our first christmas.

We had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner with the Carter's. This year we had it a little more low-kay and casual because our group was cut in half due to missions and other family obligations. It was still a great time though to celebrate the holiday with our good friends. 

After the Carter's left we opened our Christmas Eve presents - pajamas. Kacey and I got to be twinners this year in our super awesome "saturday pants" that I pretty much live in. 

Later that night Nick and I headed back to our place and finished up all our wrapping. Luckily Nick is quite the wrapper (serious) so I had a nice little helper to get the job done. Nick may have made fun of me though because I have OCD and had to make tags for every present - including all of his. But hey, he knew this when he decided he wanted to marry me:)

When we were done wrapping we called it a night because we knew we were going to have to get up bright and early to have our own little Christmas before heading over to my parents to talk to Zack when he called from Africa. 

Seemed like 7:30 crept up on us and we tiredly got out of bed and enjoyed our own little Christmas together. It was so fun to have a little time to enjoy Christmas - just the two of us.  Talking to Zack was great - he had actually surprise called me on Christmas Eve (technically it was already Christmas in Ghana) and it was so fun to be able to talk with him.

After our phone call it was off to church and then we spent the rest of the afternoon with Nick's family. We were on the go almost all day but I personally deem our first married Christmas a total success. Christmas is all about being with the ones you love - and that's exactly what we did.

white elephant party.

Last year I must have been way more outgoing because I planned a couple different holiday parties as excuses to get all our friends together. Somehow I totally spaced them this year. Good thing Miss Kennedi was on the ball and decided to put together a night full of friends and white elephant gifts. It's always so good to get all our friends in one place. We had such a fun time catching up and eating lots of yummy snacks. Thanks Kenner for throwing such an awesome party. I think you win party hostess of the year!

1 year ago today...

Nick asked if I'd be his forever and ever and of course I said yes! That day was full of weird sneaky behavior (on Nick's part), tears (on my part), phone calls and texts, and so much happiness. I can't believe it was a year ago. It will always be one of the best days of my life. I don't think I'd ever been so happy until that point. Little did I know that things only got better from there.

birthday week.

My birthday celebration sort of occurred over the span of a week instead of just one day - thanks Mom for teaching me that birthday celebrations can last longer than a day. It started when we took a journey north for the weekend. The main reason for the trip was to get all my invites photographed for my new website (hopefully to be launched and blogged about soon). Nick didn't want me to go alone so we decided to make a weekend out of it. We took off Friday night after Nick got off work and drove through a blizzard for most of the drive. Driving through a blizzard in a Mini Cooper was not the most exciting thing I've ever done in my life. Luckily we survived, thanks to Nick and his awesome driving skills. I can't imagine if I'd have gone up by myself and had to drive through that. I probably would've just pulled over and let the snow bury me. We had a really fun weekend though. We stayed at "Hotel de Platt" (thanks so much Mikki for letting us invade your home) and spent all of Saturday afternoon shopping. Just so happens it was our 6 month anniversary that Sunday so we decided to head on up to Gateway and go on a little shopping-plus-dinner-and-a-movie date...the very best kind! It was freezing that night so we bought ourselves beanies to help keep us warm. The Christmas lights at Gateway were great - so great we decided they should probably count for Temple Square (I know, we're such slackers - but we're from the land of warmth so this cold was not welcome). Overall, it was the perfect anniversary/birthday kickoff weekend.

Actual birthday day was a little more low-key. Nick had just gotten back from a 2-1/2 day job in Malibu so he was pretty spent. We slept in, went and got me some chunky cinnamon french toast from Kneaders (drive-thru style cause we slept in), lunch at Durangos, Christmas shopped, went to our niece (still weird to say our niece) Kiley's dance recital, and wrapped up the night with dinner at Pasta Factory with our friends. 

My 23rd birthday was good to me. Thanks Nick for spoiling me and letting me shop til I dropped.

our christmas tree hunt.

Obviously this will be our first Christmas together and we want to make sure it's one we always remember. What better way to start off the Christmas season than to chop down our own Christmas tree? (Answer: There is no better way.) So the Friday after Thanksgiving while everyone else was fighting over TV's and anything with a discount at every store in town, Nick, Tripp and I decided to go and find ourselves a tree. 

Just by bringing Tripp with us qualified this as an adventure. He was a little excited and had a hard time containing all his excitement. But I was pretty excited too since I had never had a real tree before. The original plan was to drive up Cedar Mountain and find a tree and actually experience snow but Tripp and the truck we were in sort of complicated things so we opted to head to Pinto instead. Nick took us on this trail that I swear to you was only meant for 4-wheelers - not Ford Rangers. I thought for sure we were going to end up getting stuck out there with no service and no way to get out. But the Ranger pulled through and we pulled off the trail and hiked to find a tree. Tripp ran around looking for any trace of snow he could find and would either eat it or turn it into yellow snow. It didn't take us too long to find our small tree and cut it down. We thought we'd gotten the ultimate Christmas tree - but it took us a few days to realize it's more of a "desert tree" than a Christmas tree. We don't mind though, it's still ours so it's perfect. 

That night was spent listening to a She & Him Christmas Pandora playlist and decorating the tree. Sure it took 3 trips to Target to get everything we needed, but we got the job done. Our very first tree is everything we ever wanted and it makes our home smell like Christmas.