Halloween 2015

I've really been failing at this blog thing lately, but that's largely because we have our vlog now, which kind of serves the same purpose.  So at least our lives are still getting recorded somewhere.  But I keep telling myself I should still try to keep up the blog, so here is a quick post about Halloween!

We went with an Aladdin theme this year, with Coulson being Aladdin, me being Princess Jasmine, and Chrisser being Carpet.

I had intended to actually make myself a costume with the poofy pants, etc., but I didn't have time after Chrisser's, haha.  His took forever.  It wasn't hard, but it was very time consuming since all of the red and yellow pieces are hand sewn onto the background.  But mine worked out pretty well considering.  The shirt and skirt are actually dance practice clothes that I've had for a few years and the jewelry I just made from cereal boxes.  Coulson's was pretty easy and I was able to just use some fabric we already had for the vest and the pants.  The onesie has a design on the front, but we just put it on him backwards, haha.  And to finish it off we had a little toy Abu that Chrisser has had since he was Aladdin for Halloween when he was like 5 or 6 :).  We tied Abu to Coulson's vest so we wouldn't lose him.

As far as festivities, we went to the dance lab on Thursday (which is where the above picture was taken) and a ward party on Friday.  Chrisser wore his costume to the animation lab on Saturday, and we also wore them grocery shopping that evening.  We had one group of trick-or-treaters come, which was kinda fun.  We weren't really expecting anybody since we only have 2 or 3 kids in our ward who are old enough to eat candy and I think they went with relatives in a different neighborhood, but the group that did come looked like they were about 11-13 years old, so I guess they just came here because they could hit a ton of apartments in a short amount of time.

The ward party was mostly just a dinner, but they also had bought a ton of pumpkins intending for people to carve them at the party.  It was really cold outside so I don't think very many people actually carved one (though a few people brought one inside to carve once a lot of people had left so it wasn't so crowded), so there were a ton of leftover pumpkins.  So even though we didn't really have time to carve them, I took a couple and ended up painting them.

Had to stick with the theme :).  I think I might try my hand at baking with them this year if I have time.  I've never tried cooking a pumpkin myself before.  I've always used the canned stuff on those rare occasions when I have made something with pumpkin.  So that will be an adventure!

Easter 2015

Our first Easter with more than just the 2 of us!  The Easter Bunny brought us a baby this year!

He also brought us normal baskets, and he brought us a basket for the baby that he brought!  Isn't the Easter Bunny just the best?

Coulson's basket was actually filled mostly with the toys we got at our baby showers, haha.  He doesn't know the difference...  Oh, and they aren't in the picture because I guess I was wearing them already, but there was a pair of bunny ears in my basket as well as the baby's.  It's also kinda funny to notice that Chrisser and I each got each other something with minions :).  We like our minions...

And this picture of our Easter dinner isn't very exciting, but I'm gonna put it in anyway just to remember it.

Just pork chops, hash browns, and rolls.  And fun fact, those are the flowers that my parents brought me in the hospital after having Coulson.  They still look brand new even a week later!

Well, I did it!  Three posts in one day!  I feel so accomplished.

Insert Awesome Title Here

 Oh yeah, I have a blog! Haha!

(Note: All my pictures are at the very end, so if that's all you care about, just scroll to the bottom.)

So shortly after my last post was Dancesport. I failed to take a picture of us, which was silly because Chrisser actually had a real Smooth suit instead of just a button up shirt and vest. Oh well. We also didn't make it past the first round and we only did Novice this time, but we still had fun and everyone who knew I was pregnant was really impressed that I was still dancing. And Chrisser did better than he expected in his class events, making it 1 round farther than he expected in his 2 ballroom events and taking 3rd place in his Gold American Waltz. So it was still a fun weekend.

Thanksgiving was Thanksgiving. Nothing super exciting that I recall. Oh, I did finish the coursework for my Medical Transcriptionist/Editor program a couple days before that, and I took the final about a week after. That was a big accomplishment for me, seeing as I had spent a year and a half on it and felt like I would never finish. So yay! Although now I have to look for a job :(.

