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Last Friday after skiing we went over to Mike and Lisa's to celebrate their son Carter's birthday which is actually today.  He is one of our favorite little kids.  I love going to little kids birthday parties.  They are just so cute.  Carter loves trains, so Lisa made him an awesome train cake.  It was funny to watch him eat it.  Happy 2nd Birthday Carter! 

He was having so much fun

Skiing!

Let me preface this post by saying that I have tried to convince Eric to go skiing for years.  He always says that it's too expensive, etc...  Well, last Friday Eric and I both had the chance to go to Sundance for free.  I will explain why in a later post.  Since it was free, Eric had no excuses.  He told me he would try because he knows how much I like to go.  What a sweet boy!  So Thursday night we went and rented him some skis for $12 at Outdoors Unlimited here at BYU (what a deal) and borrowed my brothers ski stuff.  Friday morning we went up to the mountain and after a delicious free breakfast, we hit the slopes.  Let's just say that Eric's first time skiing was not the highlight of his life.  Like any first time skier or snowboarder, Eric fell a few times.  I tried to teach him what to do, but let's face it, I'm not a ski instructor.  I couldn't really put into words what I was doing and how to do it.  Eric gave it a try and then decided that he would like to take a lesson.  I was surprised at that.  I thought he would never want to go again!  So, hopefully over Christmas break we'll get him a ski or snowboarding lesson and he'll soon be a pro! 

I actually quite enjoyed the day even though I was alone most of the time.  It wasn't crowded at all, which was nice.  I hadn't been skiing in almost 4 years so it was great to do it again.  I can't wait to go again!

Festival of Trees

It has become a yearly tradition of ours to go to the Festival of Trees with our good friends Kirsten and Aaron.  We always start out the evening by going to Five Guys and then we head over to the festival at the South Towne Expo Center.  The room is just filled with Christmas trees, big and small, wreaths, quilts, gingerbread houses, kids games, crafts and food.  We usually just look at the big trees and the gingerbread houses.  People decorate Christmas trees in all different themes and then sell them.  The proceeds all go to Primary Children's Medical Center.  I think it's a great way to start off the holiday season. 

Here are some of my favorite trees and gingerbread houses from this year.  There are some fun ones and some really cute ones.  I should probably take less pictures the more we go though, because I'm sure I have over 100 pictures in the three years we've gone so far.  I just love Christmas trees!!

 

After looking at all of the trees we decided to go to The Cheesecake Factory for dessert.  We had gone together a few months ago, got there at 9:30, and were seated right away.  Well that wasn't the case this time.  We didn't want to get it to go, so we had to wait a little while.  A security guard let us go into the Fashion Place Mall after it had closed and sit in a seating area.  Aaron and Kirsten's son Lincoln decided that these little stools would make a perfect train.  This was the end result.

We had such a great night with our great friends.  Can't wait until next year!!

I'm Feeling Crafty

So the other day I was looking at my friend Katie's blog.  She had made this cute wreath out of bows.  I wanted to copy her idea, so I did!!  I went to the website where she got the idea, got the needed supplies, and made myself a cute Christmas wreath.  Here it is:

If any of you out there want a cute, fun and easy wreath, you need to make this.  Click here for instructions.  I followed the instructions exactly, but I think I am going to buy more ribbon and add some more bows.  You can see through the wreath in some places so I want to make mine a little fuller.  That's just my personal opinion.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Thanks for the idea Katie!!

Birthday and Thanksgiving

I know it' been awhile since Thanksgiving, but I've been a little busy.  Thanksgiving happened to be the same day as Eric's birthday this year.  It was a weird day for us though because we were traveling to North Carolina.  However, we did have a little celebration two days beforehand with some of our friends at Texas Roadhouse.  A whole bunch of people surprised Eric which was nice because usually people are already out of town for the holiday on Eric's birthday.  It just so happens that our friend Aaron's birthday was a few days before Eric's, so we had them celebrate together.  At Texas Roadhouse they make you sit on a horse saddle and Yee-Haw.  Aaron and Eric sat on it together.  C.U.T.E.

We didn't get to North Carolina until around 6:30PM on Thanksgiving day, so it didn't really feel like Thanksgiving.  It was still nice though.  Eric's mom made a DELICIOUS meal and a lot of delicious pies.  After dinner we celebrated Eric's birthday.

We had a lot of fun in North Carolina.  While there we went to the North Carolina Museum of Art to see a Norman Rockwell exhibit.  He was an amazing artist.  We also ate some delicious BBQ, played A LOT of games, saw the new Harry Potter, enjoyed the sunny weather and spent a lot of quality time with family.  It was such a nice vacation.  I can't wait to go back to visit again.

I was really bad a taking pictures this vacation.  The only thing I caught was when we fed some ducks at the lake near Eric's parents house.  There were a lot of them.  I was afraid they were going to attack!  Eric's dad was brave and let them eat out of his hand.