Weekend before Christmas

I know that the weekend before Christmas is usually busy but good grief!! All the madness started on Saturday morning. My company's Breakfast with Santa started at 9:00. Since I was helping with putting the party together I had to show up early. We arrived about 8:15 and started helping with the little bit of set up we had left to do. The party was great! Tons of people showed up and I think everyone had a good time. On our way home we picked up new wiper blades for my car and made a quick stop at the grocery store. We were only home for about an hour before we had to leave again.

The next party started at 1:00 at my cousin's house. We get together every month with my cousins on my mom's side to celebrate birthday's for the month. In December we celebrate my mom's brother since he's the only December birthday that comes to the party. Straight from the cousins birthday party we head over to a family Christmas party with all my mom's cousins. We have it at a church and there are always tons of people. The real Santa comes to the party and calls kids up one at a time to sit on his lap. Its been a family tradition for many years. After the Santa Claus party we headed to the mall to pick up some gifts for my mom and her siblings from my grandma. She recruited me this year to do her shopping for Christmas. I've helped her before but usually she gives me ideas to go get. This year she asked me to come up with the ideas. That's not what I thought I was signing up for. Well I got it all finished so hopefully I did good shopping.

After the quick trip to the mall we headed over to Chuck E. Cheese's for Paul's nephew's 3rd birthday party (part 1). They had reserved a big table and lots of people showed up. There was a mountain of presents. We stayed til almost 9:30. We were ready for the long day to be over.

Sunday was Kairo's (Paul's nephew) actual birthday. Since Paul's parents are divorced we always have to do 2 parties. So we went over to Paul's dad's house to celebrate part 2 of Kairo's birthday. There was lots of food and quite a few people. I think Kairo had more fun playing with the box his new Buzz Lightyear trike came in than with anything else. It was a long weekend that we were glad to have over. Only now we have something planned for every night this week. We only bought groceries this week so we would have what we need to make bean dip for Christmas Eve.

Golden Compass, Kevin & Annmarie and Logan

Our weekend consisted of a few of our favorite things. First on Friday after Paul got home from work and we went out for dinner, we decided to watch The Golden Compass. We own the movie and we really like it. Paul just finished "reading" the book. He actually listened to it on his ipod. He wanted to see how close the movie was to the book. Kylie hadn't seen the movie so she came over and watched it with us.

On Saturday Paul had to go to work which left me time to finish reading, as in actual reading, the second Hunger Games book. It was really good. I can't wait to finish the series and see how it all turns out. I'm totally Team Peeta. I needed to pick up some curling ribbon so I could start wrapping Christmas presents. While I was out I stopped by Kylie's work to say hi and waited a little bit so we could go to lunch together. I wrapped a few presents before Paul got home. As soon as he got home we headed over to his brother's house to celebrate his older nephew's birthday. He's 15 now I think. Then we headed to Pleasant Grove to hang out with one of my oldest friends, Annmarie and her husband Kevin (as in I've known her longer than most of my current friends). I met Annmarie during my second year of college in the fall of 2003. We've been friends ever since. We decided a few months ago that we needed to set up a monthly double date night so we picked the second Saturday of each month. It's worked out great so far. We went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. Kevin and I enjoyed our sushi and Paul and Annmarie ordered whatever it was that they ordered. Afterwards we ended up bowling and had a great time. Kevin & Annmarie day is one of our favorite days of the month.

On Sunday we headed up to my aunt's house in Logan for the Jensen family Christmas party. Paul will admit this isn't one of his favorite things but since we only get together with my dad's family twice a year I like it. We all chipped in to help a needy family in my parent's mission ward and we took some time during the party to wrap all the gifts. The family will have a great Christmas now.

My life since May 29th.

Ok, ok. So this has been a long time coming. I know I need to be better about updating my blog. Maybe I should make that my new years resolution. Is it too early to start thinking about that? Well anyway, on May 29th Paul and I got married. It was a great. Almost perfect in fact. We had a small ceremony at a local hotel that was officiated by our two best friends Karri and Paige. My whole family came and I was very happy about that. Now its 6 months later and I don't feel like anything is different. We were already living together and already had a joint bank account so life continued on as usual. Which is awesome! We went to Denver on our Honeymoon. A couple of people thought we were strange for picking such a lowkey location for a Honeymoon but it was perfect for us. We really loved Denver. We got to see some of the sites including the Aquarium, which we highly recommend, and the zoo. We didn't get to see everything we wanted to so we want to go back. But we both have permanent reminders of Denver in our tattoos that we got while we were there. Paul got "Namaste" written in Sandscrit on his left wrist and I got a star on my right upper calf. We both love them. In August Paul got his long overdue promotion to a Service Manager at Wells Fargo. He now has a lot more responsiblity and gets stuck working crazy hours sometimes but we are enjoying the pay increase and he's one step closer to being able to do what he would really like and that's being a trainer at the Wells Fargo training center. I also accepted a new job in August and started the first part of September. I now work in a Human Resources department. I love it. I definitely miss my friends from my last job but I am enjoying the new position. The people here are great and I love learning more about the HR process. Paul, Karri, Kylie and I went to Disneyland again in October for Gay Days. The first night we were there we dressed up and went to the trick-or-treat event. It was so fun. Karri and I went as Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and Kylie and Paul dressed up as the little green aliens for Toy Story. We were a big hit! The next morning we participated in a Scavenger Hunt and took 5th place out of about 40 teams. I was so proud of us. Last year we placed 11th. We are already planning to go back next year and we plan to WIN!! We really enjoyed ourselves. Our feet...not so much. It was a really fun weekend. Since Disneyland not much has happened. We celebrated Halloween with friends and family at several different parties. Thanksgiving was our usual marathon eating day. We have to visit 3 houses because Paul's parents are divorced. We finally said we couldn't eat by the time we got to the last house. Now Christmas is in full swing. We are so close to having our Christmas shopping done. I put up our tree last night before Paul got home from work and could complain about having to help me. We are looking forward to the holidays and we hope you all have a great holiday season.

47 Days and counting...

We only have 47 days left before our wedding. I can not believe it is coming so fast. Sometimes I feel like it will never get here and other moments I feel like it is coming to quickly and we still have so much to get ready. I think we've made some good progress lately so hopefully we can keep that momentum. We took care of registering over the weekend. I was very impressed with how gay friendly both Target and Bed Bath & Beyond turned out to be. It made a process I was dreading so much better. We are getting ready to send out invitations and I hope people aren't offended if they don't receive one. We would love to invite everyone we've ever known and loved but we simply can't afford to. So if you receive an invite, know that we think you are special. And if you don't receive one, know that we had to draw the line somewhere.