Local Book Christmas Party: Part 2

My company festivities were contained to Friday night, but we had the chance to stay in St. George Saturday night as well. I was super excited for a whole weekend away. I just love going on trips even if it's just a few hours south.  It's just nice to mix it up once and a while. 

On Saturday morning we slept in and then headed to breakfast at The Egg and I. I was craving eggs benedict like no other and these guys have like 7 different kinds of eggs benedict, so I knew we had to go. There are Egg and I locations in several different states but this is the only one in Utah. If you happen to visit St. George you have to go here! It was so, so delicious. Erik  said it was the best breakfast he had ever eaten. Our waitress suggested he get the Pineapple Coconut Pancake and it was AMAZING. Instead of syrup they give you a vanilla cream sauce, and wow, there are really no words. Just please, go and try it for yourself. 

Oh and another bonus...the pancake is basically the size of your head. That's my eggs benedict in the background which was also de-lish. 

After cleaning up a bit and recovering from our food coma we went to the St. George Temple. I have seen this temple so many times from the highway but I have never been up close or gone inside, so I was pretty excited. 

 I love going to the temple. It is definitely a piece of heaven on earth. And for anyone not of our faith, if  you'd like to learn more about why we build temples you can go here. 

After the temple we did a little bit of Christmas shopping and had dinner at Panda Express (Erik's choice...that boy just loves Panda). And because we are 22/25 going on 50 we went back to the hotel at 7:30 and I was totally conked out by 9. That's just how we roll. 

On Sunday we took full advantage of the free hotel breakfast and then packed up the car and headed home. I definitely had what Erik calls "End of Vacation Blues." Even though it was only a two day vacation it was still hard to come back to real life (first world problems I know). But lucky for us Christmas vacation is only 2 weeks away and I cannot wait! 

Local Book Christmas Party: Part 1

Erik and I had the best weekend! We had the chance to head down to St. George for my company Christmas party. I work for a phone book publisher called The Local Book. Our corporate office is in Midway, but we also have an office in St. George. Since we have more people in our St. George office, we have our party down south. 

Our office closed at 11am on Friday and Erik and I drove down after that.    After getting settled in at our hotel we headed over to the Entrada Country Club for the party. If the golf course looks familiar that's because it's where they filmed High School Musical 2! I'll admit...I was pretty excited about that. 

The party started off with delicious appetizers and an even more delicious dinner and dessert. Then we headed into the "Christmas Accessory Contest." Where Brad, from my office in Midway, won with his ridiculously awesome antler hat. 

He had been talking about this accessory contest for weeks before the party but none of us knew what he was actually going to wear. I just have to say, he sure outdid himself. And yes, those antlers are real.

I work with my cute MIL, Jill. She and her sister Dori may not have won the costume contest, but their reindeer hair sure was cute.  

After the contest we moved on to the main part of the evening which is a serious of games. We were divided into teams by table. Each table received points based on where they placed in the game.

Some of the game highlights included:

This rudolph game where you had to hold a string in your mouth and then get the little red ball to stick to the vaseline on your nose. 

 Erik got second place!

This cookie game that I got stuck doing, where you had to put a cookie on your forehead and then work it down to your mouth and take a bite. 

Sooooo attractive, I know. And even worse...I got fourth place. Lame-o. 

This crazy game where you had to balance M&M's on two pencils that were hanging from string and then pull them up to your mouth and eat at least one. 

Bonnie from the Midway office got first place and Chris who was at mine and Erik's table got second! 

And this toilet paper game where one teammate had to wrap another teammate in an entire roll of toilet paper. 

And finally, we had 10 minutes to dress up one of our teammates as Santa Claus. 

There ended up being some pretty great looking Santas. 

Erik got second place and my boss's adorable daughter got first. I have a feeling none of the other Santas even stood a chance against this cutie. 

 After all the games were finished the teams each got to choose a prize by picking one of the wrapped boxes that you can see in a lot of these pictures. Nobody knew what was under each box. The last place team had to go first and then each subsequent team could steal a prize that had already been opened or choose another box. There were some pretty great prizes! My MIL's table all got Kindles, another table got mini video cameras, and another table got some pretty awesome snow hats from Venezuela. We ended up with a cool retro lunch box (with $ inside) and a fun board game. 

