TGIF BABY

Happy Friday!

1 resolution down.. 11 to go

Matt and I were vegetarians for a month!  Why?  Pure curiosity.. and a little incentive to eat more vegetables.  It was our new years resolution for the month of January.  Instead of make a whole list of resolutions that honestly we weren't intending on keeping for a whole year, we decided to make a list and only do one a month.  So for the month of January we ate a ton of beans and if you know me well, then you would know that I was in bean heaven!  We also ruled out sweets and if you know me well enough again then you would know that I was having some major cookie withdrawals.

We powered through it anyhow and at the end of the month we broke our fast with In-n-Out and Chick-fil-A.  Matt wanted a burger and I wanted chicken and we conveniently have both these restaurants right next to each other.  We broke our sweet fast with some cookies our friends left for us with a note that said: 

"Welcome back to civilization..You are an inspiration to all of us" 

 Thank you Matt and Elyse.. its good to be back. 

Wedding book: Check

8 months later and I FINALLY finished my wedding photo books and wedding scrapbook.  One of our wedding gifts was a gift card to Photo Book America which ironically manufactured and shipped our books from Malasia.  They turned out soooo great and it feels good to have them done.  Thank you Margie!!

I can also mark my Wedding book off the check list too.  This book was inspired by my parent's wedding book but turned out to be more of a scrapbook which means it was a LOT OF WORK.  I bought this book a year ago in a consignment shop for $8.  I added some fabric plus allllll the other embellishments within it which made it more "valuable."  It took forever to finish with all the tedious details but it's personalized to my style and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

Because it's never too late for (another) Christmas post

Like Matt mentioned a couple posts back,  we had a great Christmas!  Well we have finally put up our Christmas gifts we gave to each other: A bird feeder for Matt, and a spice rack for Allison. Matt keeps the blinds open 24/7 so he can spot his first anticipated bird feeding from our "bird hotel."  What bird wouldn't want to hang around this cool bird dig? 

I LOVE my spice rack!  I have had my eye on a Griffith spice rack for some time and Matt surprised me with a 16 piece set.  I was pretty stoked.  My Dad sanded down the rusty lids and painted them to match my mixer and they turned out great.

I also gave Matt a slide for his guitar which he LOVES.  I want him to practice his "sliding" so he can start a surf guitar band like the Sandals or the Ventures.  Anyone want to start a band? Matt also gave me a Beatles ukulele book that Im FINALLY playing.  It came with a CD which plays the song they way they should sound...not the way I make them sound.

It was fun decorating for Christmas with Matt for the first time.  We made an Advent Calendar (inspired by my sister in law Ismari's calender), bought a 3 foot Christmas Tree, lights, and a couple of vintage decorations.  Plus going to Texas was just the icing on the cake to top off our Christmas holiday.  I don't have many photos from Texas.. or from Arizona.  But here are well.. 2

Christmas in Arizona

Christmas in Texas

tree -> lemon -> lemonade

So Matt's campus started out a little sour.  It was originally a lemon orchard with lemon trees as far as the eye can see.  I can only imagine thats how it was.  When Midwestern was built they decided to keep a small section of the trees and allow the students access to all you can (..eat?) lemons.

We went to pick some lemons with our friends who are THE cutest little family.

"Ohhhh Matttttt!!!" Matt and Lola playing hide n seek in the orchard

I think all little boys should wear overalls.  I mean look at how darn cute he is!  Jake loved running through the lines of trees.  He was wearing some Wee Squeaks so we could here him with every step.

Someone's hiding.. can you find him? Matt climbed his way up to the biggest lemons

Olivia and Jake

The goods

With all our lemons we had to make some lemonade.   What else do you do with a butt load of lemons?



We LOVE our juicer!   Matt and I had to take many turns juicing.. simple pleasures..

And we ended up with a pitcher full of the tangiest lemonade I've ever tasted!  Oh.. we also learned that you have to add sugar (which becomes the key ingredient to lemonade) AND water to make fresh squeezed lemonade drinkable.  Fun times

do da do da (i guess thats what they sing at races)

Who knew horse races could be so fun?  Well, it's entertaining for the first hour.  We joined some of our friends at the horse track nestled secretly right in the ghetto of Phoenix just a few miles away from us.  It was so nice here that it made you forget where exactly you were.  Our friend's neighbor is a jockey and we were lucky enough to watch her race.  We didn't know much of what was going on and we had to wait a good 20 minutes between races.. but when our friend's neighbor was up to race, my adrenaline started racing for her! A minute later she smoked the other horses, won the race, and our friends walked away with $4.

winner winner chicken dinner

A look at Christmas

Let me tell you about our Christmas. First off, we drove through some snow. In Texas! It was the middle of the night and lot's and lot's of snow. A semi truck was blocking the west bound traffic and it was one of those big fed-ex trucks that carries like three trailers. It looked like 2 game pieces from tetris, you know, the really tough pieces? Our lane was clear and after singing that Christmas song that says "oh the weather outside is frightful" about 35 times, we were there. It was kind of like when Dorothy clicks her shoes and ends up at home...but our magic spell took about 18 hours to finally work.

So...there we were, deep in the heart of Texas.

When we got there the Richardson family Christmas party was already in full swing. We were really tired, but I think we partied pretty hard. I ate like...8 cake balls or something, just that day. Well, I at least figured out all the flavors. We had a great Christmas the next morning and went to the Alvin ward for Church and saw a lot of people. No one threatened me this time, so that was nice. I guess they figure if you go through with the wedding stuff even after all the threats, you must be pretty tough. They are probably thinking, Allison married someone really tough, good job Allison! That is probably what they are thinking.
We had a lot of great food and watched a lot of movies together. I loved it! Plus I got some bird pictures. Here's a good one.

And here is a baby bird.

We got to go to the beach and hang out around Galveston.

 Diggin'

 Doing stuff

 Playing Giant Chess in a very new way.
We also went antiquing on one of the days and had a good time checking out some shops in Pasadena and in Alvin. Allison and Julianne found a big garbage can full of toys...and they dug through. Ok, I helped. But we got a ton of little people toys for only 7 dollars and think of all the money being saved on vaccinations for whatever kids play with these things, in the end I am sure they will have immunity to a couple things that even the county health department doesn't even vaccinate for!
Hey, Are you still listening to me?

                

All in all it was a great Christmas and we didn't want it to end. A lot of the angst about it ending was having to face the 18 hour car ride home but it wasn't as bad on the way back, no snow.  And to soften the blow we got to hang out with this guy our last nigh in town.

 

I have eaten at Joe's every time I visit Texas. It's kind of a representation of Allison and me. Awesome Texas BBQ on a big old Idaho baked potatoe. I actually don't know if they are from Idaho, but I don't want to find out, And if you ruin this for me!....just don't.

Hope you all had a super Christmas too.

Bye for now. Talk at you later...Sometimes it feels like I am talking to a big stuffed animal when I am talking to you, but I guess that is how blogs work...