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.

Save the Date!!

For anyone who may not have heard, Paul and I are engaged. It actually happened in Disneyland when we went in October. He had it all planned out and got Karri in on the excitement. He staged it right in front of the castle and Karri got the whole thing on video. You can't really hear anything in the video but its still cute. Paul teared up, I totally didn't (heart of stone) and it was perfect. So here is the important part. We are planning to tie the knot on May 22. Don't make plans for that day. Grab a sharpie and mark your calendars. We would love to see you there.

What a shocker!!

We got a phone call last Monday night from Paul's sister informing us that their dad would be getting married...on Friday. We were pretty surprised. We knew he was dating someone but we didn't think it was this serious. Well the wedding was nice but it was held at a Mormon church and Paul's Catholic family wanted to party after the wedding. His brother invited everyone over to party in his newly finished basement. The alcohol flowed and dancing began. I snuck a couple shots of Paul dancing with his sister. It was a pretty fun night that ended very late.

Happy Belated Halloween

I know Halloween was like 2 weeks ago but I'm just getting around to updating things. We found some super discounted costumes at PetSmart right before Halloween and we couldn't pass them up. We think our little kitties are pretty cute!!

Vegas Baby!!

Ok so this post is a couple of week late but oh well. We took Paul's sister Carla to Vegas for her 21st birthday. Karri came with us. It was a really fun trip. We left Friday afternoon around 2:30, stopped and got Karri then hit the road. We got to Vegas around 8:30 or so and got checked into our room. We stayed at the Tropicana. It was ok. Not too fancy but not gross either. We looked through the information book and saw a special for the buffet at the Tropicana that let us eat there as many times as we could/wanted to within 24 hours for only 24 bucks. So we headed over for dinner. They had some pretty good stuff. We got really full. Right outside of the buffet area there was a karaoke lounge. The guy that was singing over and over during dinner was so horrible. At one point the bartender that was close by said he'd give a free drink for anyone else to sing. After dinner Paul and Carla wanted to go to a haunted house and Karri and I didn't want to so we sat down in the karaoke lounge. We picked out two songs and got up there and did our best. We pretty much rocked the first song and the second song was a little rough. But we were so much better than the guy that had been singing. Then we decided to walk over to the MGM Grand and wandered around. We were looking for our favorite StarWars slot machines. We found a new version that was no good so we wandered around some more. In our wanderings we found some Survivor slots. We played them for a little while and then moved on to find the CBS store. When we got there they had already closed so we wandered back through the casino and headed outside. We thought about heading down the strip but decided that we weren't going to gamble anymore (that night) and all the stores would be closed so we headed back to our room and I pulled out my knitting and Karri busted out her cross-stitch. We worked on that stuff til Paul and Carla got back. They called us when they got back to the Tropicana and I met them for Carla's first (legal) drink. Then we all headed to bed. I love not being woken up by an alarm clock. Karri and I were the first ones up about 9. She jumped in the shower first and I got in after her. When I got out I pulled open the curtains so Paul and Carla would have to wake up. When we were all ready we headed over to the buffet for breakfast. We didn't have to pay this time because of the cool deal we found. So we got stuffed for breakfast and then started walking down the strip. We wanted Carla to see the fountains at the Bellagio. When we got there a lady told us that there was a wedding taking place and that they wouldn't be having shows for a while. We were about to leave when Karri noticed the jets stick out of the water. They did three shows right together and it was awesome. I got some pretty cool pictures with my phone. After the water shows we took her in to see the Bellagio seasonally themed gardens. Paul had never seen them before either. It was really beautiful. We made our way over to Cesears Palace and wandered through the mall. We headed back to the MGM to go to the CBS store. We decided to do a preview screening for a new tv show that might be released soon. They gave us a discount coupon for the store so Karri was able to get a shirt and I got a survivor shot glass. Its so awesome. After that we headed back to the buffet where we didn't have to pay to eat again. (So three meals for 24 bucks. Not bad at all.) Paul and Carla wanted to go to a night club which Karri and I didn't want to do so we bought tickets to see a show. After dinner we went to our show and they headed to the club. After our show we played a few slots before we headed back to our hotel. We wandered back over to the karaoke lounge and I decided to sing a song with out Karri. We had a pretty good time. There were definitely some characters there. One guy was really good. The karaoke lasted til 1:00 AM and afterwards we played a few more slots. We headed back to our room and text Paul to see when they were coming back. Karri and I had both fallen asleep before they got back. The next morning I was the first one up. I wanted to make sure our day got started with enough time to visit the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. We got checked out and had some breakfast then headed to the Shark Reef. It really is so cool. There were a lot of people this time. After the shark reef we were on the open road. We stopped in St. George for gas and then we didn't stop again til Nephi because Carla wanted to use the bathroom and we decided to eat. It was a really great trip!!

3 Months!!

Yesterday marked 3 months til Kylie is done with her mission. I unfortunately will not get to see her til she gets home a week later with my parents but that's not that much longer. (I can't believe I'm saying that... that week will feel like an eternity!!)

So the entire time that Kylie has been gone I have had dreams about her on a regular basis. When she first left I would dream that I was a missionary again and we were on a mission together. Sometimes we were in Mexico and I was showing her around and sometimes we were other places. Lately I have been having dreams that she is home. Two nights ago I dreamt she was home and we were hanging out. A about a week or so before that I dreamt that I was sitting in church waiting for her to give her homecoming talk. The weirdest part about that dream is that when she walked into the chapel it was the first time I had seen her since she got home. I don't really know how to interpret these dreams other than to say I really miss my sister and I can't wait for her to get home.

Disneyland or bust

Paul, Karri and I leave for Disneyland on Thursday afternoon. We are very excited. We have tickets to a special trick or treat event on Friday night and we are dressing up as Wendy, John and Michael from Peter Pan. It is also Gay Days Anaheim this weekend and we are participating in a special Scavanger Hunt on Saturday. I wish today was Thursday.