I'm Baaaack!

I had a wonderful, amazing, marvelous Christmas! My parents and brother flew out to St. George and my sister and her husband came down from Provo. Aaaand, my grandparents are spending the winter down here already. The last week I've spent all of my time with my family, and it's been the best!

We picked up my parents and Taylor at the airport Sunday afternoon. After driving the strip and a pit stop for some Mexican food we were back in St. George at the Grandparents house.

Christmas Eve we braved the store to go shopping for some last minute stocking stuffers and groceries for Christmas dinner. I took over Grandma's kitchen to make all of our favorite cookies and Chad started a new tradition of making his mom's cinnamon rolls. We had KFC for dinner, and a piece of fried chicken may or may not have found it's way on to my plate, whoops.... mmmmmm. We then dragged Grandma out into the cold to see all of the lights at the St. George temple. On the late drive home Chad, Taylor and I managed to avoid getting ran over by the biggest tumble weed of all time.

Then we played dress up with all the animals while Chad stayed up until the wee hours of the morning finishing his delicious cinnamon rolls.

Ash and Pat joined us Christmas night where we ate too much, opened presents, took naps and played Christmas bingo. Grandma even had prizes for us all, Taylor was the big cash winner. I got some jerky and Chad and Pat played with Pat's prize of "go fish" into the night.
 

 

Wednesday we headed to Kneaders for a french toast breakfast and then braved the snow(?!) to take some pictures up at Pioneer Park. It was just a tad bit chilly out. We were happy to join the grandparents back at the warm house for leftovers and more cookies :)

We spent the rest of the evening playing pool, playing the piano, swimming, working on a puzzle and playing hand and foot.

The rest of the week brought surprise 2am visitors and a buffet of buffets! But that can wait until tomorrow! I hope that you all had wonderful a wonderful Christmas!

And a Happy New Year!

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Lewis' Top 12 of 2012:

1. Moving out to St. George Utah. We survived the nearly 2,000 mile journey out here without staying in a hotel and snuggling with our 2 cats and dog the whole way.

2. Mangaing to get a new job in Utah. I'm pretty sure it had little to do with me and everything to do with some awesome reference letters from my previous Dr.

3. Chad finished up his first year at Dixie State. He loved almost all of his classes :)

4. Mountain biking in the mountains

5. Hiking Angel's Landing multiple times! A big accomplishment for me after a giant meltdown during the first attempt.

6. Getting a King Size Bed. Thanks Cheryl!

7. Familiy Trip to Hawaii courtesy of Mom and Dad Portela! Best Vacation E-V-E-R! We should probably make this a yearly thing ;)

8. All of our crazy road trips. We were able to visit some incredible places, multiple National Parks and the ocean, twice :)

9. Realizing our dog is awesome. We can take her out hiking and even more impressive, mountain biking, with us. She stays right next to us and runs along the trails with us.

10. Chad's awesome photography skills allowing us to document our wonderful year

11. Dylan introducing us to the amazingness of janky sno-cone stands. Yeah, they are amazing enough to make the list. Thanks Dyl.

12. All of the friends and family that love us enough to come all the way out here to visit us. We had so many visitors this past year, we really felt loved and had so much fun with everyone! Again, you should all probably make this a yearly tradition...

Merry Chirstmas! We love you all and hope that you had a wonderful year!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

 

We take our Zoolander fashion shows very seriously around here. Although I think the most awkward thing about these photos is my beautiful pool hair. Warning: I may be looking through all my old photos to find new "awkward" photos, you may be up here soon ;) These are coming at ya from over 3 years ago.

 

 

Awkward:

• Planning on being 20 minutes early to work only to find your car completely frosted over. No worries, scrape it off! Nope. We were prematurely happy about the warm weather and who the heck knows where our window scrapers are. I patiently sat in the car for close to 15 minutes waiting for our car to warm up. Until it warmed up I may have been blowing freezing cold air full blast, making the problem much worse. At any rate I made it to work only 1 minute late. Is it the weekend yet?
• I wore the sweatshirt I usually wear at work while making brownies. The next day at work as I am handing a new patient some papers to fill out I notice that it looks like I have poo all over the cuff near my right hand. Nope, just brownie batter. Poo or chocolate? Luckily I don't think this particular patient noticed, and if they did I don't think they would have cared. Classy people.
• It was nursing home week at work, so it was an explosion of older awkwardness, topped off by a woman who told the Dr. to look away, as she stood up her pants and adult diaper were around her knees. Danielle to the rescue! She tried to take them all the way off but I convinced her to let me pull them back up. BTW, she had used the diaper. Pants seem to be a real issue at nursing homes.... but I guess I've mentioned multiple times that I hate wearing pants, so....
• Someones socks at the nursing home were covered in old pee. They were yellow, and no they were not just stained, you know pee when you smell it.
• Enough poo and pee talk? I am happy to report that I haven't seen Miss Brittany in a whole week! While this in and of itself is AWESOME, Brittany will only ever be mentioned as being super awkward.

