Saturday, December 29, 2012

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and everything in between

Hello all!

I've been pretty bad about posting lately, I know.  Honestly, besides these past 2 holidays, my life has been pretty boring.  Sad story huh?  But I figured I should probably play some catch up while I had the time, so here goes.

For Thanksgiving, my grandparents, 2 sisters, and I headed to Colorado to spend the holiday with my mom and everyone else that lives there.  We stopped at some pretty cool rest stops along the way.  One included a little museum and gift store:





Another had some other pretty cool, stuffed animal type things:


One of my goals is to stop at all the scenic overlook, museums, and other things like that between here and my moms.  There are TONS of stops like that in the short drive and they all look really cool.

So once we got to my mom's I got to see my 4 brothers: 2 of them humans, and 2 of them dogs :)  I love all 4 of them, but there is a special place in my heart for one "small" puppy in particular: Jake.


He's a cutie isn't he?  We brought that Jake sized bone with us as a Thanksgiving present :)  

One of my favorite things about Colorado is that they sell the worlds BEST ice cream: Blue Bell.  Utah doesn't sell this ice cream, except at the Provo Beach resort. And even there you can't buy it in cartons to take home.  My mom forgot to buy some vanilla Blue Bell ice cream, so my little sister and I made a grocery store run and entered blue bell paradise, or at least as close to Blue Bell paradise as we can get without being in Texas:


This is how every ice cream aisle in every grocery store SHOULD look.

Ashley and I bought the vanilla ice cream, and then picked up some Dutch Chocolate for ourselves. Seriously we can't get enough of this stuff.  Blue Bell's homemade vanilla ice cream is the ONLY vanilla ice cream I will eat with no toppings, so that's saying something right there.

The rest of Thanksgiving was pretty chill.  We just hung out at home and attempted to do some shopping on Black Friday, with very little success.

After getting back to Utah and hanging out and working for a few weeks, I woke up one morning to snow.  This is not that unusual, so I just cleaned off my windows and drove to work.  That day happened to be pay day, so after getting my check from work, I decided to go cash it.  I went back out to my car and did some more snow cleaning off.  While doing that, I noticed that the hood of my car looked to be popped. This struck me as a bit odd so I checked it out.  Much to my chagrin, the hood was NOT popped.  Someone had hit my car!!!!  It had happened the previous night while I was parked out on the street. So I had to call my insurance company and go through all that hassle of getting my car repaired, getting a rental car, and all that other good stuff.  Thankfully I had insurance because the damage to my car was about $1900 worth.  I only had to pay $100 though.  While I was pretty upset that some jerk face hit my car a few weeks before Christmas, I had to remind myself that there wasn't a whole heck of a lot that could be done other than repair the car and move on.




Yeah I was not a happy camper

Needless to say, this really put a damper on Christmas.  I've been a bit stressed with money since I haven't been getting a ton of hours at the studio these days.  To have to fork over any extra money, even if it's just $100 bucks for the repairs and $70 for the rental car, is not an easy thing for me to do right now.  But I'm getting by for now.

For Christmas, Zane and I spent the day at my Grandparents house.  But not before we bought a little Christmas tree and opened all of our presents for each other at midnight.


Zane also surprised me with a dozen roses, which was awesome :)  They were just 1 of the awesome presents Zane got for me.  One of the presents Zane got, which I don't have a picture of yet, is a BEAUTIFUL 3 stranded pearl bracelet.  And we are talking REAL pearls!  I've never had a piece of super nice jewelry before, so this is a great start to a collection :)

Christmas at the grandparents was nice, but quiet.  Normally for Christmas, my entire family is there and the festivities start at 6 in the morning.  With it only being Zane, my grandparents, my sister, and me, we opened presents at 11 and just hung out casually for the day.
My sister in law made all of us aprons.  My grandpa and I are just modeling ours.

Zane and Me on Christmas.  You can kind of see the bracelet he got me.

After an excellent meal and a relaxing day, Zane and I left the festivities to relax for the rest of our day off.  I just want to thank all of my family for making Zane feel included (via presents and welcoming him in with open arms) when he couldn't go back to Illinois to be with his family.  You all better get used to him being around! 

It's been a great holiday season so far.  Stressful, yes, but awesome all the same.  I'm so thankful I have a wonderful family and boyfriend that make up such an awesome support group for me.

Until next time!

~Tara