Black-eye Friday & Thanksgiving

Oh Brian. He always manages to make things interesting (2 broken feet, anyone remember that?). Well, luckily this wasn't as tragic as the fire pole episode, but it easily could have been!

For Thanksgiving we got to go to Queen Creek to have Thanksgiving with Brian's side of the family. There were tons of people there (as is usually the case with their family) and tons of cousins. Brian was playing night games and I was inside taking care of sweet Myla. Well, Brian comes rushing into the house with his hand over his eye and heads straight to the bathroom to assess the damage. Apparently he was running in the dark and got clotheslined. Literally. He ran into a clothesline. With his eye.

Someone was watching out for him and luckily there was no damage to his actual eyeball. He did get a impressively deep slice in the skin right next to his eye on the outside corner. 

His sweet (and talented) cousin, Natalie, stitched him up at her PA office and we were good to go. Thank heavens he didn't damage his eyeball - he needs both of them to be a dentist!!

With his stitch!

And our cute little muffin's first Thanksgiving :)

chocolate chocolate chip peppermint cookies

(a combination and tweaking of some favorite cookie recipes... + candy canes!)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup softened butter (NOT melted)
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 package chocolate pudding mix (small box - 3.9 oz)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbs baking soda
2 1/2 - 3 cups flour (I used 3)
chocolate chips
candy canes (crushed to very small pieces)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees
Beat together butter, shortening, and sugars until light and fluffy.
Add eggs and vanilla extract and again beat until light and fluffy.
Mix in pudding mix, salt, and baking soda until well combined.
Add flour 1/2 cup - 1 cup at a time until reached desired consistency. I like my cookies thick and chewy, so I make my batter very thick - hardly sticky at all.

Mix in a generous amount of chocolate chips (I used an entire standard bag).
I made my cookies into about 1.5 inch balls (but you can do bigger or smaller).
Place on cookie sheet.
Moisten the tops of the cookies with a little bit of water so the candy will stick (I used a spray bottle) and sprinkle crushed candy canes on top. My candy canes were basically a candy cane powder with a few larger chunks mixed in. No need to press candy into the cookie - it sticks really well and melts onto the cookie during baking.
Put in oven for 9-12 minutes depending on your oven. Mine were perfect at 10 minutes 30 seconds :).

Enjoy!!

 

Oh Christmas Tree

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Here are some decorations that we have around the casa to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year...

Nativity set from my trip to Guatemala

Our tree!

Isn't this Santa adorable? I think we got him for $1

lights

ornament from our trip to San Diego

ornament from our trip to Bear Lake

I had some time to wrap presents yesterday :)

presents for this handsome man!

Christmas tree during the day

And our wee Charlie Brown Christmas tree - love it!

Treat or treat

Because who likes tricks?

My fabulous looking Russian-esk husband and me before our haunted Halloween cruise down the Provo River! Great fun. 2nd year that we've done it.

The captain of our "cruise" ship

All along the river there are carved pumpkins lighting the way!

Our costumes on Halloween night! A nerdy dentist and his tooth fairy :)

Halloween was fun this year - we went to our ward's trunk or treat and soup potluck (where we brought our infamous taco soup). Unfortunatley, we were so busy sampling all the soups that we never made it back to our car to give out candy! No worries though, we went to some friends' house afterward and passed out our delicious Milky Ways and Snickers. We also watched "The House on Haunted Hill." A very old, very cheesy, and very scary (only for me) movie. I stink at watching scary movies. I'm a wuss.

I went for a run on the Provo River trail earlier this week and just thought the leaves were SO BEAUTIFUL! So, naturally I had to go and take a lot of pictures. Here are a few :) Makes me excited to get a sweet camera in the near(ish) future!

#13. Describe 5 weaknesses you have

Howdy ho!

Well, I haven't written in a while because I haven't really had too much to write about! I've been working a lot, helping Brian study for the DAT (trying), and trying to get in shape again. Ever heard of "spidermans"? They are killer. If you want a good ab workout, talk to me..

