...dropping the ball on 2009...

i can't believe its already the start of a brand new year. i won't bore you with a recap of the entire last year... so we'll settle on the past couple of weeks. deal.

i spent christmas in california with my family. everyone was there. it was fun to go home and not do anything for work and enjoy my time with my family. it was really exciting because this was olivia's first christmas. i was kind of sad while i was there. a few of our family christmas traditions did not come to pass. i had a difficult time with that. but hey monitor and adjust (for those educators out there). we did keep the tradition alive of opening presents on christmas eve. olivia was really good at opening her presents. i caught this nice sequence of pictures at the end of her run at the presents:
christmas morning SANTA came (again for me, thanks bry). olivia scored some awesome little instruments and more toys. my sister and brother in law managed to get them all back to omaha. after we took our traditional christmas pajama picture, started cooking, and geared up for a long day of company, good food, and laughter. it was good to be home and be with my family.

over the week we spent time together playing settlers of catan, having wii fit tournaments, and eating yummy foods. brad didn't get to stay long, but it was good to see him for the few days. we shopped a little. we even went bowling! spent time with grandparents on both sides and just relaxed. jacks and i had a good time with liv and my mom. we celebrated liv's 1st brithday, twice. lol. i'll post those pictures later.

i left on the 30th to get back to az for new years. wink wink. i got home late that night and went over to bry's to meet his sister and her husband before they took off back to utah. i also had the opportunity to meet his grandparents on his mom's side. it was a full house to say the least. i was a little intimidated, but had a good time.

of course i spent new year's with bryan (and every day since). started the evening with dinner with the bluth's. we all ate at oregano's. yum. after we got a surprise phone call from austin about being in a minor motor cycle accident. so bry, me, and lexi headed to pick him up. then we took lexi back to get ready for the youth dance that ashley and tom happen to be dj-ing at. after, we hit up a YSA activity here in phoenix with the "marrieds" in tow (courtney and austin l.). the activity was kind of crowded and not exactly what we thought (its what bry thought it would be actually). we left there after a few mintues of wandering. chatted with the roommates. i really wanted to go to see quinn, but unfortunately i left before he got there.
after we dropped off the "marrieds" and headed to austin m.'s to watch the ball literally drop on 2009 with some friends. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1...then...midnight came and went. no kiss. lol. good story. i love the way that bry tells it. in the moment and all the excitement bry dropped the ball on the new year's kiss. oh well. omen? i wouldn't think so. good times.

we rocked the night away playing rock band and guitar hero. bry and austin make quite the duet. trio with me... not so much. i think we played for a good 3 or 4 hours. then settled down and watched season 3 of the office. yes in our old age we managed to pull an all nighter... almost. we all parted ways around 6:30 am. good clean new years fun.

more to come...

...a strong 10...

...dear santa part II...

ok so i promised that i would posted picture from the date and reveal the very clever guy who asked me on a date via a letter to santa (see previous entry). his name is bryan bluth. and for our first date he hosted a dinner party with his closest friends and the girl of their choice.

the night before we got together and made some yummy goodness in the kitchen. who knew a cougar and a ute could get along and create some culinary master pieces! we baked gingerbread with lemon sauce, wassail, and red hot apples. i learned where everything went in their kitchen, maybe a little better than his sister. we stay up and talked until about midnight.the next night was the fabulous dinner party. i was an hour late. lol. my ride (because bry was getting everything ready and hosting) was fashionably late due to the fact that his date had fallen alseep and forgot to get a gift for the gift exchange (love you Kenz). We kind of missed the wassail part of the evening.

as soon as we arrived we were seated outside at a table that was decorated thickly (but not too thickly) with holiday cheer. the ambiance was perfect. the heaters kept us warm as we enjoyed french onion soup (that bry made earlier in the day), a spinach salad (that i passed on eating), pork tenderloin, red hot apples, yummy mashed potatoes, and rhodes rolls! YUM! Bryan out did himself. he is a great cook! my compliments to the chef!

the wonderful servers for the meal were Bryan's younger sister, Lexi, and her friend. They were very polite and did an amazing job making sure we were taken care of. By the way i loved how they were dressed in all black. Thanks Lexi.
after we stuffed ourselves silly full of delicious goodness, we moved inside to play greed, catch phrase (j "its made of ham..." a: "put the sanwich in a bag"), and eat dessert. after bry and i washed dishes until about 1 in the morning. i sported his U shirt as to keep from getting dirty (secretly i was hoping to get it dirty while washing dishes and cleaning up my sister has a dirty mind). then talked until about 3 in the morning.

so was there a second date? or possible more... you'll have to wait to find out. more pictures from the evening can be found in the album "i'm dreaming of a white christmas...because is aint going to happen..."

...dear santa...

this past weekend i was directed to this pleasant surprise on a poster as big as the wall at a party i was attending. brownie points for being clever. how could i refuse him after this. plus he is pretty cute. as you can see below we'll be going out on Friday. i'm sure you can figure out what that means for the second phone number listed. i'll make sure to take some pictures of the date and reveal the guy then. or you can just go to the album on the right and look him up. lol.

...yee haw...

learning how to country swing dance

professional photos!

more dancing...

the rest of the BIG apple... FINALLY

Here are the highlights from the rest of our trip. sorry its taken me so long to put this up! you can click on the links on the side to see the albums individually and at your pace... if you want.

New York: Day 4

• Late Show with David Letterman taping
• Little Mermaid- Front Row Center!
• Museum Of Natural History
• Day time hop on hop off bus tour
• Lincoln Center
• Manhattan Temple
• Bird pooped on my purse
• Junior's Cheesecake

New York: Day 5

• Magnolia’s Bakery
• Wicked(again)
  
  
• NBC Tour
• Cosi’s with Jackie
• China Town for dinner
• Union Square- Break Dancing Competition
• Shopping!
  
  
• Angelina Arrived

New York: Day 6

• Liberty Island- Statue of Liberty
• Ellis Island
• Lombardi’s Pizza
• Rice to Riches
• Pink berry
• Shopping on Canal St.

New York: Day 7

• The Today Show Taping
• Nintendo World
• Empire State Building
• Financial District
• Ground Zero
• Waterfront
• Bodies Exhibit
• Toys R Us
• Brad passed the Bar

New York: Day 8

• Central Park
• Mom and Dad scored free tickets to Lion King
• Tiffany’s
• Gap Casting Call for Olivia
• Shopping
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• FAO Schwartz again
• Marry Poppins
• Packing Etc.

fhe at its finest...

in our church monday nights are reserved specifically as family time. we called it FHE or family home evening. for FHE today we went around NYC on a double decker bus tours... but before that we found our day starting on the subway once again... this time you can see that mom was a little on the happier side than the day before... yay!

we perused times square... went around here and there. jackie and i revisited one of our favorite childhood stores... Sanrio. but this was called sanrio luxe. its the only "hybrid" store of its kind in the world. i bought olivia a hello kitty new york photo album to put her pictures from our trip in... and drum roll.... one of those old school plastic wallets that i used to beg my parents for as a kid. sweet!

later we went to madame tussauds for some smoozing with the celebrity wax figures. Liv loved it. we "met" n sync, bono, jennifer lopez, whoopi, george clooney, michael jordan, etc.

Other happenings that day:

• Ate lunch at Ellen's Star dust diner where olivia was serenaded "i only have eyes for you..."
• took the night bus tour around new york...
• got tickets for the david letterman late show taping
• FAO Schwartz
• Seeing the "Naked Cowboy" in Times Square
  
• Tiffanys
• M & M Store