Christmas and snow snow snow!!!

SO Christmas was yesterday and yes i am typing this blog from Nick and I's new computer!!!!!! We love it. It is so fast and it is amazing to think that all of this time we were missing out on the fastness( is that a word?) that was out there:) Not to mention the amazing ease that it provides with having card readers right on the outside of the computer tower i don't even need my camera cable, i can upload pictures like nothing. Here is some pictures of our shopping experience, and the computer actually set up in our now clean office. ( i refused to set up the computer until we had re- organized the office, because it was just pretty much a storage room for nick's hunting stuff which was everywhere.....)

Anyway so we ended up getting a nice Christmas tree. It was more $$$$ than we expected, but i guess that is what we get for living in Idaho and trying to get a oregon looking tree right? So we went on Saturday the 13th and drove around tree hunting. We had originally planned on going out to cut one down but it was blizzarding and we went with plan 'B', the lots on in the grocery store parking lots...... well crazy as it may seem, rexburg didn't have any of those... so we decided to drive to a gas station that we had seen selling them between rexburg and rigby. So we drove up and looked around. This is what we found... well this isn't the exact tree but this is what it looked like...I MISS OREGON TREES!!!!!!!

So we were like, well there really isn't much out there so these really are not too bad right? so lets go find out how much they are. We went inside to ask the guy and he told us it was 25 for the shorter ones and 35 or so for the taller ones!!!! WE though he was kidding at first because seriously these trees looked like branches that were just cuts off of a big tree that you would see in my back yard in Oregon.... and they wanted 35$$ for the branches that fell so freely in my parents back yard... i laugh and the guy looked a little offended, we just told him we were used to Oregon trees and that this was not something we were used to calling' Christmas trees'. Don't get me wrong we were nice, but this guy was a little older gentleman that reminded me a lot of scrooge... well kinda. He went on to tell us that those tree's were amazing for Idaho and we were not going to find anything better. Anyway the other guy working the counter followed us out and told us about a place we could go to get a better cheaper tree. So we went to the place he told us, and the lady went on to tell us that they only had 4 left and they were little guys, they looked kinda like this:

So we laughed when she told us 40 $$$$ Well to make a long story short we ended up paying about 35 $$ for this tree:

It was way more than we wanted to pay but it was really all there was out there that was this decent. The funny thing way that she said they shipped the trees in from Oregon like three days before that... ahhhhh an Oregon tree.... So nick and i had a fun time decorating it, and re- enacting scenes from the last office episode....

MY HORN CAN PIERCE THE SKY!!!! man i love the office, it cracks me up. For Christmas we got lots of snow, i mean lots of snow, the difference between Oregon and here though is when we get this much snow nothing closes down, they just plow it and expect you to get to church, in Oregon you better have food storage, because you are snowed in and NOTHING is open, not even gas stations! I can't believe oregon got 16 in! that is record for Oregon, i sure do miss it, but i am glad that i am not snowed in. Here is some snow that was in our front yard....

Nick and I slept in Christmas morning and then ate some cinnamon rolls, and made our way over to the tree to open presents at about 10 or so, I think this was nick's first year sleeping in ever on Christmas... it was fun to just have it be us though. Then we lounged around the rest of the day until about 5 or so and we went to heather's and keith's for Christmas dinner. It was SSSOOOO good, Keith made a Delicious ham that i literally couldn't stop eating , and there was rolls, mashed potatoes, salad, and cheesecake and cinnamon rolls, um it was awesome...... but i am still full today ha. So here are a few pictures of that.....

So now nick and i are just hanging out enjoying our time off of work. We both are pretty much the only ones staying around in our apartment building and a lot of the people in our ward went home for Christmas too, so naturally we both have big things to do for Sunday. Nick got asked to do a musical number in Sacrament meeting, and i get to teach R.S. which i have never done and i am nervous. Anyway i will update again later, we start school in about 2 weeks!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited even though i will be taking about 16 credits, which will be hard, i am so excited because i am enrolled in a bunch of dance classes, for my new dance major i got into, i am nervous for some of them but so so so excited at the same time. Thank you to everyone who helped to make Nick and I's Christmas special, being in school things get tight with $$ and we had a lot of things come up at the last minute, we are just so grateful for family and friends who really look out for us and care for us, we wouldn't have been able to do it without you..we are so blessed and really enjoyed christmas together this year..... happy holidays... we miss all of you in Oregon!! - amanda

It's startin' to smell a lot like christmas???