Christmas break was quite a whirlwind for us. School got out on December 19, but Chrisser was still going to campus all day every day to work on the senior film, which needs to be done in like a week. Then we went to the Christmas Eve party that my family has every year, which was fun. Just your basic dinner, re-enact the nativity, and exchange gifts. Then we stayed the night at my parents' house and did the whole Christmas morning stocking and presents thing with my family. Then, still on Christmas morning, we flew out to Virginia and did some more present opening with Chrisser's family. Then the next day (Friday) we all drove down to Raleigh, NC, for Chrisser's brother's wedding on Saturday. And the reception was an hour and a half away from the temple. And Sunday right after Sacrament Meeting we drove back to Falls Church. Lots and lots of traveling those 4 days.... Then Monday and Tuesday we were put to work making decorations for the Virginia reception (which we didn't even get to go to because we had to get back to Utah, sadly), and Wednesday morning we flew back here. Then Chrisser did actually get 1 day of a break because he had a cold and wanted to just rest, but then he went right back to working on finishing up the senior film, and then classes started back up again yesterday. So he didn't really get a Christmas break, but he said he probably would have ended up in the animation lab the whole break anyway if we had stayed here. So it was probably a good thing that we had that craziness so that at least we could actually be together all day for a week. I was starting to really miss him since he was on campus so much....

And here are some pictures:

I sneaked a picture of Chrisser waiting for the newlyweds to make their exit.

Only 2 layers were actually cake; the rest were styrofoam.

The bride is very into fairytales...

...and dragons.

I heard she had been collecting dragon things for her wedding since she was 14.

Aaannnd this is super blurry, but still cute. Dancing with their grandson :)

And this is what we made for the Virginia reception. (Disclaimer: I took this pic from my sister-in-law's Facebook since I wasn't around for the finished product.)

Halloween 2014

We had a fun Halloween this year.  I put up our decorations that consisted of a spider web, poster board bats, a sparkly pumpkin and sparkly roses, and a stuffed bat that we found among Chrisser's old stuffed animals while we were in Virginia.

I wasn't really planning on carving a pumpkin this year because I didn't have much time, but I ended up with about 2 hours of free time on Halloween day so I decided to go ahead and carve the pumpkin my aunt had given us.  I'm not very artistic and didn't have a ton of time, so I just used the bats from our wall as a stencil.

The reason I didn't have much time this year was because I spent forever making our costumes.  We were Lumiére and Babette from Beauty and the Beast this year.

It took me so long to make them that I actually finished Chrisser's about 10 minutes before we left for the dance lab on Thursday.  And by finished I mean I safety-pinned the last couple things because I didn't have time to sew them.  And Chrisser actually had to finish sewing the feather boas onto my skirt while I worked on his costume.  And actually, there is a chunk of the layer with black boas that is missing a boa because we ran out of time.  Oh well.  Everybody loved us anyway.  A lot of people couldn't quite figure out who we were until we told them, but they still loved how fancy Chrisser's outfit was.  So I'll call it a success anyway.

Our festivities included the social dance lab and a ward party.  The ward party included a chili cook-off and costume contest.  It was kind of funny trying to vote in the costume contest, because they split the children's categories into boys and girls, but there were several children that we couldn't figure out if they were a boy or a girl!  Some of them we knew because we know the family, but the newer families we were totally clueless on.  The winners ended up being Captain America for the boys and an elephant for the girls.  The adults that won were Zelda and the Phantom of the Opera, and the family that won was a family of pandas (who can resist a baby panda?).

Easter 2014

So Easter was yesterday! I hadn't really done much planning beforehand, so I was very happy that it turned out as fun as it did. The first thing, of course, was finding our Easter baskets. I did much better this year than last. Chrisser actually had to look to find his basket (behind the vacuum in the coat closet), and it had more than just candy in it.

Ok, it's kinda hard to tell in the picture, but it has a giant pen, a thing of bubbles, and a "sticky creature" bunny that you throw at the window or wall and it sort of flops down it. He got quite a kick out of the creature and had to show it to both his sister and his parents when we FaceTimed them. And nothing in that basket cost more than $1, which is much better than my Easter bunny can say about my basket...

It's pretty hidden, but it's got Despicable Me 2 in there, as well as Nerf Guns (definitely more for Chrisser's enjoyment than mine...:) ) and 3 different chocolate bunnies. (And yes it was hidden in the fridge, haha.) Yeah, it was a good thing that Chrisser had a bunch of cash on him from people repaying him for ballroom concert tickets. I don't include cash on my financial records because it is too hard to keep track of if you don't get a receipt or you lose some, so I don't even know how much that stuff cost (thank goodness). (And don't worry, I used our tax refund to pay off the credit card Chrisser had bought the concert tickets with in the first place.) (I am having a lot of fun with parentheses today, aren't I?)

Anyway, I spent the rest of the morning making rolls. I decided to try something I found on Pinterest where you make round rolls and clip the dough before baking them to make little bunny ears. Only mine turned out more like demon biscuits, haha. I didn't even take a picture of them, they were so horrifying. I think part of the problem is that I clipped them after they had risen, which of course made them deflate. If I try them again I will definitely try clipping them before letting them rise, and see if that works better.

