Happy Late Birthday MOM

I realize I haven't posted in a long time and there were many important days I never got around to posting about.  One of those important days was my mom's birthday! HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY MOMMA!!!!! It was Dec. 13th, and I wanted to take a second and dedicate this entire post all about my mom. I have one of the coolest mom's out there.  She has taught me so much about serving others.  She ALWAYS makes sure her families needs are met before her own.  When we get together and make plans for activities, she will do one that one of her kids want to do even if she wouldn't have picked it herself, because she would rather please others than be selfish.  She has also taught me that it is important to be a hard worker.  No one likes a lazy pants.  And as much as I hated the Saturday Chore list...(I can't believe I'm saying this)...I miss it. WAH! But it's true.  She taught me to love a clean house.  When my apartment gets messy, I wish I could turn on some Footloose and get my boogie on while cleaning.  She is also a great example to me of good cooking.   I would LOVE to learn all of my mom's skills in the kitchen.  She makes AMAZING food, and I am glad she taught me how important it is to ALWAYS have a salad AND another vegetable on the table with the main dish.  Granted, I still am not the best at doing these things now, but every time I make dinner, I think, "oh yikes, mom would be disappointed with the colors of food I have on my plate. No greens or fun colors." hahah I love how she always made comments about the colors she had on her plate. Also, something I admire most about my mom, is her testimony.  I KNOW that my mom has a strong testimony because she shares it with her family and lives her life according to the commandments and is an example to me.  I also love that my mom is silly. You can always count on my mom to be the silly one, whether she means to or not. I love that she was the one to convince the bridesmaids at my cousin Bri's wedding, to jump in the pool in their dresses because "you never really wear bridesmaid dresses again!" or her ability to jump into a pool without getting her hair wet, or how competitive she gets while playing card games. Or the classic: the day it was really hot in our Wilsonville house and told us to "not touch her, or bug her, or talk to her, or bug her or talk to her...... and after repeating herself a trillion times, ending with a loud, "AND DON'T TOUCH THE DOG!" before laying in the middle of the family room in front of fan on the ground. hahah we love teasing her about that day. And I think the same week she "taking our communication privileges away" and after we all looked at each other and mouthed, "can she doooo that?!" and immediately getting online and talking about how mom had "officially lost it".  hahahah My mom is so stinkin funny and I love her so much! Not to mention how cute she is!!!! Every time we get together I envy how cute her clothes are.  My mom's got cuuuute style.  I have the coolest mom ever and I love her so much.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!

Christmas Season Begins

The Christmas season began everybody!!! Connor and I spent a night listening to Christmas music and decorated the tree and put together our new shelf!!! I got the shelf with my Christmas gift card to Ikea that Dan and Annette gave us for my Birthday. I LOOOOVE it! We still need to get a couple cute baskets to get in some of the shelves, and I need to make some more decorations to fill the holes. But I love it. 

Our cute little Christmas tree.

I bought some material and am in the process of making a Christmas table runner. When it's done I will show you how it turns out.  I gotta get it done ASAP so I can have it out the rest of the Christmas season. 

And what brings a Christmas night to an end better than a yummy treat like brownies?!?!?

Christmas is one of my most favorite holidays, not only because we get to buy gifts for eachother, but because I love the music, I love the lights, the decorations, the smells, and the feeling you get. It's the bessssssssst! Happy Christmas season everybody! 

I'm Thankful for Connor

So, this week has been really hard for me, because I had to spend my Thanksgiving away from my family when I knew they were all together.  And I was going to drive home after work on Saturday to hear Jenica's farewell talk, and then drive back on Monday.  But, a few hours before it was time to go, I decided that it was going to cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to just be home for a total of 1 day.  So, I decided I would stay and wait to see Jenica on Monday when she gets brought here for the MTC.  I feel like it was the right decision but it was still really hard for me to miss such an important event.  I came home from work really sad and expressed my sadness to Connor and shed a few tears, but then Connor was AMAZING.  We went and had a fun night together Christmas shopping where we spent most of the night laughing to the point I almost peed my pants.  Either because Connor drenched me in some fabric freshener spray, or him trying to block me from my path when I wanted to go and look at new shower curtains or Christmas decorations.  I realized that even though I was sad that I wasn't there with my family, that Connor IS my new family.  He is so wonderful and he makes everything better.  He really is my best friend and when I'm with him, things ARE better.  He is so patient and kind and so stinkin funny.  I am SO thankful to have Connor in my life, he is the best.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Today I have a lot of things to be thankful for.  But I think the thing that I am MOST thankful for, is my family.  I didn't get to go home this year for Thanksgiving when the rest of my family did.  So I knew they were ALL home having fun together and I was missing out, and it was really hard and I tried real hard to never think about it.  I hate missing out when all of my siblings get together. I love my family so much. My siblings are my best friends! I am so thankful for siblings that care about me and that love me.  I am thankful to have an older brother named Devin that has one of the cutest little girls in the world and is one of my favorite people to ask advice from. I am also thankful for my brother Trent.  Trent is one of the nicest people I know, he is always so caring and is so easy to talk to.  I love having deep conversations where Trent is involved, they're the best.  Karissa is my oldest sister, and I feel SO lucky to live near her.  She has taught me so much about how to be a good mom some day and is so creative and so fun to do craft days with.  Tyleen is the most supportive person I know.  If any of us have something big going on in our life, you now SHE'LL BE THERE! and I love that about her.  I also love hanging out with her, being with Tyleen is so easy and fun.  Jenica is my little sister, and I just recently wrote a post about her, but a little something about her too, is that I look  up to her so much.  She leaves on her mission soon, so she's been on my mind a lot lately and I don't know what I'll do without her.  She's so nice and good and I am going to miss her sooo much! It'll be fun to have someone to write letters to again. I've missed doing that since Connor's been home for 2 1/2years now. Kendra is the baby of the family and has a lot of older siblings that like to give her advice and guidance, but she handles it well.  She's so adventurous and fun.  I love watching her play sports, and is one of my favorite people to have a dance party with.  She's the only one that would try to learn silly dances from music videos we saw, or let me do her hair growing up when no one else did. My parents are the best people in the world.  My siblings are my best friends, but my parents are my heroes.  I don't know what I would do without their love and support.  I always want to know their opinion about everything because I feel like they've done everything right. My mom is the most selfless person.  She spends all of her time worrying about her kids and Grandma and does whatever she can to help the people she loves.  I want to be more like her in that way.  She also has gotten really funny over the years! It's fun to be around her and listen to her silly witty comments.   And not to mention, she is SO stinkin cute! I hope that I can be as cute as my mom some day.  My dad is my hero beyond all heroes.  My dad has a BIG heart and is such a hard worker.  And my dad's hugs are my most favorite hugs in the world and he's so nice to let me hug him as much as I want.  I love that I know that if I ever needed help building something, or fixing anything, that my dad can!  Another thing I love to do with my dad is play games.  If you've ever met my dad, you probably know that he is incredibly competitive.  And for a while I thought that it drove me crazy and thought "can't we all just play for fun?!" But just tonight I played a game where people looked at me crazy for wanting to WIN and then I was grateful for a dad that made it fun to win because he was trying his hardest to win too! 

