4 Months and 3 Callings

Yes my dear friends and family, in the four whole months that Eric and I have been married and living in our married student ward, I have had no less than three callings. Count 'em, one, two, three!

It is common in student wards to change callings every three months, but at three within 4 months we wonder if this is a record or something.

My first calling--relief society chorister--was nice, relaxing, and really low-key. I was fine and happy with that, besides I got an intense right arm workout for 5 minutes every Sunday.

About a month later Eric and I were confused why we had been asked to come in and meet with the counselor again when we both already had callings and a volunteer calling that isn't really a calling (going to do sealings once a month with other couples from the ward). When low and behold I was called to be a nursery leader... joy.

I like kids, but do I like them enough to replace Sunday School and Relief Society, nope. And I don't think anyone else does either. I struggled with my significantly less spiritually uplifting Sundays. Even when I taught primary I didn't feel this spiritually neglected. At least in primary there were plenty of lessons and songs, and the kids are at an age where they actually can pay attention for more than 15 seconds and sometimes say some pretty profound things that pull at your heartstrings.

Do get me wrong the nursery kids were truly darling most of the time, I just missed Relief Society and the chance to mingle with other sisters, and going to Sunday School with my husband.

Enter my third calling, which came as a relief and an escape. After almost 2 months in nursery Eric and I got another call from the counselor, this time we were really confused, but joked that I would be getting another calling. And funnily enough that is just what happened. I was called to be the Relief Society Secretary. The whole time the counselor was extending the calling to me I had to stop myself from grinning like a kid on Christmas. I didn't care what the calling was as long as I could go back to Relief Society and Sunday School with Eric.

I haven't really done anything for my calling yet, but I think it will be a good one. Definitely more time consuming but at least I get my weekly dose of Relief Society.

And I'm hoping I'll keep this calling for awhile...

Eric's Fun {tache} tic Birthday

Eric was pretty bummed that his birthday fell on Saturday, which only happens once every 7 years, and it happened to be on a drill weekend so we couldn't go to Lava Hot Springs that weekend like we had been planning. We decided to go to following week, but I still wanted to make his birthday special, especially after spending all day at drill. 

I decided to go all out and had a lot of fun planning Eric's birthday. Since we all know how much he loves mustaches, seeing as he had one for a whole year in Iraq, I thought a mustache themed birthday would be fun. Eric didn't want to go out to dinner since we planned to go to Lava Hot Springs the next week to celebrate, I bought some steaks and made him a nice meal at home. We had steaks, twice-baked potatoes, drop biscuits, and IBC rootbeer. 

The whole mustache inspiriation come from a cake I saw on Pinterest, and then I saw the mustache sticks (I don't know what to call them) and I just had to do it. 

We had Willy, Eric's little brother who is going to school here, over for cake and icecream and presents.

I made my very first cake from scratch for his cake. It wasn't hard, and it tasted good, but didn't taste very chocoaltey--oh well there is next year. 

Happy Birthday Eric! Now he's "old" like his wife :)

Ice Skating with Robert Redford

The day after Christmas Eric and I went skating with Tori at the Midway outdoor ice-skating rink. We almost went a few days earlier, but chickened out because it was really cold. I'm glad we did, because we had the most beautiful weather when we did finally go. The sun was shining, and the air was crisp, but not too cold.

So while we were waiting in line to pay, all of a sudden Eric stopped and stared intently at someone, and then turned to me and said, "I think that's Robert Redford." Now I know that he is an actor, but not one that I really know or pay attention to, but Eric informed me that Robert Redford plays the notorious Jeremiah Johnson in the movie of the same name. Then I instantly knew why Eric was so interested, you see Eric LOVES Jeremiah Johnson, in fact he wishes that he could be Jeremiah Johnson.

So Eric spent the next 30 minutes following him around the ice rink trying to verify that he was indeed Mr. Redford. He even took a stalker picture from across the rink. Evidence:

This is the guy that Eric stalked, and his creepy paparazzi picture he took :)

 After observing the man at a close distance Eric decided that wasn't really Robert Redford, just a close, younger look a like. Later when Eric pointed him out to me and I got a good look, I realized that it was none other than Brother Stone, the father of some kids I used to babysit. Oh we had some good laughs about that.

This is the real Robert Redford. I must say I can't really blame Eric, they do look similar.

Anywhoo back to ice skating...

We had a blast ice-skating, I've always wanted to go ice-skating with someone I could hold hands with. We definitely got our share of that in along with trying out some moves that Tori taught us.

Eric trying out some moves, and Tori laughing in the background.

While we were there we also ran into our friends Felicia and Kevin, their baby Evelyn, Kevin's sisters, and Felicia's sister Anna and her kids. I was hoping to see them over Christmas, so it was a happy coincidence when we ran into them ice-skating.

The night before we spent several hours watching some old family home videos, so we thought it only appropriate to add to the collection. This one's a keeper.

Santa Came to Town

Christmas Morning is always more fun with a kid around. It was so much fun to watch Aleksa when she found her stocking and the presents that Santa left for her. 