 

Awesome:

• I told a guy at the nursing home "bye" and that we would see him in a couple months. He told me to "stay sweet".
• Adjustments were finally made to Chad's financial aid!
• Grades are in! Chad was unnecessarily worried.
• My parents are amazing and wonderful.
• Grandma's are the best.
• Aunt's are pretty awesome too.
• Previous bosses rock as well.
• Anniversary celebrations.
• Parents and Tay will be here Sunday!
• Ash and Pat will be here Christmas day!

 

I hope you had an awesome week!

3 years ago...

Three years ago there was a crazy snowstorm, a hastily bought substitute ring from KMart, "trespassing" at Cranbrook, a lot of friends, family and love. Three years ago I married my very best friend, and I've never been more happy.

Five {Confessions} Friday

1. I cannot spell the word definitely. Can't do it. I usually spell it so wrong that spell check can't figure out what I'm trying to do. I really consider it a success when I spell it just close enough that spell check catches on the first try and I don't have to go through multiple wrong spellings that just get further and further from right.

D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y

2. I could eat soup every day, all day. It's yummy and delicious and I crave it even when it's over 100 degrees outside.

3. I get bored with my handwriting and change it every so often. Slanted, all caps, all lowercase, cursive, straight up and down, big and girly... This has caused problems only once, maybe twice. In Hawaii they wouldn't accept my signature on a credit card purchase because it didn't match. I literally had to cross it out and try again. Yeah, cause that makes sense. I had to think back on how I used to sign my name to do my absentee ballot, they said that they wouldn't count the ballots where the signatures didn't match the ones on file. Not quite sure I was able to do that... Never knew signing my name could be so difficult...

4. If I don't know the number that's calling my phone I don't answer. Period. Chalk it up to some bad experiences but there are literally no exceptions to this rule.

5. I am super excited about NOT having a White Christmas! Sure it's all festive and beautiful, blah, blah, blah. I for one have had enough snow. It's cold, it's wet, it's icy, it's sucky. I will be enjoying my colder weather with palm trees, blue skies and beautiful red rock!

 

 

 Do you have any confessions? ;)

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Let's me be real for a minute. This week, and last week for that matter, haven't been so much awkward or awesome as it's just been kinda sucky. Sorry Aunt Joleen, it's "inhaled vigorously". I'm determined to make up for the less than stellar start to December and bring back some Christmas cheer to our house.

Instead of boring you with my pity party let's move on to something a little more fun...

Are you all so excited to hear about Brittany? She's psycho. For reals. I want to make a video of her. I'm pretty sure positive that she's high all the time so I don't think she'd notice or mind.

Awkward:

• Brittany knocking on our door every day. Every. Single. Freaking. Day. A couple days ago she knocked 3 times in an hour period. I ignored every knock.

• How Brittany knocks. She stands at our door and does this pathetic, quiet knock that lasts like 15 seconds. It may not sounds like a long time but try it. Seriously, right now, knock on your desk/table/counter/whatevs for 15 seconds without stopping. It's a long time people.

• Finally getting angry enough to go an answer Brittany's ridiculous knocks only to have her not be there! She gives us the 15 seconds to answer the door and if we don't come immediately she runs back into her apartment. Slamming her door every time.

• Jumping up so fast to answer the door the next time she knocked that I scared Rukia. When I answered she was bawling and crying all over herself. I lost my nerve. I couldn't tell her "no" flat out. I made up some lame lie instead about why I couldn't give her our Internet password.

• Jumping up off the couch to answer the door on Sunday, Sooooooo ready for Brittany. She knocked that morning before church, then woke us up while we were napping. No matter what this girl wanted the answer was no. I was fuming when I whipped open the door, only to find my sweet visiting teacher there with banana bread for us. I tried to recover but she looked confused at the crazy, angry lady answering the door.

Awesome:

• My Parents. They rock.
• Refusing to pay an extra $100 in rent when renewing our contract and they actually listened. $30 more is a much better compromise.
• They towed the raper van outside our house.
• Debi's Brownie Recipe.
• This Van we saw at the Grocery Store. You know you want it.

Anything Awkward or Awesome happen this week?

Jackpot

We hit the jackpot of Christmas lights a week or so ago. We were driving by the park downtown and found it blinged out with tons of Christmas lights! The trees were glowing since most of them still had leaves. It was beautiful and Christmas-y and we only had to wear jackets. Not having snow is really shaping up to be wonderful. :)

We had a great, relaxing weekend. It was definitely needed to recover from the past week. Chad has finals this week and then he can relax! We can both relax!

No Meatless Monday today, unless someone out there needs a recipe for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or bean burritos. On a happier eating note we made Debi's awesome brownies this weekend. Our fridge may be bare but at least we had everything we needed to bake! I'm pretty sure you all know what we will be eating for dinner tonight.

I hope your all having a wonderful December full of Christmas lights and treats!