Christmas Eve

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve. Spent the day mostly hanging out and relaxing. Em (the other one) & I did have some last minute shopping to finish up, the cold outside was much worse than the crowds so it wasn't that bad. Mom got rockband for her Birthday back in July, we haven't been here since than so yesterday we pulled it out and Alaina agreed to play with us. I think we make a pretty good rockband if I do say so myself!


We, Em & Em, decided to help Mom & Dad out and make the Pasta E Fagiole for dinner. We ate by candle light, and the soup was excellent!


Tradition in Mom H's family is to celebrate Christmas Eve, this is a tradition she has carried on. It was my first year celebrating Christmas Eve here and participating in this tradition. It was so much fun, the night started off with Dad playing Christmas Carols on the guitar, than opening presents from Oma & Opa. Mark got a beautiful glass and gold airplane ornament for our tree, thanks Opa! Mom also got a surprise....a NEW camera! Dad surprised her with it by giving it to her last night instead of today. She went picture crazy, so check out her blog for more pictures I kind of put ours away after she got hers. A tradition from my family, that Mark & I have to decided to carry on to our own family, is always reading a new childrens book that is centered around Christmas before going to bed and awaiting Santa Claus' arrival. This year my Mom sent us a book, The Miracle of the Wooden Shoes. Mark read it to us, it was wonderful. After this we gathered as a family and sang Christmas carols. As many of you know singing is not one of my talents, and I am usually very uncomfortable singing around people especially those who could be professionals. Marks family is very musically talented, I am not this has been hard for me to want to sing as part of the family. But last night I realized they don't love me as a wife, daughter and sister depending on if I can sing or not, they love me for me. So I stepped out of my box & sang out loud in celebration of our Saviours birth! What difference the spirits of the night had when the songs of the season were being sung into the air. As I was telling my friend Natalie on the phone later I ust wanted to shout to the world of the truthfulness of the Season and the Gospel. She than suggested we should be able to bottle this up for opening on hard days, so I hope each of can keep this spirit with us for those hard days.


Oh you can just click on our family & friends list Mom H to see her blog, I don't know if she's updated yet or not.

December 23

Of course we had to do a litte shopping yesterday, Mom and Alaina decided to try on boots at the Gap...but no chairs to sit in made it really funny to watch. They both may hurt me for posting this picture but it made me giggle so I'll take the pain.

I want all of you to know I went shopping yesterday and didn't buy anything!!! I know, I can't believe it either.

Last night Emily and Alaina had opera tickets to see Porgy & Bess downtown (they looked so classy all dressed up to go but I don't pictures, I'll try and get some from Mom's camera to post them), so we volunteered to take them down so we could spend some time with your great/awesome friend Cameron. We don't get to see him very often so any chance we have to go downtown and see him take. We had a yummy dinner and than dropped the girls off at the opera. After driving around for awhile we decided to visit the Kris Kindle Mart. It was really cool, it has booths and food from all over, mostly Germany. There was this wonderful cinnamon smell that Cameron and I kept smelling so everytime we would see a food booth we'd smell it. Sadly we never found the smell. We did find the Chocolate building, it was heavenly! We bought this yummy chocolate but I can't remember the
brand.


We had a couple hours till the girls opera was over so we decided on ice skating at Milenial Park, one problem so did everyone else. We opted to not join the mass of people moving on ice with blades on their feet. We wandered up to check out the "bean" and ended up standing on a terrace watching ice skaters for almost an hour. Its amazing the things you see people do when you are above them.




For some reason Sammy hasn't liked us till today, but now we are among her favorite. As soon as we opened our bedroom door this morning she had to come visit Mark.

We made it to Chicago yesterday afternoon!! We took a slight detour on the drive to the airport to see Matthew & Kristin's house, it is coming along beautifully. The constructions workers thought we were weird for taking a picture, how else was I gonna show all the progress to its owners without a picture.


The flight was great, and very quick. It is amazing what a strong tailwind does to shorten a flight. It is so wonderful to be with here with family!
The weather men kept saying that there was going to be a big storm in the Chicagoland area overnight. Alaina was super excited just knowing she'd get a snow day, I kept telling her not to count her eggs before they hatch. Alas this time the weather man was telling the truth,the snow fell deep so school was indeed canceled. Alaina is very happy, her and Mark are playing wii as I type this.... I think they may spend the whole day playing.



Dad and Mark were quick to clean the driveway and sidewalk off, once the snow stopped a bit. I stayed inside to enjoy the heater, so the pictures aren't great cause I took them through a window. One thing about Illinois snow that we don't get in the west is how packed with moisture it is or as Mark said very heavy to shovel.


Well I'm off to play with family! Have a great day!

