Conference and Game

I had a really good weekend! I got up early Saturday morning to attend a women's conference with my mom at her stake center. The morning started with a light breakfast followed by a great talk given by Sister Sheri Dew. She gave such a wonderful message about how we as women can have an influence on others. She said a lot of things that I really needed to hear. Apparently she is best friends with Elder Nielsen's wife, who was also there and bore her testimony.

After the conference, Adam met me at my parent's house and we headed down to Provo for a fun date with Jordan and Kinsale. We had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen then went to the BYU vs Utah basketball game. It was SO FUN!! We love Jimmer Fredette. He is pretty much amazing! Although our seats were at the very top, we were sitting behind (yes, behind) all the U fans, and also a very crazy BYU fan...it was still such a blast. And because BYU scored over 80 points, we were able to take our tickets to Magleby's for a free piece of chocolate cake to finish off our fun night.

As you can tell, it got SO hot in the building. Go Cougars!

Clint's Birthday

This little guy turned the big 1-5 on January 18th and we celebrated with the family on Sunday. I cannot believe that my little brother will be old enough to DRIVE and DATE next year! He was super spoiled and got an itouch along with some other great gifts. Happy Birthday Clinty!

I think Jack thought it was his birthday too!

Just goofing around with the wrapping paper...

Cute as ever!

Adam sent these beautiful flowers to me on my first day of work. It was such a good surprise. Don't mind how gross I look in the picture. Let's just say it was a long day.

A few weeks ago we went to the birthday party of one of our good friends, Riley. I worked with Riley at the bank and later worked with his wife Kandas. We love them and have so much fun together. All these people make us laugh SO hard when we get together! Happy birthday Riley!

My Husband's Head!!

On Friday I got a call from Adam. "Check your email and give me a call." That was all he said. So about twenty minutes later I went to check my email and found that my husband was B-A-L-D. Bald! I couldn't believe my eyes and kind of freaked out. I had met him for lunch one hour earlier and he was NOT bald. "WHY???" was all I could say (along with something like..."It looks awful!" over and over. That was rude. I shouldn't have said that. Anyway, once I found out it was part of a fund raiser his work was doing to raise money for Haiti, I wasn't AS mad. Okay I still was a little bit. It'll grow, right? I sure hope!

On a better note, we had a fun day today. We headed to the Gateway for some light shopping and walking around. Too bad it was freezing! I just can't get over how different Adam looks with a bald head. This morning when I woke up and looked over at him...I had forgotten. It was just weird :)

Home Sweet Home

Well hello, blog. It's been a while! So much has been going on and honestly blogging has been at the bottom of my list. So just to catch up: I worked my last day of work on Monday. I have had the rest of this week off to relax and prepare for when I start my new job this coming Monday. Although I am so sad I had to quit my job, I'm really excited about this new opportunity. I will be working for an optometrist in Layton as a lab tech. I will also be doing front office stuff too.

This was my last day at work...so weird! It's crazy to be doing the same thing every day for over a year and now all of a sudden I won't be doing that anymore. I loved my job and especially loved all the people I worked with.

We recently moved into the basement of a cute little house in Layton. Although I HATE moving, I'm glad we found such a great place. Our landlords are awesome. They live upstairs and are about our same age. It is just one bedroom and one bath but it's great for our needs right now. The best part about where we live is that it is sooo close to my new job...5 minutes to get there! It's also close to the mall and lots of restaurants.

This is the living room. I went crazy and already decorated for Valentines. We're still in the process of putting stuff away and hanging things up--so not the finished product yet! I'm so excited about the fireplace. I think a requirement for the house we buy is that it must have one! I think they're so cute and cozy.

Don't you just love our chairs :) We don't have a couch yet, so camping chairs will have to do for now. By the way, if you or anyone you know is getting rid of a couch, we'd love to hear about it!

This is the kitchen

And this is our bedroom. When we first went to look at the house, my first requirement was that the bedroom walls had to be painted over and our landlords said they would be totally fine with that. I think the previous owners used it as a playroom--hence the yellow striped walls. We were going to paint before we moved in, but things got really busy and we never got around to it. I actually don't mind them now especially since our bedding is green and yellow and it really doesn't look that bad! Plus we saved a lot of time and money by just leaving it. I think this summer I would like to refinish the dressers. We bought them off of KSL about a year ago and I'm pretty sure they belong in a child's room. They are so small!

So there you have it! We are loving our new little apartment! Hopefully I can be a little better about blogging now that our lives aren't so crazy.

