Thursday, December 22, 2011

Gingerbread House

Erik surprised me by bringing home a gingerbread house kit a couple of weeks ago, and last Sunday we finally got around to putting it together. This was actually my first time making one! I think it's definitely going to be one of our Christmas traditions. 

All the supplies ready to go! And you can't forget the essentials - Coke Zero and Throwback Mountain Dew. 
Hard at work! 



Almost there...
And we're done!




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A Birthday & J Dawgs

My sister Rachel's birthday was on the 15th and I'm just now posting these pictures. Lame, I know. But, better late than never, right? 

For her birthday Erik and I headed down to Provo and took her and my niece Emily out for J Dawgs. It was de-lish! It was so fun to spend a couple of hours with Rachel and Emily. Even though they only live 30 minutes away we hardly ever see them.  


Plus, we sort of adore J Dawgs. Rachel and Emily are lucky enough to live practically next door to this Provo staple. 


I'm getting hungry just looking at that picture...


This is Emily. And yes, she's my niece. We're only two years apart. You see, I have three half-siblings: Sarah, John, and Rachel. Emily is Sarah's daughter. We grew up super close. She graduated from BYU with a degree in Biology in April, and she just finished her teaching program. Now she's off to Houston  for student teaching. 


Rachel is finishing up her history degree at BYU. She's my closest sibling in age, and I just idolized her growing up. I wanted to follow in her footsteps and go to BYU, and serve a mission (which I did - yay!). Once I went off to college, we didn't get to see each other as often, so it's been fun having her up in Utah. Now we just need to work around our busy schedules and see each other more often! 


I sure do love these two! There really is nothing like family. 

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

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! 


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Monday, December 12, 2011

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. 

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Thursday, December 8, 2011

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 :)

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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!

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Wednesday, December 7, 2011

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! 



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