After the games we did a fun gift exchange. My company is good enough to provide every employee with $50 for the gift exchange. My boss's wife wrote a fun poem that she read while everyone opened their presents that had instructions for switching with other people or stealing presents. It was a fun twist on your typical gift exchange. There were tons of great gifts and we ended up with a cute neon green IPod Shuffle. 

It was definitely the best work Christmas party I've ever been to. We had a total blast. It was so fun to see my co-workers outside the office. I really work with a fantastic bunch of people. And I am so, so privileged to work for such a great company and have wonderful bosses who treat their employees so well. 

Happy Birthday Mom!

I got the most classic email from my mom while I was at work today. She had just found out that the Angel's had signed Albert Pujols for $254 million over 10 years and she was FREAKING out. The email was written in red and basically in all caps. She said it was the best birthday present she ever could have gotten!

You see, my mom is a total Angels fanatic. 

She listens to the Angel's radio commentators during the game to get more insight into what's happening on the field. 

She also keeps score at every game she attends (which is almost every home game). 

She puts her whole heart and soul into supporting her favorite team. In fact, she puts her whole heart and soul into everything she does in life. It's something I've always admired about her. She doesn't do anything half-way. 

So I just want to wish my mom a very happy birthday! 

Love you mom!!

I would also like to thank the Angels and Albert Pujols for making it the best birthday ever for her! Now if you can just win the World Series she would really appreciate it :)

p.s. To learn a little (or a lot) more about my mom, check out this post from Mother's Day! 

I can do anything good!

Despite the mind-numbing headache I've had all day, I still feel a bit like little Jessica. I am incredibly content and happy with life right now.  I have an amazing husband, a wonderful family, and the best friends a girl could ask for. I have a great job, 10-minutes from my house and a cozy apartment to come home to every night. Plus, I get to leave the freezing cold of Heber tomorrow and head down to sunny St. George for my office Christmas party. I cannot wait! I've been hearing about the epicness (yes, I just made up that word) of this party for weeks now. And I'm all for any weekend that starts at 11am on Friday. 

Also, the next video has nothing to do with anything I just said, but it is just so dang funny I couldn't resist. I've already watched at least 5 times and it still cracks me up!

Christmas Day (New Years Eve Parody) - watch more funny videos

O Christmas Tree

The day after Thanksgiving, I dragged Erik to WalMart to buy our first Christmas tree! I seriously could not contain my excitement. I love Christmas so much. It's definitely my absolute favorite time of year. 

My Mom has always gone all out with her decorations and my parent's house still looks magical every Christmas. I used to beg her not to take the decorations down until after New Years. Now, our apartment definitely doesn't look as beautiful as my parent's house but we feel pretty good about it. I haven't taken pictures of all of my little decorations but I snapped a few the day we put up our tree that I wanted to share. 

It was such a fun day. I lit some candles, put on my favorite Christmas music and talked Erik's ear off about all my favorite Christmas traditions (including going to In-N-Out on Christmas Eve which Erik has promised me we get to continue this year! Yay!). I can't wait to start our own traditions this year. Decorating the tree together is definitely the first of those. 

Please don't mind the 1,000 pictures of Erik and I on the shelves behind him...we haven't gotten around to framing anything but our engagement and bridal pictures quite yet. 

Almost there!

Hooray! All the lights work!

All done!

Shortly after we took the above pictures, the lighted star on the top of the tree stopped working. So we headed back to WalMart for a new star and couldn't resist a tree skirt to match our new stockings! 

Weekend Wrap-Up (One Day Late)

Erik and I had a really good weekend! Unfortunately we only took one picture the whole weekend so you'll have to endure my babbling for today. 

