Christmas

So, as you've noticed, I haven't been up on my blogging lately. Well, usually I take lots of pictures so I remember what I did...(I'm gettin' old). I didn't take any pictures this Christmas. I can't believe it! I kind of remember some of what we did, so here goes...
Leah was going to come out for Christmas, but a couple of days before she was shoveling and threw her back out. We were totally bummed!
We had a pretty low-key day. Adam, Janae & their kids were out of town as were David, Melody & their kids. We had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner and program at mom's house. We also exchanged gifts that night.
On Christmas Day, I headed over to mom's at about noon. Some of the family came over sporadically throughout the day.
That night, we went to Dad's house and headed up to Bountiful to take dinner to the grandparents.
All in all, it was a nice day. Merry Christmas to all!

Present Exchange

So, I love socks. Any type of decorative socks. Long, short, ankle, crew, striped, argyle, polka dot, checkered, solid. You name it, I like it. So, this year, Steph got me a sock bouquet! Is that the cutest idea ever? I thought it was! I got her a Scentsy candle, which was super cute, but not nearly as creative!

Me & Kira with her new counting turtle

Kira helping Steph open her present

Christmas Baking

We have started a tradition to have a Girl's Christmas Goodie Baking Day. This year, we went to Jonathan & Ali's house. We made tons of stuff from chocolate dipped everything (candy canes, oreos, pretzels...), shortbread, chocolate crinkles, saltine toffee, english toffee, peppermint brownies, peanut butter balls, and more...I wish I had more pics from our fun day, but here's what I have...I didn't get any of Jenn or Melody & Lilah. :(

Ali, Val (Ali's Mom), Lona (Jenn's mother-in-law) in the background

Momma

Sarah & Janae

Ruby & I dipping away... Me & Sarah making Chocolate Crinkles Me, Sarah, & Ali

Baby Benjamin

Ruby Lou

Chris and Rachel Get Married

My step-brother Chris got remarried on 12-5. The wedding was small and quaint and turned out really nice. Favorite quote about the wedding: [regarding the wedding kiss] "Becca, do you remember when Chris was chewing on Rachel's tounge when they got married?" Ha! Priceless!

Here are a few pics of some of the cute guests...

Isaac, Gavin, Aaron

Caleb & Jenn

Book Club

I'm a little behind in writing about our book club...We had a get-together at Brooke's BEAUTIFUL home in November. Our book for that time was The Thirteenth Tale. I had heard from a lot of people that it was such a good book, so naturally I was excited to read it. It was alright. It kind of took a while to get into, but it ended up being interesting.

In December, we had a meeting at Shelby's house, which is so cute! We had a yummy dinenr that her husband cooked for us. We missed a few people from our group, but we had fun anyway. Our book for December was Skipping Christmas. If you're looking for just a cute little story about Christmastime, read this...or just watch the movie Christmas with the Kranks. This book is about this family that has a daughter that joined the peace corp and was going to be in Peru for the holidays. Her parents decided to skip Christmas and go on a cruise instead. The story is just about their difficulties with the community when they make this decision. Steph and I had already left by the time the pic was taken...

Congratulations, Jenny & Alan

Jenny and Alan got married during Thanksgiving, so we got to celebrate with them. We went to The Wight House for a wedding dinner which was really nice. There were a few highlights including the raunchy server, the raspberry butter voice, and the "Wal-Mart worker" advocates. Oh yeah, and you should probably take note of who the grooms parents are. Anyway, fun was had by all! So, Michelle's eyes are closed, but this is the only picture I had of that night...

The wedding was the next day, so here are a few pics from that...

Waitin' in line to see the couple...

A little dancin'

Da girls. Steph, Michelle, Kira, Jenny, Me, KarenAnd last, but definately not least...This is what you get when you leave your veil and flowers just hanging around with a certain person...

Chocolate Pecan Pie

I had a special request to post my chocolate pecan recipe. I should probably give credit where due, so I actually got the recipe from my mom via Karo Syrup. That's the best recipe for pecan pie we've had...it's on the back of the bottle. We just add some chocolate 'cause that makes everything better, right!?!? Here goes...

1 cup Karo Light Corn Syrup
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla extra
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups pecans
1 unbaked 9-inch deep dish pie crust

Stir the first 6 ingredients thoroughly using a spoon. Mix in pecans.
Pour into pie crust.
Bake at 350 degrees on center rack of oven for 55 to 60 minutes. Cool for 2 hours.

