Merry Christmas to all!

We had a wonderful Christmas holiday with both of our families this year.  We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day at the Reimschiissel's down in St. George.  Not much of the "White Christmas" I was dreaming of, but it was fun.  JD gave me a wonderful jewelry stand, big enough for all the jewelry I could imagine, along with lots of other neat things, and JD was quite surprised with his new camcorder.  He has been fiddling with it since he got it, and can't wait to get all the bells and whistles to go along with it.  Check out the stockings I made.  I worked forever on them, and got them done in the nick of time--on Christmas Eve!  Do you like them?  We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, filled with the Spirit of Christ.  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Let it snow!

Boy, have we had some good storms lately.  They even cancelled school one day in Washington County where I work because of the snow.  It was taking SO LONG to get to school and back.  But while I was dreading driving in it, JD and his buddies were loving it.  They called each other up one night late to see if the other wanted to go make a snow-fort.  Of course both these grown-men wanted to go out and play in the snow for hours.  They didn't even ask the wives to come and play..how rude!  Just kidding.  Here is their creation:

Goodbye Christmas Tree

Christmas is over, and it was time for the tree and the decorations to come down.  But before it went out to the dumpster, I just had to take one last picture of it.  Isn't it cute?  JD went trekking out in a blizzard and cut it down for our little house, and we had fun decorating it.  This is the first year that we have had a tree and ornaments all together during the same year.  I'm still working on the decorating thing.  Hopefully I'll get better with time. :)

I love to see the temple!

Our ward had an activity where we had Pizza Factory for dinner and made gingerbread houses.  We decided to make our favorite place-the temple!  We modeled our house after the Timpanogas temple, although it wasn't quite to scale.  We had fun, even though our house didn't turn out very solid or stable.  We did, however, win a prize for the most creative house.  

Fun at the Gateway

While we were up visiting my family, we all went to Gateway.  We found out that the night we chose to go was also the night they were going to turn the lights on all over downtown Salt Lake.  It was packed.  At the Gateway, we waited around for what seemed like forever for the lights, but they never came on.  An hour past the scheduled time, and no lights. However, Jon Schmidt played at the Gateway also that night, and it was fun to listen to him and also a few other very good choirs while we were there.  We also got free hot chocolate and cookies.  Yum, Yum!  

An Apple a day...

While I neglected cooking the past few months, sweets have been sounding really quite good.  So one night I made some caramel apples, and they were so good we made quite a few batches of them over the next few weeks.  What do you think?  Don't they look tasty?

Happy New Year!

Here's wishing you a late Merry Christmas and a 'just-in-time' Happy New Year!  

Boy, what a dizzying few months.  I am loving my first year of teaching, but boy is it crazy.  I feel like there is always something else that I need to work on or catch up on.  If I only had time to spend an extra 3 hours there each day.  Oh well, life doesn't work that way.  Because I was so stressed there were a lot of things I neglected--such as:  my blog (obviously), writing missionary letters I've been putting off, cooking, cleaning my house, Christmas shopping, and finally, Christmas cards.  So, for those of you who didn't get a Christmas card (wait, all of you!), here it is.  But rather than a Christmas card, accept the New Year's card instead.  

We love missionaries!

Well, the time has almost come.  This weekend I had the chance to travel up to Highland and see my best friend Evelyn speak as a final farewell before her mission.  She did a great job and I am excited for her to be over in England teaching the gospel.  What a great friend she is, and what a great testimony she has.  I am so happy that she has made this decision to go, and I know she will do great.  What a blessing it is to have the gospel in our lives--to have the ability to know for ourselves if it is really true.  I am so jealous that she gets to live out my dream of going on a mission and teaching people far away from here, but I guess I am pretty lucky to have found my wonderful husband so I can't complain.  

Not only do I get to have my best friend on a mission, but I also want to put a word in for my awesome brother on a mission right now.  He is doing awesome and has officially past his hump-day this past September.  We are so proud of him and are glad is making so much progess.  We love you, Spence!  P.S. Elder Reiber's address is on the left sidebar if you'd like to write him in Maryland.

Finished Project!

Recently I posted a picture of a bunch of projects that I've been working on.  Well, I have officially finished all of them.  This is one of the more exciting ones, I think.  I loved my wedding bouquet, but I knew I'd  never use it or have it out if I left it how it was.  So, I decided to turn it into a decoration.  I made it into a topiary, and even used a flower-pot from my wedding.  This is how the finished product looks.  What do you think?

Christ-Centered Halloween?

My brother Spencer is on a mission and he just sent me a picture of the pumpkin he carved out in Maryland.  I think it is pretty cool.  Compare the two pictures.  Pretty accurate I think.

All Hallow's Eve

I love Halloween.  It is one time during the year when I can be silly and dress up like I am a little kid again-and nobody can even say anything.  I enjoy seeing the kids travel from house to house in their little costumes even though we don't get many coming to our house since we live in apartments.  We got about 5 sets this year.  We have way too many treats around now because of the holiday (and it's not even Christmas yet!)  For enrichment this week we made lots of Halloween treats and also Halloween cards.  Very fun.  We ate the really cool treats before I really got a picture of them, so you'll have to settle with this cool idea for Halloween cookies.  You make sugar cookie dough then dye it orange with food coloring.  Take an empty tuna-fish can and remove both the top and bottom with a can-opener. Then bend the can into any cookie-cutter shape you want (Candy-corn in this case).  Then after we cut and baked the cookies, we dipped one end in white chocolate, and the other end in dark chocolate, and I thought they came out pretty cute even though mine did not look very professional.  For Halloween, JD was a greaser, mostly because he could recycle the costume from our "How to host a murder" party.  Notice the striking resemblance:  ;)

We carved a lovely pumpkin on Halloween, right before the trick-or-treaters started showing up.  I rather liked it.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow...

