Christmas with the Burnett's

     Christmas got to come a week and a half early for Paul and I this year. Paul's brother Peter is getting married on the 27th of December in South Carolina and all of the family is going to fly back East for the wedding, so we had Christmas with the Burnett's early so that we would all be here together.
      Most of my teenage years I was not all up and in the the whole Christmas spirit thing, but ever since I have gotten married and essentially started my family with Paul, I have loved the Christmas Season and everything that comes with it. Anyway, this weekend we got to celebrate our Christmas together. It was kind of weird to think about open presents on not Christmas, but it was so fun to have the family all together.
      Even Eric and Amanda were able to be with us on "Christmas" with their two cute kids Sage and Milo.

     Today we opened our presents and Santa was even able to accomodate and come early for us. As far as presents go, Paul and I received some wonderful gifts. We are very grateful for all of the wonder things we were given today. Paul and I got sleeping bags that zip together. I am so excited to go camping and be able to zip them up together. Sage is almost two and it was so fun to see his expressions and reactions to everything that was going on. It has made me even more excited for our future children. I hope they will always enjoy time with their families the way I enjoy it now.
     Julie wanted all of us to sing a song in sacrament meeting, so we practiced for an hour yesterday and then pulled it off in sacrament. It was very spiritual to have everyone together singing of the Savior. I am so grateful that I was asked to help sing. It was a testimony to me of the Savior and his love for everyone.
     I still have a week of school left before I am on Christmas break. I know it is only five days of school, but I think I am going to be just as stoked for Christmas as the kids are. I surely hope that we can all stayed focused enough to learn something over the next five days. Then Paul and I will get to celebrate Christmas again with my side of the family before we leave on a plane for South Carolina and Virginia.

Only five more days... I can do it.....maybe... :)

Thanksgiving Break

    YAY! Its that time of the year when families and friends gather together for food, memory making, and great company! Paul and I were lucky enough to visit our families here in Salt Lake. We spent Tuesday Night (11/20) with Paul's family. Paul's dad makes chocolates so he snatched us while we were visiting to help him make some of his deliciously famous hand dipped chocolates. We spent actual Thanksgiving with Paul's family. We did come visit my family before dinner and after. Paul played in a turkey bowl with my dad while my mom and I did an intense kick my butt workout. After dinner, we met here to have a late celebration of Paul's birthday, and figure out our plan of attack for Black Friday shopping.

     Walmart opened this year at 8:00 PM with all of their deals, so of course we had to be in on all the good stuff! We got there at about 7:40 with plans to split up and get what we needed to done. Paul, Tallus, and Lena all fought their way through the DVD selection while my mom and I got PJ pants and some clothes figured out. My dad was the set of wheels. He dropped us off and found some parking so we didn't waste time with that. When the sale finally started at 8:00 we had everything we needed and were checked out by 8:30. We did awesome.

     Paul had planned to get his laptop this weekend, (the one that I told him he could have for his birthday). He decided the store that he needed to get it from, and at around 11:30 left to get in line. Just in case there were tons of people showing up. Paul said he sat in front of Staples for almost 6 hours and by the time the doors opened there were only 15 people in line! I am glad I didn't have to sit in the cold for that long. My little brother loves me enough to have some "male bonding time" with Paul in the freezing cold weather. While it did stink that Paul had to waste 4 hours of his life, he was grateful that he got his "precious" laptop.

      Paul has spent the last few days trying to figure out how to use windows 8, and getting the hang of his cool new toy. We were able to visit with some of my friends from high school  (Courtney Leonard and Alyssa Mustoe) and see Breaking Dawn together, (I was a huge Twilight junkie in high school). It has been so wonderful to have time to relax, enjoy life, and spend time with family and friends. Its crazy to see all the changes that happen within our family, but I love it at the same time.

Paul's Birthday Bash

     Today we had an early birthday celebration for my wonderful hubby Paul! I am awful at keeping secrets from Paul so I figured I would save him the hassle of trying to keep a surprise party from him and just plan a regular ole party for friends and family in Cedar City to come to. I told him that if he really wanted a birthday party he could set up an invite on my facebook. Thats right, I made my husband set up his own birthday party event on facebook. I am an awful wife sometimes. Its ok though because Paul still loves me. I did want to give him a little bit of a surprise, so I decided to not tell him what I was going to do cake wise.

    I had planned to give Paul a few spring form pans for his birthday (I know its cheesy, but he really needed/wanted a new laptop so that was the plan for his main present. I still felt like Paul needed something smaller to open on his actual birthday). Back to the cheesecake pan, I thought to myself, "I should make an awesome cheesecake with Paul's new cheesecake pans!" Then I thought, "Paul might be a little bummed if I use his present first, but I know he loves cheesecake, so I guess I am just going to have to use Paul's cheesecake pans before he does."

