Thanks-christmas Eve

This year we were able to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my side of the family. We had such a great time, I was so grateful the roads cleared up so all the fam could make it to boise! Everyone arrived wednesday evening, we got to go over to Stephens parents house to see Nathan and Sherry (who are expecting Trips) and their two beautiful spunky 2 & 3 year old girls! I painted their fingers and toes, they were in love. Here is the spunkerino herself Hazel Dawn(3)...




And Here is Kendall Lynn(6)


Its just expected of me now...and I'm ok with that! At least they love me. Then Stephen read stories to all the little ones before it was time to go. We have Clair Christine(2), Stephen Wayne(26), Hazel Dawn(3), Jaxon T(4), and Kendall Lynn(6)


We had such a great time with them! Then we went to my moms house where Ainslee, Brad, Kylee, JJ and babe on the way had already arrived in their brand new mini van! I tried not to make too much fun over the mini van my sister swore she would never own! Haha. Then I gave pedicures and the rest of the gang showed up later that night... Riley, Destry and baby Hinder then Mallory, Don and Mazie (who is their hyper puppy). Thanksgiving day was packed fulll! We woke up and had a beautiful breakfast courtesy of my wonderful hubby, then got ready and took some family pictures, came home and ate a fabulous feast. Destry was so creative this year, she had all of us fill out a little survey about the holidays and the family and put all our answers on our place mats so we could read each others answers! It was very fun to read what everyone had to say about favorite memories and hobbies and such. Her and Riley also gathered pictures of all of us and made us into little pilgrims it was hilarious. So thoughtful! Thank you again for taking the time to make our place settings so fun! Earlier this year we decided as a family to do the gift exchange over thanksgiving since we wouldnt be together for christmas. I'm so glad we did, it was great to see them open presents and brought an even better spirit of gratitude to our thanksgiving weekend. The best part was watching the kids. They are so easily distracted! Next year I think we'll just get hinder and big bouquet of balloons! He is so dang funny. Later that night I gave Riley a pedicure and while he was busy playing card games I painted his toes hot pink with snowflakes and he had no idea till I was almost done! It was so hilarious! And I also put snowflakes on Hinders toes. He was so still, he loves his toes. He kept wanting the balloon to be tied to his big toe. Haha. Kylees nails were decked out in pink and purple and flowers and snowflakes! It was such a fun weekend, I didnt take many pictures at all! Sad. Even sadder having to end the weekend with a loss from BSU, but it made for an extra thing to have to be gratful for...and that is a 33 game winning streak! It had to end sometime. I still love my broncos, I just wish they would have played better. Anyway... I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. The countdown begins for CHRISTMAS! Cant wait.

Girls who marry their dads...

I love my dad. It took until this weekend to realize just how much! For any of you who know my dad, will know him as either a mans man kinda scary or intimidating or you'll refer to the soft, gentle sensitive Ray. Over the years we have come to lovingly refer to him as accident prone. A few of my favorites have been the many motorcycle accidents, the one last year where he walked into a tree branch and poked out his eye, Halloween 2006 when he fell off the roof while building our house, the one when I came home from school to him changing out the garbage disposal under the sink and it fell on his head...I got to rush him to the ER that time, the list could seriously go on and on! Well this weekend my dear husband joined the club. He has been roofing houses for 14 years now, working with lots of power tools including nail guns...but this day in particular he got a little too comfortable with that nail gun. He was sitting down shingling and went to scoot forward to do the next square and set his nail gun on his lap. When he went to grab it off his lap he grabbed the trigger and shot himself in the leg!! The nail he shot was no regular nail either, it was made for roofing and had the texture spike things on it so when he went to pull it out of his leg....it didnt come so easily. I'm so proud of him he yanked that thing out of there all by himself! OUCH!! Poor guy. He just ripped it out and kept shingling though so I guess it wasn't too bad. Then I made him go get a tetanus shot..apparently the last tetanus shot he had was in 2002 when he fell off a roof on to staples that went through his hand! I fell in love with an accident prone man, now I must live with the consequences! Haha So later that night we were talking with my parents and my mom said, "I guess its true what they say, girls really do marry their dads" and I told her, "I knew that this morning when he was singing Taylor Swift songs...today was a fairytale no less" haha!!! He knew every word. I dont even know all the words! I think its adorable. Then my dad goes, "Oh yeah I love that song" it was hilarious! I love my Husband so much, and my dad so much more than I thought! I'm so lucky to have such sensitive and thoughtful men in my life. Even if we spend half our lives in the Emergency room:)


The Wound...luckily he took it right in the quad so it got all meat no bones or eyes or anything. Interestingly, when he took off his shorts he had 2 holes in his shorts and one in his leg but none in the G's! They remained holy without holes.


One happy camper...I got him a get well balloon and cold stone. Then we watched a football game Trojans vs Ducks..actually a good game even tho ducks won..while i rubbed his back and hands and feet then we went to haunted world and screamed our heads off then finished the night at Ihop. I cant remember the last time we stayed out till 1 A.M.! So much fun.

I love you baby.
Happy Halloween everyone!

Forgetful Nancy...

W A N T E D



My sweet, sweet husband has misplaced his wedding ring! And he is devastated...okay maybe not devastated but he feels horrible! Apparently he took it roofing, took it off and put it somewhere in the truck and it has disappeared. The truck has been searched thoroughly and it is simply gone. He seems to forget things pretty frequently. I lovingly refer to him as Nancy when he tells me he's misplaced things :) Haha Poor guy, poor ring! It never stood a chance! I'm actually pretty proud he kept it a whole 14 months! If anyone comes across it laying in a ditch or street corner, you know who to contact. And as for us, we get to go ring shopping again! For a much, much cheeper ring for stephen this time :) I love you baby.

