My cousin Brady was married December 13th to my now cousin Chelse in the Logan Temple. They got married on the same day as my parents and had the same wedding colors. We drove through a lovely blizzard, but it was worth it!

For decorations they had huge champagne glasses filled with christmas ornaments and lit trees all around the room


Rachel manned the camera for a while. I swear she has tremors or something. Every picture she took was blurry. I tried to sharpen this one up a bit so you can see my handsome cousins.


The beautiful black/crimson roses and pine branches for a bouquet


For a favor, they gave out a CD of their favorite songs. They were some GOOD songs too!


The grooms cake, made in copy of Brady's favorite tie


The dessert table was just that. About 15 different cakes, pies and cheesecakes. They were all gigantic and delicious.


The beautiful wedding cake. Always the highlight for me. I'm obsessed with wedding cakes!


My cousin Brady is majoring in Opera performance at BYU-I. He is SO good! This is just his normal singing, but when he switches to opera, he's amazing. I would LOVE to have my hubby sing a song to me at my wedding like this. All his groomsmen were from a barbershop group they were in since high school.

Testing, Testing 1, 2, 3

Just doing a new layout for spring (HA! Spring? I think it's snowing right now) so bare with me. Massive christmas/picture post to follow!!

I've been no place but home for the holidays

Christmas has kicked in at the Hodgson house! I spent half a day at Shell's house this week helping (eating mostly) make cookies for her family party the day after. First off she made corn salsa that's made with white corn and a bunch of other tasty ingredients. It was SO good. I'm getting all the ingredients on Tuesday and making it for my family. I can't wait!!!

After the salsa we did sugar cookies and coconut macaroons. Michelle was genius and made half the batch into chocolate sugar cookies by adding cocoa. Actually, they were pinwheels to be technical.


Michelle ghave me a plate full to take home for helping her. Even though I pretty much talke to her sister the whole time and tested evrything while stealing all her recipes. But that's what friends are for, right? :D The joke of the day was teeth cookies. We were cracking up like no other. While crushing the candy canes, Kim noted it sounded like crushing bone. Then MIchelle piped up, "Actually they look like teeth when they are freshly pulled with the blood still in the root." After examination of the candy canes, we realized she was right. Does it not look like little teeth in the cookies? makes you want to go out and a eat a dozen or so! But they turned out good and we ate them anyway. She needs to re-write the recipe down with the title of Teeth Cookies.


This upcoming wednesday is our cooking day for the girls in my family. We'll have about 8 different things cooking at once. Should be interesting, and hopefully we survive it without killing eachother.

Oh side note, I'm starting up a new blog (yes me, beckstreet who is constant end never changing) I'm keeping this one as my personal blog, but this new one called "She Hints" is going to be all stuff I love and stuff I want. I'll also have an etsy shop linked to it where my family and I will be selling random stuff. So look for that ina couple of days. It's gonna be BIG!!!

Pain is Good...I think.

Thursday Night Volleyball. A way to keep in shape, socialize with friends, increase sporting ability, make yourself look like a fool in front of pro Samoans, and realize how much you're out of shape.

I used to go to our stakes' volleyball night religiously (ha), and then I quit for a couple months with life being too busy. We started it up again this past month and tonight was the first night the Samoans returned.

Oy.

Don't get me wrong, I love playing against these guys. After all I'm related to one now, thus making me related to every Samoan in Utah. They're amazingly fast, powerful and just plain volleyball superheroes. I love the rush when I save one of their spikes, or get one of their jump serves (which includes watching my life flash before my eyes before impact). You can't imagine the rush of blocking a hit up close by the net in which I decide in a split second if I value my vision and/or face more than the victory of blocking a 100/mph hit from a guy who can jump 5 ft in the air without trying.

Playing against these pro's only improves me each time and I wouldn't have it any other way. Not to be humble, but I'm quite the decent volleyball player after having years of coaching from a vollyball superstar sister, so it's not like I'm some novice playing against pros. I know what I'm doing, but these guys are just SO GOOD.

I swear they have iron arms with supersonic fast reflexes, and endless muscle power. (Vampires perhaps? Nah, just reading too much twilight I think)

The result in my relentless blocking of hits and serves after not playing for two weeks, is the picture below.

No, I don't have fat forearms with patches of fat here and there, They are swollen, have blood spots under the skin as well as a bunch of small bruises and one big one. I think when the Samoans get going, I get going and we push eachother to the point of exhaustion. (Or maybe it's just me, and I'm kidding myself)

I have to admit though, I over did it tonight. I'm now nursing my ever bad left knee (which I won't be able to walk on tomorrow or the next day), arms so tender and swollen I can't wear a long sleeve shirt because touching them hurts so bad, a large headache from overexertion, one blister on my foot, and calves and thighs so sore I can't exactly walk upstairs or downstairs. Just straight forward (I like to dive for stray hits, what can I say?)

After taking two very large Extra strength Tylenol, and Icing my knee, I'm off to bed to dream about a sport I have a love/hate relationship with. Over time my arms will toughen up again and I'll be used to the 2hr game of death minus headache and killer knee.

So this is a good thing. I have to get right back on the horse and keep going.

Can someone bring me a ladder though? My leg won't lift that high on it's own right now.