Little Helper

Monday night Matthew and Kristin came over to have dinner and hang out before we leave for Chicago this Thursday, since they've been out of town since Thanksgiving it was so great to have our "cousin" time. Axton decided to help me finish up a few sewing projects for Christmas gifts.... no I'm not tell what they are, I'll post pictures later. Isn't my nephew so cute!!!

Nash

Sunday we traveled across the border to have a early "mini" Christmas with Dad & Mom Nash, Mike & Jessie and Miles & Sara. Since we will be in Chicago over Christmas. We did the name drawing gift exchange, which always fun, ate a yummy dinner and of course lots and lots of treats. My favorite had to be my Mom's fudge, I love that stuff!

As you can see below Mark is part of the "you'll shoot your eye" out club, he is the official owner of a BB gun. Yeah you guessed it, Miles had his name. It was a fun surprise and even though it was cold we had fun shooting it! Merry Christmas!

I don't have pictures of my gift but Mike had my name and got me sewing supplies: a large ruler and rotary cutter. Not to help me sew but just to make me happy there were fuzzy purple socks included to. I like the socks but I have been wanting a rotary cutter since I started sewing. Now I need a new project....

NO room

Today we went to church just like every other Sunday, in a hurry after getting the guys lunch, arriving in time to hear announcements... okay really we were late cause of my killer headache that turned into body aches and Mark dragged me out of bed at 1230, so making it by 105 was a great accomplishment. Now back to the title, Bishop Cottle stood up to make announcements and asked that we listen with both ears to the announcement he had, stop thinking our ward is bad people how often do you listen with both ears?!?! He proceeded to tell us how he and the other ward(s) bishops have been meeting trying to figure out the new schedule for next year. You see we are a USU student married ward but we don't go to a church building for student wards, most of our ward lives on the south side of the valley (basically Center St to the end of the Valley creates our ward boundaries) we share a meeting house with 2 family wards in providence. A few factors were mentioned, making a long story short, that would make it so we didn't have a building to meet after May. There just wasn't room for us in providence anymore. We are being moved to meet at our Stake Center with other student wards starting Dec 21. I am extremely excited for a couple of reasons, ~we'll be around other people our same age and maybe have combined activities or something which would rock! But mostly because this is also the building Jessie and Mike attend, and since they are shoving us into a spot we have to have the time of 130 to meet. Not a great time, but it is the same time as when my sister is there so we might get to see each other! I am really excited. I think most people in our ward groaned because the drive is now going to be longer like 20 or 30 minutes for them, I kind of wanted to shout (remember I am sick) for them to buck up and deal. My in-laws drive that far every Sunday! And many more members around the world travel much,much further than that. Luckily the bishop took the words out of my mouth. We won't actually be at our new ward building until after Christmas, we are gonna be gone till than. Anyway just had to share how we got kicked out of our building cause there was no room, don't worry though I get to see my sister now! oh and Mike to ;)

"I'm dreaming of a White Christmas"

Thanksgiving

So I am a little behind on my posting, but I am posting now so that is all that matters. We had a great Thanksgiving in Weston with Mom and Dad Nash. We started our day with our house duties in Logan, making breakfast. We decided a fun breakfast was in order since it was a Holiday so we turned to the Hendricks family cookbook and found what Mark is calling "our traditional Thanksgiving breakfast"

After breakfast we headed off to Weston. As tradition goes we spent the morning putting up Christmas lights with my family. There is one things that has changed since I brought Mark home, I no longer climb on roofs....I am rather grateful for this. I never realized how much it scared me till I had to climb up this year to hand Miles more lights. Not only do we get to decorate for Christmas, I love decorating for Christmas, but we get to spend a great amount of time laughing with my family!


With the lights up and ready to turn on with the setting sun we headed into to make the final preparations on the wonderful meal Mom made. Those of you who have spent much time around me know that I love to make pie, particularly French Silk and Apple. This year I finally figured out how to make chocolate curls work, with out
breaking and looking bad. Of course we had to have at least one opps moment. Note the picture below where Mom is vacuuming the set Thanksgiving table, this becomes necessary when the pepper shaker looses its bottom and a black/gray line appears on the middle of the table, but never fear Mom was there to fix it. Had it not been for my quick camera skills I wouldn't have been able to document it, that is how quick she is!

After eating ourselves to a stuffed point we relaxed for a few minutes before Dad rushed to chores and Mark and I had to run back to the house for Dinner here. We feel very fortunate to live so close to our family, we love you all!!

We got our apartment decorated that night, doesn't take long its only a 1 room apartment. Mark was so patient to string the lights on the tree, I love my husband. I will post pictures of the decorations soon!