Wii Christmas!

It was a Wii Christmas at the Carter house. We really got spoiled with this new system and all the new games and accessories we got for it. Since I took this picture, we have bought even more, yikes! Even though I didn't get any pics of us actually playing (my parents even got in to a tennis tournament with us!) believe me, we have already gotten plenty of use out of it! Besides the Wii and all the accessories I was also spoiled with other gifts this year: cozy slippers, cute clothes, funny movies and TV shows, make-up, luggage tags, and gift cards. But my favorite gift was...

My new video camera! Two of the ladies in South Africa had these and I've wanted one since then. They can hold up to 60 min. on this tiny digital camera then you just upload it to your computer through a pop-up USB drive. So cool!

As soon as I figure out how to load videos on here I'll post some. (I have a black-mail video of Carlee in liquid leggings acting like the bad Sandy from Grease-dancing and all!)

I hope all of you had a great Christmas as well.

Winter Fun

I went to dinner with my best girls for our annual Christmas get together. We went to the Cheesecake Factory and even though there was 7 of us there, we only waited for about 30 minutes. We always have a good time when we are together. I have been friends with these girls since Junior High. Crazy!

Then a few nights later we went to the Nutcracker. It was supposed to be a mother/daughter night but there was a horrible snow storm and Lyndsi and her mom decided not to go out. Then my mom ended up being on her death bed with some horrible cold/flu thing, so it was the girls and Kelly's sister Paige and her mom. We still had a good time, there's something about the Nutcracker that gets you excited for the season!

I've Been Tagged!

I have been tagged by Mindi!
RULES
1. List these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

#1 This is probably no surprise, but I really do love to travel. I have been to six countries and a lot of different states. This year alone I have been to Hawaii, Disneyland 3 times, South Africa, and New York. Sadly, I think I have spent more on travel this year than on rent, it's one of the few perks of being single!

#2 I love dance! Ever since I was in elementary school in the "Petites" I have been a dancer! In Jr. High my friends and I spent every day of the summer in my front yard practicing our routines and cheerleading stunts. Any movie or TV show that has dancing is always one of my favs. I couldn't help but reinact the Rockettes and the Nutcracker for my roommates who didn't get to see either of those shows this year.

#3 I'm glad I teach fourth grade for one main reason: the 6th grade math was killing me. I'm not kidding, math was never my strong suite but some of that stuff I would really have to study before I tried to teach it.

#4 I am 28 and I can still do the splits!

#5 I am a hair twister. It's who I am. Anyone who is around me for any length of time will know that when I'm sitting, I'm twisting. I blame my mom (she twists with both hands) and has passed on this trait to my sister Hillory and Me. Have I twisted knots into my hair that I had to cut out? More than once.

#6 I have stared down an Elephant that was looking to charge, and won.

#7 Did I mention we went to Disneyland 3 times this year? That was because we became annual passholders in March. Have I comtemplated signing up again next year? Um, yes. It's the most magical place on Earth.

I tag Annie, Kelly, Hillory, Jenny, Emily, Amy, and Sharee.

New York Top Three

So we made it home from New York. I don't have lots of time so I wanted to post my top three New York memories.

3. Caution signs posted in the subway station for R.O.U.S.'s (Rodents of Unusual Size)

2. The window displays. I loved the Macy's and Sak's 5th Ave. windows that were geared toward kids, but the Bergdorf windows were AMAZING! They were all themed around Sworovski crystal and they had designers make one-of-a-kind gowns featuring the crystals. This one was my favorite. You can't see the detail, but the crystals are sewn on in the shape of snowflakes.

1. But, my number one favorite memory of New York was spending time with my sisters and niece. (And my parents and Nate!) This picture was inside Macy's. You can see some of the decorations, red arches throughout. They also had a great Santa's Village and the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about Elf, especially when Hill started to ride the escalator like him!

I will post more pictures from our trip later. I'm off to our friend party tomorrow night and then to the Nutcracker on Friday. It's hectic, but I still love it!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I came home from work a few nights ago to this: our Christmas lights were glowing, there was fresh snow on the ground, and when I went inside our fireplace (gas) was roaring! I don't really know if gas fires can roar, but you get the picture. It was so nice. I was kind of in a bad mood from having to finish up some things at work, but this cheered me right up. Then I started to remember something funny that happened that day at school. One of my students had gotten his hair braided into corn rows over the weekend. When we went to read with our kindergarten buddies, his buddy just stared at him for a long time then said, "How did you get those to stick on there?" It was so cute becuase he really wanted to know what this kid had on his head. Out of the mouths of babes, huh!

