Goodbye to 2012- every year seems to get better & better for us

2012 was a good year for us.
It was fun looking back over our pictures and remembering everything we did. Summertime is especially my favorite with camping & fishing trips, picnics & farmers markets. We went on a few vacations too. Not as many as 2010 though.
So here's 2012 in a nutshell:

Jan- We went to Lava hot springs with friends.

me & cute Teri at the hot springs

 Feb- Valentine’s day & the “14 days of Valentines” that I surprised Mic with every day until the 14^th.  Mic’s birthday & I made him a nice quilt. Scuba dived for the first time with Mic, Laura & Alex.

March- My birthday & shopping in Park City. I went to Florida & Mic went to LA.

April- My cute mini schnauzer passed away. We'd had the privilege of having Duncan for 12 years.

old picture, back when I was in high school but I love this dog. 

May- Celebrated Sophie’s first birthday on 5/5. Laura got engaged. Started remodeling my mom’s house so it could go on the market soon to sell. (lots and lots of painting).

June- Went to Mace’s high school graduation. Volunteered at the Arts Festival. Lake Powell with the Ashby’s.

July- Every month I volunteer with Planned Parenthood, but July was fun with the booth at the Farmer’s Market. Got accepted to nursing school!!

Aug- Colbie Callait concert. St George girl’s trip to see Aladdin. Found out I got bumped up a semester for school & started nursing school 4 days later.

Sept- Mic & my dad went to Alaska. My best friend Michelle had her baby & I made a cute quilt.

Oct- Weekend away to Park City. My mom sold her house & moved in with us at the end of Oct.

Nov- Cirque Du Soleil with Tifanie- craziest thing I've ever seen!

Dec- Aced my first semester of nursing school. My mom’s house got finished & we helped her move in right before the holidays. Lots of time spent with family. Temple lights & zoo lights. 

Helping her move in a snowstorm

Excited to see what 2013 brings- besides Mic graduating from Utah State's Accounting Program & me from Nursing School :) 

Zoo lights

I've been loving having free days from school the last couple weeks. It's going to be hard going back to waking up early & my commute but I look forward to being back with my school friends. Mic's also been off work (his work has paid time off from Dec 22-Jan 2) so we've been loving having so much free time together.
Yesterday we went to Zoo Lights for three dollar Thursdays.  Every year I want to go, and then something comes up. It was pretty cool, I wish more of the animals were out. The snow leopards and Bengal tigers were out though.
It was cold and snowing but we bundled up and I wore my cute new snow boots that I got for my birthday clear back in March. We only had one pair of gloves between the two of us, so we each wore one and held hands and then put the ungloved hand in our coat pockets. It was genius, LOL.
It was hard to get good pictures since it was snowing & dark & the camera on our phones isn't that great at night. Plus taking pictures of the two of us ourselves always looks the same, so we didn't take a lot.

hot cocoa & a churro- with my one gloved hand ;)

After zoo lights we headed to "Christmas Street", a street in Sugar House that has a lot of Christmas lights on the houses and yards- so they've deemed themselves Christmas Street. I thought it was funny that one of the houses on the street had absolutely zero lights. All the rest even had a string of lights connecting each house to one another.
We headed to Market Street Grill to get Clam Chowder to go. They have a special going on where you can get a pint of soup, potato/pasta/or cole slaw & bread for a great price. Unfortunately they were out of bread. The guy at the counter didn't want to sell me the soup & potato salad for the special price since they were out of bread & it was suppose to be a bundle- he wanted me to pay the separate price for the two, which is higher than the special price. I thought that was dumb- and had to argue with him to give me the two out of three for the special price. He didn't seem to get it. So annoying. But we finally came home & had delicious clam chowder which was perfect on a cold snowy night.
Mic wanted to make a bread/sausage/breakfast casserole that you make the night before & let it soak in the fridge and then heat up the next day. So we had extra cubed toasted bread squares for that that we ate with our soup. So yummy.

We need some more fun activities for the next week before I go back to school. Any suggestions?
PS We'll probably see the Hobbit soon. Mic had been trying to get me to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the last 10 years and I kept refusing. Somehow he ended up convincing me & we watched all three over the course of three days. I was surprised by how much I actually liked them, but if he wasn't there to explain everything every 10 minutes than I probably would've fallen asleep. For Christmas I bought him the book boxed set of the hobbit & the three Lord of the Rings. He read the hobbit in two days!

Happy Holidays!

Christmastime this year was so fun. And I didn’t have to work Christmas Eve (first time in 7 years!) or Christmas day this year (since I worked it last year, I have this year off)!

Mic’s family always gets together on Christmas Eve- which is nice, that way on Christmas day we don’t have to visit three families in one day, which would be a challenge to coordinate everyone’s schedule.

The Ashby’s do dinner, reenact the nativity story with singing, and reading scriptures about Jesus’s birth, and the grandkids all dress up and play their parts (Mary, Joseph, wise men, sheppards, and an angel). This year we had a mini musical program as well since so many people in the family are so talented when it comes to playing instruments. For some numbers we had a whole string quartet! (2 violins, a viola, and a cello.) Afterwards we open presents in our name exchange.