We had a good time on the 4th of July with some friends. We had the biggest burgers I had ever seen at a barbeque and then we watched the fireworks from Rock Canyon Park. While we weren't able to see any really big fireworks because we were far away, we were able to see about 5 different fireworks shows because from where we were at we could see the whole valley. I love fireworks! I am, however, surprised that they even had them this year after a good part of Utah was on fire.

Brian will probably be taking the DAT next Friday. If you have some spare time to pray, please say one on his behalf! He has studied so, so hard. Unfortunately, he is at a big disadvantage because he isn't a biology major and consequently is trying to learn in a month what they learn in a few years. I am so proud of how hard he is working! I am glad the end is in sight and then we can party!

I realized the other day that I never finished up my "30 questions" series. So, on to number thirteen!

13. Describe 5 weaknesses you have.

1. Well, I have a weakness for Brian! Hehe... he makes me weak in the knees ;)

2. Sweets. Top three offenders: Ice cream, cookies, and brownies. I could pass on the chips any day of the week, but set a bowl of ice cream in front of me and my self control flies out the window. I'm trying to get better at that one.

3. Procrastination. I think I have gotten better at that one though.

4. I am sad to admit this, but I am not very great at good spiritual habits. I do really good for short spurts, but always go back to, well, not doing good.

5. Texting people back. If you are one of the people I have not texted back, you are not alone. I have a personal goal to get better at it!

For more of the questions, click here.

our first anniversary :)

Brian and I had a very eventful weekend! 

We had thrown around a couple of ideas as to what we wanted to do for the big one year, but still hadn't decided on anything as of Saturday. Friday night we went on a campout with our ward and that was lots of fun... but then... I got food poisoning.

Ew.

So, I spent Saturday morning ralphing and Brian went and took a practice DAT exam (which he did well on, by the way :)). By Saturday night I was feeling better (and significantly more thin - the only benefit of food poisoning) and we decided it was time we made some plans! So, we looked into a few options and decided that we just wanted to get out of Provo at all costs!

We ended up going to Logan to the Anniversary Inn (yes, you may roll your eyes and gag at this point because of the unoriginality of this idea)... and let me tell ya, it was awesome! Maybe it's because Brian and I are such kids at heart, but we thought the themed room was so much fun! We stopped by Brian's uncle's house (Martin) on the way and picked up the amazing wedding video he made for us last year. We had actually never seen it because our copy never made it from the reception, and it was neat to watch it! I may or may not have gotten a little teary-eyed. He did such a wonderful job - THANKS MARTIN! I tried to figure out a way to post it on the blog, but no luck so far.

Monday we hung around Logan for a while and then headed up to Bear Lake where we had spent the majority of our honeymoon. We took some cheesy pictures: 

I got the idea off of Pinterest (where else?) to take a photo on every anniversary and then it will be really neat to look back and see how we've changed as the years go by. I'm sure we could do that with normal pictures too, but I think it will be really fun to do it on our anniversaries. So, we took a few and we'll decide which one is our favorite later. Probably not the kissing ones, but because this is a blog post about romanticy things, I just couldn't leave them out, right?

We, of course, went and got the famous raspberry shakes that Bear Lake had to offer. We got our two favorites from last time and man alive, they were tasty. I could've probably eaten 10. The first picture is of Brian eating the deliciousness last year and the rest are of this year. Still delicious.

I simply had to pose with the same ferocious bear too... again, last year on top, this year on the bottom.

After hanging around Bear Lake for a while and reminiscing, we headed back to Logan where we ate at the oh-so-delicious El Sol (not to rub it in your face, mom), and then went to my grandma's for a visit and to stay the night. I worked Tuesday so we got up a the crack of dawn and headed to Salt Lake where I put in a full day of work and Brian put in a full day of studying! It was a very eventful day at work, but I'll save that story for another day :).

I really can't believe that it's been a year since we got married. It has been such a great year and I am so grateful that Brian asked me to be his wifey. We have learned a whole lot this last year and I love him more than ever before. Here's to many more years to come! I blogged about our wedding and honeymoon here, here, here, and here

And some wedding pictures for good measure :)