I am so thankful for my family!! They are most fun family in the world and I can't wait to see them this weekend for Jenica's farewell talk. Also, I can't forget to mention my in laws!!! Dan, Annette, Cortney, Toby, Ryan, Meredith and Morgan are the best!!!!  I love all of them so much and am so lucky to like all of them and get along with all of them.  I have A LOT to be thankful for. 

Every year, the Willis family fills out the feathers of the turkey with things that they are thankful for.  And since, this year Ryan and Meredith are going to her house for Thanksgiving and Connor and I are staying here, we had to do our feathers over the phone.  But, I really like this tradition.  We only thought of three feathers each, but it got me really thinking of the things that I am extremely thankful for in my life RIGHT now.  I wish I could have had more feathers than just three, but it was good for me to really think about how good of a life I have.  I am thankful to be a part of such a wonderful family.  I have the worlds BEST in laws EVER! They are so welcoming and loving to me and are so supportive of me, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.  I feel bad for everyone that struggles with their in laws and I wish everyone could have it as good as me.  They are the best and I am the luckiest girl ever.

Leave Me Alone

Today was a GLORIOUS day.  I  always get Sunday off from work, and then get right back into it on Monday. But this week was different. I got to sleep in as late as I wanted, and then do WHATEVER else I wanted ALLLLL day long!!! So, I went and ran 3 miles at the gym with Catherine, and it felt AWESOME today by the way.  Then I went home, got ready, and ran some errands.  Today I started getting stuff ready for Christmas and got some stuff to start some Christmas projects.  I got some material to make a Christmas table runner that I'm really excited about.  But then, when Connor got home, I of course had to ask what he thought of the materials I picked, and lets just say, he's coming back to Joann's with me tomorrow to help me pick one or two DIFFERENT ones. Haha I guess the ones I picked didn't go together as well as I had hoped they did.  I like it though, Connor has good taste and I will take his word for it.  He's coming with me tomorrow to help me pick a couple better ones.  So, after that I ran to a couple other places, I went home and enjoyed a QUIET evening allll alone.  Connor was at school studying and taking a test, and I was at home doing WHATEVER my heart desired.  If you know me at all, you know that usually I hate being alone.  But today- Today was NICE! I guess sometimes everybody's gotta have some time where they're doing whatever they wanta do.  It was so super nice.  I watched a lot of Friends episodes, cleaned the wax off my wax melter that had spilled alllll over the place and had been driving me crazy for a while now, I painted my finger AND toenails a nice pretty sparkly red to get ready for the Christmas Holiday. (I'm getting really excited for Christmas this year). And then made a dinner that I wanted.  It was such a wonderful day.  And GUESS WHAT!!!!!!! It doesn't end tomorrow.  I get to do it ALL OVER AGAIN! This week I get Monday AND Tuesday off from work! And I can't tell you how long I have waited for these couple of days.  Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but it is suuuure nice to do whatever I want and nothing all at the same time! It was a GOOOD DAY!

Thankful for my Friends

Today I am thankful for a few things.  First, I am thankful for awesome people in my life.  I have the best family in the world, and I get to live by half of them, and I also have the best of friends.  Catherine Bates in one of them.   She was one of my dear roommates, and now good friend and she is awesome enough to get my bum to the gym everyday! I learn a lot from her. She's the most caring and loving person I know.  And I am thankful for her today for being such a good friend to me and making me work my hinnie out.  Second, I am thankful for my good friend Landon today, because he got an extra shirt from the BYU Basketball game today, and gave it to me!!!!!! WHOORAAAA!!  How nice is that! And third thing I am thankful for today, is someone came into the salon today and gave us free tickets to a sneak preview of Breaking Dawn! THE NEW TWILIGHT movie!!!!!! And my manager of course asked me first if I wanted to go because I am the only one in that salon to not be embarrassed to admit that I am stinkin excited for that movie.  Lame it may be, but i do not care! I will probably love every bit of it and can't wait! I just am hoping I can get the last couple hours of my shift taken care of :)


So as you can see, I had a good day where I had a lot to be thankful for!  Hope you're all having a good day!