Holiday baking

On Saturday Elliot and I decided to make cookies for all of the families we home/visit teach. It took us five hours to do it, but we finished strong and with a LOT of cookies. Elliot insisted on wearing his coveralls for the entire time which made things a little more interesting. It was like baking cookies with a mechanic. You may wonder why he owns a pair of coveralls. I don't know the answer to that. I don't know why he owns a lot of things. Well, that is about it. Nothing extraordinarily interesting happened while baking. Other then the fact that both of us were in the kitchen baking. That was pretty extraordinary.

Work Christmas party

So blogger is not working very well right now but I am going to type this out and see if it posts correctly. I am really going to be irritated if after typing this it deletes everything.
Anyways, my company had their Christmas Party last night. Elliot's mom did my hair and make-up which was the most fun of the entire evening. You can tell by the photo's below that she obviously has a talent for it. I'm sure working with something so stunning made it easier for her though. The party was ok. I tried a duck cooked inside of a chicken cooked inside of a turkey. That was interesting. It was actually pretty tasty. They didn't really have that exciting of food like I thought they would. Everyone talked it up pretty big but it was just regular Christmas food (stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beens). For appetizers they had grilled cheese sandwiches cut into 4's so they were small. Seriously. Grilled cheese. I wonder if they had a 6 year olds b-day party held there earlier that day and needed to get rid of the leftovers. They did have an open bar with unlimited drinks. ALL THE DIET COKE MY HEART DESIRED!! Pretty exciting. I think that most of the people there go for that open bar. It did seem to be the focal point of most peoples attention throughout the evening.
One interesting thing that happened was that the valet people almost lost our car. At the end of the night when we were leaving, we gave the valet guy our ticket and he said he would go get it and be right back. Well, 15 minutes went by and he came back and asked us if we would be more comfortable inside (I don't think this is a good sign in circumstance like this) so we went inside and waited for another 15 or so minutes while all the valet people huddled outside talking and sneaking glanced our way. They definitely looked nervous. Eventually they did find a car for us to drive home and even though it has a bashed in front and it looks raggedy, we told them we would accept it until the could get our Mercedes back to us. And while your at it, tint the windows as compensation.

Merry Christmas to all

Thanksgiving 2007 Part 1

Thanksgiving 2007 Part 2

The rest of the Oregon trip

Pictures of my old "backyard." So beautiful. It was nice to be back there.


















It was so fun to see Chrysta! We got to talk a lot, go around Corvallis, watch plenty of old Friends episodes, and eat good food (most important). We also Dyed Chrysta's hair this really pretty red color. It turned out very nice. I'm so sad we live so far apart!! Hopefully we will be able to see each other again soon. The wedding was beautiful. It was the first wedding I have been to outside of the temple which was fun. Amanda (my brothers wife) looked so beautiful. I loved her wedding dress. My nieces were adorable too. As usual. I can't believe how grown up they were! They have gotten so old since the last time I saw them. It makes me sad that I don't live closer. I also got to see my grandpa who isn't doing so well, so it was nice I got to spend some time with him. I had such a great time in Oregon and am so happy I got to go.

I've been tagged!

Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


#1. I was tagged by Erica, who's blog is quite a bit more interesting then mine, therefore, this entry might not be able to keep your attention as well as hers did.

#2. Ok, here are my random facts. I'm not sure I can come up with enough, and since Elliot's name is attached to this blog as well, I just might have to add a few things about him to keep this going the entire duration of the 7 items.

#1. I can't stand the sound of the microwave beeping. I always stop it when it gets to 1 second and take my food out.

#2. When I was 12, I was a huge fan of Oprah. I wrote her a letter telling her how much I liked her, and in return I received an autographed photo of her which I put in a frame and hung proudly over my dresser.

#3. Ok, Elliot's turn. He knows every stat of every football game every played, but can't remember how our first kiss went down. (If you want the real version, come to me. Don't believe a word he says).

#4. Elliot owns every album that Queen made. You should hear him sing (and sometimes dance) along. It is something else.

#5. I prefer rain to sunshine. There is something about a really overcast day that puts me in a good mood. Ahh, a true Oregonian.

#6. I cannot stand to be shushed.

#7. I love my birthday. I make people (and by people I really mean Elliot), start celebrating the week before and I try to drag it out a few days after. This year, I'm going to try to make the entire month of February one big party.

#4. I tag: Chrysta. I'm too tired to go to anyone else's blog to leave a comment.

