A Utah Christmas

But before we get to the Utah portion of my holiday season, I've got to record the end of my California Christmas...

This video gives you a pretty good idea of my Christmas morning.

It was amazing! I got spoiled. Santa got me some boots, clothes, and kitchen appliances! You know you're getting old when a waffle iron, magic bullet blender, and panini maker are the source of your joy on Christmas. I'm excited to put them to use at college, and I know my roommates will enjoy it too (:

Kennedy was thrilled about her easy bake oven. I only caught the end little bit of her screaming reaction, but it's pretty cute:

She was so excited, and you can bet that we put that thing to use within 10 minutes after it was opened.

Mini (more like microscopic) cupcakes! 

Memories kept flooding back of when I was younger and had an easy bake oven of my own. (That really made me sound old didn't it? Sounds like something my Mom would say...shoot.)

Me and Corb said goodbye to our family, which is never fun. I won't be able to see most of them until after I'm done with Disney World in August!! SO FAR AWAY. 

Unfortunately, our first flight was delayed, and then our connecting flight in Las Vegas was super delayed. In all, we spent about 9 hours traveling on Christmas. Boo!

If I had to travel with anyone though, it would be this kid. He's my best friend. 

Finally arrived home in Draper for the second Christmas festivities of the day. I failed to get any pictures, but here's one I stole from my mama:

Cute sisters.

I got some money, clothes, boots (you can never have enough), jewelry, and gift cards. It was wonderful! I am so blessed.

The day after Christmas, me and my Mom went shopping! Put my gift cards to good use. (: It was a long day, but nice to spend it with my lovely mama.

Thursday night, me, Megan, and Challie hung out! Couldn't ask for better friends. We all went to Dancing Yeti Coffee, which it turns out has amazing hot chocolate.

We got frozen white hot chocolate peppermint blended drinks...that's a mouthful. A mouthful of deliciousness!! See what I did there? (; 

In case you counted the drinks in the picture, you would see there are 7 between the three of us...though we do love our frozen beverages, we did not order this many, promise. The barista made them wrong the first time, but gave us his mess ups. Score!

Carved our names into the table.

We went to Megan's house after and watched Pitch Perfect, which is the best. Then we were looking at Megan's old pictures on her laptop, and found this!

This was the night me, Lexe, and Megan made a gingerbread house in my basement (which actually isn't even mine anymore--we moved!). This was just one of many many pictures of our high school adventures. Really made me wish I had started blogging sooner, because I have already forgotten all the fun times we had! At least I'll remember this one now. It's just crazy how much can change in a year. I feel like a totally different person, and I look like one too! (:

On Friday, my gorgeous cousin Chelsea had her wedding dinner which me and Corbin went to.

We were an hour late, and yes, I was freaking out, because I am not a late person. Ever. (It was all Corbin's fault, if we were to point fingers. (; )

We finally made it, and it was a beautiful dinner and fun to see my Bishop extended family.

I found this picture on Instagram of Chelsea and Mark playing the 'honeymoon fundraiser' game that they did, and in the mirror behind them you can see Corbin just chillin...

Thought it was pretty funny.

And since I know you're probably dying to see more about Chels and Mark...here you go.

So happy for them!

Well after the wedding dinner, me and Corbie just made a night of it and kept on hanging out. 

We went to his friend Allie's house with his girlfriend Kellsie and his best friend/roommate Andrew, who happens to be dating Allie. They are the 4 closest people you will ever meet. So yes, I most definitely was a fifth wheel.

It was fun though, we played lots of games, made a late night McDonald's run, and I watched them kiss a lot, so that was that. Fun night!

Saturday I sat around writing my talk, and managed to leave the house twice. Once to go see Les Miserables with my mom, and the second time to drive Jayci and Libby around because they have more of a life than me. (; Really though, Les Mis was just incredible. I have no words that would do it justice. Loved every second of it. And I'm not a cryer in movies, but the last scene had me tearing up and gave me chills all over. GO SEE IT.

Sunday I had to speak in Sacrament meeting, and it actually went really well! My hours writing my talk paid off. This was the first time I was an actual speaker, not a youth speaker, so the pressure was on, but I managed alright! Although when they passed the sacrament water cups around, my nervous shaky hands combined with my usual clumsiness led me to dump basically the whole cup of water all over my talk and skirt. Oops. Other than that, it went off without a hitch and I got a lot of compliments, so that's usually a good sign.

Sunday night I went over to Megan's house. We made rice krispie treats, which is sort of a tradition for us because it happens just about every time we are bored and don't know what else to do!

We decided to share our treats with some friends, so we dropped by Challie's house and stayed for a bit, and that was followed by a visit to Dan's house for a while as well. It was a great night! Love you lots Dorphy (:

Just a random side note, I've been obsessed with the red lipstick I got from Santa, and my new glasses. No, they aren't prescription, they're fakies. But I love em anyways, and just wear them on lazy days (which is basically all of this break). Here's a fun picture for ya.

And finally, we'll end with a few more photos that Michele has sent me from our photo shoot. I enjoy them.

One of my favorites ^^

This one's super intense and kind of dark, but it just amazes me how good Michele is with photo shop! Wow.

 

Me and Pari like to joke that my look for this photo shoot was a mixture of Snow White and Twilight--so we coined the term "Twi-white," but we realized it just sounds like you're saying Twilight with a lisp or something...