UPDATE...

Stephen and I found out we will be expecting 4 new nieces/nephews this spring!! My sister, Ainslee, will be having baby number three!! Finally! And whats even sweeter is that she is due on kylee's birthday (her oldest) which is April 20th. We are very excited to welcome the 4th grand baby on my side. Then Stephens brothers wife is expecting T R I P L E T S!!! three babies. Yikes! What makes it a double yikes is that they already have TWO 2 year old girls! HAHA five children under the age of 3. that will be so fun and busy and crazy for them! We cant wait, they are due may 2nd. We are especially thankful to them for taking all the pressure off of us to have children soon! And that will make 10 grand babies for Stephens side.

In other news, we are still hunting for the perfect house. So many deals, so many houses... how to choose? For now we are content in our basement apartment saving saving SAVING for that down payment on our dream home.

Also, we had the privilege of speaking in sacrament meeting yesterday on the topic of patience. It was a success! Stephen always speaks so sweetly. If only I didn't have a cold making my voice sound all funny.

And Finally, I have been having severe stomach pains since like april/may time and we finally figured out it is an allergy to wheat and dairy. So basically, I cant eat anything but fruit, veggies, rice, oats and nuts. super! At least I'll weigh like 90 pounds soon. We are just glad we figured it out and its nothing serious. Wish me luck!

We are looking forward to enjoying a beautiful fall this year, especially HALLOWEEN! Its coming up! Will our costumes be cooler than last year? I dont know, you be the judges. SOO EXCITED! Happy fall everyone! GOOOO BOISE STATE!!

3rd Honeymoon!

We joke that every big trip we take is just like another honeymoon. They have all been so wonderful. This time, we headed to the 3rd most romantic city in the United States. San Francisco! We had THE BEST time celebrating our 1 year anniversary. We stayed in a beautiful hotel and spent the entire time walking and walking and WALKING some more around the entire city. We saw amazing things, and loved every minute of it.

view from our hotel room, we stayed right on the bay! It was beautiful.

Down on Pier 39, with the city in the background.

Stephen found his peeps in the Lefty's store. They had the coolest pen that was designed so they wouldn't smear the pen as they wrote! It was pretty cool. And $25 so sorry Stephen, learn to deal.

Ahh, the Wharf. The best food and entertainment anyone could ask for.

Couldnt go to the wharf without a good crab feast! HA! He is so cute.

Nor could we come home without a picture with the infamous bridge. It was breathtaking. We crossed the bridge and took a hike up to this hill and were literally SO CLOSE to it. Seriously gorgeous.


This place was COLD. It didn't get above 67 the entire time we were there, and the breeze down by the bay didnt help much. It would start out in the morning cloudy and cold, then around noon it was like a cartoon as we watched the cloud cover burn off and turn into a beautiful sunny day! then around 6 the clouds would roll in again and it was time to be inside! We learned after a couple days to live like locals and carry our sweatshirts around.

Our sweet rental car we used to cross the bridges into Oakland! We looked pretty hilarious getting in and out of that thing.
Next was the Oakland Temple!

This was my only request for the trip. I LOVE this temple. It sits on a hill in Oakland and the grounds overlook the entire bay. From the temple terrace, you can see both the Bay and Golden Gate bridges. AMAZING view. If I were to do it all over again, I would get married here. It is so gorgeous. You can see from the picture, There is a huge fountain behind me and the water runs from this fountain down the stream to another fountain at the bottom of the hill. With two bridges that go over the stream! Its amazing. There are even speakers around playing church music as you walk through the courtyard. So gorgeous. This was the best part of the trip. We were able to do a session here also, what a beautiful experience. You can see its obvious outward beauty, just imagine the beauty inside!

What a way to end the trip. We had so much fun and were so happy to spend the week with each other, Summer was crazy and we barely saw each other but we made it through and now our reward is a lazy winter FULL of time together! I cant wait. It was a wonderful 1 year anniversary.
I love you baby.

Anniversary...

Fall. It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For Stephen, it means BOISE STATE FOOOOOTTTBBAALLLLL! Is there any other kind of football?:) For a great deal of youngsters it means [uhhg] back to school. For others maybe it means oh crap winter is coming. For me, its LOVE. Fall is my verrrrry favorite time of year. What is not to love? The weather is perfect, my work starts slowing down and becoming not quite so hectic, the leaves are changing the breeze is blowing the sun is shining and it is just UH so perfect. Fall also reminds me of falling in love with my dear sweet husband. On September 28th, 2008 was the reflections of Christ fireside in the Jordan ball room at BSU. After, Stephen walked me to my car and I can distinctly remember standing on the 3rd floor of that parking garage waiting for the cute guy to make his move. Little did I know then, that he would not only make his move… but completely consume my entire heart and fill my life with more joy than I could have ever thought possible. We just celebrated our 1 year anniversary on September 5th and couldn’t me more happy or more in love. Stephen bought me these incredibly beautiful flowers!!





I’m so grateful to have such an amazing man. And I’m so grateful for the season of fall, because it will come every year reminding me of falling in love.

House Hunting...

First rule when looking for a house: DON'T get attached till the papers are signed.

We've broken the rule. We have been looking for maybe a minute and a half and found this perfect house in Tuscany subdivision off Eagle just past Victory. Yesterday afternoon.....we did a drive by. The house was abandoned months ago so we decided to walk around and peek thru every window possible. Although we didnt get a good view of the upstairs due to stephens cheerleading skills being rusty, the down stairs was just perfect.

Why does this process take so loooong??

We will be patient. And, although its sad to say it, we will keep looking.

...keep you posted!!