We were all quite spoiled and had too much fun. It was nice that church was later so we had time to open all our presents, get dressed, eat breakfast and go to church. It was nice to go to church to celebrate Christmas, how fitting. 

Here are some pictures of the mornings events. 

Aleksa playing with her new dress up clothes.

Aleksa tired from all the opening and taking a break atop her new dress up chest.

Tori sporting her pjs and leopard scarf.

Christmas Eve Antics

It's become a tradition in my family to get new pajamas on Christmas Eve. And since Tori has started picking them out we've been getting cute animal print pajamas. This year she's on a huge leopard kick, so they were leopard. And the guys in the family got A Christmas Story "You'll shoot your eyes out" pajama pants, they were pretty hilarious.

And then commenced the Nerf gun war, a tradition just started last year. Someone decided to let Aleksa choose the teams, and guess who she picked? Certainly not mom and dad, she went with the cool aunt and new uncle-- yep me and Eric. Armed with Nerf guns and extra Nerf bullets, we shot at the opposing team over sofas, ping/pong table, and other furniture. If you were lucky you got a safe position behind a large piece of furniture. If you're unlucky--me--you get stuck behind a chair and a very unhelpful pillow, I got pummeled with darts in the head and shoulders. The rule was no darts to the head, but since most of us were too chicken or too clever to expose anything put our heads, heads were the target. My shining moment was when I accidentally shot Cam in the eye, and the dart stuck to his eyelid! I was pretty impressed with my previously hidden talent. Cam said he couldn't get mad because he knew coming from me it was just a lucky accident, because we all know that if I had been aiming for his eyelid, I would have hit the wall instead.

The only true casualty was Eric's toenail. Somehow it got snagged on the carpet, and he didn't even feel it or notice it until we decided to investigate some suspicious looking red fuzz that was everywhere! We took a small time out to clean up the blood and get Eric a band-aid. And shortly we recommenced shooting. We went until we were all too tired to continue.

It may not be the most normal way to spend Christmas Eve, but we enjoy it. Besides maybe it burns off some of those calories from those cheese balls... maybe.

Though, one of the best parts of the evening was watching Aleksa running around telling everyone to go to bed so Santa could come.

Christmas and All the Trimings

I've been dreaming about our first Christmas together since we first got engaged. And especially after having him gone last year, this Christmas was really special, and I couldn't wait to do all the fun Christmas time things together. The first thing we did together was cut down this beautiful Christmas tree, which you can read about in one our previous posts. We couldn't wait to decorate the tree. Luckily we had a lot of hand me down ornaments from my parents to keep the tree from looking too much like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Besides the lights and balls, almost all the ornaments were homemade, I loved the feel/theme it gave it.

One of Eric's favorite things to do growing up is lie on a blanket under the tree and gaze at the tree in all its splendor. Definitely a new favorite thing to do, it was so peaceful and gave us a moment to just lie their and think about all of our blessings. We looked at several stores and could never find a star that we liked well enough, and decided to just wait until next year to find one.

I made a beautiful red and beige stripped ruffle tree skirt, but somehow we never got a picture of the tree and skirt combined :(

It wouldn't be the holidays without crafts. I saw this idea on Pinterest, and just had to do it. We went to Porter's one night to find supplies and low and behold they had the whole idea in a neat little kit, blocks of wood and all. So we caved because it was so convenient. It was really quick and easy to put together, however the little kits kind of take away the creative aspect, but it was still fun.

My little French nativity is my favorite souvenir that I brought home from my mission. The French believe that everyone would come to see and worship the baby Jesus, so their nativity depicts just that, everyone coming to worship, not just the kings and shepherds, but the baker, the farmer, the maid, everyone. So real French nativities have 40, 60, sometimes hundreds of characters! I could only purchase the essential characters, but want to keep adding to my nativity throughout the years.

Eric bought this Poinsettia for me after a hard day, he's so thoughtful, and it really added  a nice pop of color to the apartment.

My mom made this nativity years ago, and she graciously passed it on to me. It was nice to have plenty of decorations even though we are newlyweds, especially because I LOVE decorating!

When I worked at Bath & Body Works last winter, I snagged this cute candle Christmas house when it was on clearance.

So even though we are newlyweds and didn't have much space to decorate, I loved how our little house looked during Christmas it was so much fun! Now I have to make more decorations for other holidays, so our apartment doesn't feel so bare. 

My First Haircutting Experience

 So, Eric wanted me to give him a haircut. I've helped him before, but I've never had full reign of the trimmers before, and let me tell you it was nerve wracking. I was too scared I was going to take too much off that I didn't take off enough, and you can see the result for yourselves...

 I didn't step back to look at it fully, and didn't realize I'd given Eric a really ugly bowl cut, until he looked in the mirror and tried to tell me really politely without hurting my feelings that it looked bad. Though he needn't have worried, because when he came out of the bathroom and saw him, I burst out laughing.

Don't worry, I didn't let him go like that, with Eric's help I redid it with less trepidation, and it ended up fine. I won't be opening a hair salon anytime soon, but it'll do.