Yeah that was probably it.

Oh and guess what else, Brenda...they had a fire place inside! How awesome is that!?!

Ok so remember last week how I told you that we were going to run this fundraiser 5K for Tyler Nielsen an Iraqi war veteran who lost his job at ATK and then found out that he had colon cancer? Well Saturday was race day. Sadly we haven't ran a race all year so when the wind and rain woke me up at 4 am on Saturday morning I knew that it wasn't going to be fun. This was the first race where Clayton and I didn't run together. He had set a goal of finishing in 20 minutes (9.3 mph on a treadmill...he accomplished his goal several times on a treadmill that week) and I ... well I didn't really care... until I saw the Bear River High School basketball team there and decided that I wanted to beat them. The race was cold. Very cold. Very windy. Very rainy. Very cold. Clayton finished in just over 21 minutes and I finished in 22:15 and YES we both beat the high school basketball team! If you want to read more about Tyler and his story or donate go to http://www.conqueringcoloncancer.weebly.com/.

After talking to my mother-in-law one time about the 5 temples in Utah that we have not been too she commented that she was shocked that after all our Provo BYU games we had never done a session in the Provo LDS Temple. So we thought, "Hey we have time to kill before the last BYU home football game so why not!?!" So we did. Coldest. Session. Ever. Not cold as in spiritually, but cold as in temperature. Seriously. so cold. But warm in spirit!

This picture was taken by the missionaries. they are obligated to do service, right?

I know that you don't like BYU Brenda, but please find joy in my joy that they won. And yes it was a cold game. And yes we packed mucho hot chocolate. And yes my dad informed us that too many sweets gives him gas. gross.

Well my dear friend, Brenda...I hope you have enjoyed your latest installment of our weekend activities. And I'm going to heed your advice and do my thanksgiving "I'm thankful" post right after I finish making my Thanksgiving pie.

Till then my friend...much love and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Love,

Heidi

ps. I updated last night too so I think with Thanksgiving tomorrow I think you should be covered until Monday