Draper Temple Open House

For those of you that are interested the new Draper LDS Temple is having an open house. You can get your tickets now at http://www.lds.org/reservations/0,10751,1619-1-501,00.html. My parents will be in the new Draper Temple area and my mom even gets to sing at the dedication! I'm excited to see how beautiful it is inside.

Where's my Christmas Music????

Can I just share my frustration with you right now? I have my house all decorated for Christmas, got all those boxes down and put away and guess what I can't find? ALL of my Christmas music is missing. ALL OF IT! What am I going to do without my Josh Groban, Celine Dion, The Carpenters, just to mention a few! I've already been listening to FM100 for a few weeks, and I swear they play the same 20 songs on that station over and over. Seriously, I've looked in every closet, I even got all the Christmas decoration boxes down a 2nd time, and they are not there! I'm losing my mind! And, I'm losing precious Christmas music listening time each day that I can't find it!

Christmas countdown!

December has begun! The Christmas decorations are put up, the excitement is here, the train is around the tree!

Birthday Dinner at The Roof

Steve really spoiled me tonight and suprised me by taking me to The Roof for dinner for my birthday! The food was amazing: appetizers, salads, shrimp, soup, amazing Lion House rolls, meats, fish, and of course the dessert bar. It's all buffet so of course we ate as much as we possibly could. The view was amazing of the Salt Lake Temple where we were married. And of course the company was great! After dinner we went to see Twilight. Thanks so much for making it such a special night, Steve--you're the best!

Thanksgiving & 30th Birthday

I started the holiday (Thanksgiving & my 30th birthday) off with a 5K race at the park behind our house. I ran with my friend Joni and I wasn't out to break any records because I had a cold, but we ended up beating our previous 5K time by about a minute! My time was 25:37. We were pretty excited to see the clock when we came into the finish!

Thanksgiving was at my mom & dad's house this year. My mom put out a little kids table for Kate, Michael, and Brooklyn. They played with playdough before dinner started. I was in charge of green bean casserole and jello pretzel salad this year.

Thanksgiving Dinner was SO yummy. I have so much to be thankful for in my life!

After dinner we headed to the theater to watch the movie BOLT. I thought it was pretty cute. If anyone has seen it my family knows the guy that does the voice for the hamster. Mark Walton was a missionary in our ward when we lived in Albuquerque. He came to our house the first night of his mission and drew disney characters for each one of us.

Kaitlyn LOVED the movie and loved being in a theater. That was her first movie theater experience. Michael spent most of his first movie theater experience out in the hall with his dad.

Today is also my niece Brooklyn's birthday and my 30th birthday. I can't believe I'm 30! It just sounds old, although I can't really say that I feel much different than when I was 20. It was fun to share my birthday with a 2 year old. We had a pinata, cake, and presents. Kaitlyn & Brooklyn didn't have a chance a breaking open the pinata, so we decided to take some karate kicks to it!

My mom didn't even attempt to put 30 candles on the cake...it would've started the fire alarm. I still had to blow really hard and get a little help from Kate. Well, here's to 30!
Some of my girl friends surprized me last night and took me out to dinner and to the movie Mamma Mia. Thanks girls--that was a lot of fun!

Curious Michael

Steve came downstairs this morning to find Michael doing this...

Arizona Day 7...

I wasn't the best at keeping Steve company on the drive home from this trip. I really wanted to finish Twilight because I knew everyone would be talking about it again with the movie coming out, so I read a lot of the drive home. I can't say that I've ever read a book that fast. I have to say that-- I loved it!

We planned to stop at the Dam again on our way back and take a dam tour (he he he). Had we'd known that the last tour of the day is at 3:00 we wouldn't have shown up at 3:20. Dam tours! We did spend about an hour in the visitors center. My grandpa Chamberlain actually helped build the dam.

Then we drove about another hour to Grandma & Grandpa Chamberlain's house in Kanab to spend the night. Steve and I had a bet on dinner at Grandma & Grandpa's house. He bet me a 30 minute massage (from him) that there would be beans served at dinner. I probably shouldn't have gone along with this because Grandma is kind of notorious for beans (black beans, pinto beans, kidney beans...you get the point) but I thought I'd give it a shot. When we showed up and Grandma asked if we'd rather have squash soup or curry chicken and rice, I voted for the chicken and rice. No beans! Well, then she had some apple cake with ice cream for dessert. Grandpa suggested that we put some almonds on it so he brought those out along with some dried edamame. Now, think to yourself...what are edamame? Well, of course they are soy beans. But they looked like nuts--hard, green. Steve wouldn't let me live it down! After a lot of arguing, he said he was right but he still gave me a massage! What a guy! The rest of the night consisted of Grandpa telling Steve stories of working on the dam and Kaitlyn & Michael playing with the marble track. Grandma read some books to Kate, too.