Our First Christmas

Even though Kyle and I were dating last Christmas, we're considering this our first official Christmas together, since it's our first as a married couple. Here are a few pictures of our Christmas adventures so far!

Here's our Christmas tree! It's a live tree and took a lot of help to get it where it is now... reason one, because it was 12 feet high or more and about five feet in diameter, we had to cut the bottom four feet off to fit into the apartment, and then we had to cut off the back half so that it wouldn't take up the entire space in the room; reason two, because we got it up and decorated and then I came home one day to find it had toppled over and water and pine needles were everywhere, thank you Rachel and Kevin for helping me get it back up and wired to the wall, I don't think it's going anywhere now... :); reason three, it had a very obvious hole in the middle and we weren't sure what to do with it, until we found one of our marriage pictures and put it there, I think it works beautifully!









Another adventure was yesterday's snow storm!!! For anyone who also traveled 1 1/2 hours just to drive a normally 20 minutes long drive to work... I feel your pain!! There was quite literally 8-10 inches of snow on top of my car and even more around it. I had to dig it out before I could even get the door open. I wish I had a picture! Then, there was the icky and icy drive to work, yuck! It was absolutely beautiful to watch once you weren't driving in it. This is Kyle being an awesome man and shoveling it for me late at night so that I could be warm inside and not have to walk through the snow anymore to get to my car!





Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas season!

-k-

Bienvendos!

Another reason I love my hubby....
I came home the other night to this sign on the door...


I then opened the door to find his surprise he had made for me!


There were chips, salsa, and decks of cards inside the bag... but the inflatable tucan made me laugh the most! It was a complete Mexican Christmas fiesta! We watched Los Increibles (The Incredibles movie) in spanish and laughed so hard about their different accents and how the movie is still just as funny in Spanish as it is in English.



He had also left me a note on the remote to our TV...



I pressed play to hear, "Feliz Navidad....". I had my niece and nephew with me for a hour or so, and they danced and sang with me to the Spanish Christmas music in our living room. :)

He then capped off the surprise by telling me that he'd gotten a new job!!!!!! :) He'd had a few interviews earlier in the week that I had known about, but he kept the GREAT news from me until the fiesta! I am so proud of him and am SO excited that he won't be working nights any more. His current job has been so good to him, that I know it will be hard to change, but he is looking forward to working at this new job because it's in his future career field. We are so anxious and happy for him! :)

Thank you Kyle for being my best friend and such a fun and loving husband! Love you!

-k-

the best is yet to be

“There are cycles of good and bad times, ups and downs, periods of joy and sadness, and times of plenty as well as scarcity. When our lives turn in an unanticipated and undesirable direction, sometimes we experience stress and anxiety. One of the challenges of this mortal experience is to not allow the stresses and strains of life to get the better of us—to endure the varied seasons of life while remaining positive, even optimistic. Perhaps when difficulties and challenges strike, we should have these hopeful words of Robert Browning etched in our minds: 'The best is yet to be' ("Rabbi Ben Ezra," in Charles W. Eliot, ed., The Harvard Classics, 50 vols. [1909–10], 42:1103).”

L. Tom Perry, "Let Him Do It with Simplicity", Ensign, Nov. 2008, 7

the best is yet to be... i have felt so incredibly blessed this weekend. being thanksgiving, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the important things in our lives. my family has a tradition of sharing with each other the blessings and experiences from the current year that we are most grateful for. it is always an uplifting (and often tearful) moment of my thanksgiving weekend. and even though there have been and continue to be many trials (big and small), i am grateful for the love i feel from my family because it gets me through each and every day.

i am so grateful for so many things and people and experiences this year, but here are a few of mine:

kyle

family

new family

getting married

knowledge and testiony of the gospel
trust in my heavenly father's plan for me
friends - that are always there for me... and that list is VERY long!

how grateful i truly am for all of these things and many more! hope your thanksgiving blessings were as plentiful as mine!

love,
k

strength & hope

i get "daily gems" each morning at my work, and really loved this quote. i know that it's true! i wanted to pass it along to you!

i have so much that i want to improve on, that often i find myself WAY too overwhelmed with the lists and lists of goals in my brain. a lot of that habit comes from my mission companions that taught me about setting goals... i've got to work on the achieving end more now. but i believe i'm doing better! i've started a new goal and fully and completely intend to finish it out to the bitter and most definitely sweet end!! i will post pictures as soon as i'm done with it. but mostly i want it to be a surprise for me and for all when i actually complete it! wish me luck! i know that as i do the daily things towards achieving my goals and honor the covenants i have made, i will find sucess, and more importantly, happiness in each day of my life! and so will each of us!

-k-

Halloween B-day Party!

this year for my b-day, i wanted to have a party on halloween. we gave out invitations filled with candy corn and everyone had to dress up. everyone including my grandpa dressed up and it definitely was the best party ever!

here are a few pictures of the costumes!
dead skiier... ouch!
dragon
nerd
mr. clean
redneck
hunter & witch
fairy or butterfly?
fairy/butterfly catcher
skeleton
cat, skeleton, tiger
referee
and i was a witch!

to top off the costumes, mom dressed up as a bag of jelly beans and grandpa let me paint a curly mustache and darken his eyebrows; he finished the look off with a classic bowler hat.

it really was the most awesome party and i love my family very much for making me laugh and enjoy my b-day!

sibling day

if anyone is looking for an awesome family tradition to start... this is the one i would recommend! every month (as often as we can) we have a sibling party. we've gone to lagoon twice now, but you can do simpler things too. we've done a game night and pizza making... anything goes! i love my brothers and sisters so much! they are my best friends in the whole world.

halloween sleepover

here is the evidence that i have the best husband! we had a sleepover with my nieces and nephew, painted pumpkins, watched monsters vs aliens and the charlie brown's the great pumpkin. we had a blast!!