It started on Friday night with dinner at Magleby's Fresh.  That place is seriously delicious and I hadn't been in forever and Erik had never been.  My friend Allison introduced me to their Stuffed Breadstick a few years ago and I've been hooked ever since.  I also recommend the BBQ Chicken Salad which is delish. Erik had the French Toast Platter which they serve all day long and he says it's his new favorite french toast place. Yum-o! 

How much do you love that girl's face behind me?

Then we headed to BYU to see Christmas Around the World. It was so, so good!! I've been a couple of other times and I think I forgot how good it was. Erik said it was his favorite thing he's ever been to - but I have a feeling he's not including sporting events  in that assessment. If you're looking for a great family friendly Christmas activity I highly recommend Christmas Around the World. It features the BYU International Folk Dance Ensemble and they perform dances from all over the world (hence the name of the show). The tickets are a little pricey for a tight budget (they start at $12 for non-students) but it is so worth it! 

Saturday I woke up with a sore throat and just felt yucky all day, so Erik surprised me and came home from work with pizza. Now I know that doesn't seem like a big deal but it was just what the doctor ordered especially because he also brought home root beer. I LOVE root beer. And pizza and root beer is just about the worlds best combination. Oh and for dessert...Chocolate Lava Crunch Cakes which are my new favorite thing. You simply must try them for yourself because I simply cannot describe the deliciousness in words. Then I got to spend the night on the couch with my sweetie watching "Lost" (We're completely obsessed by the way. Thank goodness for Netflix Instant Play and the XBOX Erik got from his cousin Cam, and his friend/boss Andrew, for our wedding. Yes that's right, he got an XBOX as a wedding present.) Such a perfect evening at home. 

On Sunday we went to church where Erik and I had the privilege of substituting in the 5-year-old primary class. We taught three adorable little kids about the golden rule and choosing the right. They were too much fun. We drew pictures of our favorite things and made CTR necklaces...I wish we got to do fun things like that in Relief Society! 

That night we watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. It was fantastic as always. It was wonderful to hear the leaders of our church and sort of refocus on what's important this time of year. If you missed make sure to go to lds.org and watch or listen to it. They played a portion of a new church movie, "A Gift to the World", and it was gorgeous depiction of the birth of the Savior. Even if you aren't of our faith, I'm sure you'd love it! 

Quarter of Century Birthday

I have to say I'm probably the worst blogger ever. I've had this blog for a few years now and I've never been good at regularly posting...and I can't even count how many how many posts I've started with "Well, I'm really bad at this blogging thing." But I'm determined to be better mostly because I'm terrible at writing in a journal and I'd like to have some record of my life...for myself and for my family. My excuse in not posting the last few months was that I was planning a wedding - but now I'm married and I have no more excuses! Plus Erik's been teasing me forever that the only reason I wanted to get married was so I could have a cute married blog. So I figure I better justify all of that teasing by actually having a cute married blog :) 

So without further ado...here is my hopeful return to the blogging world. 

I turned 25 back on November 20th. Erik loved telling everyone it was my "Quarter of  a Century Birthday". I'm 2.5 years older than him and he milks that for all it's worth. 

But despite the teasing he made it an awesome birthday!

Starting the night before my birthday with dinner at Texas Roadhouse and some pretty great presents.

Gold Ray-Ban Aviators and Grey Toms! I didn't even have to tell him that's what I wanted! He's a pretty good listener and noticed I've been talking about wanting these two items for months. 

When you have a birthday at Texas Roadhouse they make you sit on a saddle...

...which is much less embarrassing than the year I had my birthday dinner at Joe's Crab Shack and I had to run around the restaurant in a cow costume. I'm still trying to recover from that one. 

All in all it was a great evening with my incredibly adorable husband.

The next night we had some of our best friends over for cake and games. Somehow I didn't get any pictures of the whole group! But I didn't forget to get pictures of the cake Erik made. 

Poor thing, he had the best intentions with this cake, but for some reason it just fell apart as soon as he put the icing on! But it still tasted delicious! 

24 was a pretty amazing year - I started dating the most amazing man, married him, graduated from college, and got my first real job. In fact, I'd say 24 was probably the best year ever. But I have a feeling things will just keep getting better from here on out. I've got high hopes for 25.