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Valentine's Day 2015

Since Valentine's Day fell on a Saturday this year we knew that every restaurant would be super crowded. So we opted to stay in and cook. Nate loves steak and he really enjoys grilling so that was an easy choice. He also requested a homemade macaroni and cheese, something I've never made before. I hate to admit it, but the only macaroni and cheese I enjoy is Kraft. So we went on a hunt for a good mac and cheese recipe and Nate picked the Pioneer Woman's recipe. He said it turned out great and definitely wants it again. For our steaks we went to Meier's meats up in Highland. We picked out some ribeyes and they turned out so good! We'll definitely be going back to Meier's. I also had Nate grill up some asparagus, a favorite of mine. All in all, dinner was a big success. We had a nice low key holiday and just enjoyed one another's company. Happy Valentine's Day!

Jazz Game

Last week Nate got an email from work offering up some lower bowl Jazz tickets to anyone who wanted some. Of course Nate jumped on the opportunity and was able to take some friends and family too. Unfortunately the Jazz lost to the Clippers, but Nate said it was still a fun game to watch. Thanks for the tickets LanDesk!

Laramie, Wyoming

Last weekend Nate and I made the trip up to Laramie, Wyoming to visit an old mission buddy of Nate's. Laramie is about a six hour drive from us and boy is it scenic, not! Fortunately the drive was made better by having a good travel companion. Nate and I left early Friday morning and got to Laramie a little after noon. We got checked into our hotel and then headed to see his mission buddy Rowdy. Rowdy is a big into the outdoors so he wanted to take us ice fishing. We packed up and headed to the reservoir and the boys got out to set up the tent on the ice. Unfortunately it was so windy that the tent broke, Nate's glasses flew off and got lost, Rowdy lost his favorite hat and bucket that held all the ice fishing poles. Talk about drama on the ice! So we headed back to town without fishing and on our way back we got a flat tire. Luck was not on our side that afternoon. After visiting for a while, we headed to dinner. Nate decided he wanted to do a spicy wing challenge for dinner. 12 of their hottest wings in 12 minutes, you had to eat one wing per minute, no water, no nothing. I was dying when they brought the wings to the table, holy smokes, the smell alone was overwhelmingly hot. Nate made it five wings before he called it quits. Fortunately they provided gloves for the challenge so his hands didn't burn, but he said his lips, tongue, and throat were all on fire. He had some milk to drink to try and cool his mouth down. He also decided we needed to go for ice cream after dinner too. After dessert we went back to Rowdy's house and played games with him and his wife. Nate and Rowdy were set to go ice fishing early Saturday morning, however Nate got super sick during the night from the wing challenge. I thought for a little bit that I was going to have to take him to the ER. He rallied though and was finally able to fall asleep, but he cancelled on ice fishing. I feel bad, fishing with Rowdy was a big part of the reason for the trip and they didn't get to fish at all! Oh well, you can definitely say that things didn't go as planned on our short trip, but it was definitely memorable to say the least! After a short visit with Rowdy and his family Saturday morning, we headed home. It was a nice little getaway and it was good to see friends. 'Til next time!

Even though I brought my camera, I only took iphone pics. Oh well.


Here we are bright eyed and bushy tailed to make our 6 am departure time.



Nate in the midst of the wing challenge.


Um, is this not the coolest name for a street ever?!


Mission buddies.

Christmas

Christmas was nice this year. It was full of family and fun times. Since we had been up to Idaho the weekend before Christmas, we were able to make it to Nate's extended family's Christmas Eve party. Nate and I got up early to go over and help his mom make rolls for the party, I think we made well over 20 dozen. There was a ham lunch, a recorded nativity, and a slide show at the party. Later that night we had a hot chocolate party with Nate's immediate family and our annual gift exchange. It was a long and busy day so we crashed at like 9 pm. Usually Nate is up around 5 am on Christmas morning ready to open gifts and start the day, but he actually let me sleep in til 7:30 am this year. So nice. Nate and I always spend Christmas morning just the two of us, a tradition we started so we could have special moments with our kids on Christmas morning. After our morning together, we trekked through the new snow to visit Nate's parents. We had a prime rib and potato dinner and were able to Skype with our favorite missionary, Nate's brother Aaron. He'll be home in about 9 months and we can't wait to hug him! Like I said, we had a nice Christmas and now I'm a little sad that the holidays are over, especially since Nate and I are both sick. Here's to 2015!

Our poor tree. This was it's last year with us. Some sections of the lights don't light up any more and the tree has seen better days over the last 8 Christmases.

Cute Nate, always so excited on Christmas morning.

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.