iNovember

thanksgiving 2013

once upon a time it was november and it was thanksgiving… aka the beginning of all the delicious holiday food.

it was the first thanksgiving i haven't been scheduled to work in 3 years and i was very excited

(even though we put together a pretty good potluck thanksgiving at the hospital).

daw and i took advantage of being able to spend the whole day together with two thanksgiving feasts.

an early, elegant dinner at the kents, put on by diana, was first on the agenda.

it was marvelous and a great way to stretch out our stomachs and warm up with a few thousand calories.

next was a thanksgiving smorgasbord at the whittinghams, with 30+ people cramming into julie's house.

we impressed ourselves with eating another full meal, complete with a second dessert.

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i should do an in-depth list of all that we are thankful for, but lets be honest.  

it's january and i'm writing a post about thanksgiving and all i really want to do is make this short and sweet and get it over with.

so the top 5 things we are thankful for are (in no particular order)…

1. each other

2. our families

3. dash

4. the gospel

5. our health

i think between the 5 of those things, we are pretty much the luckiest people in the world.

friendsgiving

#thisisfriends friendsgiving 2013.

we may be a bunch of newlyweds but we put together a thanksgiving feast that would have made those pilgrims and indians proud.

we couldn't be more grateful for our amazing friends.
dallin & kate. winston & elise. ryan & nicole. steve & kayley. chase & nakita. gavin & jill.

however you will mostly just see pictures of the female parts of those couples, seeing as our husbands would prefer to reminisce about high school, discuss business, or talk about sports than take pictures.  weird, right?

but sometimes i can sneak in a picture or two with this cutie.  it's because of him that we have this great group of friends.

thank you brighton high school class of 2007!

hopefully this is the start of a tradition that will last until we're grey-haired and senile (even if the venue has to change to chuck-a-rama because we're too old and lazy to cook our own thanksgiving dinner)!

utah @ oregon

score: 21-44

i don't have fond memories of autzen stadium (the last time i was there i got more soaked than i ever have in my life… not to mention we lost), but we decided to make the trip to eugene anyway.

i went to dinner with my mom and the other wives when we got there, and then dawson and i contemplated going out on the town… and then thought again and decided that staying at the hotel and relaxing was a much better idea.  we are hermits at heart. 

the game was much drier than the 2009 game but the end result was the same… however it was much better than before because #1 dawson was with me,  and #2 our friends were there with us!

friends make everything better.  the nicols and the rices road tripped out to oregon and we couldn't have been more glad they did.  you have no idea how happy i am that we have friends who are utes.

it's hard to have lost 4 games in a row (i thought i was gaining weight from victory meals, but turns out i'm gaining weight from depression eating), and i know it's even harder on my dad, the coaches, and the players.  but we love and support them all no matter what (especially my dad).  it's always a good day to be a ute.

go utes!!!

utah vs asu

score 19-20

it was the salute america game so we got to show our american pride. 

the pretty sunset even cooperated as you can see from above.

however as you can also see in the picture above, our faces describe our feelings perfectly.

to lose by one point after being two touchdowns ahead in the 4th quarter… heartbreaking.

but everyone tried their hardest and cousin jason had an amazing game.

we are proud of those fighting for our country, and our utes who play their hearts out every week!

utah @ washington state

score 37-49

we didn't make it to this away game, because

1- i had a dermatologist appointment that i had made 3 months ago and i didn't want to miss just in case i ended up having a mole that was cancerous and i didn't want to wait another 3 months to find out,
2- grandma nancy was getting released from the hospital and needed a ride back to provo, and
3- pullman isn't the most desirable of destinations...

plus, we ended up watching the game at julie's house and she made as a mexican fiesta for dinner which was amazing.

we learned that our fear that us going to away games is bad luck was proved wrong, because we weren't there and we still lost.  i was really worried (but secretly hoping) that was the case and we would pull of a win and be closer to becoming bowl eligible.  but it was not meant to be.

one more game left in the season now to show everyone what the utes are made of!  i know they can pull it off.  bring on colorado!

angels landing

dawson has a very granola side to him that not many people know about.  he has been dying for months to go hike in zion and was very distraught when we couldn't go as planned in september because of that government shut down thing.  

now national parks are up and running again, so dawson made sure he put zion on the schedule for the weekend so that i had no choice but to go along with it (but i'm a little granola too so i was pretty ok with it).

we (but really dawson) decided to do the angel's landing hike.  as you can see we were very excited at the beginning of it all.  it might not look that high from the picture, but looks can be deceiving.

the fact that the path was so narrow at the top that they had to put chains on the mountain to hold onto wasn't that comforting.  neither was the fact that the chains looked about 100 years old.

this was the last part of the hike to get to the top of the peak.  again, it doesn't really look that narrow and i wish it did so everyone could be more impressed with our daringness. 

but when you are climbing on chains with a 1000+ ft drop on either side of you, your hands are bound to get sweaty and thoughts of falling to your death are very real (at least they were for me).

it was an amazing view from the top.  i really felt like an angel because i was so close to the heavens (joking).  i'm not really afraid of heights but dawson is so i was very proud of him for being one with his fear and making it to the top without any cursing.

it was also really windy and there were 3 or 4 different groups up there that were all foreign and were speaking in their own language.  after a few minutes i felt like they were looking at us funny and i started getting anxiety.  i told dawson i thought they were talking about pushing me off the edge, so we headed back down.

