HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

“Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays,
‘Cause no matter how far away you roam,
When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze,
For the holidays, you can’t beat home, sweet home”

This Christmas would be another memorable one for our family! For it was the time that we let everybody know the big exciting news! WE’RE PREGNANT!

There’s little Peanut! We are so very excited. Currently Mandy is due June 29th, 2011. So this Christmas we decided we would tell the whole family the good news. They were all so excited and we feel very blessed to begin this new chapter of our lives.

                     

For Mandy’s Christmas present she was sent on a little treasure hunt within our condo ending with 2 tickets for us to go see her brother and their family back East in Boston for a week. After opening presents from each other we then traveled from house to house visiting family and celebrating the joyous holiday. Colton took all of the old home videos on VHS that his parents have kept for over 25 years and transferred them all to DVD and gave each of his parents a copy of which they loved!

Mandy Loved her “Future Soccer Mom” T-Shirt!

During the holidays we each have Birthdays to celebrate in our families as well. Colton’s twin sisters Brooklyn and Danielle on Dec. 26th and our niece Cayenne was also born the day after Christmas. We had fun and we are so grateful for each one of them. Brooklyn received a Kindle and Danielle a new Blu-Ray player from the family. Cayenne is a true princess so it’s no surprise what the majority of her gifts were.

   

Anyway we hope your holidays were as memorable as ours. We are so excited for little Peanut to arrive! Merry Christmas!

35 IN THE SNOW

It was our good friend Luke’s Birthday last Saturday and we were invited to celebrate by taking a little snowshoeing hike up Little Cottonwood Canyon with some friends. We have never been snowshoeing and thought that it would be a fun experience. We rented some snowshoes and headed up for our adventure. Boy did we like it! We had an amazing time. We snow shoed down a trail across a field and over to some boulders where we would climb up and jump off. It was a complete riot!

Colton pulled a 360 off his jump!

We had a great time. It was unfortunate that we had to leave early and weren’t able to stay longer. Poor Nicole ended up breaking her foot on one of the jumps. That stinks. Colton took Luke to his favorite restaurant Rusted Sun Pizzeria downtown and then we all met up and went and saw the movie “127 hours”. We really liked it. It’s a great movie. Colton wants to read the book. We hope that you had a Happy Birthday Luke! Love ya buddy!

            

We only had Colton’s phone for the video and pics so it’s not the best quality but good enough!

HAPPY TURKEY DAY

Thanksgiving weekend is always such a fun time. We absolutely love getting together with family and giving thanks for the many things we are so fortunate to enjoy. We feel very blessed. It’s especially fun because with 3 households to travel to we stay pretty well fed throughout the holiday. We began this years festivities with Thanksgiving dinner Wednesday evening at Colton’s Dad’s house. He is such a great cook and there was so much good food to go around. Although the food was great, it was to soon be overdone by the traditional Pie Contest that Colton’s family does each year.

The first year that we held the contest Danielle took 1st, Colton 2nd, and Mandy 3rd. Last year we thought we entered some award winning pies yet again, only to discover that we would be snubbed by the judges out of the awards. This year we were hoping to at least place in the top 3. Just 1 of us. Since there is a considerable amount of prize money ($300 for 1st, $200 for 2nd, and $100 for 3rd) the money would sure go a long way towards our Christmas budget. Colton decided on making what he called a “Winter Candy Apple Pie” and Mandy made an orange cream type pie which she so eloquently named “Kris Kringle Creamsicle Pie”. Here’s a picture of what they turned out to look like:

          

The pies were judged on “Presentation”, “Uniqueness”, “Crust”, and most importantly “Taste”. We had about 5 volunteers come from around the neighborhood to do the judging. After some nail biting Colton ran away with 1st place by a large margin putting his claim to fame as a Pie Contest Champion and earning the much elusive Chef Jacket. Tami (Jeanne’s daughter) took 2nd and Danielle once again finished in the top 3. She is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to baking. What a great time!

  

Early the next morning Colton was pumped up for the Turkey Bowl. He was invited to go play with Kyle up in Woods Cross at the indoor soccer facility which was a lot of fun. The below freezing weather appeared that it might spoil the outdoor game with friends but Colton forged ahead with the football plans.  He met up with the brave few from the ward and some others to get a good group together for football. He loved it!

