I'm sorry sweetheart...

But while you were at work I had to take apart the toilet...


...for you see, it was totally in my way...

...don't worry, it was easy and I was very clean...

...and now we won't have an unpainted spot behind the tank, you know how obsessive compulsive I get about those kinds of things...

...and the throne is all put back together. see? no damage done...

dinner with friends

So, should you mistakenly think that I got the gumption up to decorate what little I did with just the motivation of Curt and I being at home...

Actually, we had friends over that night for dinner.
This is us with Salil and Sheetal, aren't they cute?

gold star on the forehead

Well, Curt is a smarty pants and got straight A's last semester.
Or rather, straight E's for excellents, to use University of Michigan terms.
(very different from a BYU report card where E's are failing)

Big, gold star on the forehead *mwah* love you sweetheart.

Twilight

OK. Fine. I went and saw the movie.
But not because it was the trendy thing to do. Maybe I need to get over myself, but I really hate doing things that are the current fad. What can I say, it's a personal flaw and I'm working on it.
Meh, it was alright.
Whoever was in charge of makeup was an idiot.
The script did a reasonably well job of telling the book's story in the allotted time frame.
Overall I'm OK with the casting, although when they announced who they had picked I thought they had gotten it all wrong. I liked Charlie.
I now have to go back and read the book to see if it was soo over-the-top-puke-on-the-floor sappy. But hey, I'll be the first to admit the girly, emotional section of my brain is severely and irrevocably deformed.
I'll go and see the rest of the films they make.

Merry Christmas!

This year our immediate families are celebrating Christmas separately all across the country:
Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Arizona, and Utah.

I'm not going to lie, it stinks pretty bad not being able to see any of the little siblings as kids are what make Christmas really special. But Curt's brother, Andrew, gave us the play by play of the opening presents in FL with picture texts on the phone, and I was able to talk to my Shaners this morning and partake of his excitement.

To help me celebrate, I've decided to do a little recap of some of the past Christmas pictures of my family.

One year my Dad sent out this picture with the Christmas card...classic.

This was one Mom sent out.

This was from a Christmas party in Dad's ward.

This is a picture taken at Christmastime at my Mom's Aunt's home in Utah.

This me around my kindergarten year at my Grandma L's house.

Again, me at Grandma L's. By the by, does anyone know who was playing Santa down there?

Crazy Christmas morning at Grandma L's house.
Many aunts, uncles, cousins, and other family were in attendance.

I don't know if this was Christmas time, but isn't this a cool snow fort?!

The 2000 card that was sent out. Shane is so teeny-tiny.

Grand Occasion

This just needed to be recorded...my first Scrabble win ever over Curt!
My personal favorite moments included spelling "PRUDE" and then adding to it to make "PRUDENCE", then adding to Curt's "GRIN" to make "CHAGRIN", oh, classic.
I know this will only last until we play next time, but until then I'll bask in the glory.

*BTW: I'm a little iffy on whether "UR", seen in the middle on the bottom, really counts as a word, as dictionary.com listed it as an ancient city and proper nouns don't count, but I won even with Curt claiming these points :)*

my meager decorations

I love decorating.

But for some reason this year Christmas came way too fast for me to even think about it.

Gosh, Christmas is this week, how did that happen?

Oh well, here's what I did do, little may it be.

I hung pretty ornaments from my dining light fixture.

By the end of the evening I had decided that they would make more of an impact grouped together, so I changed it.

I got out a vase and filled it with some more shiny things.

All told, this was a less than $3 project as IKEA and Meijer already have Christmas decor 75% off. I love it when that happens.

Snow.

So, it snowed a lot last Friday.

It was pretty impressive with the totals per hour, but honestly you would have thought it was much worse by the Michigander reaction...offices closing, stranded cars, etc.

I have concluded that Utah handles snow much better, ie they have plows (which they actually use as opposed to having them ineffectually drive around with the blade up scattering great-salt-lake-amounts of salt ensuring that all cars are buckets of rust) and an organized plan.

I don't think I appreciated it as much until I moved here.

One of my co-workers succictly summed it up when I met them by asking "so what could possibly bring you to this decaying state".

The pile of snow to the right of our car?

Yeah, that's the entrance to our driveway. We had a little bit of digging to do before having the option of parking in our garage.

I like shoveling snow.

some updated house progress pics

I took these last night, and night time is not the optimal for pictures.

Oh well, as Shaners would say, "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit".

I love how this wall of windows turned out.

The curtains and rod? Less than $35.

The whole thing, including the blinds? Less than $100.

OK, I know we have a whole lot of blank going on, but most of our big wall hangings are sitting in my Mom's house in Utah, so they are going to stay blank until we drive out there or until I cannot stand it and get crafty to fix it. It's a toss up how it will end.

This is the master bedroom. I made this bedding set for the guest bedroom at our old house, but we ended up liking it so much that we put it in ours here.

Don't mind the pillows and towel sitting on the tub, maybe I should have shut the door on my mess :)

Curt says we still have room on our floor for a wrestling mat.

While it is very nice to have lots of extra space, I don't think that I will be using it for a wrestling mat any time soon.

The loft is still messy, but here is the start of the library.

This is our guest bedroom, we are ready for any of you to come and stay!

Well, that is what I have for today. Happy Tuesday.

Yeah, I miss my siblings...

My Lane and my Melynda

Orlando

Well, we slipped away to Florida for the weekend, and it was wonderful.

The reason we were there was to attend the wedding of Ryan (one of Curt's long time buddies) to Kao Nu.

While there we got in some good Hostetler family pictures (I'm sure there will be more of these to show later).

After the ceremony at the Orlando temple, Ryan's mom hosted a reception at the Lake Buena Vista hotel (check out that view, and sorry about the flash).

Yeah, good times.

Here's Alison, Jeff, and Andrew.

Ryan and Kao Nu.

She was very princess-y for her day.

Sometimes I think that it is more entertaining to watch the spectators than the main event.

But the main event is pretty good too.

We got to spend Sunday with Curt's grandparents (which is always nice) and then caught a flight to get us home at a very reasonable 9:00 pm.