A Christmas Novel

It is time to recap on our awesome Christmas vacation! For us Christmas started on Thursday. Dalan and I did our own Christmas and opened presents together. We ate waffles, bacon and eggs. It is so much fun to spoil Dalan, but he spoiled & surprised me as well. He bought us a new laptop! And for me the prettiest shirt and cardigan, earmuffs to survive Logan's cold air and the book & movie The Help. Which he may have regretted when I was a super boring passenger as I read & finished The Help on our way to Idaho on Friday :) I tried to be fun, it just kept pulling me back. We got to Idaho in pretty good time and it was so great to see my family! I met up with some of my friends at Moxie Java to reconnect and I realized how long it had been since I had seen them. It was so much fun to chat and catch up on each others lives. Those girls are friends that will last a life-time. P.s. If you want to try a great winter drink at Moxie, try the hot cholocolate with the roated marshmellows in it MMmmmm. So good. but I can't remember its official name . . . .

Christmas Eve we had a huge shopping day. The boys went one way and my mom and I in another. It was so much fun to go shopping with my mom and find great presents for my brothers and sisters.

That may have been one of my favorite days! That night we had a great Christmas Eve dinner with my Grandma Gayle. Wrapped some presents and we all ran around excited for Santa to visit.

Christmas day was so great. I got up super early to beat my brothers and sisters up, got ready for church and Dalan and I went to the house to wake them up. It was so fun being there as they first woke up Christmas Day. Everyone was so excited that Santa had come. My family's Christmas tradition is that we had to sing Christmas songs to wake up my parents before we could leave our room. It is hilarious. Singing is more shouting and it is so fun. Santa bought me some dang cute boots and a new pair of jeans! and brought Dalan a nice wool coat he had his eye on.

We went to church and they had a great Christmas presentation. Came home and played with our new toys and left for Mountain Home for an amazing Christmas dinner and more present opening! And a dance competition with the new Just Dance 3! My awesome sister Grace got me a cute scentsy with Blueberry Cheesecake aroma. I love it! It has been going all day :) I also got tickets to Lady Antebellum!! Ah! I can't wait!

Monday we went Bowling! It was so much fun to be with everyone cheering and laughing. My Mom is the champion bowler followed by Dalan and my Dad. I am somewhere farther down the line . . . . It was so much fun.

Tuesday was our last day and it made me sad. We packed up our stuff and after lunch we headed back to Utah. It was so much fun being with my family. They are the best ever. I can't wait to go back up to visit for Grace's baptism! We are so excited for her.

Our Weekend.

This past weekend is worth blogging about. I got to spend the entire weekend with Dalan and it was so great. Friday we were a tiny bit spontaneous and we bought a car that Dalan had his eye on! It was a little crazy. Now, realize that I say spontaneous, but it wasn't that spontaneous. It was just that I never imagined buying a car. We had been looking and preparing for a while but it seemed a little surreal to me. Neither of us had ever gone through the "car buying process" before. But we love our new purchase. It is a 2007 Nissan Altima, and I am fast forwarding 14 years into the future with all of its fancy gadgets :) It is so nice to have something with good gas milage. This picture below is what our car looks like . . . but is not our car. Our car is sitting outside in the cold and in the wind. Yes. I am that lazy right now, and nice and warm in our house. I figured google image search would do.

I am loving it!

Saturday we were able to drive our new car to Twin Falls, Idaho for one of my best friends wedding! It was so beautiful. I was also lucky enough to take pictures of the newlyweds! It was so fun and I was so glad I was able to steal Dalan away from work for a second day in a row :)

I have known the lovely bride since Kindergarten. We have literally grown up together.

The pictures turned out great and I can't wait to hand over the copies to her.

I love this picture! She looks gorgeous.

I hadn't been to the Twin Falls Temple since its open house and it is so beautiful.

Now, we are about to have our own Christmas and start packing for Idaho! I can't wait or a Christmas in Kuna :) Merry Christmas Everyone!

Thinking Christmas

Now that I can think stop thinking about the human ear and voice I can focus a little more on Christmas! I made myself refrain from wrapping presents all weekend, until each final was over and then came home to wrap all the gifts in the beautiful paper I found the second it was over. I also refrained from blogging, and yes that actually applied to almost the whole semester. There are just too many distractions. But I am free now to live a normal life for a few weeks and I have to share pictures of our gorgeous tree :)

I bought these pinecones for a Thanksgiving day centerpiece and then wrapped some twine around it to re-purpose it to our amazing tree.

I love how it turned out, very simplistic, country and very much our style.

This star is my favorite. I spotted it online and I could not find anything around that was like it. It seems like the style is leaning away from a Christmas Tree Topper, but I feel like the star is a very important part of Christmas and the true meaning that it brings. Plus it is just so darn cute and rustic.

I also made these sweet stars for the tree. They are made out of applesauce and cinnamon. They were so easy and I loved how they turned out.

And this is how I see our master piece of a tree as I sit on the couch watching the pretty lights. And, yes. I am in love with this tree. I think it is the best ever.

And I cant leave out our stockings. Of course I couldn't help but add some sparkle to my stocking. Now it is easy to tell which one is mine & which is Dalan's.

Here is an up close view of my jean design. Wrangler might want to hire me. ha ha

Anyways. Thanks for being so patient as I go on & on about our tree and our stockings. Christmas is just so much fun. And I love decorating for the holidays.
May your days be Merry & Bright.