dang it.  our after pictures still don't do the height any justice.  but just know that my mom, who won't go on the ferris wheel at lagoon because of her fear of heights, wouldn't have made it even halfway up.

big thanks to dawson for making us be adventurous!!!

surprise weekend getaway

a few months ago we planned a trip to san fran for the first weekend in november, but it ended up not working out and we couldn't go.  i was so sad that i almost cried because i love san francisco and i love our family who lives there even more.

the weekend we were supposed to go came, and on that thursday dawson sent me an email with this schedule attached to it.  i was equally as excited for a vacay as i was impressed by his microsoft excel skills.  and he definitely deserves an award or gold star or something for being so amazing and planning a whole weekend out.

we made it to st george and easily filled up all of our "open" time with the following:

• going to the st george temple.  i've never been to that temple before and it was beautiful.  i almost made us too late for our session but i think god knew we needed some uplifting and we made it with about 3 seconds to spare.
• stopping by swig to get diabetes.  discovered the swig man is dawson in cartoon form.  i got a sugar cookie and immediate got a cavity.  dawson got a dirty dr pepper and if you can believe it that ^ was a SMALL
• going to the movie "ender's game".  dawson really liked it but i was a disappointed.  i've read the book no less than 10 times in my life and i just felt like they left too much out.  oh and we almost got in a brawl with a mom who was there with her two kids.  she tried to fight us for being in their seats when we didn't even know it was assigned seats, duh.  i was embarrassed for her.
• being very daring and eating breakfast burritos at a sketchy mexican place.  being very glad that neither of us ended up with violent diarrhea.

then into las vegas we went to bask in the 75 degree weather.  there isn't a lot for boring married folk to do in sin city, but dawson put up with a few hours of shopping and then we devoured a greasy cheesy pizza.

and then the best part of the day, the beatles love show at the mirage!  i love the beatles and have always wanted to see the show.  i laughed, i cried, i sang along (but not as loud and obnoxiously as the drunk girl sitting behind us did), and loved every second of it.

we finished the night off with some classic bellagio water fountain dancing and being amazed at all the crazy people you see on the strip.  some of the most entertaining people watching EVER.  then because my love knows me so well, we stopped for some nielsens frozen custard on the way home. 10,000 calories, mmmmmmm.

it might not seem like too thrilling of a weekend to most people, but for me it was absolutely perfect.  what can i say, i'm easy to please.  dawson knows the keys to my heart (warm weather and good food).

and no i didn't forget that there was one more day on dawson's weekend agenda!  but that deserves a post of it's own (plus i'm really sick of typing).  stay tuned!

dash diaries

this picture is of dash and i going for a run (walk/jog) in the beautiful weather.  why did i, the girl who loathes running more than anyone in this world, do this for dash?  well, besides the fact that the vet said that dash is 1.5 lbs overweight and he loves to prove he can run faster than me, let me tell you.

last night i had one of the worst nightmares of my life.  i feel incredibly ashamed even admitting this, but i dreamed that i got dash killed.  well, most likely killed at least. i am very concerned about what my self conscious is telling me.

in my dream i was a thief of some sort and dash was my sneaky sidekick.  we were robbing this gangster (guys, you know that dreams don't make sense when you tell them in the day time) and we didn't realize that he had a gun!  rookie mistake, i know.

dash couldn't run away fast enough and the guy SHOT HIM.  of course i dropped whatever it was i was stealing and picked up dash and sprinted outside to find the veterinarian.  i was holding my hand over the bullet wound and keeping the blood in to keep him alive.  

it was very "where the red fern grows" like and now that i'm telling the story it sounds very graphic, but it was really just so sad because he was whimpering and i was racing against the clock to find the vet.

and then the worst part.  i'm running down the street (which for some reason was a road from an old western movie with saloons and stuff on both sides) and before i can find the vet, I WOKE UP!  so i don't even know what ended up happening to dash.

of course i woke up crying and completely devastated.  thank heavens it was my day off so i was able to make it up to dash for subconsciously getting him murdered.  

he ate human food for every meal (not conducive to his diet, i know), i scratched his ears for a whole hour, we went on a run (as before mentioned), went to the dog park, and went to visit his best friend max. he might not have understood why he was getting treated like a king (i didn't have the heart to tell him), but i think that was for the best.

so i think we're even, wouldn't you say?  now i just need to figure out how to have happy dreams where dash can talk and i can fly, instead of these terrible nighmares that make me think i was an evil villain in another life.

all hallow's eve

being the hard-working, money-making woman that i am, i have worked night shifts the past 2 halloweens.  

ok i admit, it wasn't necessarily by choice. but i wasn't missing out on much, so i wasn't too disappointed.

this year however, we had a PARTY to go to, and i was lucky enough to only work a day shift.  

elise was the hostess with mostest, and threw the party at her dad's mortuary.  very fitting for halloween, right?

us and the millers have been working out like fiends lately, so it was only fitting that we were the biggest losers.

everyone else put together fabulous costumes, as you can see from the picture above.

and just in case you wanted more pictures from our married people party (i know you do...), here you go:

us wives are very adorable and festive, as you can see from our amazing halloween themed treats ^

seriously though, i wish that really was my butt. ^ i need a little more junk in the trunk.

much thanks to these old farts for throwing such a wicked partay ^

^ kayley and i really embraced the costume and ate enough sugar to actually give us diabetes.

happy halloween 2013!!!