Festivities

Well Christmas has come and gone, and the new year is fast approaching. Seeing as flights to Florida in the winter aren't the most affordable we opted for a White Christmas once again with the Sullivan fam.

Per usual we had the Christmas story dramatically played out by all the nieces and nephews complete with horses and hay, crying sheep, disheveled angels, and confused wise men. Honestly though, I wouldn't have it any other way and Christmas wouldn't be the same without it.

Lucas- sheep #1

The cast of players: Benjamin- Shepard#1, Emory- angel#1, Grace- angel#2, Lucas- sheep#1

Hallee mesmerized by the pretty lights.
After the story telling was over we all headed off to our respected houses and slept the night away. After last years incident with the futon...Roy opted for a night in his own bed with a promise to rise with the dawn in order to open presents at the parentals. So at 5:30 we drove through the driving snow as well as many stop lights to make it to my parents house safely. Santa brought some good stuff this year. Including Roy's favorite....

A new sleeping bag that's graded for 0 degrees...hopefully that will keep him warm enough.Oh yeah...he's stoked!

And my favorite...Cooper!

Having the day after Christmas off as well we decide to spend it sledding with the kids. It was not the best sledding experience I have had. There was a lot of loose powder, and at the end of the hill you ended up looking something like this.

But we still had a good time.

Roy and Emory on the Snowflake aka: the blue bulletI guess the sledding was too much for Emory (he he he)

We also got to go snowmobiling with the Brady's on Saturday. It was so great to go again, even if we are a bunch of armatures. We took their homemade sleds up to the top of Butterfield canyon and road them down and than took the snowmobiles back up so we wouldn't have to walk. I was giggling like a little girl the whole time, and kept saying..."let's do that again". Hopefully, despite the fact that Roy and I tipped over their snowmobiles twice, they will consider taking us again, we had a blast! All in all, good festivities!

Hamster Runner

You know those wheels that hamster's run on, usually at night when you are trying to sleep? I feel like I'm on one of those right now. Running, running, running...thinking your getting somewhere, but when you get off the wheel and look around...surprise!!! you're in the same place. It seems to get that way around this time of year, even when I try to simplify, things seem to just perpetuate themselves into more things and before you know it it's Christmas eve and you still have a list of things to do. That's what's happened once again. I thought I was completely done last week with everything, but turns out I'm still scrambling to get those last minute things off the list. I'm hoping eventually that this running in place stuff will become something of the past, but I have a feeling that when I get off that wheel I'll find myself in the same place.

Getting Older

Perhaps I have been thinking about the subject of getting older because of a recent birthday or perhaps I was just reading a younger perspective of life from a fellow blogger, but what ever the reason I have indeed been thinking about it. I don't consider myself older in the sense that I'm still relatively active and healthy and I haven't really slowed down at all. But I realize that a lot of my ideas about life have changed. In college I lived for late nights and huge groups of friends. As far as late nights go I have only completed one all nighter in my entire life and that happened almost by accident. Colette and I usually talked while lying in bed at night, but the conversation would usually end when Colette's response time got longer and longer. This particular night though we stayed up talking for hours and in the middle of our conversation we realized we were hungry. Off to the pantry for a midnight snack we went. We continued our conversation on a 4 in the morning walk, where we observed that there are quite a lot of people up at 4 in the morning. I think we were both surprised at how "not tired" we were at church the next day.

Late nights no longer exist for me. I love nothing better than to be curled up in my warm bed by 10 PM and very rarely do I stay up past 11 anymore. In college I also loved being around huge groups of people and just being in the thick of things. I don't know what switch was clicked, but now I love just being in small intimate groups. I often feel overwhelmed and suffocated in large unknown groups now. So although I'm still a "young 20 something" I feel like I've aged in different ways.

Cheesecake Please

So for my birthday Roy and the girls took me out to the Cheesecake Factory. I'd never been and was completely stoked to try their amazing cheesecake. We didn't plan as well as we should so we ended up waiting about a half an hour to be seated.

waiting to go eat we saw lots a skanky women i.e. big women with little dresses

We were finally seated and seeing as we were all starving we ordered rather quickly. But having to still wait for our food this is what Roy ended up doing...passing out on the table.

