Looking at Lights

For Family Home Evening on Monday night we went on our annual trip to look at lights. We love bundling up and taking a drive to look at all the festive homes in our area. Here are some highlights from our evening.

To Grandmother's House We Go

My mom and grandma live in Idaho. We try and visit every 4-6 weeks. Nate and I knew we wanted to visit close to Christmas and celebrate with them. We were able to go up last weekend and spend a couple nights. Upon arrival my cute grandma has fresh baked cinnamon rolls made for Nate since they are his favorite treat. We spent the next day making and decorating sugar cookies and playing Rack-O, our family's favorite game. It's a rite of passage for newcomers into our family, they must learn to play Rack-O to be accepted into the family :). Since we were there so close to Christmas we wanted to celebrate and have a pre-Christmas dinner. Nate and I told my grandma we could make anything she wanted. She said she wanted Mexican food, so we made double decker tacos, another family favorite, along with some salsa rice. Dinner was a hit with both my mom and grandma, our pre-Christmas fiesta was a success! We had to leave the next morning, and both my mom and grandma started crying when it was time to go, but we loved the time we got to spend together. I'm so glad we went and we miss them already!

My cute mom, super excited about the holly berry sprinkles we had.

The handsome husband who is totally taken.

Some of our decorated cookies, don't mind the fact that I over-baked them a little bit.

A cookie Nate made just for me.

A shot of our fiesta dinner.

Dipping Pretzels

Nate's favorite holiday treat are these dipped pretzels. We have made them every year for the past few years. This year Nate asked if we could make some for our neighbor gifts and for his colleagues at work. Now we've only ever done a bag or two of pretzels at a time. This year we made 7 pounds of pretzels, 7 pounds! It took us three days to get it all done. The first day, Nate's cute brother Jake came to help us. We spent lots of hours working, but I think it was worth it. Everyone seemed to enjoy them and there was even a small amount left over for Nate to have some, which he really liked.


Nate was in a sling for a few days, but he is doing better now after some physical therapy. But he still had to help with dipping pretzels!


Cute Jake helping us out.






The finished product ready for delivery! I found these cute treat bags at Target, there were also some that were striped red with black and white stickers. We thought they were pretty cute.

2014 Ornaments

One of our favorite holiday traditions is picking out a new ornament for our tree. We have done it each year since we've been married. It's fun to decorate the tree and look back at all the ornaments we've collected over the years. Last night was date night and as part of our date we hit up the Hallmark store and picked out our 2014 ornaments. Nate chose a cowboy snowman and I chose a gingerbread man cookie and milk. Two of my favorite guys love milk and cookies, my awesome husband and my sweet Grandpa Olson who passed away earlier this year. So my ornament has some sentimental value this year. I love holiday date nights. Next week we will need to pick out our annual Christmas book, another tradition of ours.

Thanksgiving

We had a good Thanksgiving holiday. The best part was all the time I got to spend with Nate. It was a nice long weekend and I'm already looking forward to the time Nate has off around Christmas. This year it was our year to spend Thanksgiving with my side of the family. So we made the trek up to Idaho and had Thanksgiving there. My sister Kelley came up too. We went and saw my cute grandma at the stroke rehabilitation center on Thanksgiving day before we had dinner and we had a great visit with her. Hopefully she'll have her strength back soon and be able to come home. Unfortunately, I was still getting over my darn cold during Thanksgiving. On Wednesday, I was getting ready and I coughed and totally threw out my back. I spent a good portion of the holiday in pain, so I wasn't much help in getting dinner prepared and on the table. Cute Nate made the mashed potatoes and carved the turkey. Dinner was great, everyone ate their fill and we enjoyed ourselves. Of course with my mom and Nate there we had to watch some football after dinner. Nate and I drove home early Friday morning and spent the rest of the weekend trying to relax. All in all a good holiday. Now if we can just get my back to feel better! Sorry about the picture quality. I wasn't feeling so great, so I didn't take too much of an interest in photos, but some are better than none I guess.