For Halloween this year, all the teachers on our first grade team decided to be the Wizard of Oz.  They informed me that I was to be Dorothy.  Here is a picture of Dorothy and I.. let me know how good of Dorothy you think I was...  (I did omit the socks from under the Ruby slippers, but we are in the 21st century here...)  The rest of the 1st grade teachers were the lion, the scarecrow, the Wicked Witch of the West, the good witch Glinda, and the tin man.  All the costumes were pretty funny.  How did we do?

8 Things Tag

I was tagged by Rachael so here we go...

8 TV shows I like to watch

In no certain order:
1. Biggest Loser

2. House

3. Heroes

4. Little House on the Prairie

5. Deal or No Deal

6. Brady Bunch

7. Saved by the Bell (on everyday again)

8. Seinfeld

8 Things that happened yesterday
1. I dressed up as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz complete with Ruby slippers and Toto.  
2. Commuted to Washington
3. Marched around the whole school in the Halloween parade shouting "and my little dog, too!"  (In response to the Wicked Witch from the West who right in front of me was yelling "I'll get you my pretties!")
4. Read Halloween stories to my kids.
5. Passed out a ridiculous amount of candy to my first grade class.
6. Fell asleep as soon as I got home
7. Made "Witch hat cookies" and salad for our Halloween party
8. Stayed awake for the entire duration of "Wait Until Dark" with Audrey Hepburn (which is an incredible task for me) and was even scared out of my skin more than I have been in a very long time.

8 Favorite places to eat
1. Home

2. Mom's house

3. Carabbas
4. Wendy's (Favorite fast food) 

5. Olive Garden
6. Jake's Over the Top
7. Pizza Factory
8. Jen Flake's House

8 Things I am looking forward to
1. Christmas
2. Having a whole family of my own
3. Dental School
4. Stake Conference tomorrow
5. Snow up at the cabin
6. Thanksgiving with my family
7. Decorating for Christmas

8. 

8 Things on my wish list
1. I wish there weren't so many things going on at school this week.
2. I wish I didn't have to commute everyday to Washington.
3. I wish JD would ace the DAT.
4. I wish we knew where we will be in 3 years.
5. I wish Evelyn could go on a mission and not have to leave for 2 years.
6. I wish I had someone to scrapbook with.
7. I wish I had time to exercise in the morning before school.. ppffff.. but like I am going to get up at 4:30.
8. I wish lots of people will comment on this post! :)

8 people I tag:

1. Danielle

2. Evelyn

3. Marci

4. Mandi 

5. Nic and Caitlin

6. Brooke

7. Laciejo

8. Anyone else who feels inclined

How to Host a Murder Party

Our friends Misty and Nate invited us to a "How to Host a Murder Party."  We had no idea what this was going to be like, but last night we went and it was really fun.  JD's character was Richard or "Rick" C. Alcitrent, who was a rebellious Rock 'n' Roller.  My character was Priscilla or "Pris" E. Teene, who won the spelling bee at age 8 and was valedictorian with a straight A average.  We ate dinner and played this murder mystery game which was really fun.  It ended up not being either of us that was the murderer, so that was a bonus, I guess.  Here are a few funny pictures from last night.

Sheep Parade?

JD and I were driving down Main Street yesterday to head down to St. George for my school Halloween Carnival and also a Stake Temple Trip.  On our way out of town, we saw that people were lining up for a parade.  What did I tell you?  I think every weekend there is some kind of parade, even if it is freezing cold outside.  Oh well, we would have to miss this one.  While driving toward the freeway, we looked down main street and far off in the distance we saw a big white something all over the road.  We couldn't figure out what had happened, but there were lots of cops blocking off whatever it was on every side.  I had never seen that many cops together in quiet little Cedar City before.  We got closer, and realized it was actually hundreds of SHEEP!  The cops were the herders and they were herding all these tons of sheep right down mainstreet for the Sheep Parade and Festival.  Cedar City is hilarious-it really is "Festival City, U.S.A."

Sorry this one is a bit blurry.  It is a hasty picture from a car window.

Pizza

The other day we decided to make pizza because we haven't made it homemade in awhile.  The whole purpose was to use some of the chicken or sausage we have in our fridge that needs to be used up, but we didn't end up using either of those things.  But we did have a lot of odds and ends food in the fridge that were all good pizza toppings so we just used all those up.  It was a good pizza though, probably our most successful homemade one.  YUM!

Weekend with the Kids

This weekend I got to go up to Highland and spend time with my family.  We went to Roberts, went shopping in Park City, and later on Mom and I went to Thanksgiving Point with the kids and got some mini pumpkins.  I caught some funny pictures while going from place to place.  Kaden loves to watch movies in the car.  We turned on "The Sand Lot" and the huge scary dog and baseball captured his attention fully.  He seemed to be obsessed with the movie, as well as his new fluffy coat that was too hot for the weather.  With the two things he loved, this is what I turned around to see in the car.  Here is Brinnley in the store when I gave her a sucker that ended up all over her shirt.

Doctor Bowl

Have you heard of the Super-bowl before?  Well this is way more fun.  Almost-Doctors and Almost-Dentists going at each other on the football field.  Okay, "going at each other" sounds rather rough.  They are just having a bunch of fun.  Every year the Pre-dental students and the Pre-med students go against each other in a football game.  It is a good thing the pre-dental guys have good careers going for them because they haven't won either game in the past two years.  It sure was fun though, and it was a close game.  JD made some good plays, and I somehow ended up being the photographer of the game, although I'm not very good at it.  I am sad to say that the better pictures of the game are on my big camera and are yet to be developed.  So I guess you'll have some pictures to look forward to.