2013 Holiday Recap

Our Holiday season was nothing but parties and playing interspersed with working hard decorating lots of beautiful weddings but somewhere we found time to take a few pictures. :)

November:

My wedding business started to pick up and I scheduled several weddings for the holiday season. Alexander and I had our very first little Thanksgiving dinner with just the two of us. It was very quiet...much more so than I am used to Thanksgiving being...but it was lovely and my very first real Turkey didn't turn out so bad. :) Also, my pies were THE BEST I have EVER made! For reals, they were totally divine. I made a raspberry rhubarb pie and a real coconut custard pie (and a regular old pumpkin pie). Seriously, the best!

Our Thanksgiving Feast!

Alexander couldn't wait to dive into those pies!

It was Godiva's first invitation to Thanksgiving dinner! She really enjoyed her turkey scraps!

December was a whirlwind of finals, weddings, parties and Christmas! Nothing beats starting out the Christmas season with our annual Ugly Sweater Party! This year was no exception and we had a great turn-out. The food was good, the people were better and the white elephant gifts were hilarious!

 The Hot Cocoa Bar!

The Feast!

Kelley and Gina and their gluten-free heaven of desserts

Jeff, Alexander, Sarah and Tammy

Scott and Sarah

The Ugly Sweater Winners! Kimball and Tammy

Jeff and Gina

Kelley and Jon

We also invited my MBA class over for another Ugly Sweater Party the next week. We got a lot of the international students here and for most of them it was their first time playing the white elephant gift game. They were skeptical at first, but the competition was fierce as the night went on and it was a VERY long game. I think everyone had fun.

Christmas Eve we went over to our good friends' house with our adopted extended family, the Bennions, the Hales, and the Cunninghams, to do a live action nativity (Alexander and I were Mary and Joseph!) and eat a smorgasbord of yumminess. Christmas morning we had brunch with our awesome friends Joe and Kathy and then went over to the Cunninghams for Christmas dinner. We are completely spoiled by our amazing friends!

Christmas Eve:

Christmas Morning:

Alexander was barely awake when he got his stocking

White Chocolate Santa!

Bayeux Tapestry tie and new cozy blanket :)

Alexander's pile of goodies

Happy Girls!

Annalee's stocking was so heavy it couldn't be hung up after it was filled

Annalee's pile of goodies

Godiva inspecting her stocking

Godiva is excited to find her present under the tree!

On December 27, Alexander's parents visited us for a few days. We did some church history site-seeing, some shopping, and some gourmet cooking. We had several dinner parties as well as a very exciting and lively New Years Eve party filled with Disney karaoke, Oklahoma Joe's BBQ, and good friends.

We had such an exciting holiday season that it took us nearly all of January to recuperate! We just know that 2014 is going to be another wonderful year!

Fall 2013 Recap

These past few months have been crazy at best so it's no wonder I haven't had time to blog about it. Please accept my apology for the lateness of these posts, but check out how much fun we've been having!

August: I went back to school!!!! This is huge for me! Not only did I go back, but I got accepted to a program that is 180 degrees different than I ever imagined I would want to do. I'm at the UMKC Bloch School of Business to get a Master's of Business Administration in Entrepreneurship. I've already completed one semester and I love it! It's super hard work and a lot of studying but I love the challenge!

All ready for the first day of school:

Alexander also got a new job at H&R Block Corporate headquarters. Within a few weeks, he was given a great promotion, along with a nice raise. :) He doesn't love the work, but he is respected and has done very well in his department.

Alexander turned 31!

Just before school started, I snuck back to Utah for a quick girls weekend in Park City with my high school besties. We had so much fun! A total flashback to sleepovers when we were teenagers. :)

September:

In September some of our bestest friends, Zuke and Melissa, came to visit for a few days. We had a blast at the Renaissance Festival, visiting church history sites and eating some darn good food! I wish I had written about this soon after, but alas.

At Adam-ondi-ahman:

Eating green jello!

Here are some of our highlights from the Renaissance Festival!

We threw dangerous weapons:

We pretended to be Robin Hood:

We put Melissa in the stocks:

Alexander found a dragon:

Melissa found a wooden mug:

I RODE AN ELEPHANT!! It was awesome..

We later went back to the Ren Fest with our other good friends, Joe and Kathy. Needless to say, we had a little too much fun with our food. We really enjoyed our turkey legs and cider floats :)

Joe, Kathy, Audrey and Alexander in the dragon:

In October we were incredibly busy. We moved into a new, beautiful (and much larger) home, we rushed to complete our adoption homestudy and we had our super awesome Halloween Party. We had over 40 people in our home for the party which featured costumes, soup and salad, treats galore, It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown for the little kids, much WII gaming for the teenagers and tons of great conversation for the adults. I didn't get a single picture during the party, however, I did take a few of the aftermath. ;)

We were invited to murder mystery dinner. Here are our costumes:

Miss Jade:

Sir Ruelion:

For Halloween, we dressed up as Vercingetorix and Cartimandua of the Celtic people:

The aftermath of the Halloween party: