Christmas

This Christmas was my first actually feeling like an adult and the reason is kinda ridiculous . . . we woke up and showered before opening presents! That was monumental for me. haha

So Christmas morning we opened all of our presents. We both got the things we wanted and some surprises, which is always happy. :) Here's us and some of our new treasures:

After presents we had a scrumptious breakfast. I had to remind Joshua of the tradition he initiated last year - that he make Christmas breakfast every year. He'd forgotten but was more than happy to oblige me. So we had eggs, bacon, and chocolate chip pancakes. Yum!

My handsome man making breakfast:

Later in the day we talked to some of our family on the phone. Then we headed over to our friends, the Andersons, for dinner and fun! The Seagraves, Twitchells, and some-random-couple-from-out-of-town-that-we-don't-know (that's their real name) were also there. We did a White Elephant exchange, watched YouTube videos, played games, laughed a whole bunch, made people feel awkward, and ate! There was lots of ham, potatoes, rolls (we LOVE Krista's rolls!), and treats! We had a lot of fun!! Honestly, by the end of the day it didn't feel much like Christmas to either of us (hard to define but I think we all know the feeling) but it was still great! Last year it was soo weird for me to not be around family so this year it was good to at least spend Christmas with friends!

O Christmas Tree!

After not having a Christmas tree last year we were both soo excited for a tree this year!! Our problem last year had been that neither of us knew how/cared to take care of a real tree, but we weren't sure where we'd store a fake tree during the rest of the year. This year we decided we needed a tree! So we'd just have to find a place for it. And we found the perfect tree at Walmart. It's a decent size so we can enjoy it, but not so big we have no room for it. Plus, it was pretty cheap.

We couldn't wait any longer and bought our tree a few days before Thanksgiving. I was so anxious we ended up setting it up the day before Thanksgiving! It was my first experience setting up a Christmas tree. And I have to add that Joshua is a master at putting lights on a tree.

We did try to celebrate and give Thanksgiving some of the time it deserves, and didn't decorate our tree until a few days after Thanksgiving.

Our tree on Christmas morning:Having a tree this year made us both very happy.
We enjoyed it until after New Year's!

Thanksgiving

This year we decided that if we were in Rexburg for Thanksgiving I wanted to make our own dinner. It sounded fun to me. So that's what we did.

We had an awesome blizzard Thanksgiving week. There was SOO much snow! Joshua didn't have school that week anyway, but we got snow days and I had no work! (Excellent way to start a new job...a week of pay with no actual work.) Check out how much snow we had:

I think this was on Tuesday.

And here's right outside our front door. Keep in mind that

we live on the third floor, and we shouldn't have snow there.

With all the snow our friend, Ryan, got stranded in Rexburg so he came over to celebrate Thanksgiving with us!

I have to admit that I wasn't a complete culinary master, and I took the easy way out on some things (like using Stove Top stuffing - really I think it's better than homemade anyway). I guess I made up for some of the time real stuffing would have taken by having the world's worst potato peeler. It took me half an hour to peel and cut six potatoes. No joke. Peeling things with a knife terrifies me, so I stuck with the peeler. In case you didn't do the math, that was about five minutes per potato. Let's just say I'll be buying a new potato peeler before we have mashed potatoes again.

We had a little six pound turkey with one of those pop-out things to tell you when it's done. Everything else was ready and we were waiting for the turkey, but the thing wasn't popping up! It had been long enough, but without a meat thermometer I wasn't sure if we should take it out anyway. Ryan called his mom and she told us to take it out. Good thing. It was done perfectly!! I was pretty proud of it.

During the week Joshua had found a YouTube video of a crackling fire. We spent lots of time cuddled on the couch by our fire, singing "Let it Snow!" Here's Joshua and Ryan "warming up their hands" while I was finishing dinner:

And here's our beautiful dinner:
My loaded plate:

After dinner we made the treacherous journey to Ryan's to watch a movie and eat our pie. We had the pumpkin pie we made and Marie Callender made us a delicious Dutch Apple Pie too! ;)

Joshua and I made a last minute decision to buy a computer on Black Friday. Joshua was in serious need of a reliable computer for school. We checked out our options, and decided with the terrible roads our best bet was just to go to Walmart in town for a computer at 5 a.m.

We dragged our mattress out into the living room and pulled an all-nighter watching Christmas movies! We headed to Walmart around 4:30. It was crazy!! I had never been Black Friday shopping before. Yikes! So many people and the store was a mess.

But we got the computer we wanted!! And I got the little 2-quart slow cooker I wanted. (Now I have to learn how to use it.) Plus, we got a few movies. It was a successful trip! Just maybe not one I want to repeat any year soon.

Joshua and his new computer:

Pumpkin Pie

A couple weeks after Halloween, our downstairs neighbors, the Ortons, had a few uncarved pumpkins still and invited us to come make pumpkin pie with them. Pumpkin pie is my most favorite, and I've never had actually made from pumpkins pumpkin pie. I was stoked.

I think Rebeckah had made it once before, and she had the recipe, so we just did what she told us to do. :) We did a batch with one pumpkin, and the Ortons did a batch with another. It was actually way easier to make than I'd expected. The hardest part was probably peeling the pumpkins. We had a lot of fun making the pies, and even got to watch a movie while they baked! We like to hang out with the Ortons. Not only because of this...just in general.

We each made a pie that night, and we were sent home with a huge bowl of pumpkin filling. (I later attempted to make our filling into cookies, which I ended up having to bake as a cake. Sad. I've never been successful at pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. The rest we froze, and it became our pie on Thanksgiving!)

This was the most delicious pumpkin pie I've ever had!! I think I should do it every year. It was totally worth the time and effort.

Me with our beautiful pie.

Joshua cutting our pie so we could taste the yumminess.