Light Parade

Last night our cute little town had a light parade down Main Street. We got all bundled up in thermals and hats and made some hot chocolate to take with us and went to enjoy the parade. Unfortunately we were a little late getting out there so we missed about half of it, but the last half was cute. Cars and trailers and boats were all decorated with lights and people and they were throwing out candy like the 4th of July! It was so small town-ish, but fun. At the very end Santa and Mrs. Clause came riding down the street on motorcycles.

Chris all bundled up. (he didn't really wear that hat outside)

One of the trailers all decorated. Crappy pics, but you get the idea!The light parade made it feel more like Christmas here. It has been very hard for me to realize that it is December and Christmas time. It is hard when there is green grass outside and no snow! But we bought a little 3 foot Christmas tree to put up in our place. We don't have room for a bigger tree and we definitely don't have room to store anything bigger, so it's perfect! And I finally got to put up the cute Christmas decorations that we got for our wedding. And we hung all our ornaments with paper clips :)

For fun Chris and I play Yahtzee a lot, it's a great 2 person game. However, Chris rolls yahtzees like no other! Tonight he rolled a yahtzee on his FIRST roll! I had to take a picture it was so unbelievable!

So unfair! I only win about 2 out of every 10 games.

And in our countdown until we are home for Christmas we have 15 more days! And I'm also beginning to believe that the ward choir will not be performing the Sunday before Christmas, which means we could have flown home earlier! Very UNCOOL.

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend! It was so fun to be home with family and friends and to see everyone again. It was a pretty quick weekend for such a long drive (12 hours each way) but it was fun. Chris and I both got sick in Salt Lake and are still recovering and getting our voices back. We were super busy the whole time we were there but we managed to do just about everything we wanted to. We ate at Cafe Rio the first night we got there and played our favorite game, Rook, a couple of times. We also played solitaire, settlers of zarahemla, mormon bridge, uno and yahtzee free for all during our break. I went shopping at midnight with my sister and sister-in-law but was too pooped the next morning to get up at 5 am. Chris got to play ball with his friends like the good old days. I got to go to lunch with all the girls in my family, and we babysat my niece Savannah and played with Cambria too. We got to see Katie and Stain and all of Chris's friends. We played a lot of games with the Lowe's and had a party with my family for the BYU/Utah game. The 12 hour drives were pretty brutal, being long-legged and crammed into a small car, next to each other. Plus being sick on the drive back to Oregon made it pretty miserable. But it was so fun to be with friends and family again, we've missed everyone a lot. We will be back in Utah in about 2 1/2 weeks, but this time for 2 whole weeks! We are really glad we decided to fly home for Christmas, even if it means that we can't spend too much money celebrating our 1 year anniversary.

I only managed to get pictures of my nieces, who I'm obsessed with. Bana and Bre watching Beauty and the Beast. I just love this little "tude" Cambria is giving me because this was like the 5th picture I took of them.

Bana (folding her arms) and my dad at Thanksgiving dinner.

Man, they make being 800 miles away really hard.

It is actually getting pretty cold here; Chris had to scrape frost off the windshield for the first time this morning. And unfortunately we decided to leave our winter coats in Utah until Christmas break, thinking we wouldn't need them here but we might after all! Chris only has 1 1/2 weeks left of school and then finals! This sickness hit him a lot worse than me and he has a hard time studying when he doesn't feel well. Coughing is what we do best right now.

The fact that Chris is almost done with this semester is exciting because that means he is 1/4 of the way done with the hard years of optometry school. At least that is how I am looking at it, 4 years is too long! Hopefully next semester will go as fast as this one has and hopefully I will be a little busier. No, not hopefully, I WILL be busier. That's a fact!