Merry Christmoose

It was great. This post is an homage to my new camera, which is awesome.

 Love my parent's tree, especially when it snows on Christmas Day.

Becky and John have the prettiest Christmas house:

Presents!

 Sometimes people get matching coats and hats...

 Grandma helped Moose open his present.

 Rawr.

Love my boys.

Yay Christmas!

Birthday Endings

Michael's birthday is over. Now we can all come up with Christmas presents for him. Remind me to never bear children in December. Michael's actually very fun to shop for--I take it all back.

 I made dinner. After late night Hobbit, 2200 student papers and my usual job, this should be documented in the books as an incredible feat of gift-giving. I made gnocchi and brussel sprouts and by golly he liked it. It just doesn't seem like much though, since Michael has been doing everything else around the house. He did all the laundry, got an oil change, cleaned the car, did dishes, and made the bed. Dang girl! He also chose to reorganize the kitchen (yep, he truly is bored and no, I don't know where anything in the kitchen is anymore).

I individually wrapped each dvd set, to make it seem like he had a million presents. He figured it out after the second box though...

Here's James going through the radiation showers.

In a Hole in the Ground there Lived a Hobbit

The movie was good. Our costumes were probably better. If Tolkien were still alive he would have to write the tales of Thumper and Dumpy. Those were the names that my mom gave to us. I'm pretty sure that I'm Thumper....nah, that's probably wishful thinking.

Our beards were the result of a conversation a few weeks ago.

Mandy: Sarah! The Hobbit is coming sooon! Are we going to dress up?
Sarah: Psh, yeah. I like to think that I'm an elf, but I'm probably a hobbit.
Mandy: I should borrow my friend's cloak! (Yes, Mandy has pretty cool friends that have cloaks.)
Sarah: Nah, we're not hobbits.
Mandy: What are we, dwarves?
Sarah: YES!

 

Then we hatched a plan, which mostly consisted of telling my mom to make us beards. Just kidding, we helped.

It was pretty fun. I should mention that Michael already owned that hat (what?).

Popcorn in the beard--a common problem.

Gandalf looking cool? or a member of ZZ Top?

That's so meta, dude.

Some of us don't need costumes to look like hobbits.

Thanks for the super fun day, Peter Jackson.

Birthday Beginnings

People asked me what Michael wanted for his birthday. Without hesitation, I said A GLOBE! For some reason when we were moving into our apartment and assessing what we needed to buy (like a kitchen rug or an extension cord). Michael decided that what we needed for our apartment was a globe. It was apparently a 'need.'

Anyway, he had to wait until his birthday, but here it is. He opened it excitedly, and found his brother in England....and then he learned that it lights up!!!

We also found New Zealand right away due to our current Hobbit enthusiasm and honeymoon aspirations.

Dam, That's Impressive

My mother claims that the last time I went to the Hoover Dam, I was "a pill" and thought that it was very boring. In my defense, I was thirteen and was therefore conditioned to think things were boring and be "a pill." Michael and I thought it was pretty cool, but Moose thought it was boring (he wasn't "a pill" though--he's always jolly) since he had to stay in the car. They built this bridge a few years ago, which doesn't look like much when you're driving over it, but it's sort of amazing from below.

I'm happy that we have family members that live in random parts of the country, so that we can visit them and see impressive things along the way. I just which they could simultaneously live here...

He likes bridges. Maybe that comes from growing up in the desert and thinking that a bridge is the ten feet of concrete that goes over Jordan River. 

Michael seems to be explaining something in this picture, or perhaps he's about to start a Hoover Dam sing-along. I seem to be tired. Yeah, this isn't the most flattering picture of me, but I didn't trust Michael to take a picture without either falling off the edge or dropping my phone.

Swimming on Thanksgiving

Jealous? If you are jealous, I'll just admit to you that it was very, very cold. Here's a slew of pictures--I'm so sad that we're packing up tonight to leave in the morning.

Water dog.

 

Scaredy dog.

Poor guy. He's a...cautious swimmer (that's code for wuss). We kept throwing him in the pool. Hmmmm, maybe he'll just be scared of us now, instead of water.

Too cold for babies. So this one just sat to the side, lookin' cute.

 






Thanks for the swell time, Arizona!

We Be Trippin

We've been in Arizona for a few days now, trying to keep up with Michael's nieces and nephew. It's been so nice to spend days in the playroom and sunshine instead of in cubicles.

We spent the night in Southern Utah to break up the drive (15 hrs!!). Moose loved that king size bed.

Here he is, in the lap of luxury/a cheap hotel, sticking his tongue out at the commoners.

We set off, full of a gross continental breakfast, only to sit on the highway for about an hour. Bummer. Moose and I got out and ran around in the sand for a while, which drove all the dogs in the cars absolutely bonkers. It was a little surprising that no one else got out of the car--maybe they weren't as thrilled as I was to be on vacation. I took this photo while people stared, just for you, blog reader.

Versa commerical?

Grand Canyon! Michael had never been here before. We were hunting around for someone to take our picture, which was actually quite difficult because 1) I'm overly shy when I need someone to take a picture 2) English wasn't the dominate language for 90% of the people there. We saw a basketball team and I awkardly asked, while Michael awkwardly tried to get Moose to hold still. Then the entire basketball team started giving the volunteer photographer advice. So, we're smiling while 12 highschool boys shout suggestions like "get out of the shade of the tree" and "you can't even see the dog from there". Well, they were right. You can barely see Moose's doofy smile and we are in the shade of the tree, but I still like the picture.

I loved it.

Hopefully we can visit the Grand Canyon sometime when we go more than 20 ft below the rim.

Hot air balloons outside of Pheonix. That made the last bit of our drive a little more interesting.

I'm so happy to be here. Thanksgiving dinner is tomorrow for us. Woot!