Hey ok i know i am really bad at keeping things updated on this blog i really should write more here and post more fun pictures... I will try to recap quickly but A LOT has happened. I think my last post was about my first item for sale on ebay... well yep that was exactly one month ago... and TeAr... the necklace didn't sell. but hey it's all good maybe next time. Um, lets see lately things have been shall we say interesting not too mention a little bit chaotic:) ok the good stuff first thanksgiving was yummy, we went down to georgetown on wednesday night and stayed with my grandparents it was fun, and we had quite a few rounds of sequence, turns out they even in their aged years ( :) ) are quick and pretty much kicked nick and I's butt's at it.... but none the less it was fun anyway. The next day we drove down to preston which i thought was in Utah for some crazy reason but it is close at least. but it was good and was a filling day:) the only sad part was that we didn't get to take any turkey home... no leftovers that was sad, but we lived on some rolls i brought for about two days afterwards though. still...grrrrrrrr..... um no this is not the turkey we ate but it looked really yummy... and it's fried! really want to try this some year... has anyone tried it or know how it tastes i bet it is waist widening bliss...:)

OH, yes well i saw the twilight movie, and i had mixed feelings about it. It probably didn't really help that I finished reading the last 1/4 of the book to nick about two hours before the midnight showing that we went to, but i practically had that book memorized. It was hard watching it and not seeing parts that i had visualized in my head a million times, and knowing that a line by a character was coming up only to never hear them say it, but all in all i think it was ok, i just don't think that i will be staying up until 3 in the morning with the midnight showing with the second one. I thought they casted most of the roles very well though. I thought alice was perfect.. Did anyone else see rosalie a little differently though? She was a pretty girl but i just thought it was not quite what i had pictured, but look up pictures of her on google( her name is Nikki Reed) and she looks amazing. I had no idea that her natural hair color is brown, check this out:


It doesn't even look like the same girl. There were some cool photos though of all of the cast pre- twilight makeover at this address:

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0S020likDxJ3TYBmRijzbkF/SIG=124gmuoj9/EXP=1228792290/**http://www.flickr.com/photos/15grl07/3022999875/

It is fun to see what the cast looks like before they got all made up for their roles... i know im a little obsessed but i promise i don't just look up pictures of them all day online..... I will move on to the next topic....

So Nick and I have had a few fun things happen. So about 2 weeks ago i did a load of laundry and i noticed a small dripping sound right at the bottom of our washer. So i took a look and sure enough a leak. So i stuck a towel under it and it was soaked in minutes. So i turned off the water and unplugged the washer and waited anxiously for my handy dandy fix it man husband to hurry home and work his magic. So he took it apart and diagnosed the problem and had it fixed that night. No problem right? We even did a test load to make sure and it worked fine. So my sister lives in a building where there are coin operated washers and dryers ...blah...... so we let her and her hubby so their laundry at our house. So while I was at work on monday the 24th I get a call that the washer had flooded our apartment and that the carpet in the hall and beginning of the living room were wet. So I got a shop vac after work and tried my hand at sucking up some of the water.. But there was SSSSOOOO much water. Every one of our towels was being used to soak it all up, and there was still puddles of standing water in the kitchen. The water had sunk under the transitions to the carpets and was wet to the office, into the bathroom, and to the window in the living room, so pretty much all of our carpet except for our bedroom. So we were a lot bit frazzled and having a really hard time figuring out how we were going to get all of the water out. So i began ringing out the sopping towels and re- using what i could while sticking the other half in the dryer so we could re- use them as well. Well we called our manager and they had the carpet cleaning company over within 20 minutes and we cleared out all of the furniture in the living room, thanks to the Pratts our neighbors who acquired another living rooms worth of furniture while we got things taken care of. They used crazy sucker machines and sucked up tons of water probably close to 75 gallons!!!!!!!!!!! Um thats enough water for a small trough.....




Then they pulled back all of the carpets and stuck huge fans under them to help dry the carpet pad. Well this went on for about 4 days of drying, and it stunk, really bad.

I never imagined walking into my home during the start of Christmas season and had it smell like a hotel smoking lobby, i have no idea why it did smell this way but the glue or something when drying just made the place smell horrible. So we Tried to make the best of it, and played many a game on the floor, while waiting to move our furniture back in.I even learned how to play poker, using our bag of collasal berry crunch ceral as money... All the while i dreamed of cinnamon sticks and hot cocoa smells trying to block out the fumes that we were probably not supposed to really be inhaling;) Well long long long story short, the washer is not yet fixed and laundry is getting taller by the day, and they just re-stretched the carpets after a week and a half of them being dry, still need to be cleaned though. Also the worst part of it i think is that we are being told that we are going to have to pay for the water extraction and carpet re-pair/ cleaning. We thought WHAT!!! so we did our research and really don't think we should have to pay for this. It is still in the process and not going well but this has differently been a humbling experience. Ha just the other night we REALLY needed some clean bath towels so i filled up the bath tub with hot water and soap and did some laundry the old fashioned way. I even used a spatula to "churn" the clothes with. It really reminded me of that one scene in the old Charlie and the Chocolate factory movie when the mom is doing that load of laundry in that big tub with that giant stir stick, i just wanted to burst out and song while doing it and really make the moment feel the same but i couldn't remember the words..lol. But thanks to great neighbors and friends Nick and I are at least able to wear a clean pair of underwear everyday.. well most days....J/K oh my gosh just kidding, just kidding, just kidding......but we only smell a little...:) but it is differently a experience to realize how blessed we are. It has been a interesting experience to allow us to grow closer to each other and our heavenly father. So next week on Saturday WE ARE GETTING A CHRISTMAS TREE!!!!!! I can't wait and i will write a blog about our fun experience then. I can't wait for that pine tree smell to take over the evil carpet glue aroma.. until then, in remembrance of our wonderful apostle Joseph B. Worthlin who passed away recently, Come what may and love it.........