The Findlay Family Christmas Party

Just wanted to show a couple fun pictures of our annual Findlay Family Christmas Party. As you can tell by my uncle, it must have been a party:
This was the best part of the party-we noticed my cousin Nathan's little boy, Jackson, start twirling in the middle of everyone as we started cleaning up. I had to shorten it because it went on for so long but I started taking the video a little after he started:

I'm pretty sure just watching the video made me dizzy! The original video went on for over 4 minutes before my camera ran out of memory. Not sure why my mom was vacuuming-should have wound him up with tape and let him have at it!

Redneck Gingerbread House

Maybe you've seen the email floating around with redneck pictures on it. For some reason I think my Mom thinks I'm a little redneck-I guess spending 3 years in Cedar City could do that to a person. One picture I always loved-the Redneck Gingerbread House! When I got set up through a lady at work on a date where we were going to make gingerbread houses, I thought it would be the perfect chance to try it out-and show my date who I really was ;)! He was pretty excited to do it too so it was a joint effort:

Christmas Tree Hunting

We thought it would be way fun as roommates to go cut down our own Christmas tree for our house. We'd heard a lot of people going up to Preston and getting permits so we planned to do it the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Like most plans, they fell through and with Tasha leaving to Salt Lake for the Thanksgiving Break, Candace and I decided to just get it done.

We both got off work early the Friday after Thanksgiving so we borrowed my Dad's truck and headed north. After picking up a permit in Preston we headed for the hills. Spotting the perfect tree on the horizon we began our hike. After being chased by a moose, crossing two rivers, and nearly catching frost bite we arrived at our tree-which ended up being 15 feet tall-oops! Well I hope you didn't believe that story but I needed something good to tell. We actually ended up buying a tree at King's in Preston-lame we know. We did end up using the saw to cut off the end but that's all we can claim to our tree cutting adventure.

Not a bad tree for picking it out while it was wrapped up!

It was almost a little bit too full but it looked great in our front window, what else matters?

Surviving Family Pictures

Oh the dreaded family pictures! The last time we took family pictures was 3 years ago, thrown together in our neighbor's backyard (while they were out of town I might add) and we have all changed a lot since, including the addition of a new brother-in-law. Christin's sister-in-law, Heather Taylor, took the photo's and did an awesome job. Here's a couple of my favorites:

Hit by a bus?

So I work with a hard core wake boarder who is moving to China for 3 years for work. The day before he was handing over his boat to it's new owner he talked a couple of us into going wakeboarding, which took some work doing since I'm a little leary around water. Valerie and her daughter, Suzanne, and I met up with 5 other people out at Newton Dam.

After the 4 guys went out and amazed the new comers it was our turn. I swallowed my pride and went for it. I'm pretty sure I was in the water for nearly an hour and drank at least a gallon of water before I got up but I got up! Didn't have a clue what I was doing once I got up but I got up! I always get a little nervous going with people who are way good thinking they'll get tired of my lack of coordination but these guys were fun to learn with. The last time I got up I rode for a little bit-probably 10 seconds:)-and then fell hard. So hard one of my feet came out of the boot.
The next day Tommy asked if I had whiplash and I told him no but the next day I changed my mind. And let me tell you it wasn't just whiplash-I felt like I got hit by a bus. I don't know how those old-as in over 30-guys do it!

Packin up and movin out

So after graduating college last year I moved back home. What followed was nearly a year of zero social life-my fault mostly, I had to get back out on my own. This is in no way a reflection on my family-mostly:) love you guys, but how does it go. . .absence makes the heart grow fonder? I have always loved the area around the temple and along the Boulevard here in Logan so when I drove past a house with a 'For Rent' sign in front I jumped on it. Everything sounded awesome about it so three of us got together working on the application. It was a Monday afternoon I was on my way over to drop it off, and the 'For Rent' sign was gone! I about freaked-I called the landlady and she said, "Oh yeah, I rented that out this morning." I and my friends were literally heart broken. We had set our hearts on this house and nothing else would compare. Candace and I went to FHE just depressed after driving around for over an hour calling on every house we saw for rent with no luck-they weren't the house on the Boulevard. We left FHE, which happened to be at a house on the Boulevard, and I saw I had a voice mail. I flagged Candace down while I listened to the landlady from our house! She got my number from my mom from when we originally called-it was meant to be! So Candace and I moved in July 1st and Natasha will move in before school starts in August. We love it!

Happy 22nd Birthday in LA!!

Apparently I have a lot to learn and get used to-I had only been working full time for 10 months and needed a break. No vacation time presented a problem but my boss agreed to give me one day off for my birthday. What could be better than a short trip to LA? Well, I could probably think of a lot of things but anway. . . I found a plane ticket to Las Vegas on Thursday the 26th and met up with my best friend Holli. We got up early the next morning, did the usualy shopping (H&M mostly) that is necessary in Vegas, and began our drive to LA.

The drive went quick until we were about 5 miles away from Marina Del Ray where our hotel was. Then we hit the expected LA traffic and it took us about an hour to go the rest of the way (did I mention it was only 5 miles!). Our hotel was on the marina so it had pretty decent views.

We dropped our bags and headed to Santa Monica to find something to eat and do-it was a Friday night afterall. We found the Santa Monica pier, hard to miss really, and ate at this great Mexican restaurant that was at the end of the pier. We checked out the local Elvis impersonator, wandered around a while then headed back to the hotel. We're super exciting, we know already.

The real reason we went was to go see the musical Wicked. Holli got us tickets for Saturday night so we hung out in Venice and Marina del Ray (Pinkberry Frozen Yogurtis amazing http://www.pinkberry.com/) that morning and early afternoon then headed to Hollywood for the night. The musical was awesome! I really didn't know anything about it before we went, didn't know the story line at all, and wasn't a die hard fan of the soundtrack. I think I prefer it that way, better to not know anything before hand so there are no let downs. But it was so good! The music was great-way better when I knew the story behind it, and great acting. I forget how much I love musicals!

It was a short trip but tons of fun!

Too much time on our hands

Let's just say we like to do a little something special for birthdays at work. This was a little while back but Val and I decided to leave a present for Ron in his office when he came back from the weekend. Pretty sure everyone was doing double-takes as they walked by his office all morning! We couldn't help but laugh as every 10 min. we would hear another round of "pop, pop, pop". It took half the morning for him to get rid of them all, kind of a party pooper. All that hard work seemed to have paid off:) Happy Birthday Ron!

She talked me into it!

So it is with much pushing and prodding that I finally sit down and begin my blog. Well probably not, I've been thinking about starting one with my sister and everyone else talking about it and then when a friend mentioned I should start one, I knew it was meant to be. Then, when she actually agreed to start it for me, thanks Laura!, I thought what the heck. Let's be honest my life isn't very exciting with me working way too much and living at home :) but I'll see what I can do!