A Western White Elephant

Ryans company decided to do something different this year for the company Christmas party. Usually we have a nice lunch at Market Street Grill in one of their private rooms and the guys play guitars and sing. This year they decided to have the party up at Bill George's Cabin up Parleys Canyon. It was a beautiful cabin way up on the mountain, infact you couldn't really get there unless you had four wheel drive, although there were a couple brave souls that did it with out. We have the Jeep so it was not a real problem for us. We had a great steak and chicken dinner and you could not ask for better company than this group of people. We are all like family it feels like, and everyone has a fun personality.



The big event for the night was the white elephant gift exchange. Ryan and I knew it would be fun with this group so we wanted to get something really good. We thought and looked everywhere for something with no luck, so the night before we headed out to DI as our last resort. DI did not disappoint. The first thing we found was this knit box that had knitted on it the words "MY STUFF" we thought it was a great one and put it in the cart. Then Ryan found this knit house and we thought that would go great with the knit box so we threw that in the cart as-well. As we kept looking up and down every aisle rummaging throw things we kept finding more and more of these knit houses and kept laughing more and more as we unearthed each one. They seemed to be everywhere in the store, a whole village just scattered about. At the end of our DI adventure we ended up with the knit box, 8 or so knit houses, a set of knit coasters, a big game bag (to hang a deer carcass in)complete with illustrated instructions, a 70's mini crumb vacuum, and a foam sandwich note pad. We knew we had done well when the cashier gave an, "ohhh" when looking at the items in our basket. The best though was when some of the houses did not have price tags on them so she had to call the manager to come price them. They debated on wether or not to charge us 50 cents or 75 cents and then the girl said, "how about 50 cents each?" and the manager replied "No, do two for a dollar." Our trip to DI could not have ended better we had so much fun. After that we went home to decide what to do with all that we had bought.



We decided to package all the none knit items together in one bag as a gift and then decided we would put one knit house in a bag and include a tag that said, "pick me you will not be disappointed, there is more to this gift". We then wrapped the rest of the village along with the box and coasters in a big box that we then wrapped and decided that this would be a mystery box that went along with the knit house in the bag. So whoever ended up with the knit house at the end of the game would also receive the mystery box. It was a hit at the party. Everyone was fighting over this stupid knit house due to the lure of the mystery box. It was hysterical. Brandon ended up winning it and we video taped him opening the mystery box. I was screaming laughing. This game lasted almost three hours and this was the perfect ending to the funniest white elephant gift exchange I have ever participated in. So thank you to the old lady who knitted all those houses and gave them to DI.



The rest of the night up at the cabin we stayed up late playing games and snacking on food and hanging out in our PJs. Jayna loved all the attention and enjoyed playing with Cash, Chips two year old little boy. The guys played music, and Jayna danced as she sat and listened. It was really fun.



The next morning we had a big but quick breakfast since there was a big storm coming in, and we all made it safely off the mountain and down the Canyon.

New Calling

My New calling at church is the second counselor in the Relief Society Presidency. I have only been in for about a month, but I have already made 100 bell ornaments to take to the retirement inn residence, and close to 200 greeting cards to send out to the singles in our ward. I love the sisters I am serving with and am looking forward to serving the sisters in our ward in this capacity. Here are some pictures of the bells I put together.

Thankful Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful thanksgiving in Arizona this year, and were so excited that we got to stay for two weeks. Ryan had a business trip the week after Thanksgiving so he just flew out of Arizona to go to that and then came back and we drove home. It was so nice that I got to stay at my parents while he was gone instead of just being at home alone with the baby. I have a wonderful husband that thinks of those things for me. Jayna did great driving to and from Arizona. We did the late night drive and she slept the whole time. Red did great as-well with a little help from the vet and some magic medicine.

While in Arizona my brother Craig and his wife had an open house that I helped with. It was lots of fun to do, and their house is gorgeous.

We also swam a lot and just plain hung out. Mom and I hit up lots of good sales and even went out on Thanksgiving night to get a screaming deal on a pink flocked Christmas tree and ornaments for Jaynas room.

I cooked the turkey for my third year in a row thanks to a little help from Martha.

Ryan and I also did a big chinese night were we made all of our good dishes. My fortune cookies turned out 100 times better too because my mom had those silicone baking mats that I did not use the first time I tried making them. My mom took us to this huge oriental grocery store to buy all of our ingredients too. This place was so awesome, and had everything a former Taiwan missionary could ask for. Or best find was all the ingredients to make Zhenzhu Drinks. So needless to say we stocked up on things to take home.

Another fun thing that we got to do was go to the Phoenix Zoo to see their Zoo Lights. Jayna liked seeing all the bright fun moving lights. I felt like an abusive parent though, we found the weather to be so warm and nice compared to Utah so I would put Jayna in little short sleeve onesies and light pants. So when I started looking around at Zoo Lights and realized all the other babies were in snow clothes with hats and gloves I was sure everyone was looking at me like, "what a terrible mom, her kid is not even wearing a jacket." It was pretty funny.

So buy the end of the trip we had purchased and gathered so many fun things and Christmas presents from Grandma and Grandpa that we had to borrow their car top carrier. My Dad was nothing but thrilled, he always hated that they would have to use one for trips. So he was delighted to be watching Ryan, put it on our car. I think it was a full circle life moment for him.

I will have to put pictures to this post later. We misplaced our camera for most of the trips so all the pictures I took were on my moms camera.

Puffs

Back at the beginning of November we gave Jayna her first solid treat food in the form of Gerber sweet potato puffs. We video taped her reaction and thought it was pretty funny. It was such a new experience for her to have something like that in her mouth. She was not to sure about the whole thing so she started feeding them to Red instead of eating them. I think Red is more excited about Jayna eating treats then she is.