Then we went to church. One of the guys in our ward gave a really good talk in Sacrament Meeting (okay, I'm sure all the talks were great, but I was having a really hard time paying attention to the others). I don't remember everything he said, but the gist of it was inviting us to ask ourselves which of the 5 types of disciples in the Easter story we wanted to be--faithful like John, hopeful like Mary Magdalene, doubtful like the group of apostles, slothful like the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus, or faithless like Thomas.

Then we came home and made dinner. I had gotten some pork chops because a) they were cheap, and b) Chrisser's brother actually bought them for us along with a few other groceries because he had a bunch of leftover meal plan money that would expire at the end of the semester. So that was nice. Chrisser cooked them up for me while I made the rest of dinner and ironed the tablecloth (yup, I went all out on this dinner!).

I guess you can kinda see the demon biscuits there in front of the ducky wearing bunny ears (isn't he cute?). And there's also mashed potatoes (the gravy was on the stove) and broccoli and cauliflower. It was delicious (at least Chrisser told me so about 7 times... :) ). Although it was also very tiring chewing the pork chops, so we decided the next thing we would do was watch the VeggieTales Easter Carol (we watch a VeggieTales every Sunday) so that we could just sit and rest.

After that we dyed eggs. We decided to try dying them with Kool-Aid this year (another Pinterest idea--1 packet and 1/2 cup of water) since that would be cheaper. It worked pretty well, smelled better than other dyes, and gave us very vibrant colors!

Though we discovered that Grape does not actually make them purple, but rather a nasty gray. Oh well. Also, our eggs weren't very creative this year because we couldn't get the crayons to work for some reason. And we're pretty sure it had something to do with the eggs themselves, because they wouldn't work even before we put the eggs in the Kool-Aid. Sad. But we were done really quickly since we didn't really have to spend time thinking, haha.

All in all, it was a good holiday and we enjoyed spending it together. And here are a few pictures of the jelly beans and Robin's Eggs that the Easter bunny left around the house.

Christmas

Yes, I know Christmas was a month ago, but my computer was in the shop for 2 weeks shortly after Christmas with a failing hard drive, and then when I got it back I just kept forgetting that I never blogged about the holiday.  But I remembered today!

Honestly, I don't remember a whole lot about the week of Christmas, so I'll probably mostly just post the pictures I took of our decorations.  Chrisser and I were so excited to have an apartment this year that we could decorate!  Last year we had just gotten married 2 weeks before Christmas and didn't have our own apartment until January.  So we had fun this year.  The thing we were most excited about was that we found a 6-foot-tall artificial tree at Walmart for just $20!  So we bought it, of course.

And we didn't even have to buy any of the things we put on it!  Chrisser had bought the lights a couple years ago on an after-Christmas sale, I've had the star for as long as I can remember, my grandma gave me the skirt several years ago when she was cleaning things out, and she gave us the tinsel and ornaments as bridal shower gifts last year (she also gave us several other things for the bridal shower and wedding--thanks Grandma!!!).

The tree went up on Thanksgiving Day because we were just so excited, but we made ourselves wait until the next Monday to put everything else up for Family Home Evening.  Everything we put up was stuff that we already had been collecting over the years.

Chrisser had lots of fun stuffing the sleigh with pinecones...

I never actually got around to arranging this display.
This is just how they ended up when I pulled everything out of the box.

Don't mind the mess on the table...

This will (eventually) be an Advent Calendar.
I started making it just before Thanksgiving but never finished.

The minion is playing Joseph because Chrisser decided that Joseph had to be a shepherd since the set didn't come with a shepherd.  I also love that the donkey (far left) is smiling for the camera :)

So those were our many decorations.  As far as what we did, this year it was my family's turn to have us.  We went up for the Christmas Eve party that my mom's side has every year.  My mom was in charge of planning it this year, and she delegated the craft to me.  I'm not the most creative person ever, but I had seen ideas for popsicle stick ornaments on Pinterest and figured that would be easy enough.  I pre-painted a bunch of sticks and then everyone just had to glue them together at the party.  I was actually pretty dead at the party.  I had thrown up at 2:30 that morning...  But it was just the once, so I figured I could go, haha.  So I was alive, but very tired and afraid to eat.  Anyway.  Sorry, tmi...

