Christmas 2010

December 25, 2010

It is surprising because I feel like there is not too much to say about Christmas Day.  It is not like it was wonderful like all the other years, but I guess that is just it, it was like every other yea.

We kind of went crazy this year with presents for each other.  The issue was we both really needed some new clothes and we had held off until Christmas to get them.

I was super super excited to get some black and gray boots.  I am finally somewhat in style and I love them!!!

Trav had hinted to me all of December that if I was going to surprise him, that he wanted BYU Basketball Tickets.  Well I really wanted to get him SDSU vs. BYU tickets because they were both ranked at the time and when they played SDSU was 4th and BYU was 9th, but it was on a weekday night and I thought it would be safer to get tickets to a game that were on a Saturday.  So I got the BYU vs. UNLV (they are a good team still).

The pink box that I am holding is new perfume.  Trav surprised me with a really nice Ed Hardy perfume that he picked out himself.  He did an awesome job because I LOVE IT!! 

Amanda, Shannon and Josh

Dad and Mom

Trav and Me

After we opened presents at our apartment we headed up to my parents house and opened gifts there.  We gave my mom some nice Australian Sheepskin slippers and my dad 2 tickets to 2 different Utah Jazz games.  We also got them a combined gift to pick out a play they want to go see at the new Centerville Theater. Next we headed to grandma and grandpa Fords and enjoyed a little family time and then it was off to the Tidwell's to have dinner  and do gifts there.  My grandma and grandpa Tidwell always have something creative for us to do.  This year my grandma had gathered all of the pictures she had of me and bought some cute scrapbook paper and stinkers and gave it to me in a binder. Then while we were there on Christmas, we started to put together a little scrapbook of all of the pictures.  It was a lot of fun to see some pictures of me as a baby that I have never seen before.  It was an awesome Christmas and me and Trav have so much to be grateful for.  Great families, great friends, a place to live, a job, schooling, the gospel, Christ's birth, and each other!

Tidwell Family Christmas Outing and Ford Family Party

December 17 -18

So usually for our get together we go out to dinner and then hit up a play (most of the time being Deseret Star Playhouse).  Well this year we decided to mix it up.  We all met up at the Embassy Suites in Salt Lake.  My dad went up picked us up dinner at Hires Big H.  We sat in the lobby together and chatted and ate.  Then we were headed to our rooms to bundle up and Trax in to Temple Square.  We walked around Temple Square for awhile and enjoyed the beautiful lights on the temple grounds. It was fun to feel the Christmas spirit in the air.  Once we had made the rounds, my dad thought we might all want to stop at this little stand where they were serving hot chocolate, but we all opted to get going because we were too cold.  Once we got back to the hotel, we got out some games to play as a family and then headed down to the pool.  I was really hoping it would be relaxing and that we could just have it to just our family because kids weren't supposed to be in the pool after 10pm.  It turns out there were a bunch of kids and no one said anything so we heard the echo of yelling and splashing as we tried to relax in the hot tub.  It was still fun anyways. That night my parents surprised the girls (Amanda, Me, and Shannon) with some cute new pajamas and they gave the guys (Shane, Travis and Josh) gift cards to Cafe Rio.  It ended up being a really great night and we always have a good time with the family.

FYI...I did have a huge sweater on under my coat....

Later that Saturday night, we headed over to Kathy and Kevin's for the Ford Christmas Party.  We ate chicken pillows for dinner. Brianna had put together a Christmas Cranium game that was a lot of fun.  We also did a sort of gift/white elephant game.  There is a sad story to tell about this year though...we didn't do the regular talent show.  What it came down to is our family had something planned, but it was a little bit of a project and we didn't have the time to pull it together.  My mom talked to Kathy and said that maybe we should drop the talent show this year.  Kathy thought that was a great idea and let everyone else know and apparently everyone else thought it was a great idea too.  Kathy did pull together a bunch of clips of past Christmas talents show and we got a kick out of those!!! Needless to say, I was sad that we didn't get to see the creativity that comes along with the annual talent show.  You never know what someone is going to come up with.  As old, Kathy and Kevin were great hosts and we had an awesome time with the fam.

