Pandora

Pandora is the new best "girl" of a friend i ever had. She has never let me down and her singing christmas music to me every day is a plus. She probably feels like thats all she does and gets pretty tired, but i wanted her to know i appreciate her. she has saved me these last couple weeks from feeling homesick. she has made our home here feel more like christmas. and she even sings for me weeeee into the hours of the night( NOW) when i am finishing up a research paper, or even when i am at the library studying with my earphones in. so thank you my good friend Pandora for being there for me, and for getting me through these last two weeks. I love you. but i dont love you more than Huston. ok? Goodnight

FINAALLLLSSS SUCKkkkk

it has been A LONG week. i dont know why i am complaining.. most of my finals were comprehensive and or open note considering i have done really well! .. My prediction for grades this semester is fairly well for being my first semester back in school for almost 2 years. but anyways.. i have mostly just had LOADS to do. and so has Huston. Pretty stressful for both of us. probably the most "intensive" semester we both have had. but i think it has been good for us to really rely on each other for help, or even just appreciate the small things like today we had some down time, and we went out for lunch and then to the beach to tan and it was so nice to relax but as soon as we were done we had to crack down..and i have grown to appreciate Huston so much because i called for another break after spending a good 3 hours in the library...and Huston showed up at the library with ice cream for me and we just sat and chit chatted outside the library eating ice cream looking like lobsters from todays previous tanning sesh..anywayss. .. i just need to go home....only a few more days. but we are both done with school for at least 2 weeks tomorrow! horray. ;) love home, love breaks, love husband, love family etc! cant wait!

Christmas Cards

Mom Rainey asked us to take some pictures for the family Christmas card this year. Here is what we came up with!!!!

Stairway to Heaven

Huston finally hiked stairway with one of his good friends Chris. they had a blast. Huston says its an incredible hike. one that i do want to cross off the bucket list myself eventually someday. i think the pictures will show its beauty, however im sure its not even close to doing it justice!!!

"Fall" Ball

Friday night... O friday night... haha....

Our friend Brandon was sick and he had tickets to the "Fall" Ball(should be called Winter, but its the semester we are in, which is fall i guess).anyways.. he couldnt get rid of them. So, Huston... felt "obligated" to take them off his hands considering they were serving prime rib for dinner. So, last minute we hurried up and got ready. Huston breaking out his tux from our wedding, and me scrambling and borrowing a beautiful blue dress from my neighbors, we were ready in 15 minutes. Hurried there in hopes to make the dinner which we were told ended at 9:30pm, however it ended at 9 and we showed up at 9:10pm. This presented a problem....no Prime Rib for us. after sulking a bit, we settled for sprite in fancy cups and crappy dessert, then a few dances!! It was sooo fun! Random night, but great time together! Dancing and laughing and formally dressed up! We had not been dancing since senior Prom..if you dont count our wedding! Not to mention church dances are even funnier when your married. You should have seen some of the looks we were getting from dancing "too close." hahahaha.. o boy did we have fun with that, and making fun of some of the single students who were trying way too hard. When you are married you have a much different perspective. but you know, i suppose we were all there at one point in our lives right??

Anyways, after the dance, Huston and i mosied our ways on over to Mcdonald's after missing the dinner we were anxiously trying to make it there for. Had ice cream, shared fries, and Huston had a burger. And then we relaxed on a very windy beach covered in blankets for a while. I forget how much of a romantic Huston really is! :) Needless to say it was fun to SPICE IT UP A BIT on the date night!

Its Christmas!!

Remember one time i stated that i was not going to decorate our house because we were going home, so that i did our blog instead... welll, Yep! Its December!! Thankfully my mother sent us some cute decorations in the mail. and its just gone down hill from there.lets put it this way... I AM MY MOTHERS CHILD!!! Christmas at my house growing up was always decked out!! So, i feel compelled to do the same in my own home! Its been so fun creating our own enviroment. We had a microscopic little tree, a fun nativity and a table centerpiece snowman with some candles is what we started with. But thankfully again, for what??? DOLLAR STORESS!!!! yep, haha.. baught a snowman for our door, some garland, a "Merry Christmas" sign, our neighbors gave us some extra christmas lights, and we got some stockings and santa hats. We also made snowflakes of our own and hung them from the ceiling, so now our house feels like Christmas. its our little "Home away from Home." Our favorite thing to do in the evenings is turn off all of our lights and have on the X-mas lights, with all of our X-mas smelling candles burning and just enjoy X-mas music. ... Thankfully i will be home in 2 weeks! its getting a little out of hand.haha.. Huston made me promise to not ask to buy anymore Christmas Decorations.

Traditions

Anyone want to share some fun traditions they have through-out the year?? Any at all??? please, i invite you to comment and share! I would love to hear!

This year we have loved starting our own. It's our first year married and we have had a fun time this holiday season creating our own fun! Of course we all have those traditions from growing up with families.. but its fun to create your own too as you combine both families, and ideas when you are together.

So far, we would like a few things to become traditions:

-For Halloween we compiled everyone we were spending it with, and took thier favorite Halloween tradtion and tried to make it as fun as possible. we loved that, because then we got alot of variety and it was really fun. the doughnut game will probably stick with us from now on. we might re-consider bobbing for apples next year;) We shared scary stories together, and also watched scary movies throughout the month. which really got us into the spirit. This year foodland was out of pumkins so we carved watermelons...which just might become a tradition of ours...to think of something different every year to carve!