     I got my best friend Lisa Walters on board to help me cook this cheesecake. Of course, I had looked on pintrest and picked the exact one that I wanted to attempt to make, now I just needed a distraction to keep Paul from knowing what I was up to. The easiest way to do that was to steal Lisa's kitchen for several hours. Paul got left at home to do homework while Lisa and I set to work in her kitchen making what I hoped would be an amazing recipe.



     We finally got the cheesecake cooked and cooled and decorated and it turned out quite fantastic! I had never made a two tier cheesecake before, but I have to say that the cheesecake turned out far better than I thought my hands were capable of making. All of our friends at the party raved about how good the cheesecake was, so I thought I would post the recipe just incase anyone wants to try it.

His party turned out lovely. We had family and friends over for pizza and games. Our friend Tricia Keeler totally gave the cheesecake surprise away on accident but it was great anyway! Paul still acted surprised so that made me happy :)













Delicious Cheesecake
               Crust
1 1/2 cups finely crushed Graham Crackers
1/4 cups walnuts
1 TBSP sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)    

For crust: in a bowl mix the graham crackers, walnuts, 1 TBSP sugar, and optional cinnamon. Stir in the melted butter. Press the crumb mixture into the bottom of a spring form pan either an 8" or 9" pan.

               Filling
2 - 8 oz packages of cream cheese
2- 8 oz packages of sour cream
1 cup sugar
2 TBSP flour
1 tsp vanilla
3 slightly beaten eggs

For filling: in a large bowl beat the cream cheese, sour cream, 1 cup of sugar, flour, and vanilla with electric mixer until combined. Stir in the eggs.

Pour the filling into the crust lined pan. place the pan in a shallow baking pan and bake at 375* for 40-45 minutes for an 8 inch pan and about 45- 50 minutes if you used an 9 inch pan. The cake is done when 2 1/2 inches around the edge of the cake appear set when gently shaken.

Cool for 30 minutes. Remove the sides of the pan and cool the cheese cake completely. Then chill for at least 4 hours before serving.



  

Murder Mystery Party

     For the past two years Paul and I have done a Murder Mystery party with our friends for Halloween. Last year it was 1920's Chicago Caper themed. This year, we had a Hawaiian Luau! It was a hoot, thats for sure! Because Paul and I did a Hawaiian Luau wedding reception, we had TONS of decorations to deck out our apartment with. By the time we took the pictures all our awesome decorations died, but before everyone came over they looked pretty cool! :)
    We have made really good friends with our neighbors just up the sidewalk from us, Ray and Shay Martel. They introduced us to the Ada and Dion Munk, (who used to live right by us also), and Aaron and Taylor Remer. We have developed some awesome friendships with these three couples so, when you get all of us together, there is no telling what will happen. Paul and I thought that it would crazy fun if all of us were together trying to solve a murder.
     Paul got to dress up like a hawaiian tourist, I was a native Hawaiian hula dancer, Shay was a bodacious swimsuit model, Ray was a surfer dude, Taylor was a ridiculously rich, fancy woman, and Aaron was Chief Wiki-Wiki. You can guess by his name that he was the island chief right? Anyway, the food was great, the company was great, and it was so fun to see how everyone got into their characters. By the end of the night, we had a murderer, it was one of our six guests, but I am so not going to give it away. If you want to know who was the killer, you gotta play the game!

      This is the whole crew all together! Don't we look like a crazy bunch of people? 

A few days before Halloween Paul and I decided to carve our pumpkin. We had grown our beautiful pumpkin in our garden and had waited a few months to be able to carve it. Anyway, we were having a hard time deciding what to carve. Paul wanted one thing I wanted another. Finally, we came to an agreement which involved bringing out the geeky-ness in both of us.

      Two hours later our beautiful masterpiece was complete. It wasn't as perfect as we wanted it to be, but it was still pretty sweet!

Bringing Home the BABY!

       As some of you may know, Paul and I found out that we were expecting in late August. We were told our little bundle of joy would be joining our family Mid October. With so little time to prepare for the arrival, we had to work quickly to get all of our preparations in order.
      Two months later we drove to Salt Lake for the long awaited edition to our cute little family. We went into labor at about 10:15 on Saturday morning. Thankfully it wasn't as bad or long as we were expecting! An hour and fifteen minutes later we had our beautiful baby!
      Name and gender are soon to come, but look at this, isn't it beautiful?

