Banshee

This is for Uncle Whitney.

Christmas Eve 2009

*This is from a post I blogged two years ago and might give anyone who watches this a better idea as to why we scream!

"We all settled in to watch "Scrooge". This year was especially special to us because there is a scene in the movie where a hideous looking child sings about Scrooge saying, "He's a Banshee". Well not so....Uncle Whitney ruined our fun by telling us that the kid really says, 'he's a bandit' and told us our dad had been lying to us all these years. We put the closed captions on during the song and all cried when we read the sad truth. We still screamed out that he was a banshee and will continue to do so....so there."

SNOW

I knew it would have to snow sometime during my trip but what I didn't know was that it was going to be the biggest storm of 2009!
Jenna, Hailey and I had big plans for Saturday so we braved the storm and went shopping.
We saw Santa on our way.....he brings candy canes to all of the children in the township one day a year and it happened to be this snowy day.

Concerts

In the past when I would come home from college I was always able to see my sisters perform in their winter concerts. This year I had the same opportunity and I loved it!

Here is Hailey's performance. She plays the trumpet.

Here is Kyra's high school performance.

Every year the Choir sings "Hallelujah Chorus" and they invite the Alumni to come sing with them. I got the courage and went up!!

Here is a video of Hailey's performance. The song is titled, "African Noel". Now keep in Mind this is an elementary school band! They are hot diggity good.

Cookie Exchange

My mom had her annual cookie exchange and I was finally home when it took place!

Me with Dana's precious little baby Finn. I got permission to put this up....right Dana?!

I was in charge of the hot chocolate station......only two people drank it :( But I think it looks Scrumtrulescent.

Matt's New Truck

Because there is no metro north here in Phoenix we finally had to buy a second car. Matt had to have a truck so we went to a shady car dealer downtown and found this little number. The best part of the whole car buying experience came when we were in the lobby and "New Moon" was playing on the TV. Is it wrong that I watched nearly half of a movie taped by some guy trying to make a buck? I mean we already paid money to see it in the theatre.......right?!

Such Is Life

Arizona storm + our luck = 20 foot tree blown over in the front yard

Before:

During:

After:

So yes this blog is somewhat of me boasting......I just have to say that I painted this entire room all by myself! It was my goal to get this done before I left for PA next week and I did it in one day :) I painted the whole room white except for one wall which I painted brown. I even got up on the ladder and risked my life to bring beauty to my home! I almost fell twice onto the concrete floor....but it was worth it! Matt was pretty proud when he woke up from his nap and found me exactly like this:

It'll be nice when I can put pictures up of the final product, carpet and all. Until then you get to see these pretty pictures.

You will notice the very top of the wall is not painted. Confession: I enlisted Matt to risk his life doing the very scary scary hard part! He is such a good husband.

Christmas Nativity Festival

Matt and I attended our stakes nativity festival last evening and had a great time. The activities committee and those involved put so much time and effort into this and everything was wonderful. The stake invited many different religious choirs from around the valley to come and perform. The basic message we were sending out was that we are Christian and we have so much in common with other faiths. I took a bunch of pictures to pass on to my Dad in hopes that their stake might try it next year! Friday night alone they had 500 guests; 150 non-lds. Matt and I saw the Baptist Choir perform and we really enjoyed their music and message.

I thought this nativity set was cute :)

Happy Thanksgiving

This year we had Thanksgiving in our new house. Karen, Max, Kevin, Cynthia, Emma and Adam joined us for the holiday weekend. We had a lot of fun watching movies, eating, going to see '2012' and shopping black Friday sales. Matt had to work every day this week due to the big lobby renovation at the Hyatt so it was nice to have some company. Everyone left today so right now I am cleaning and keeping tabs on the BYU vs Utah game. Go cougs :)

Max and Adam

Emma

Matt got home right in time for dinner. It was my first time making Thanksgiving dinner and I had (and needed) a lot of help from Karen :) Thanks Karen!

This weekend was the first time Matt and I slept over in the house. It was so much fun and we can't wait to have more visitors in the future.

Transformation of The Wall

This is the wall that Ami thought would be a disaster and now she loves it.

This wall was very crooked to start with.

So I cut off most of the crooked part.

I refinished it with drywall and texture.

Then painted it brown,

added a pine cap with some moldings,

patched it up,

painted the cap white,

added some base boards,

and voila!