The Weekend

The weekend was wonderful, as it usually is. Saturday Joel and I slept in, and then went to my parents to play Guitar Hero World Tour with Mike and Spencer. It was awesome! I love that game! Then at 430 Joel and Mike and I went to Kelsey's house because she was having a Scencity party, but we just wanted to see our friends. We saw Nicki and her little boy Keegan. He is getting so so big, and Nicki looks great. We also got to see Josh and Erica, which was awesome! After that, Mike went to pick up his date for the night - Kat - and went Laser Questing!! I LOVE LASER QUESTING! It was so awesome...Joel and I are so bad...Mike barely got second by 20 points! Only 2 more shots and he would have won! Dang...Afterward, Joel and I went to grab some pizza and Jarritos to eat while we watched WALL-E. Unfortunately we had to leave in the middle of the movie to go and pick up my parents at the airport because they were at a convention in LA.
Sunday we went to church and my little sunbeams were so so good! We talked about saying our prayers, and they were so responsive! At the end we had about five minutes and I asked them what game they would like to play and they all wanted head, shoulders, knees and toes. Chase screams out, "We have to do it so so fast! Faster than a dinosaur can run!" HAHA I love my sunbeams! Andrew was pouty when he came in and after about 10 minutes I told him that I had fishies (Swedish fish). He looks at me and says, "I really like that. How many can I have? This many?" -as he holds is arms out as far as he can stretch. So cute. My mom wanted us to make Sopes on for dinner, and that turned out great! Then we finally got to watch the season premiere of LOST! SO HAPPY! We couldn't see it together because mom and dad were in LA. It was wonderful! Well, it turned out to be a nice weekend.

Books and Family

Last Friday was Book Club meeting. Last month's book was Pride and Prejudice - Jen tried really really hard to finish. I love that book so much! Cami made these really cute book marks with questions that we go through while we're at dinner. We ate dinner at the Zupas Cafe in the river bottoms just off 106 by Market Street and Geckos. It was surprisingly good! I got a turkey cranberry sandwich on panini and they put like 4 different kinds of cheese on it...yum. And, to Jen's delight, they give you half of a chocolate covered strawberry with your meal. However, she did get a whole one because I'm not a strawberry fan. This was my first time reading the book for club and going out with them, and I really enjoyed it! Last time I went to dinner because we were going to the Twilight movie at midnight, but I didn't know it was book club meeting. I'm really looking forward to this next month reading Confessions of a Shopaholic. We're going to dinner and talking about it, then going to see the movie! I'm really excited about this one :)

Monday was my turn for FHE at the Albas. I really really hate "New Year's Resolutions" so I didn't give a lesson on that. No one ever completes their new year's resolutions...I know a handful of people who actually have, and I would rather make goals when they are necessary than just make an unreasonable goal only at the beginning of the year. It's like that saying "I'll lose weight tomorrow". That's how people are with new year's resolutions - this is a very broad generalization and I'm sorry if you are one of those people who can have the discipline to fulfill a new year's resolution. ANYWAY, I decided to talk about keeping a good journal. I am really really bad at keeping a journal, and I know the best way for me to learn is to talk about it. So, I read this really good article from President Spencer W. Kimball about how important it is to keep a good journal. Then, I got this idea

from watching LOST. At the end of season three, Charlie - a musician - knows he's going to die and he wants to write down the five best moments of his life and calls it his "Greatest Hits". So, I thought it would be a fun idea to have everyone write down their "Greatest Hits" to this date. Just kind of something to put in a journal and have each of us get to know each other a little better. I enjoyed hearing about everyone's greatest hits! It was awesome! John and Suegro had gone to get Papa Murphey's before and it was cooking during the lesson. It was really good. I love pizza! Joel and I thought it would be fun to bring the wii, so we brought rock band and mario kart. Something is wrong with our rock band guitar so we need to take that back. Oli was so cute! She almost had a heart attack when she saw the drums! She had to play them! Mario kart was awesome! We play a circuit and it was getting late so we went home. But, John made it very clear who got first on the last race ;) Nice one John!

