Winter is definitely here...and Christmas has passed.

So our Christmas was really great. Christmas Eve Chad and I went to my sister Nichole's in Lehi. We fixed tortilla soup and had lots of goodies. Then we watched The Nativity. It is such a good movie and I would really recommend it to anyone! Here is a picture of my sister and her little baby Brielle. Aren't they cute?

Here are some pictures of Brielle's bath time. Just before this she laughed a little. It was her first laugh. I was excited to be there to hear it!




Earlier in the day we also went to see Chad's sister Jill who was visiting from California and her husband Phil and her son Parker. Here are some pics of Chad playing with Parker.




Chad has fun being a kid sometimes...or a lot of the time. But thats why I love him, because he is so much fun!



Christmas day we opened presents together. Chad got some new sunglasses, a white and blue dress shirt, a pea coat, a cell phone holder and some other stuff. I got a new jacket, some new boots, a scarf, some jewelry and a couple cd's. We had a really fun Christmas. We also went to my grandpa's house and just relaxed together at our apartment. We were sad we weren't able to go home, but we were also happy to have a peaceful Christmas by ourselves.


Here is me after a relaxing Christmas day.


Here is Chad and all the leftovers from Christmas morning...



And of course we got a ton, and I mean a ton, of snow this week. Here is a couple of pictures of my wonderful husband shoveling snow. He is so diligent. If it snows, you know where Chad will be the next morning.

There is a lot of snow!!

Lastly, here are a couple of new things we got for our fish tank. The first is a gold striped maroon clown.



And this is a clam.


Today we took a few things back from Christmas and then we went to temple square to meet Chad's Uncle Mike and some of his family to see the lights. I love this temple.


This is a good shot of us.


Here is another...


And here is a shot of all of us who were there.


It was a great Christmas!!

Thanksgiving, our first tree, my finished pottery and much more

I know this is has taken me forever and I know that it is almost Christmas, but I still really wanted to post these. Thanksgiving was really fun. We went to Idaho to Chad's grandma's house. She lives in Rupert. A lot of Chad's aunts, uncles and cousins came. This is a picture of everyone that was there.

We really had a lot of fun!

This is his Uncle John and Aunt Diane.

Aunt Diane again and our cousin Mathew.

This is our cousin Sam.

This is Aunt Sherrie and cousins Allison and Ashton.

Here is our cousin Tyler and our nephew Dalton.

My second bout of news is my niece Brielle's baby blessing. It was on November . It was a wonderful blessing. Nichole and Chase did it at their house and Chase gave a really beautiful blessing. Here's the happy family.



Here is sweet baby Brielle. My mom made her blessing dress. It was beautiful.

And Chase might be mad at me for pointing this out, but I really have to. It's too nice not to point out. Here is Chase and Brielle right after the blessing. Note: the tear on Chase's cheek. Real men cry when they are blessing their babies.

Okay, thirdly, I finally finished all of the pottery I have been working on all semester! It turned out really good and I must say that I am really proud of myself. The first one pictured below is called a horse-hair pinch-pot. The black squiggly lines on it are horse hair and the little tiny black specks is sugar. We put both these on the pot when it was hot out of the kiln. This is my favorite.


This next one is also a pinch-pot but it has a crackle glaze. Thus the cracks in the glaze. Yes, it is supposed to be like that.


This one is a soft slab pot. It will be someones Christmas present....wonder who?

The next two are also soft slabs, but not presents. I'm keeping these.



I'm also keeping this one. Its a hard slap box. The glaze is AA Copper. I love how it turned out!


These are the two mugs I made. We already used them for hot chocolate on Sunday when it snowed!



And last, this is my very first tea-pot. Also going to be a Christmas gift to a very special someone.




We were so excited, ok, I was so excited, to get our first Christmas tree. We shopped around at some tree lots and ended up getting our tree from Hope Depot. Ha ha. Kinda a cop out, but it was cheaper. Here is our 6 foot tree in our little tiny apartment, pre-decorating.

Mid decoration...

More decorating... he was annoyed because I kept wanting to take pictures of this milestone. But he did it anyway. That's why I love him!


Almost done now...


I made the bow myself. I must say that I think they are pretty awesome.

Another...


Our very inexpensive ornaments from Target...


And lastly our Star.


And drum roll please... the finished product.

We had fun decorating our first tree.

Oh and these are our stockings.

And I really couldn't get away with this long blog without posting something about the fish tank. We got a new addition to the tank. It is a Niger Trigger. They call them triggers because when they eat you can here their jaws close and it sounds like a trigger being pulled. Or maybe I made that up...still you can here their jaws close and its way cool. This guy is still pretty small.

And last, but certainly not least I thought I would blog about this. I think its really cool, maybe you won't and I'm just a nerd. The first presidency always gives a Christmas gift to all of the church's employees every year. This year they gave us a hand crafted Italian leather Hymnal. It is really beautiful and the picture doesn't do it justice.

Also, the card they gave us was really nice.


It's pretty awesome to have a job where you get things like this.