Thanksgiving and the Guymon Annual Gingerbread Houses

November 24-27

Thanksgiving/Black Friday

This year we were able to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with the Guymon's.  (I need to be better at posting closer to the event because I forget the details of what we did), but I do remember that the Thanksgiving feast was excellent.  And it definitely was a feast!!!  Jaime and her boys, Adam and Heidi's Family, Mark, Ray and Marian were there to celebrate.  My favorite part of Thanksgiving is the stuffing!  It is sooooo delicious.  Oh my memory is coming back to me......So that night I went with the girls to the Walmart's Black Friday Sale.  There wasn't really anything I needed, but I helped man the cart while the others went to go grab all the good deal.  I haven't been to a Black Friday sale in quite a few years, and boy did I forget how crowded and crazy it is.  I do have to say that I think everyone in Carbon and Emery county were at Wal-mart because they are the only big store down there. ha ha.  The aisles were gridlocked.  We had someone telling us that we were going down the wrong side of the aisle?!?!  I thought to myself.... I don't see anyone moving in any sort of an organized fasion, you just go where your cart has 2 inches to move, or with the flow of traffic, but there was no "flowing" going on.  Another thing that shocked me was that people have always said that things can get stolen out of your cart on Black Friday, and I thought there is no way that people actually do that.  Well I am here to tell you they DO.  So I am walking down a main aisle and Jaime is looking at pajamas, and Heidi and Marian are following a little bit behind me.  Well I'm just pushing along and I hear plastic being moved.  I look down  and this 17-year-old boy is lifting up a pillow in my cart and taking out 1 of the 3 art kits we were going to purchase that was at the bottom of the cart.  He made a mad dash and I yelled at him...I was so suprised I didn't even know what to do.  I wanted to run after him, but considering I had my purse and Jaime's purse in the front of the cart and all the other "theft worthy" items in my cart.  I decided to just let him go.  It made me so upset.  How can people be that CRAZY!  Needless to say, it was quite the adventure. 

Utah 17 vs. BYU 16

 So by the time Saturday came, Cody and Laura's family, and Megan and Paul, were able to join us for the day's festivites.  We were going to watch the last offical "Holy War" and then head to the church to decorate our gingerbread houses.  So I started watching the game downstairs with all of the guys aka BYU fans.  It was going well until I just couldn't hadle them saying there was this hold or that hold or that they gave them a generous spot.  It was just killing me and I didn't want to say anything I would regret, so I decided to seperate myself and watch it upstairs with the Utah fans and the Uninterested fans.  It was a lot more enjoyable.  Well Paul and I thought for sure it was over when they had the opportunity for a field goal, but the Utes came through with an AWESOME block!  UTAH UTES win the 2010 HOLY WAR!!! I do have to say that the BYU crowd downstairs wasn't the most pleasant to be around until they had a chance to cool down.

True Gingerbread Houses

So to get everyone back in the family fun mood we headed to the stake center to create out gingerbread houses.  Laura had be so nice to make almost everyone real gingerbread pieces that fit together to make a darling house.  They were quite elaborate might I say.  Trav and I assisted Hiedi in helping Camden put his house together.  We weren't going to do our own house this year, but we got suckered into it and it ended up turning out cute. 

We did learn of some good news during the event.  Megan and Paul brought out two large glass candy jars with blue and pink candy in them and they had tied a bow around the top of each of them.  They are having a baby and since then, we have found out it is a boy that is due in May.  We are so excited for them and can't went to welcome baby Campbell into the family!  In celebration, Megan and Paul made their gingerbread house only blue and pink.

You can't tell what Trav is making, but while I decorated our house, he worked on making a direct tv satellite to put on the roof of our gingerbread house.  It was pretty creative, but it would never stay together well enough to actually get it on the house.

Camden making a silly face, but I think he also has a whole lot of candy in his mouth.  All he was worried about concerning his house was the frogs that were in the pond.

Keith and Colin-Colin's house unofficially won the award of "most candied house".  We were all worried that it was going to cave in. 

Kenya, Laura, and Megan.  Laura was making a Victorian Gingerbread House.  They turned out so cute!!!

Cody, Avery, Alanna, Jaime, and Keith

Ashlee, Trav, Austin, Adam, and Miles

Half 1

Half 2

The whole crew!

Our Gingerbread house.

I liked the momma and baby snowman in the front.

The guys played some basketball after and I jumped in for a few games a lightening.  Thanks to Laura for the gingerbread houses, and to Marian and Ray for hosting us all weekend.