My parents house.....kind of

Ok, so dumb blogger isn't working again. I just downloaded a bunch of pictures from my trip to Oregon and these 4 are the only ones it is allowing me to keep. I guess I will just have to do multiple blogs to tell the tale of my journey to Oregon. I went out there to see Chrysta, and to go to my brothers wedding. It was so fun!! I hadn't seen Chrysta since my wedding day over 2 years ago!! Crazy. We both don't feel like it had been that long, probably due to our hour long phone conversations every day. We can get sick of each other 3000 miles apart!!! Anyways, while I was there, we went back to my parents old house. They moved to Indiana while I was on my mission so I never got to see it one last time before they moved. I totally still pictured it the way it looked when they still lived there. Well, for those of you that have been to the house, you will be so surprised by how they have redone the living room and kitchen!! It looks so great!! The couple that bought it (the wife rather) has a knack for decorating. They have cute stuff everywhere, and they painted the walls these really great colors. I loved it! It was a little strange being in a house that was still so familiar to me but knowing it wasn't my house anymore. I showed the new owner where I had carved me and all my siblings names into the wood on the staircase. Funny that it was still there. The lady said that they still use the wood fireplace to heat the house!! It brought back bittersweet (mostly bitter) memories of me and my brothers hauling in wood every Saturday morning. 100 pieces each. Ugh. But I have to say, heat from a wood stove feels way better then central heat. There is just something about it that feels cozy. They are still renovating a lot more of the house so I am excited to go back in a few years and see what else they do to it. Ok, I will try again tomorrow night to add more pictures of the rest of my trip.

Kickball

Elliot's fraternity (Beta Alpha Si, it is a fraternity for accounting students) held a kickball game today. It was really fun. They had it at Piedmont park in Atlanta and I had never been there before so it was really cool to see it. It is beautiful up there! And today's weather was totally perfect. It was about 75 degrees and felt more like a spring day then November 3rd!! I sat and watched and enjoyed the sunshine. Elliot's team ended up winning 11-0. You'll probably see recaps on ESPN tonight. After the game, on our walk back to the MARTA we stopped by to look at some apartments. They were a little out of our price range. And by out of our price range, I really mean they were in a price range 3 worlds away from our price range. Too bad, it would be so great to live up so close to school and work, and the area around Piedmont is so cute. Looks like a really great place to live.
So tonight we are going to a Miranda Lambert concert!! I am really really excited. I love her! I will put up pictures tomorrow of the concert.

*!%@#*%^#

I am convinced that this dumb computer is alive and is getting it's jollies out of taunting me. For the last hour and a half I have been trying to post pictures of our bedroom and living room. Very simple tasks, I know, but not tonight. It keeps purposely messing up to see how angry I will get. I am about 2 1/2 seconds from setting this computer on fire and doing a celebration dance around it while I am dressed in nothing but a sheet (I don't know why I have to be dressed in a sheet, it just seemed appropriate for the setting.) Anyways, here is the one picture the dumb computer would let me download of our living room. We still have to paint the window still white, and finish moving in. We have piles of clothes mixed with piles of power tools lying all around down here. Hopefully by this next weekend everything will be a little bit more cleaned up.

Flowers and toilets

So for the last few weeks Elliot has been bringing me flowers to work. I'm not sure why and I am choosing not to be suspicious of his reasons so it doesn't disrupt my enjoyment of the flowers. They are so pretty! Especially the red ones. I have no idea what they are called but I think they are my new favorites.

While I was taking pictures of the flowers, I decided to take some pictures of my office for those of you who just can't get enough of my life. I know, it is very interesting. You can now stop imagining what it looks like and see it in all it's wonder. 9 hours of my life each day are spent in this quaint little room (quaint can also be substituted with suffocating).



In other news, we finished the plumbing for the bathroom downstairs. And by we I really mean Bill with about 5 minutes of Elliot's help (while wearing a trashbag shirt. Yeah, I have no idea either.) So now we just need to do a few minor things and we are ready to move in (i.e - crown molding, paint touch up's, outlet covers, etc) I am excited. We put all of our clothes in our new bedroom and tonight is the first night we are sleeping in it. I'll let you know how it goes. Tomorrow I will take more pictures of everything (including the kelly green living room) so everyone can see.

Happy Halloween

Last weekend we went to a Halloween party. Can you guess what we were?

I may be getting a new calling....

So last night was mutual and for beehives we made bags of candy to doorbell ditch at members homes. Well, we made 15 bags and only had about 6 members houses that we had planned on going to so with the remaining bags we decided to leave them at random houses thinking we would bring some Halloween cheer to people in the community. We are such good people. Anyways, everything had gone fine and we were on the last house of the night and all of the girls wanted to get out and do this one together (we had 8 girls). So they all got out and hid in the bushes at this one house (why did I not think this was a bad idea?) and one girl rang the doorbell. As she was going down the porch steps 2 guys busted out of the front door, jumped down the stairs and chased after all the girls yelling at them. Oh boy. All the girls were TERRIFIED. To make matters worse, I was in someone else's car and couldn't figure out how to unlock the dumb door to go rescue the girls. So I sat in the car for like 10 seconds frantically clawing at the locks watching my beehives about to be attacked!!! Anyways, I finally figured out the locks, got out and explained to the men that we were a church group dropping candy off at random peoples houses for fun (yeah, it sounded strange saying it out loud). The guys still looked mad and scary but they went back into their house. The girls were all pretty scared by the entire ordeal. One girl swore one of the guys had a gun. Yeah, this should be interesting seeing all of these girls' parents at church on Sunday. I can hardly wait. I suppose I should get geared up to be called as nursery leader now. At least I documented my last activity as a beehive leader. Here are some pictures.