Family Picture Fiasco

       I have been bugging Paul for the longest time to take family pictures and even though we don't have kids yet, I thought it would be fun to take some pictures of our cute little family. Paul hasn't been too thrilled about the idea of pictures, but several weeks ago we were shopping for clothes and Paul found the perfect shirt to wear for pictures. I was kind of excited because after that I knew he was on board!
      I asked Paul's amazing cousin Nicole to take our pictures, and we set a date. As over done as it is, I really wanted to take pictures up the canyon with the changing fall leaves; and even though it snowed up the canyon the night before, I was still determined to get those fall pictures taken.
      Paul had never been up Cedar Canyon to the place where I wanted to take pictures, so we drove around a little bit looking for places where we wanted to take pictures. We kept driving up and up and up until we had pretty much gotten to the top of the canyon and started going down the other side. (Might I add in that whilst we were driving up and up and up we splashed through at least three ginormous puddles that repainted the truck brown!) Anyway, at that point we decided it would be a good idea to turn around and go back to the picture sites that we thought were really good. We flipped a U turn and started going up so we could go back down the canyon. We were started up a semi flat hill when the truck just slowly died. Power was still on, the radio was running, but the engine turned off for some reason! Of course I was dressed in super cute clothes, and shoes that couldn't really get muddy, and of course the truck happened to die right in the middle of a huge puddle of dirt and snow; so naturally Paul got to get out and look under the hood to see what the problem was. Nicole and I tried to make the best of the situation by taking some silly pictures.

     While he was checking things out, I was frantically trying to get service on my phone. When Paul got back into the truck with no news, I was trying not to psych myself out. We were in the middle of no where, no cell service, no clue what was wrong, and no clue as to when the next person would drive along. We couldn't think of anything else to do but pray. After our prayer we tried to start the car. It didn't start. We tried to push the truck enough to get to a down hill so we could coast, and that didn't really work either. So we sat and waited, hoping and praying that some kind soul would drive along and want to tow us.
     About fifteen minutes later our prayers were answered! Someone came driving down the road. We flagged them down and asked so nicely if they would tow us down the mountain. Paul and the boy
from the other car hooked up the tow straps and we started off. After five minutes of us being towed, Paul attempted to start the truck and... it started! We waved our saviors down and told them that the truck started and had been running for a good 5 minutes or so, so we told them they didn't have to take us all the way back down the mountain. After we unhooked the tow straps and waved our goodbyes, we continued down the mountain as well. Since we hadn't taken our family pictures yet we decided we might as well do it since we were up there already.
       Paul pulled the truck off to the side of the road at a cute spot and turned her off. We took some really great pictures and then loaded back into the truck to move on to the next picture spot. When Paul tried to start the truck it wouldn't start... AGAIN! As you can guess we felt like idiots for not towing the truck all the way down when we had the chance. We were on a pretty good sized hill so we gave the truck a little push and coasted down the mountain.

      We still had a few spots that we wanted to take pictures at, so we coasted to them, made sure the truck was sitting at the top of a down hill, and got out to take pictures. Nicole Golden did a fabulous job  with our pictures. They all turned out really great. Anyway, after we had taken all the pictures we wanted to up the canyon, we prepared ourselves for the adventure we would have as we tried to get back down the canyon. The road was steep enough that we were able to start coasting down without pushing the truck at all. We actually sped up to at least 30mph, the problem with that was, the brakes were really tight and the steering wheel was tight as well so we couldn't turn or slow down very well. We hit a flat spot where there were cows in the road. We couldn't slow down or we could get stuck on the flat spot. We prayed that the cows would stay put and also that no cars would be coming the opposite direction of us so we could drive on the wrong side of the road to get around the cows. We successfully passed them and continued down the mountain. Pretty sure we may have hit a bird in the process though, because it seriously flew right in front of the truck!
     When we got to the section of the road that T-bones we were hoping that there wouldn't be any traffic coming so we could coast right through a stop sign and not lose momentum. When we got to the split, there were at least 6 cars coming in either direction. We stopped the truck and waited for traffic to clear. Since we stopped on a flat spot, the truck wasn't going to move anywhere without help. Nicole and I jumped out of the truck and started pushing from behind. When we had achieved a pretty decent speed we jumped in the back of the truck so we could keep up the trucks speed.
       Clearly I wasn't thinking about the weather when I jumped out of the truck to push, because I left my coat in the car. While we were coasting down the last half of the canyon I was freezing in the back of the truck! When we got closer to the bottom, a cop pulled up behind us and started following us. Nicole and I flipped out a little bit because we weren't sure if we were going to get in trouble for sitting in the back of a pickup while driving down a highway. We pulled into the canyon park parking lot and the cop just kept on driving. *phewf* dodged that bullet!
       When we started driving up the canyon this morning we had no idea what sort of an adventure we were going to have. Can't say that having a car break down is an adventure I would want to have again, but it sure was something that I won't forget!