Tips: Pie is done when center reaches 200 degrees. Tap center surface of pie lightly; it should spring back when done. For easy cleanup, spray pie pan with cooking spray. If pie crust is over-browning , cover edges with foil.
For ease, the frozen pie crusts work great.

Hope you love it as much as we do!!!

How do you like them apples?

It's that time of year!!! Yep, gift show time which means buckets of apples...

Come check out the gift show. Here are the details:
Here are just a few stages of the yummy treats that I have in the show...

Thanksgiving!!!

On Thanksgiving Day, we went to Adam and Janae's. It was such a beautiful set up! Janae used all of her beautiful china and even had some for the kids!

Check it out! Name tags and everything! Beautiful!

Even a super cute centerpiece!

I got to make pies this year seven in all... I thought they turned out awesome, so I just had to share! :)

Chocolate Cream & Banana Cream

Chocolate Pecan

AppleAs we began to eat, Janae tells us that the bottom plastic plates are just chargers, so don't eat on them. Jonathan just thought that he'd use the biggest plate. Yeah, good job Jonathan!After dinner, Sarah played with the kids. She came up with this costume...Nice!Caleb and Janae ran a 5K in the morning. Their ward sponsored it and had tons of shirts left over. So naturally, we all got one!
Since there were so many shirts, the kids decided to wear ALL of them! I think they all had like 25 shirts on each!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

So, we got to celebrate Thanksgiving twice this year! We had a family dinner with my mom on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. We went out to Sarah & Matt's house out in BFE. It was super fun to hang out with the fam and eat lots of stuff. Here are a couple of pictures from that day...For some reason, I didn't take pictures of everyone, but this is what I came out with albeit a little random!
Lilah was so cute playing with the dogs. If I counted correctly, they have THIRTEEN dogs right now. There are four that they always have and there were nine babies! This pic is of two of the babies (one of which, Kronk, that can climb and jump over the gate!) and Abbie is the big one that's cut off in the pic.

Just randomness...Adam and Janae...oh and David had to get in too.
Jonathan & Ali being goofy.

Twilight Opening

A friend of mine, Liz, knew this girl that rented out an entire theater for the opening night of Twilight. Sarah, Matt, Jenn, Michelle, Jenny, Alice, and I all got tickets to attend. The girl that rented the theater ended up making a ton of gift bags for everyone as they got there...way too much work if you ask me...but we all enjoyed it! The little bags had vampire teeth, a Cullen necklace, and blood suckers (they were really regular suckers with a blood type on them...clever). Along with the gift bags, there were tons of prizes that they drew names for, so that was cool too.

The movie was awesome! I know that some people were disappointed because of lack of character development, there were things left out, and cheesiness. I have to say though, if you read the book, you don't need tons of character development, so I thought there was enough. Hello people, how are you going to have a movie from a book and fit EVERY little thing in it? There just isn't enough time. Also, the cheesiness? Um, it's a VAMPIRE movie. Nuf said.

I absolutely loved it, so maybe I'm a nerd. I don't really care though because I have now seen it twice and I'll probably continue to see it.

I really thought I'd be annoyed by the guy that played Edward, but he grew on me and he was great!

Anyway, I totally recommend it!

Into The Woods...

About a year ago or so, my old roommate, Jenny gave me a gift card to Hale Center Theater. I finally got around to using it. It took a while, but it was worth it! Sarah, Michelle, and I saw Into The Woods, which I had never seen and didn't really know what it was going to be about. It had all kinds of fairytale characters and it was kind of about a quest that a baker and his wife went on in the woods. Pretty entertaining. A friend of mine played Cinderella's Mother and Sleeping Beauty, so it was fun to see her in it and she did an awesome job! The guy that played Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk ended up being played by a friend of Michelle's so that was a fun surprise.

Anyway, the play was really good and we had a fun girls night out!

Happy Birthday, Michelle!!!

Monday is Michelle's (my roommate) birthday. We went out to celebrate at Iggy's on Saturday. Happy birthday, Michelle! Here are some pics from Saturday...

Michelle and her bday treat

Kim, Todd, Curt, Camille

Camille, Box, Me

Michelle, Katie, Steve