The After Party

After a great Christmas with Adam's family, we returned home to open presents and celebrate the new year with my family. My parents divided our gifts into three categories: Temporal, Spiritual, and Just For Fun. Temporal=A starter kit for food storage. This was such a great gift because food storage is something I always know I should be working on...but never want to spend the money on it. So I was glad we got this starter kit. Spiritual=new undies. While we were living with my parents, I had a load of laundry in the dryer that my mom folded for me one day. And that's when she decided we could use new tighty whiteys. She was right! Just for Fun=we each got some clothes, a season of BONES and gift cards to iTunes. We were spoiled by our families for Christmas!

My dad brought the four wheelers home one day and we had a blast riding around in the snow pulling sleds.

I have really neglected my blog over the past few weeks! We had a wonderful Christmas in TX and here are lots of pictures of the fun things we did there:

It took us about two days to get to Lubbock. I don't know if you can tell in this picture, but we hit some MAJOR fog in Green River, UT. It was actually pretty scary.

Our lovely dirty car...Lubbock received the most snow they've had in over ten years! We expected to have nice warm weather but instead experienced about the same thing as everyone in Utah. Dang!

We finally made it!!

On Christmas Eve, we opened all the gifts we got for each other

Adam gave me the cutest makeup bag. I mentioned a while ago that I really needed one. He remembered and got me this cute one!

Jackson playing with his favorite present from Uncle Jake. After playing with it, he didn't want to open any other presents!

Jill and I experimenting with our new makeup kits

Christmas morning

Jackson and his new best friend, BoBo

Playing Scrabble Christmas morning

The Stokers beautiful new house

We kept getting a kick out of how Jill and I ended up wearing the same color of shirts several days that we were there!

Doing some shopping at the mall

We went bowling one of the days and had a ball.

Even Jackson was able to bowl!

Chris and Leah

We had missionaries come over one day and take family pictures for us

We were able to drive over to Texas Tech one day to see where Kevin works. While there, we went to the Rec Center where the boys played basketball and did some rock climbing

We were also able to do a session in the Lubbock temple with Adam's parents, Seth and Jill, and Leah and Chris. It was really special to be in the temple with all of Adam's family.

One night while the boys were playing basketball, the girls all went to Ruby Tequilla's to get appetizers. It was so good! We also went to get facials earlier in the day.

Just laying around...

Jackson was so much fun on this trip. He was constantly making us laugh! He LOVES the Stoker's cat named Pepe and was so excited to play with her.

Playing BINGO for prizes!

We were so sad to leave and have to drive back home! On the way home we stopped for the night in Durango, Colorad to spend the night at Jill's grandparents house. When we arrived they had yummy hot chili waiting for us. It was also New Year's Eve, so it was really low-key. We celebrated the new year in our room with a bottle of sparkling cider. The next morning, Jill's grandparents made us a great breakfast of pancakes, hashbrowns, and hot chocolate. We were so grateful we could stay there so that we didn't have to drive through the night!

Staying up a little too late....

Jill's grandparents live in a cabin way up on the mountain in CO. The view from the back porch was amazing!

We are so happy we were able to spend Christmas in TX with Adam's family. Adam's mom prepared awesome dinners every night and we had so much fun with the family all together. Thanks so much Tammie and Kevin for all you did for us while we were there! We are also so proud of our car for getting us there and back safely through all the bad weather. Hope you all had a great Christmas too!

West Christmas Party

We had a great Christmas party Saturday with my mom's side of the family. Christmas is usually the only time of year when I get to see all my cousins/aunts/uncles/grandparents all in one place. We enjoyed a yummy dinner and a fun white elephant gift exchange!

Adam scored with this white elephant gift (a 6-pack of cream soda) until it was stolen away. We were so sad!

After opening gifts we got a special visit from this guy....Santa Claus!! Also know as Grandpa West :) When I was little, grandpa would come to our house every year, knock at the back door, and bring a bag full of little gifts for me and my sisters. I remember being really scared of him when I was young, until I realized it was just grandpa. He hasn't dressed up as Santa for several years, so this brought back so many memories!

I saw Grandma kissing Santa Claus!

Mandy...we missed you!

Later that night, Adam gave me this. The story behind it is earlier that day, we had taken a load of things to our new apartment, including my crock pot (which I loved, I might add). As Adam was carrying a load in, he dropped my crockpot on the tile and it shattered EVERYWHERE. Needless to say, we had to throw it away. Adam felt so bad that he went and got me a new one, wrapped it, and gave it to me. Although I admit I was pretty upset at first with the whole situation...I'm really glad he took the time to get me a new one. Thanks Adam babe. This one's nicer anyway.

Well Merry Christmas everyone! Tomorrow morning we are off to Texas and are excited to spend some time with the Stokers. See you next year!