Chocolateering 2008

Well, we made it. We successfully finished our 6th annual chocoalte making session. For a couple of years now, a few of my friends and I have tried our hands at homemade chocolates. We have perfected a few recipes and have added a few new experiments each year. This is a three day process: The first night is shopping for supplies (we order a 10 lb. bar of chocolate ahead of time and that wasn't nearly enough this year!) The second night is making centers (this year we stayed up until 1:30 in the morning finishing.) The third day is an all day dipping event! Emily and Sam stopped by to help dip on Saturday. Here is some of the finished product before it gets packaged.

Pretzels

Caramellows, (a new experiment this year, thanks Martha Stewart!)

Coconut Whispers/Frosty Balls (we can't decide on a name!)

The Chocolateers: Carlee and Kelly

Al and Cyd

It takes a ton of time and patience, (we ended up making three batches of caramels and two batches of fondant before we got it right.) That was an expensive mistake, but worth it for the end product. But, in the end we love doing it and enjoy giving them to family and friends.

It's also a great way to get in the Christmas Spirit!

I can't believe I forgot!

I totally forgot the craziest part of our night, we were driving home from the Fesitval of Trees and as we turned on to Center Street in Bountiful we couldn't believe what we saw. There was a cat wandering down the middle of the street. We couldn't tell at first what it was, but we could see something moving on the road. Then as we got closer we had to come to a complete stop because he just walked right up to the car. We realized why as he got closer, he had a doritos bag stuck over his head. That's right, who hasn't had their head stuck inside a bag of doritos once or twice? I guess it was blocking out all light and sound, or the cat was an imbecile. Either way he was walking down the middle of the street and almost ran in to our stopped car.
Kelly got out of the car and pulled the bag off his head, (even though she hates cats and told us so.) As soon as she pulled off the bag he darted away.
Crazy!

Festival of Trees

I went to the Festival of Trees tonight with some of my friends. I haven't been in years and I had forgotten how much fun it was. There were quite a few Twilight trees, but this one was probably the best. There were gifts for each character in the book as well as ornaments with character names. This was my favorite tree. It was made of blown glass and had lights timed to music like the Bellagio fountains in Vegas. It was amazing!

Here we are at the BEST part of the festival, the snack corner. Seriously, chocolate dipped bananas for 50 cents. Delicious.

I was glad I decided to go, it really got me in the Christmas spirit. Now I just have to gear up for three days of chocolateering!

Go Jazz!

On Wednesday night my sister Alyson had some extra tickets to the Jazz game against Milwaukee. I went with my friend Quin and we had a great time. The seats were really good-lower bowl a few rows back from the court, and the game was good-they were down for a while, then came back to win at the end even though half their players are injured.
So, in honor of Kyle Korver who got injured after this game and couldn't play on Friday I decided to post this pic!
Cute, huh?

Twilight Movie Night

So we went to Twilight last night. We did have fun taking pictures in front of the Ducati and talking to the self-proclaimed "Chocolate Abs". None of the other girls would be in the photo shoot with us!
My review of the movie: I liked it, I didn't love it. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie based on a book that was better. We did have a lot of fun counting the number of times the audience cheered- (9 full on clapping and screaming cheers, with a couple of other times that didn't count because it was only one or two people!)
I'm not going to lie, I think the best part of the show may have been the Harry Potter preview!

Moab

We went down to Moab last weekend. It was a short trip but the weather was really nice while we were there. It's a shame that this is the only picture I took the whole time we were down there! (That's my brother Jake in the background, I'm not sure why he's making that face.)

Halloween at school

I realize it has been a few weeks since Halloween but I just got these pictures from my school computer so I thought I would post a few. I remember Halloween at school as such a fun time. I loved dressing up, even when I was in kindergarten and I was a thundercat and no one knew what I was, I still loved Halloween. Here are a couple of girls in my class after we had our school-wide parade of costumes. It was fun to see all the kids so excited. These are a couple of the boys in my class. They weren't as in to dressing up as the girls but they were ok with painting their faces.

We made oragami bats and yarn spiders. A couple of kids really ran with it and used every little scrap to make a whole bat/spider family so I had to take a picture.

Hope you don't mind my late Halloween post, and I hope everyone has the fond memories of Halloween that I do.