Everything was great until about 1 am. I woke up with excruciating pain in my stomach. It felt like someone stabbed me with a knife and was twisting it around. Food Poisoning. I can't think of anything but the pizza that would do that to me. My mom said that sometimes they mix the meats on the pizza so even just one bad piece can do the dirty deed. Poor Joel was already tired because he hadn't slept well from the night before, and he was up for about an hour and a half trying to help me. He gave me a blessing, and I remembered he had bought me a heating pad when I was sick with my gall bladder. I used to use it when I would get pain from that. So, I put that on my stomach and was able to sleep the rest of the night. But, the next day I was still feeling awful so I stayed home from school for the first time my entire year. Thank heaven I didn't miss very much. So after all of the pain and the throwing up, I think it is needless to say that I'm not really going to want Papa Murphey's for a while.

La, La, La, La...La, La, La, La...

So, my little niece is the cutest little girl in the entire world! I've probably already expressed my feelings about this on a previous occasion; however, I again must say how adorable she is. The other week we were at my suegros' house and Oli kept dragging me to the computer and I wasn't sure what she wanted so we kept asking Lila what she wanted to watch and we tried a million things! Then it finally clicked... emo means ELMO! She loves the little elmo jingle...you know the one I'm talking about *lalalala, lalalala, elmo's song. lalalala, lalalala, elmo's song. etc.* I think we watched it about 15 times in a row before she wanted to do something else. So, that week we went with our family to play arcade games at boondocks and it was so much fun! We turned in all of our tickets and got an elmo doll for Oli and some candy. We were just able to give it to her the other day, and it was so cute. She took it and was making him dance and she was singing la la la la la. HAHA. Lila looks at her and says "Oli, que dice elmo?" Oli says "la la la la" She also got a little drumset that's really cute. She loves to play on Joel's set so they decided to get her one. so cute :) It has a snare, bass, one tom, and a cymbal. Cutest little girl alive. I may be biased, but you tell me that she's not adorable!

Anniversary. Christmas. New Year.

Well, the break was wonderful! It was filled with family and games and happiness. The anniversary was awesome! Joel took me to the Anniversary Inn in Logan and we stayed in the Hollywood Romance Room! I think the TV was twice my size...So So cool. Joel it the best husband in the world, and he treats me so incredibly well! I could never ask for anyone more incredible! It's been a year, and I just keep loving him more and more every day.
Christmas was so amazing and New Years was just as good. The Vegas Show got canceled, so I didn't get to do that :( but it turned out to be good because I got to spend a lot more time with my family and friends. Joel and I did end up going to Vegas this last weekend because my parents bought us tickets to go see the Beatles "Love" show by Cirque du Soleil! It was so incredible! I could tell you all of the cool things that we saw in the show, but it certainly wouldn't do the show any justice! We're never going back to Vegas again though...I don't know how people can be there all the time. Poor Joel...we would just be driving somewhere and the truck in front of us would have pictures that were extremely inappropriate, and what are you to do? Close your eyes? It was awful in that sense.
By the way, never stay at the Stratosphere in Vegas. On friday night, Joel and I went to bed and everything was fine until 4 am. The rooms were connected by those doors that conjoin the rooms, and the next door neighbors were anything but quiet! Two girls had hired a male stripper...they were so drunk and we thought that it would pass. YEAH RIGHT! So, we called the front desk to tell them to shut up, and they did, but because we could hear everything in the room, we heard them laugh at the front desk and hang up the phone. great...we tried banging on the walls and yelling through the door, but nothing was getting them to keep their promiscuous activities at a low. So, at 430 we called again and Joel just asked if we could have a different room, and we got and upgraded room 3 floors up. Finally, at 5 or so we were all moved into our new room and ready for bed. We will never ever go back to Vegas again. We don't care how good a show is, nothing is worth being in that armpit of a city. Joel affectionately called it "Sin City".
However, everything else about the break was amazing! Joel's parents gave us rock band and a nice bookshelf, both of which have been put to very good use. Joel got me this awesome hat that I wear way too often, but it is so cute! I can't get myself to stop wearing it :) Also, Joel and I decided to start over on the Book of Mormon, with it being a new year, and we decided to read it in order of when the books were written. I'm really excited about that, and it's been great so far. We hope that everyone had an amazing break and a good Christmas and New Years!