Thanksgiving Weekend

Things have been pretty busy around here, so I'm just now getting around to blogging about Thanksgiving. My parents flew down because Jackson's blessing was that weekend. This was Christina's first time preparing an entire Thanksgiving meal and I think she did an excellent job (I helped out with some things). It looked great and tasted better!

That evening (along with most other evenings) we had fun playing games! This is a really fun one that Christina got me for my birthday--Dominion.

Christina got Jackson all dressed up in his Christmas outfit on Friday.

Christina made a yummy carrot cake to celebrate my birthday that had been on Monday, the 21st.

On Saturday we all took a trip to the Oakland temple. That evening they had a concert and lighting of the christmas lights to open the Christmas season. They have concerts almost every night leading up to Christmas at the auditorium and stake center next to the temple. We took advantage of having out parents in town and when into the temple.

Family pictures

Christmastime!!!

Christina and I had a wonderful time this past Christmas. We left California for Washington on Thursday, the 23rd, and came back late Sunday evening, January 2nd. Part of that trip we spent in northern Idaho at a cabin high in the Rocky Mountains. But first, Christmas!!

The Christmas weekend we spent with my family in University Place. On Christmas Eve my mom made a bunch of hors d'oeuvres and we had some family and friends over. It was a lot of fun! 

Christmas morning came and we were the first one's up (as a side note, we were the only "kids" at home, one of my sisters and her family live in Tacoma, but they didn't come over till 10am.) It's my family's tradition to get your stockings off the stairs when you wake up, but then wait for everyone to go into the living room and open presents.

We ate breakfast so that we could wait for my sister, Angela, to arrive with her husband, Keenan, and two girls, Daysha and Jayla. Here's Christina and I with all of our Christmas loot!

I got some good stuff, including: Toy Story 3 dvd, shirts, gift cards, The Book Thief, John Adams, Up piano book, a tie, and the board game Pompeii.

Christina got a cake decorating kit and other cooking things, a spa kit, scrapbooking supplies, sweaters, gift cards, Blokus travel addition, and a candle warmer. 

Daysha sure enjoyed having us around, especially Christina. They played a lot.

Jayla has one of the biggest smiles!

Daysha and Christina showing off some of their bling.

We'll talk about our trip to Idaho in a new post. New Year's Eve was fun too, although we don't have pictures. My home stake rented out the local YMCA. It was a bit crowded, especially in the pool and the racquetball courts, so we didn't do those two things. But we did attend the salsa class my mom taught, played a little wallyball, used the eliptical (which is cool for people that don't have a gym membership anymore), and met up with some friends. 

The rest of the time at home you would find Christina, my mom, and me playing games like these.

Sparklers can be fun!

Here are some more pictures from watching the fireworks on the 4th of July. Courtney Sharp has a new camera and she was having fun with the time lapse function. 

I'm doing the B, Courtney the Y, and Nathan the U.

I heart by Jordan and Christina

Sword fight

Independence Day Barbecue

On Monday, the 5th of July we got together with some friends to have a barbecue. We started at 5:30pm and it was still really hot out. But after we ate our yummy food we moved over into the shady area of the park. Here we are with Nathan and Courtney Sharp.

We also played Catch Phrase for a little while. It was very close, but the guys won again!

Bwood and Sarah (getting married in six days!) and Brian and Laura Olsen.

4th of July Celebration!

The day before the 4th we went to watch the Provo Stadium of Fire fireworks with Nathan and Courtney. We watched from the grassy area where DT used to be. While we were waiting we all played some card games.

As it grew darker we had some fun with sparklers. Courtney's camera had a time lapse button and we made some cool hearts and spelled out things like BYU with the sparklers. Maybe she'll send us one of those pictures! Here is Nathan playing with some fire.

And here is one picture of the fireworks. They were really cool. There was about a five minute period where they just stopped--but it didn't seem like the finale. We were all packed up and ready to go (many people had already left) and they suddenly started back up. I'm not quite sure what that was all about.