We've been getting ready for Christmas these past few weeks and boy, it's been busy! Lots of family parties (2 more to go), tons of shopping (we are now very poor), too much junk food from neighbors, and lots of wrapping to do.
We got up one of our two Christmas trees (my parents gave us there old one, so now we have two fake ones.) and a few decorations, and hopefully we'll get up more before the big day.
This is also the tree :D
Present making prep, aka a giant mess of our table.
Chocolate covered cherry mice I made to bring to my dad's side of the family Christmas party.
So cute!
I was surprised how easy and quick these were to make. I'm making white mice for the Thacker party.
My "waste of time" (per Steven)
I got this loopy metal rod at Pier 1 years ago on clearance for a few bucks. I wasn't sure what to use it for, but found it works perfect for Christmas cards!
Our Christmas tree train
I found these hanging frames at the thrift store, painted them and stuck them all over our tree with pictures of us and our family.
My family grew up with these little chocolate Christmas countdowns. I bought one for us to try. Super cheap chocolate (read: gross), but fun none the less.
Not bad for Clearance ribbon, leftover wedding decorations and all a dollar and thrift store decorations!
I've been keeping all of Steven's gifts in a box in our family room. I had to make a note so he wouldn't peek:
And what's Christmas without a little fruitcake! I personally love the stuff.
We love our grill! Even enough to grill in the snow. Sexy PJ's, no?
And a new haircut too. Ow ow.
I spent Thursday morning organizing our pantry. Holy COW it feels good to have it cleaned! Baskets are life savers for organizing and I buy tons every time I go to the D. I.
Blurry sisters picture. yay!
Tonight we celebrated Carter's 6th birthday at Randy and Becky's house. I like to liven up my cards a bit :)
Eli loved the cupcakes!
I think Carter loves being the center of attention.
Becky's super hero cupcakes
"Spider Bat" - Cater's secret identity/super hero that he imagined and drew up a design for a suit. Becky's amazing sister actually made the suit off of Carter's design and gave it as a gift. Every little boy's dream. This is his "superhero face"
The cape
Rock em' Sock em' robots was one of the gifts. I think the adults had more fun with the game than the kids
Afterwards Steven and I went around Magna and by Winder Dairy to see the lights on people's houses. Something we both did as kids and wanted to do this year.
We're busy with Christmas these days and have a full Calendar of events up until Christmas day. We got a new queen size mattress that we love, our house decorated with lights and and working away at getting our house organized. Life is great!
Or as Steven would call it, our 6 month anniversary trip. Yeah, I WISH every six months we could do something this extravagant to celebrate our marriage!
Steven won a one night stay at the anniversary inn through his work. We opted for the Logan location, even though Salt Lake has two locations. Logan's Inn is much newer, HUGE rooms and is just cooler :)
Right before we entered the canyon, we could see the spires of the Brigham city temple so we decided to go look at the temple in progress. Right across the street is the Logan tabernacle. Gorgeous building a a really neat history.
We walked over and got a good look at the temple. Both Steven and I thought it looked very much like the Salt Lake temple, but with only two spires. Also, the stone was very white.
They had all the fences filled with pine tree sticks (?) for privacy. Kinda weird, but festive for Christmas I guess.
On our way back we played in the leaves. Well, Steven did. I just collected them.
They were huge!
Main street Brigham city has huge trees lining the whole road. It was beautiful.
The lonely canyon up to Logan
We stopped at a D.I. in Logan and browsed a bit (it's our "thing"), had a fabulous huge dinner at Texas Roadhouse and then went off to the hotel.
Our room at the Anniversary Inn! The Taj Mahal!
If you'd like to see a tour of the room I did, here's a movie
We were greeted with cider, truffles and cookies.
Oh, and cold water and Cheesecake :)
A little makeup nook for me.
Our fabulous tub with a TV and us enjoying our cider right before hopping in the tub.
We had a huge Shower too!
You can see where our priorities lie...
The staircase up to our bed.
King sized "My comfort" bed. The most comfortable bed I've EVER slept in!
The view from our bed.
Nothing like breakfast in bed :)
This figurine in our room perfectly shows how we felt the whole trip. With our basement flooding a 2nd time this year, work stresses (mostly Steven, I have a great job), and just hectic life, we really needed this getaway to just breathe. It was bliss!
Saturday morning we woke up to snow. Wasn't expecting that! thankfully by the time we made it to the temple it stopped snowing. We did an endowment session and both of us got to be in the Logan temple for the first time. We were very glad we went. Steven even saw our friend Logan there!
After the temple we wanted to change, so we camped out in a deserted church parking lot and somehow managed to change out of our church clothes into some snow-compatible ones. Then it was off to the bluebird Diner on Main street. My great grandmother's family used to own/run this place when she was little (she was born in 1904 I think), and she even lived in the upstairs part that is now converted to more dining area.
Cute old-fashioned bar/soda fountain
They also have the bluebird candy factory and sell some of the candy here. We bought some caramels for the drive home.
A very large building, ornate, but super reasonable prices and huge helpings!
We went to an antique shop on our drive out, stopped for some hot chocolate and started home. We had so much fun! We even bought a bounce back certificate for the Inn to come back and do more here in Logan for our one year anniversary. So that was our trip!