She believed.

Alright! Finals are finally over. So far, I have gotten great scores back and I am super happy. I love this quote that I found on lovely pinterest. (isn't it the best?) It was great motivation for this week and for life in general.

Have I mentioned that I am so happy to be done with this semester? This Christmas break will be the longest break from school I have had in a very long time and I am going to capitalize on every second of it! So far I have cleaned the kitchen, done laundry, cleaned the living room, wrapped presents and all sorts of great stuff.
This semester although a little crazy and super busy has been fun. I took, Assessment and Treatment of Communicative Disorders in the Pediatric Population - it was a pretty good class. A lot of what we learned I had learned through working in ABA therapy already and a lot was expansions from it.
Audiology, a very informative class. I learned a lot about audiology and a lot of testing. Speech Science it followed Auidiology a little bit, but I learned a lot about the voice, how it works, pathologies and other great things. Space Exploration, long and boring but I passed and if I ever go to space I will know a few things. & lastly, Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Communicative Disorder. This was probably my favorite class. It was very interesting to learn about different cultures and their views.

So even though I sometimes complain about school, I really love it and I have learned a lot & I have met a lot of great people and great professors.

My Brag Session.

Well. Blogging has been put on the back burner, as well as many, many, many other things this semester. It has been so busy! However, after all of the studying and reading and lectures it all paid off last week when I got my test score back from an entire test of True/False questions from my Basic Audiology class. I feel a little weird posting this, but seriously, this will never happen again, and it has never happened before! So since this is my blog I figured I would think of it less of bragging and more as documenting. Proof that maybe I am learning something from these classes :)

Above is the email I recieved back from my test with a score of 98%. And as great as that is, the best part is that I ranked #1 out of the 36 smartie pants girls in my class, and the one boy who is also smart. Awesome right! I was so excited. Dalan took me out to dinner at El Parral to celebrate and we had a great time chatting and being together. He is so great!

Moving on from school, we have set up our adorable Christmas tree and pulled out our Christmas decorations too. It makes me so happy to sit on our coach cuddling under a blanket sipping hot chocolate and looking at our tree sparkle. I just love this Christmas season. I will have to blog about the cute ornaments I made and our new tree topper one of these days :)

Happy Sunday! Good Luck on finals fellow college kids!

the boy.

I haven't blogged in forever! but while the husband is away the wife will blog . . . .

Here is a little bit about my amazing husband, Dalan Rees as part of the Marriage Series. (finally) Dalan is such a great husband. He is always there to make me laugh and to tell me everything will be ok. I love sitting in the middle of his truck, singing old country songs with him & enjoying each others company. Have I said Dalan is great? He really is.

Here is Dalan on his mission to Honduras. I love this picture! And I love hearing all of his mission stories. They are so fun. I am crossing my fingers that when the temple is finished there we will make a special trip :) He has a great testimony that has strengthened mine many times.

Here are a couple pictures of Dalan in Nebraska. We loved working in Nebraska & we made such great friends there. Dalan is trailing the bulls out in this picture. Dalan is such a hard worker and that is probably why I am able to write about him right now because he is still out working. But that is one of the reasons I married him. When we were dating he would take off work from one job to go to work with his dad. I think he would go crazy without work.

Here is Dalan roping. The brandings in Nebraska were a blast, it was a huge party. Dalan is so patient and a great teacher. He has tried to teach me to do lots of things and I have succeeded in some of them ;)

Dalan with his sweet puppy. She loves him so much & always cuddles when she can. It is so fun to have Pepper in our little family. Dalan has taught her a lot, and she is great with the cattle.

And lastly Dalan at graduation! I am so proud of him! He is just the smartest guy. Dalan is so great at solving problems, let them be at work, on my sewing machine, school, me in general, cooking whatever :) I have every bit of confidence that Dalan can do everything. (another reason why I married him)

Rhinestone Cowgirl ;)

Due to broken legs & broken tractors I was chosen to go up to Idaho to help move cattle. Although I didn't help at all, mostly because I don't like going fast on top of a horse, it was a lot of fun. I got to spend 100% of the day with Dalan and that hasn't happened in a long time, and I loved it!

Here are some pictures of the pastures. I wish I could have snagged more of us moving cattle but it rained a ton! & I didn't want to ruin my camera or have lasting proof of me looking like a drowned rat. not cute.

The rain made it cold, and the wind made it a little colder. My jeans didn't dry until we got home & I was so very very sore. BUT the rain did prevent my allergies from going crazy and making me miserable. It also made for these great bright pictures S.O.C.

starting early

I am so excited this year to decorate for Halloween. Last year by the time I had thought about decorating for Halloween it was like the 20th of October & when trick-or-treaters came to our door we raided our cabinets and handed out bags of microwave popcorn. This year I have been looking for things to make and decorate & the door was first. Between studying I let myself take a break to make this.

I like how it turned out. Simple but still fun. It was originally going to be poofy all the way around . . . until I found out that would take 12 yards of tulle. That's when I decided to reinvent it a little.
Happy Fall & Halloween everyone :)

More Blogs :)

So, here is the new blog that I have created for Celebrate Autism! http://celebrateautism.blogspot.com/

I think it turned out well, soon, someday it will be more busy than it is and things will be full speed ahead :)