New York, New York

I knew I couldn't go very long with out a trip in the works. My sister Alyson has to go to some conference in New York in December and my parents were already going to be in Virgina that weekend visiting my sister Hillory so we are all meeting in the city for a long weekend.

I'm excited because Hill has never been before and my parents have only been for a day. Should be good times!

What's not to love about New York at Christmas time? The Rockettes, a broadway show, ice skating at the Rockefeller Center, I can't wait!

Where to go?

So yesterday when I went to vote I ran in to Joann Neilson and she was asking where I was going next? I was stunned to realize I don't have ANY trips planned. That is so unlike me. I decided to throw it out there and ask, "Where do you think I should visit next?" Please give me some great ideas!

Disneyland (Finally!)

We left over UEA break for California again. We were shocked to find out that the weather while we were there was going to be 86 for the high. It was SOOO nice to get some sun.

This is a re-enactment picture of Kelly at the airport. Her birthday was a few days before our trip and she hadn't realized her license was expired until we got to the airport. Luckily, she was able to get her passport to the airport just in time to board the plane. She did have to run through the whole airport and was frisked by security. We were so happy when she finally made it on to the plane.

This trip we brought along this hidden mickeys book to pass the time in line. Apparently Disney is famous for hiding mickey's throughout the park. We found quite a few of them.

This one was hiding on the ground just behind the "R" of the big California letters. This one was hidden in the tree of the entrance to our hotel, the Grand Californian. It was fun to have our own entrance to the parks and it was really nice to be so close. We loved hanging out at the pool, but I don't think we'll pay to stay here again.


We finally got to ride on the new Toy Story ride. It is a lot like Buzz Lightyear where you have things that you have to shot at but it's in 3D. We got to ride it twice while we were there.

We loved how they decorated for Halloween, everything including the letters was themed.

For staying at the hotel, we got a magic morning so we could go to Disney an hour before opening. It was a beautiful morning, and we finally got to ride Nemo. It was fun, but totally not worth the 7 hour waits that we saw last summer on opening day.

Toy Story the 2nd time.

Kelly had always wanted to get a turkey leg and this was her time. We thought she was disgusting for wanting meat on a stick, but she loved it. It did smell and taste suspiciously like ham though.

Minnie Mouse in her fall attire.


On our way back to L.A. we stopped at In-N-Out for a quick cheeseburger, animal style.

It was a fun trip, but it was very quick. I loved seeing how Disney goes all out for the holidays. I didn't post any pictures of the Haunted Mansion, but it was completely changed to the Nightmare Before Christmas inside and out. SO FUN!

Photo Tag!

This is my first blog tag so I'm kind of excited! Thanks Annie! This is the fourth photo in my 4th picture file on my computer. It's an oldie but a goodie! This was a disco murder mystery party with my family over Thanksgiving 2006. SO FUNNY! I especially love that my dad was a good sport and that my mom was channeling Cher!

I tag Hillory, Mindi, and Kelly to post their fourth picture in their fourth photo file on their computer.

Witches Brew Tea

On Oct. 22nd Kelly hosted the 2nd annual Witches Brew Tea. I love how decorative Kell is. She decorated her whole house with spooky birds and candles and such. We had a delicious dinner and the one requirement was to wear a witch hat.
I love getting together with my best girls and enjoying some delicious food. I especially love this time of year because of all the pumpkin treats. Em made a pumpkin roll and Lyndsi brought some yummy pumpkin cake. Thanks girls for the fun time.

Fall Fun!

My family has this tradition that we go for a drive on General Conference weekend. We used to take a picnic lunch, now depending on where we go we either stop or pack a lunch. This October we decided to get a condo up in Park City so we stopped at Schmidt's Bakery on 21st South for lunch.

When we got up to Park City, the girls did some outlet shopping and the boys went to Priesthood session. Then we all did a little hot-tubbing and played Apples-to-Apples.

Carlee and Kelly joined us. This is the loft where we slept. Don't mind the morning hair!

The next weekend Carlee, Kelly, and I wanted to go to Ikea so we decided to make a day of it and drive to Alpine to check out Dear Lizzie before going to Ikea since we were going to be down in that direction.

They had this star duster so we got little glitter stars on our cheeks. The store was totally worth the drive. SUPER cute, but also SUPER expensive.

After Ikea, we went to Gardner Village. They have all their witches out on display. We found lots of spooky witches and some really fun crafts.

After we left Gardner Village, we decided to go to lunch at Ruth's Diner. I lover their famous mile-high biscuits. It was such a fun day with two of my best girls!