#18 start a new tradition

remember my 30 before 30? i'm very happy to cross something off of my list :)

last year my girlfriends and i went to the temple to do a session the morning of new years eve. it was a great way for me to start the new year...so we did it again this year. and we decided to do it next year too.

i love traditions.

oh there's no place like home for the holidays....

this christmas was nothing short of a miracle. all of my siblings, their spouses and kiddos made it home to my parents for weekend. oh yeah, and grandma too! you counted right....that's 19 people in one house. and yes, we still like eachother.
this seemed to be the year of homemade gifts. for some reason it's more fun to watch someone open a present that you made...and this christmas i was able to help a few people with their homemade gifts - so even though the gift wasn't from me, it was still alot of fun for me to watch them open their gifts.
my sister and her family haven't been to grandmas for christmas in 5 years, so it was an adjustment to have little kids around, seeing as how we've made changes in the past few years to transition to "grown up kid christmas". it was so much fun to see the kids excited about leaving cookies for santa and sneaking down to take a peek to make sure santa found our house.
it was nice to have a reason to get dressed and go to church as a family. my mom was in the choir and dad spoke i church, so good thing the rest of us were there or matthew would have had to sit by himself :)

for those of you that got mad at me for not blogging about my life lately, stay tuned for a few posts about what i've been secretly doing for the past few months...if you look close at the pictures in this post you might get a sneak peek!!

christmas = ultra success

(ps...do you see my finished efy t-shirt quilt????? i still can't get over how great it turned out. I LOVE IT. my mother is so talented!!)

marathon

no, no. i didn't run a marathon...but it sure feels like it. last week was full to the brim - all with good things, but full none the less. it called for late nights and early mornings, and by the end of the week the lack of sleep caught up with me. i slept in this morning until 11. that hasn't happened in a long time. thank goodness for 1 o'clock church, right?
i've kind of joked this week that people are starting to act like i won't see them in 2 weeks when i get back from being home for christmas. there seems to be an urgency about seeing eachother before we leave. guess what...i like it. it seems to be a tradition to gather with friends and family this time of year, and frankly, i love the excuse to do it. dinners with friends and coworkers, circle breakfast meetings, gift exchanging, nights with cousins filled with christmas music and gift wrapping, afternoons and grandmas. it reminds me of what's important - the relationships i have with people that i love.
so now that i'm caught up on sleep, i just need to get caught up on laundry :) it would be great if i could come home after christmas to a clean room and a closet full of clean clothes. fingers crossed, i'll get that done today. don't laugh, but i already have monday and tuesday night planned, so that means i need to get cleaned up and packed up early so that i can enjoy time with my friends.

and just in case you forgot, christmas is a week from today. did you know there will be 19 people in my house over christmas break?? bring it on...

countdown, baby!!

ever since i was little, my mom would get us our chocolate calendars to countdown to christmas. i remember wanting to eat all my chocolates on the first day. i remember my mom would keep them all on top of the fridge, and it was sooo tempting to sneak from another siblings calendar (siblings:don't act like you never had the same idea...)

mom still gets me a chocolate calendar for christmas. it's that cheap kind of waxy chocolate that makes me excited for christmas. the only thing thats different now is that sometimes i forget to eat my chocolate, so every few days i have to catch up. today was one of those days. and guess what i learned from eating cheap chocolate??

there are 14 days until christmas.
i got home in 10 days.
in the next 10 days, i have 1 girls night planned, 2 work dinners, a wrapping party with cousins, 1 white elephant party and a partridge in a pear tree.

countdown, baby.

happy late thanksgiving

 

this year for thanksgiving the davis family all got together at timpanogos lodge up provo canyon. it was a great time to spend with family and no cell phone service :)