Mic & his mom headed to clear the snow at  his grandparents house down the street. 

4 wheeling on Christmas Eve :)

All the grandkids minus Austin, playing the Wii. No one wanted to stop what they were doing for a picture so I had to quickly take this one. 

Some of the boys playing with the train set.

Cute Jaden was trying to get his great grandma & grandpa to play with the trains too. 

String Quartet playing Christmas music.

 Christmas day I woke up way too early. While Mic still slept I read part of Mic’s mom’s journal. (This year she typed up some of her journal entries over the years and made a book out of it for all of us. She added family photos too.) It’s fun reading about the Ashby family growing up, and especially reading about how Mic was when he was younger. Some parts of his personality now are still the same as he was described in the journals growing up- if that makes sense? Anyway it makes me smile.

Soph & Jack wanting to open their stockings

Soph got three new toys- a hedgehog, raccoon, and squirrel that  all squeek. She's obsessed. 

me & soph. 

After Mic and I exchanged our gifts for each other, and let Sophie open her stocking of toys we headed to my mom’s. We got together at her new house with my mom’s side of the family for brunch and opening presents. 

cute cousins

Cute cousins

Posing with our new Christmas clothes from my mom

Laura & I always get the same gifts from my mom- which we love. And this year she included the boys in matching outfits. Too funny. So we tried them all on for a picture. 

Christmas day evening we had dinner with my dad and grandma. I also introduced the family to the dice game Farkle, which Mic and I have played with friends of ours. It is such a fun fast paced game. Lots of laughter ensued. And my Grandma beat us all!

This year was perfect, and there was no drama with splitting time and holidays that sometimes comes from having split families.

I felt so blessed to be able to spend time with such great friends and family. We sure have a lot to be Thankful for.  

Holiday Craftiness

Last year I made cute Christmas cards to send out to friends & family. This year I made a simpler card. I still like it though. I love all the family photo cards I've been getting in the mail & they are displayed on my fridge. I cannot wait until it is more than just me & Mic & the pets & then we can make fun family photo cards to send out for the holidays ;)

 ^^Laura helped me sew on the lights on my Christmas Trees. ^^

We also got together with our friends for our annual Christmas house decorating night. Except this year Mic wanted to make the houses out of rice krispies instead of gingerbread because we don't like gingerbread & so last years house didn't get eaten. Although a rock hard rice krispies house doesn't sound overly appetizing either. I found a recipe online for the house & assembled it all by myself- including measuring the walls & roof & everything. Go me. Following a recipe & measuring.. who knew? Not like my usual "wingin it" style. I'd never actually made rice krispie treats it turns out. But the house turned out well for the most part & we took our already assembled house over to Becky's to be decorated. I thought that was the plan, coming with the house already put together- but apparently we were suppose to just come with the rice krispies made. For some reason Becky & Aubrey's rice krispie treats were too gooey so the walls wouldn't stay together. But regardless it was fun to visit with them. Lots of laughing that's for sure.

Add caption

Jared & Aubrey & their "UFO"

Becky & Jared & their Mayan Pyramid

Moving Day

I finished my first semester of nursing school! I can't believe how fast it went by. I remember being so stressed the first week- not with the tests really, but just starting something new. I seriously wanted to quit that whole first week. And I probably would've if I hadn't paid tuition & knew that I wouldn't get it back. Well maybe not really quit because I've worked so hard to get to this point but I was definitely way stressed out & lost 10 pounds in that first week. No joke. But the first semester was good. I loved my instructors & my classmates. And I aced my 3 classes, so that was nice. I also applied for & was awarded a partial tuition scholarship for next semester, which will help a ton. I miss working full time way more than I imagined.
Mic did well in his classes as well. I don't know how he does it all, but I'm grateful for his hard work. He only has one more semester left!

It's finally starting to feel like winter & Christmastime, now that it has snowed A TON! Overnight it dumped like nearly a foot, I swear. Our cars were buried.  And today was my mom's moving day, so snow or shine we moved her into her new house. The company we rented the POD from almost wouldn't deliver the pod because they said they couldn't park it on the street since it snowed & they'd get fined by the snowplows. And since her driveway is still new ish we couldn't park the heavy pod on it because it could cause it to crack. Luckily we convinced the pod people to leave the pod for 2 hours and we'd have it all unloaded (instead of having it until Tuesday). So we hauled everything from the pod into the house & garage in record breaking time, all while it was snowing.
I love her new house. I keep having weird dreams about her old house though. I hope the people who bought it love it.
Ps I'll have to take pictures of Mayson's crazy man cave (he's taken over the unfinished basement). Weirdo. Oh and if anyone has a ping pong table he needs one :)

Mace and Mic shoveling the driveway & sidewalks before the unloading the pod began. Her house didn't get nearly as much snow as ours did. 

Hard to tell but it really was snowing. 

Alex & Mace's friend Bob helping unload

the kitchen with counter tops, still need the fridge

fireplace/mantel. Love.

master bath

master shower

Master sink

legos. barbies, beanie babies, tonka trucks.. all  saved for future grandkids :)