Over the weekend we went to Ephraim for Grandpa Willden's 82nd birthday. (The dad of Marc's mom). It was great. I learned all about his marriage with his wife Ruth and how he left 7 days after they were married to fight in WWII for 17 months in the Phillippines. He ended up baking thousands of loaves of bread for all the men fighting there. He has lived an incredible life and was angry at me for taking his picture instead of focusing on eating the delicious cake! He also told me before I married Marc that if Marc does anything to make me angry or if he does anything to upset me he will be the first to give him a swift kick to set him straight. We love going to visit Grandpa and have done it quite a bit. We have also had the opportunity to go to the Manti Temple...and wow is it a beautiful one.

I had to throw in pictures from school today because we dissected owl pellets. I thought it was one of the most disgusting things I did in elementary school so I decided my students needed the same opportunity. They loved it and it was something new for me to do with my class. It turned out to not be as horrible as I thought it would be.

Next time we do something I will be sure to actually take pictures of Marc and me.

Mama Egg Visits

We went to the San Francisco Bay Area to be with my family for Christmas. We flew out Christmas day and made it back to spend the evening with Marc's family. We did not get any good pictures of us, but we did get awesome pictures of the huge tree in Neiman Marcus at Union Square and the 1200 pound gingerbread house in the St. Francis Drake Hotel!

We had a great time and are looking forward to going back this Friday! I am going for a week to nanny and Marc is coming for the first weekend. I know my mom took some great pictures over Christmas. I will see if I can get any to post on here.

We cut down our Christmas tree in Richfield. It turned out to be an all day event and I am still shocked that the tree did not blow off of the top of our car.

We had a busy first Christmas! We walked over to temple square hundreds of times to see the lights. It was our weekly tradition to freeze ourselves over there and then come home and have hot chocolate. We have a kettle now and have hot chocolate almost on a regular basis. It whistles really loud!

We love living downtown and being so close to Gateway, Temple Square and the capitol. We love going on walks and seeing the fun places that are close by.

Dan Johnson is in the above picture with Marc. They have been good friends for the past 6 years. I love Dan because he bought Marc's super fast motorcycle and saved me from having to worry about Marc riding it. Right above that one I am with Shauna Francom. She is my wonderful cousin...and friend that I got to live with in Sandy for my first two years of teaching.

Here are my wonderful students! You can see the beginning of our South American rainforest in the background with the brown stumpy tree. It looks a lot better now with the leaves, flowers and animal reports. We were too busy doing Christmas things so we just barely finished it last Friday before going off track. I have a great class this year. It is very small..only 23! It changes a lot, but it's no 32 like last year!
We made a Christmas tree to hang outside of our classroom. I have never had a tree in my room so we decided to make a Henry Matisse version. The tree was oringinally orange. All the green is from small pieces of green paper. We glued for 20 minutes every day after last recess. After we started this one the reading specialist came in with a fake tree. You can see it in the first picture. It was so fun to get it because we would turn off the lights and light up the tree and the kids eyes would glow. I also got to use all of the yellow measuring tape ribbon and tree decorations my mom bought for me to use in my classroom two years ago. We also make dough ornaments. It was fun. I love teaching this week and I miss my students....probably because I am off track for two weeks!

Halloween

I have never really been a huge fan of Halloween but Marc may eventually convince me otherwise. He spent days and days on his costume so I decided that I needed to put a little extra effort into mine. We meant to go to my school carnival, but got confused with the nights. Luckily we still had a Halloween party to go to at the McFarland's. Marc ended up not only winning bunco, but also the costume contest. It was hilarious! I wish I had a picture of Marc in his costume when they called his name. His arms shot up in the air and he went on his toes...I guess him having the huge Jack Skellington head on is what made his reaction so great. I was Sally minus the red hair. If you guys have ever seen Nightmare Before Christmas I hope you recognized our costumes. It turned out to be a fun Halloween.

Leaving Cabo

Next stop San Diego!