And just because I can't get enough of this picture, I'll share it with you. Hopefully you find it as amusing as I do (just note that it was a candid picture, and the man was not photo shopped onto her as Corbin thought).

Thank you for reading, have a happy new year!! (:

A California Christmas

This post is visual heaven. Actually, more like a visual hoarder's heaven (aka, me).

There's just so much to look at!!

Let's get started, shall we?

Me and Corbie flew out to California last Tuesday

We had dinner with Tanner, his family, my family, and Brie! It was so fun. Kind of a weird experience to have them with me in a life aside from BYU.

Wednesday, Kaden and Kennedy had a Christmas concert at their school. They rocked it! Such cuties, I love 'em to death.

After that, I headed to Pari's house for a girl's night. It was a blast, and got to be with a lot of lovely ladies that I haven't seen since I was 14!

Pari makes the best hot chocolate...side note.

It's a zoo around here.

Got to meet our new puppy Charlie, and I am completely and utterly obsessed with her!! She is the cutest thing.

Took a lot of 'sister pictures' with miss Kennedy Lynn.

She's a doll.

Remember how I said I loved this dog? I wasn't kidding.

Look at her little face!! Kills me.

Here I am, just playing and talking to Charlie all by myself. This was a daily occurrence. I could post about ten more videos of her, but I don't want to look too crazy.

Corb FINALLY got his mane cut. Here are some 'during' pictures...

Looked like an animal on the ground.

Ta-dah! He's a new man. I'm in love with this cut, he looks so handsome!

I got a cut too, and Pari got her eyebrows done.

After we were all trimmed and proper, we went out for sushi.

That night, Kendra had a work party at our place for The Bishop Real estate group. Santa came!!!

The whole fam, including my favorite little fur ball.

I really enjoy my symmetry photo app.

The next afternoon, we went to Bayside church for a Christmas service. They always put on quite the production! They had 'America's Got Talent' winners, the Silouhettes, perform, as well as Cirque du soleil (yes, I did have to google how to spell both of those...). 

On top of that, they had their usual rock band performing all sorts of Christmas arrangements.

Here's the Silouhettes, who are a group of kids all under 18 who dance behind a sheet and are just awesome.

Here is Cirque du soleil, but it's a really shaky video and didn't capture any of the cool stuff...but it'll give you a little taste of it.

After the performances, they light one candle (which they gave out at the door) and slowly everyone's candles are lit from passing it along. It's really neat.

That night, we went to Mofa's birthday dinner at a yummy Thai place

followed by Parker working out...

And some late night snuggles.

One more picture of Charlie because I can. (The late night caused some puffy sleep eyes, so excuse those).

And here is where the real visual heaven starts! Me, Pari, Deyna, Andrea, and Kyndel all had a photo shoot Saturday morning, courtesy of Pari's mom, Michelle. She is entering a competition for a scholarship and needed some models, that's where we come in. (:

We did our hair and make up...

Put on some funky headresses and such (which are cut out of this picture...oops.)

And drove to this gorgeous grassy wooded area by a river.

First we had to cross the street and stand in the middle of the road in our funky outfits. (Only I would stop to take a picture in the middle of the road...I'm a little photo happy).

 

Then we arrived here!! Gorgeous right?? Couldn't get over it. We don't have random little areas like this in Utah...everything's just dead and brown haha.

Gorgeous Pari.

Deyna working it for the camera

Like my crazy gettup? Complete with feather boa, giant safety pin (clearly visible here), and all.

All of the above are just ones from my phone. Here are some of the actual ones Michelle took:

 

Two different versions of this one...I'm kind of fond of it. (:

I'm leaning towards liking ^^this one^^ more, maybe I've just got a dark side that's coming out.

And that's it for now! More pictures from the shoot will come as soon as Michelle gets them to me (:

It was a really fun day.

Modeling can be tiring, so Pari made us more Cocoa and we watched (more like slept through) The Grinch.

We headed over to a party at Connor's house with a bunch of people and a giant Pazookie. Me and Pari ended up staying hours past everyone else singing and playing guitar & piano with Connor. It was so fun, even though I'm not as musically gifted as them. (:

On Sunday I went to church with the gang (Pari, Connor, Andrea, Kyndel...the list goes on), which was great. That night we had our family's annual 'White Trash' Christmas party. It's always so fun!

Random shot of a bunch of people gathered around the food...

The best part of the night is our gift exchange, where people bring the most ridiculous gifts! One year Corbin got a hamster. This year I didn't have time to snag a gift, so I didn't participate, but it was still fun.

Monday has just been family time. Lovely Christmas Eve! (:

Grandma Caroline's homemade vanilla ice-cream recipe mixed in with some homemade cookie dough...delicious.

THERE.

I always feel the need to take a deep breath after writing a post, they take a lot more work than you think! And I'm sure reading this ginormous one took a lot of effort too, so we can both breath a sigh of relief that it's over now.

iiiiiiiinnn.....and

oooouuuuuttttt.

That was nice.

I've stayed up way too late writing this post in hopes that I'll be so dead tired tomorrow that I'll be able to sleep through both of my flights home. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without spending hours at the airport/on a plane! (That was a little sad huh? It's just the truth).

Have a very Merry Christmas, and may Santa treat you well. (:

Stay tuned for a Utah Christmas post coming your way soon.

"And to all a good night!"