I can't take him any where after 9:00

So while Roy slept, the ladies kept themselves entertained.

Finally the food arrived and most of us couldn't wait to scarf it down as is evident by Roy trying to down his massive burger.


Roy kept trying to entice Jill with his fries, which wasn't very nice since she has sworn off eating one of her most favorite fatty foods. He pulled out all his tricks even using his mad spelling skills.

Jill prevailed though and was able to resist Roy's temptations. All in all it was a good Birthday with good food and friends!

So True

Just thought I'd share what my husband

a man capable of his own...nothingness (gotta love him though)

really thinks about this whole blogging world that I'm a part of. And I have to say... it is really quite true. The majority of mine, as well as other blogs, is really about nothing. And it is quite possible that I'm the only one who reads this rubbish, but I think even stuff about nothing has its place too. So here's to laughing at ourselves and all the nothingness that we think about all day!

Gratitude Attitude

A few years ago Colette and I made up a game to help get me through a difficult time. We would each take a turn and say something we were grateful for. We would take long walks and just go back in forth coming up with the most random things that we were thankful for. I remember vividly Colette being so appreciative of her toes that she named them Harry and Harry Conick Jr. The things we came up with weren't big things, but it really helped me get out of my slumpy mood and made our friendship even closer as we laughed about the crazy things we came up with. So in the spirit of our thankful game and in an attempt to sound unoriginal I thought I would list a few simple random things I'm grateful for during these coming days of Thanksgiving.

I'm grateful for the way leaves crunch on the ground under my feet.

I'm grateful for the sore ache of muscles after a good workout.

I love the way my body feels in the morning as I'm just waking up....complete relaxation!

I love the way the air smells on winter mornings.

I'm thankful for warm brownies and cold ice cream.

I'm grateful for old warn out slippers.

I'm love puffy coats and gnarly old scarves.

I'm grateful for Ibuprofen or any medicine for that matter.

I'm thankful for Far side comics and Steve Barry (remember the closet Colette)

I'm grateful for batteries and jumper cables.

I'm thankful for toilet paper.

I'm grateful for my favorite pair of shoes-comfy rocket dogs

I'm thankful when other people get hiccups and not me.

Calculators are always good, as well as space heaters and whiteout.

I really could go on forever, but you get the idea...I'm pretty dang grateful for just about anything and everything.

Where are you from?

Not an unusual inquiry I know, but I often get this question after I start talking. This didn't use to be an issue. In fact growing up my identity was never questioned. Moving a few 100 miles north to Logan, UT seemed to do the trick. It was here my first year I picked up my first accent, nothing authentic mind you, but just a funky blend of whatever I could pull from my mind. My first year roommates only encouraged this behavior by mimicking me. We would go home for Holidays and talk normal the whole time while home, but as soon as we called each other we transformed into our alternate self's. I assumed that as long as I wasn't around any of my roommates I talked completely normal. It wasn't until I started getting the constant questioning of where I was from that I started to think I might have unconsciously picked up a random accent. I continued on through my years of college with inquiries as to the origin of my strange vernacular continuing. I eventually moved down to salt lake leaving behind my college accent and the questions. That was until I moved in with some new friends who had there own fun southern twang, that I gradually picked up as we talked. The question was raised again, "Where are you from?"... (me looking slightly confused) "South Jordan...?!?" But eventually, just as I had done with my "Logan" accent, I moved on, and packed it into a small forgotten corner of my mind. Recently, I have discovered that I have not lost them as completely as I thought I had. This year while at girls camp I told a few stories of my college days to the girls only for them to demand that I say certain words again. I thought this was strange until I realized why. They were all trying to figure out where I was from. All I could do was laugh at there requests, because I couldn't believe I had fallen back into my old college self. I still get requests from them to say something to them in my accent (I'm not even sure what it is). It does my heart good to think that I can throw so many without even trying. And apparently Roy has picked up my accent as well, as I see them often commenting that he sounds like me when he says certain words. So here's to the girls that made my accent what it is today, whatever that may be and confusing people as to where I'm from.