Our next stop was to the Mather’s home for Thanksgiving dinner with Mandy’s parents. We brought along some good friends of ours whose family lives out of state; The Hohaias and The Oliphants. Nobody should have to spend Thanksgiving by themselves right? That evening Colton and Steve made plans for Black Friday and went over to Target at about 9:00 pm to be ready for the Doorbuster deals at 4:00 am. They camped out all night in the below freezing cold! CRAZY!

If you watch close you can see Colton in his red Utah hoodie about the 10th person rushing in

They rushed the store and were the first to checkout. From there they went store hopping until they were dead tired. Mandy went shopping with friends as well and scored some good deals. Black Friday is the best!

Sunday we got together with our dear Momma Bear and Grandmother Virginia for yet another Thanksgiving Dinner. We also made our traditional predictions for the new year. We’ll see how they go. We had a great time and we are so thankful for our loving family. We feel very very fortunate to have the opportunities and freedoms that we enjoy and we give thanks to God for all that we are blessed with. Hope you had a wonderful Turkey Day as well! Gobble Gobble…

SUCKERS FOR SOCCER

Just as the title says it, we are “Suckers for Soccer”. We love playing and in fact it’s one of the things that brought the 2 of us together. The first thing we ever did together aside from saying “hi” at work to each other was play in an indoor soccer game together. From there the rest is history as they say… We play indoor together on a couple of teams throughout the year but when summer rolls around that’s what we really love. Outdoor! Colton has been on a team called Olympique Montreux for a couple of years now and loves it. Last year they won the Premiership League, Division 1 League, the Park City Tournament (for the 4th year in a row) and also the inaugural State Super Cup! They’re pretty good. haha. Colton even made a website for them: www.olympiquemontreux.com This year Colton was Captain of the Division 1 and led them to another Division 1 title as well as played in the Utah Open Cup Championship and also State Super Cup Championship yet again. Both of which they won. He loves taking photos whenever he’s not on the field. Here’s a few pics of the team:

   

 

Mandy played on St. Patricks FC womens Dividion 1 outdoor team of which she has been a part of for a few years now. They’re very good and Colton loves coming to the games to support and take pictures. This year they won their league in “runaway” fashion as well. Go Mandy!

 

  

 

As you can tell now we truly are “Suckers for some Soccer”.

UTAH vs NOTRE DAME

Colton traveled to Minnesota for work the other weekend. He even got to spend a whole day at the Mall of America right by the airport. So jealous! Anyway after the trip they caught a flight to Chicago and made the drive from there to South Bend, Indiana to watch the Utes take on Notre Dame. As we all know the game didn’t turn out too well for the Utes but Colton loved the trip anyway. He said the football tradition there is really cool and it was a lot of fun being able to go to the game. Utah vs BYU next!!!! This is probably the 1 thing we fight about. haha

BOO! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

           

It was a very wet Halloween here in Utah but that didn’t stop us from having a great time. We went to Cornbellys out at Thanksgiving Pointe with the Mateers the other weekend and had a blast. Colton bought a coupon on KSL that basically got all 4 of us in for about $16 rather than $32.

The corn maze was extremely muddy but it was fun and we managed our way through it in about 45 min. This year it was in the shape of the Boy Scouts of America logo celebrating 100 years of scouting. Just check out the mud we tracked along:

  

We had a great time!

Halloween weekend we held a costume party with friends up at the cabin. We didn’t do one last year but if you recall it was 2 years ago during our Halloween Trip up to the cabin when Colton proposed. We were Peter Pan and Captain Hook that year. Colton woke up early and we took a little hike with a treasure map to where he finally proposed. It was very memorable. Now every time we go up to the cabin especially during Halloween we can’t help but remember that special weekend.

This year we invited all of our friends and we had a great time up there together. It was a little colder this year than in the past but not too bad. At least bearable enough to go outside for the traditional Donut eating contest. We even gave out awards for costumes. Colton won funniest costume with his UFC Mexican fighter atire. Lindsey Newsome took home “Most Original” costume and the Williams family ran away with “Best Overall”. We played some fun games and watched some pretty creepy movies.

  

             

The next morning the Trones came up to meet us at the cabin. We went for a hike and even got to have some fun on the zipline again. Good times. We love going up to the cabin and having a great time with everybody. Happy Halloween!

This was pretty funny:

Zipline Blooper!