That night we slept at my parents' house so we could do Christmas morning with my family.  It seemed that, yet again, I was the most excited one of my siblings.  My mom finally went and woke everyone up at like 8am.  Chrisser and I had been awake for quite some time by then :).  Thankfully we were on the hide-a-bed right next to the video game TV, so Chrisser was able to play games while we waited.  The rest of the morning after presents was pretty chill.  My family doesn't do much on Christmas Day (unlike Chrisser's; bit of a culture shock for him) except that my mom makes a nice dinner and sometimes my dad's parents are there for that, which was the case this year.  Chrisser and I came back to Provo right after dinner (which was in the early afternoon) because it was Chrisser's turn to not feel terribly well.  Thankfully he never actually got sick.

Then right after Christmas I started a busy couple of weeks at work and Chrisser watched a couple entire cartoon series on Netflix and Hulu while he waited for school to start back up again :)

October

October was a busy but fun month.  Chrisser got to dance in BYU's Homecoming Parade with the ballroom teams again this year, and I ran along the route with them taking pictures and videos.  I was focusing more on getting as many pictures of as many people as I could so they could all have their awesomeness documented, so I didn't get quite as many good pictures of Chrisser as I did last year.  Scratch that, I hardly got any of him.  Oops.  But he is in these:

He's dead center in this picture.

And on the far right in this one.

I actually don't feel too bad about not getting tons of pictures of Chrisser, though, because a) I got several last year and he looks pretty much the same, and b) everybody else is constantly telling me how much they love the fact that I take pictures and videos of all their dance things and post them on Facebook for them.  Sometimes I kinda feel like a celebrity that no one actually knows, haha.  They just know my name and that I'm Chrisser's wife and that I record everything.

Nothing really picture-worthy happened between the parade and Halloween.  Just lots of school for Chrisser, work for me, and dance practice for us both.  One of our friends is a dance major and has asked us to be in her senior showcase, for which she had to choreograph something.  So we've been spending many evenings at rehearsals for that, and we've also been trying to prepare to compete open Smooth at Dancesport this month.  Hopefully I'll have pictures of those things that I can post after they've happened.

Then of course Halloween happened.  We never got a chance to go shopping for decorations together, but I put up a few things that either we already had or that I made really quick.

I also made an Oreo Cheesecake and put food coloring in it so it would be orange and black.

We decided to be Mary Poppins and Bert this year.  Everyone at the social dance lab (basically just a dance for all the people in a social dance class at BYU) loved us.  They were particularly intrigued by Chrisser's chimney sweep broom, which I had made from a dustpan handle, a chunk of styrofoam, and bristles that we yanked out of a couple of brooms.  It turned out surprisingly well.  I love it when I have an idea that actually works :).  I also had to make my hat out of a poster board.  Kinda weird, but you know what?  There were two other girls dressed as Mary Poppins at the lab, and my hat definitely looked the most like the one in the movie :D.  I wished I could have gone all out and made her overcoat and scarf, too, but I just didn't have the time or the money.

Oh, I almost forgot our pumpkins.  I guess I should really say my pumpkins because Chrisser never had time to carve his so I did it for him at the last second, but whatever.  Once again, I just didn't have time to be creative with them, so I just did pretty generic faces.  I'm hoping next year won't be quite so crazy...

It's Christmas!!!

So on Saturday night Chrisser was looking for something short to watch on Netflix while he packed some clothes, and ended up watching a couple Dreamworks Christmas specials.  So of course I decided that the next day would be Christmas!  We didn't quite go all out, but we put up a few decorations, watched a couple Christmas VeggieTales, and made gingerbread cookies.

We got to the last bit of dough and Chrisser said, "Just make a bar at the bottom of the sheet with it."  The bar ended up being a little too long and had to curve, so he arranged the cookies just above it to be a smiley face...

Memorial Day = Shakespeare?

Yesterday was Memorial Day, and my family decided to use the day off of school to go down to Cedar City, and Chrisser and I went with them.  My brother who is a junior in high school has been studying Shakespeare in English class, so we got a private behind-the-scenes tour of the theatres used in the Shakespearean Festival so he could write a report on them.

The Randall L. Jones Theatre was the first one we saw.  It wasn't super exciting, being just a normal theatre and all, but it was cool since we got to go backstage to where they keep costumes and stuff.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if this picture was taken in that building or another one that was mostly workshops and stuff.  But you get the point.  Anyway, our tour guide saved the best for last.  Behold the Adams Theatre:

This theatre was once the closest replica of the Globe Theatre in England that Shakespeare's plays were originally performed in, and back in the early '80s the BBC came and filmed some of their Shakespeare series here.  It was really cool.  I don't really know what else to say about it, so here are some more pictures.

On the way home we passed Holden, which is where several of my ancestors are buried, so we made a stop there, too.