Here are some of the amazingly cute pictures that Nicole Golden took for us!

Conference Weekend

Paul and I thought it would be really fun to spend general conference with our families in Salt Lake. We also thought it would be fun to take our neighbor Angelica and her son Gavin with us. Little did we know how eventful of a weekend we were going to have!

My dad gets season tickets to the BYU home games, and Friday the 5th there was a BYU game that Paul wanted to go to. Because Angelica and Gavin were coming to SLC with us we all decided to go to the game together. Paul bought me a legit BYU shirt and Paul, Angelica, and Gavin all wore theirs so we looked like an awesome bunch. The game was quite intense. Neither of the teams did well on the offense, but they both played a heck of a defense. We were sitting right in front of some hard core USU fans who were yelling and screaming at my dad for no reason, (probably because he is really good at cheering on his Alma Mater). I took it upon myself to yell louder than them for BYU every time they were trying to cheer on USU, (my lack of voice three days later has been an awesome reminder). Thankfully BYU won. It was a close game with an ending score of 6-3.

After the game (12 A.M.), we all drove up to Paul's parents to get some shut eye before our crazy Saturday. When we arrived at his parents house, the front room was filled with an air mattress and lots of pillows and blankets. Paul and I were to sleep on the air mattress in the middle of the family room, Peter, (Paul's brother), would be sleeping in the family room also, but on the couch, we stuck Angelica and Gavin in the spare bedroom down the hall, and poor Jessica, (Peter's fiance), was banned to the basement to sleep. We also had Paul's parents in their room, and Eric, Amanda, Sage, and Milo crammed into the basement as well. Needless to say, the Burnett house was literally a full house!

Saturday morning I convinced Julie and Jessica to go running with me. We took a lovely, leisurely, 3 mile run around the park before breakfast. Rex prepared a fabulous breakfast, after which, we all sat down to watch conference. After the first session of conference, (which was amazing by the way), we took Angelica and Gavin to Temple Square to see the sights and ride Trax. We parked at City Creek and walked around the mall for just a little bit before we went to the temple. Angelica had never ridden Trax, so we jumped on and got off at the next station just so she could say that she had been on Trax. We had to walk further to the temple than we would have if we hadn't ridden the Trax, but it was kind of a fun experience with them.

While we were at the temple I felt the Spirit so strong. It was so amazing! I was trying so hard not to cry in front of everyone but my feelings were so profound I had to wipe away a few tears. We walked down the street where all the protesters were to get to the North Visitors Center. Also on that street, amidst the protesters, many LDS people lined the sidewalk and quietly sang hymns to peacefully counter the protestors. We walked right through the make shift choir, and the spirit that was there was even more amazing I had felt before. When we got to the visitors center, we made sure to show Angelica and Gavin the Christas statue. That was the climax of my spiritual day. I could not look at that amazing statue of Christ and not cry. I had had a really heavy heart all week, and seeing that statue immediately lifted my heavy heart and gave me a very strong reminder of how much my Savior really does love me.

When we got back from SLC we watched the second session of conference and went to dinner. While the boys went to priesthood session I played with Gavin and Sage in the back yard for a while and then held baby Milo for another little while. I also painted toenails with my awesome sister-in-law to be Jessica. When the boys got back we watched the Avengers (which I had not yet seen, and it is INCREDIBLE!) and then went to bed.

Sunday we watched the first session of conference with the Burnett's, then went to my parents house and went for a drive up Butterfield Canyon. It is a family tradition of mine to drive up the canyon during the fall conference and look at the leaves changing colors. Tyson and Yulia came up and so we were all one big family minus Tanner who is still in Peru. We drove up to the top of Kennicott and looked down at the mines. We goofed off, like our family usually does, and listened to conference.

I thought it would be a really good idea while most of our family was together to take a family picture. We didn't have an experience photographer with us, but with the amazing skills of Angelica, we were able to get some pretty awesome family pictures.

After our drive, we made delicious lasagna and played some games with my family then headed back to Cedar City. We promised Angelica that we would be home before 11PM and true to our word we got back to Cedar at 10:45. We had an amazing weekend full of lots of spiritual food. I am so grateful for the gospel. I am a Mormon! I know it, I live it, I love it!