The Long and the Short of it: January 2013

I must stick to my New Year's goal of writing a blog post at least once a month, and January is almost over. Sadly I don't have many pictures for this post but there should be some for next month because we will be going to Utah in a week and will take lots of pictures.

We've kept ourselves busy the past two months between birthdays, anniversaries, the holidays, and work. Keith planned a surprise birthday party for me and we were able to get together with some friends and enjoy some cake and ice cream. It was funny because some friends had arrived and we didn't have icing on the cake and Keith was going to make the icing while we were sitting on the couch talking. After a few minutes Keith was like umm our hand mixer is broker...and my cute 7-month pregnant friend and her husband started trying to mix the icing by hand and Keith kept telling them to not worry about it and that we could sing and blow the candles out, open presents and then we'll worry about the icing. After a lot of convincing we did that, we put the candles in an icing-less birthday cake and everyone sang and I blew them out. We then opened presents which consisted of cute clothes from my parents, a mini rolling pin, a snow tube, letters from Grandparents, AND a brand new hand mixer! Keith had realized the hand mixer had died about a week before and so he knew the whole time and had it all planned.

We did get to ice the cake and Abi and Jayce (some of the kiddos that came) helped me decorate it with sprinkles, it was a masterpiece of 5 different colors of sprinkles mixed together and probably 3x more than needed, but the kids loved it and I didn't care what the cake looked like--sadly we don't have a pic...

After the party we went to the Botanical Gardens in Green Bay. In the winter it is a Christmas light display that you can walk around, fortunately there weren't too many people. One of our favorite activities in December was driving around looking at Christmas lights.

For our 3-year anniversary Keith and I went to one of our favorite restaurants around here, Chives. It was amazing, like usual! We usually don't get desserts when we eat out but we love the Creme Brulee, so good!

It's crazy that it has already been a month since Christmas (time goes by so fast). We had a great Christmas together just the two of us. We were able to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner with friends from the Branch. Some of the gifts Keith received were gloves, scarf, luggage, belt, clothes, a giftcard, a PS3 game, and a snow tube. Some of the gift I received were clothes, hat, and a Bosch mixer! It was pretty exciting, and I need to start cooking more now that I have all of these amazing cooking tools.

New Year's Eve we spend with some friends from the Branch (same ones we had Christmas dinner with). We played games and had yummy food. It was a lot of fun! We ended up heading home shortly after midnight and it had been pretty cold that night. When we got into the Rogue I realized that the frost on the window was actually on the inside of the glass, not the outside. I told Keith that and even scratched some of it so he could see, I could tell he was confused and he sat there for a few seconds with a confused look and then grabbed the window scraper and said I'm going to go out and scrape the windows...I couldn't stop laughing. Fortunately I didn't let him go out and try that so we sat in the car with the heat on full blast for a few minutes. That probably doesn't seem as funny reading it, maybe it was one of those instances where you had to be there :).

Some fun things I've done with friends was I've gotten my first pedicure and first nail shellac. I am in love with them both, but the shellac is AMAZING! I love it. Since both Keith and I both received a tube we have gone tubing a few times at a nearby park where there is a man-made hill (I miss mountains) which has been a lot of fun!

Keith and I babysat for some friends from the Branch who have an 8-month old and a 2-year old. Wow we were amazed at how oblivious we are about babies. The little 2-year old, Sophie, is in love with Keith so she was easy but the baby, Scarlett, was a little tougher. She wouldn't take a bottle and she was so tired. We didn't know what to do with her, poor little girl! We both kept taking turns holding her and trying to get her to take a nap (we got her tummy full with these little yogurt bites). I change her diaper and wow I am not good at that, I put it on so loose that I couldn't get her jammies snapped back up...oops! But we had a lot of fun! After I went and helped some other friends from the Branch with their kids' birthday party. They had these clowns come and they did such an amazing job! They did magic tricks, face painting, a balloonist, and crafts. It was a pretty amazing party.

Last week it was the coldest week we've experienced since moving here. It was horrible! Not only did it not get to positive temperatures for almost 3 days, the wind chill made it super cold. The coldest "real feel" that I saw on my phone was -31...I am ready to move somewhere warm or become a snow bird (summers are pretty nice around here). Today we had another semi-snow day which is the second I've seen. I do enjoy the snow a lot more than the frigid temperatures, but honestly, I cannot wait until spring!

Next week we are going to Utah for 6 days and are very excited to see family and friends. We are trying to fit so much in such a little amount of time, I feel like we'd have to stay a month to get all we want to do in. Okay, not really...but it would be nice. Anyway, here are some pictures from my birthday and Christmas. Enjoy!