-The other night we spent about 3 hours making snowflakes. fun detailed snowflakes(thank you Youtube). we then hung them all to our ceiling for decoration. Cheap(free) and very homey! .. We had so much fun listening to music and making them because it got addicting. We decided that we were not going to keep them for next year,(ok maybe some of our favorites) we were going to make it a tradition and re-do all the snowflakes again next year.

-We also made gingerbread houses. Just last night. and we loved every last second of detailing them. Huston was so intricate. This was a really fun thing to do together. makes for a great date night too, which we did join our friends. Its fun to bounce ideas off each other, and get creative. ...This is something we decided to try every year too. Maybe next year we will try them homemade, change it up a little bit.

- This year we baught stockings and glittered our names on them with glue and glitter, like my mom always did to ours growing up. It was fun to carry on that tradition. :) Gotta have stockings.

-We are starting another tradition too...There is a day dedicated for this next week-we are going to make lots and lots of Christmas cookies!! decorative and all!

-We started a tradition when we were just engaged last year, where we make hot chocolate and watch elf. :) haha.. have not gotten to that yet this year, because im pretty sure we over-did it last year;) haha. Poor Huston had to watch Elf or Grinch every night for 3 weeks straight almost. Gotta love Christmas. My excuse, there is only one time of year you can watch those movies;)

-This year we started a family journal together too. Its for monumental moments in our lives. and our adventures. its still pretty bare, but it is a goal we have to make it a neat adventure book-kind of like on the movie "Up". So far it only consists of letters to each other, reminding us why we married each other and how much we love each other in case life ever tries to convince us otherwise. Which we hope never happens. but, if it does...its there for remembrance.

-For our birthdays- we not only celebrate for one day, we celebrate for a week. who knows how long this one will last, but its sure fun!!!!!! :)

Please feel free to share! Its fun to remember, and we can all bounce ideas off of one another to make our years full of memories and fun!!

Tennis

Attempted this sport for the first time this last week. WE SUCK!!Got increasingly a little better the more we played..but not really.haha... It is so fun to watch, and they make it look so easy, but it is so much more than that. We played for two hours with Brad and Becca, and had such a great time. We laughed alot, and competed in singles and in pairs. Kilie's record all night was 1 win and probably 20 losses. haha. in both categories single and double. Thats how great we were! .. Needless to say, it was fun. But we will probably stick to raquetball! Tennis requires alot more skill that we thought.

Thanksgiving Weekend

This weekend was busy yet full of relaxation. Huston had a 4 day weekend of nothing, and i did too pretty much(minus work.)
let me tell you all a little about the weekend.

Huston basically did EVERYTHING regarding thanksgiving on our part. Poor guy didnt even go play in the ward "Turkey Bowl" because he was being the wife. He baked a turkey, made rolls(homemade and amazing), potatoes, corn, yams, and cleaned our house before everyone came over. I came home from work, (BOO WORKING ON HOLIDAYS) and he then didnt allow me to touch a thing. He let me skype with my family who were all at my aunts house. It was great seeing everybody. and Huston is amazing for doing all this. I am so grateful to him for all that he does for us, and for me! Our first thanksgiving married and me, the "homemaker" didnt even do anything. Im pathetic, i know! But that just goes to show how amazing of a husband i have!Everyone else contributed too. To add to the feast was pie, stuffing, berry pretzel salad, drinks, chips and dip, and another(EMO:cooked in a pit, hawaiian style) turkey.(sorry if im forgetting anything)

Anyways.. Thanksgiving was spent with our really good friends. We were surrounded with love all day. We brought the neighbors table to our house and made a long "Feasting" table. we had decorations and tons of food. we feasted and then had PIE of course. Everyone seemed to go home to relax for a while, and then we reconviened later that evening for games! It was just a fun day all together! It felt very much like we were with family and it was nice and homey!! It made our first Thanksgiving married pretty great!

- for those of your wandering why the heck i am writing so much..I am writing this out to remember years down the road, sorry to those who dont want to read. It is our first year of marraige and we are staring to develope some fun traditions. Which should be documented right??

Anyways, Black friday was not spent shopping. It was my only day off from school and work so we headed to China's Mans Hat beach to picnic with our left-over turkey and some friends. We literally spent all day there. We played tons of games, competed in a long jump competition, friends swam out to the island and hiked it while we babysat nephew(because we have already done the swim/hike). he mostly slept while we played volleyball, football, and threw rocks at crabs. he is the best nephew in the world by the way. It was so relaxing to spend most of the day at the beach. Had not happened in a while. Me and the beach had a much needed date. .. Huston and i were really tired when we got home, so Huston ran to the store, got us some hot chocolate to put us in the mode of Christmas, popcorn w/ MnM's, and rented us a movie, while i looked online at some Black friday deals (nothing we could afford, big suprise;)) haha. We lit our small Christmas candles, and relaxed at home curled up on the couch the rest of the evening.

Saturday and Sunday i had to work. BOOO that too! but its only a short shift. So saturday we did homework together, and i made dinner for my friends family who just had a baby. After getting frustrated from doing homework on the holiday weekend, we resorted to going to the new Harry Potter movie and grabbing a pizza! It was a good movie, however i wish i would not have gave in to seeing it yet. We were supposed to finish our marathon. So needless to say the movie was a little hard to follow for both of us, having not read the books or watched the previous movie recently. haha. But it was good and fun.

The best part about the weekend was knowing that school is over soon, and that we get to go home. Also, the wonderful quality time we were able to spend together!!