No School!

So I’ve gone through Thanksgiving break and Winter Break without writing, and here I am at the beginning of second semester finally writing! But so many great things have happened in between the last time that Jeremiah or I wrote!

The first weekend of December, despite being the weekend before finals, Jeremiah and I joined my family on our annual trip to Beaver Creek, Colorado! My family left on Wednesday (Which happened to be my birthday, and I turned 20!!) and Jeremiah and I joined them early on Friday. It was a quick trip, but it was so worth it. If you don’t already know, thanks to one of my dad’s former coworkers who owns a timeshare, we get to stay in the Timbers resort. The resort recently changed from the Ritz-Carlton and is located right on the side of the mountain.

It is beautiful and a vacation my family looks forward to every year. One of the great parts is the spa that we get to use at the resort! There is a men’s and women’s side that each have their own lounge, hot tub, sauna, cold plunge, and steam room. The end of the hallway leads into “The grotto” which is a warm pool for men and women to both relax in. It just feels really relaxing after a long day of skiing, or just any time really! We certainly make good use of it. One of the other great parts is that the employees of the resort will get your boots out and ready for you (and will even put them on for you, if you ask) and will set your skis outside. So you pop on the skis and glide over to the chairlift and off you go! Jeremiah and I got one full day of skiing and it was perfect weather! Jeremiah is pretty new to skiing, this was his fourth day of skiing I believe, and he did an awesome job. He didn’t ski at all last year, but he remembered everything, was picking up speed, was working toward “French fries” instead of “pizza.” Everything good, so hopefully we can get skiing a few more times this season! I did one of the hardest black diamonds I have ever done this year, and that felt really awesome too! Needless to say, we took advantage of the grotto that night! Since it was my birthday earlier that week, my family planned a pizza and game night for me that Saturday night! It was so fun, just hanging out and playing in the new game room in the resort. We had a competition through four different games and Jeremiah won the family competition! I did pretty bad, but still had a great time. So the weekend was very relaxing, very fun, but then it was back to reality!

Off to Colorado!

The crazy number of bags in tow to Colorado! Excluding skis!

Jeremiah and I finished out the semester both with straight As, Jeremiah received an A+ in four of his classes!! I am continually proud of how well he does in his class and how driven and intelligent he is. I received an A+ in two of my classes, and was also very happy with that. Granted one A+ for both of us came from Salsa dance, but hey, we worked hard in that class too! So we had a great end to the semester and both of us took a big sigh of relief to have a four-week break! It was full of awesome family time!

The week before Christmas Jeremiah and I mostly finished up Christmas shopping and spent time with our families. On December 20^th, for Mr. Dwight’s birthday, we went out to eat and then to see “A Christmas Carol” at the Hale Theater in Gilbert. That was a really nice evening, and the play was really well done! We have seen it there the past few years, and it’s always good, but I especially enjoyed it this year for some reason! Also, during the week before Christmas we went to a really great Gingerbread House Making party! It was a sister of a friend’s party and we have been to a few of her parties and they are all great! This one had tons of food, a bunch of gingerbread houses already built, and a huge table of candy. It was a great time! Jeremiah and I had a competition against Emily and her boyfriend, Edward. Both couples built a house and the rest of our family voted on which they thought was best… Jeremiah and I won! Emily and Edward’s was really well done though!

The candy table!

Ours is on the right!

On Christmas Eve, I went with my family to a Christmas Eve service at out church Red Mountain Community Church. It was a really nice service, and always good to take the time to reflect on the real meaning for the season. After church my whole family went over to the Mosers house. The Mosers are really good friends of ours, and we always get together on Christmas Eve for an appetizer dinner and gift exchange. That was really nice and always good to spend time with them! Then I left to go spend the evening with the Dwights! Jeremiah’s mom’s side of the family is Swedish and it is a Swedish tradition to open presents on Christmas Eve. It always works well because I spend time with his family on Christmas Eve and he spends time with my family on Christmas day! So I joined them for a traditional Lutheran Christmas Eve service, which was also a really nice service! Then we went back to the Dwights for dessert and presents! Jeremiah and I are really lucky because both of our moms are the best bakers!! We can’t go wrong. Mrs. Dwight made some great desserts that we ate on Christmas Eve and then we sat around and talked while opening presents! It was a great day. Then I went home and hopped in bed before Christmas!! I can’t help but feel really excited to wake up on Christmas morning. In addition to the usual excited feelings, I also got to wake up and see my Aunt Lesley and cousins, Sarah and Ian, there! My mom and dad picked them up on Christmas Eve but I got in too late to see them. So that was nice to see them on Christmas morning! And then slowly but surely the rest of my family and Jeremiah came over. We had a delicious breakfast of breakfast burritos, a couple casseroles, and monkey bread. Then everyone claimed a spot, presents were put into piles, and we started opening one by one, youngest to oldest. As you can imagine, it was a pretty full house and there were presents all over the place, but it was a really nice morning. Just as we thought we had opened all of the gifts Brian went out to his car and came back with two big bags full of Nerf guns! One Nerf gun for every person! Brian already had teams picked out for a Nerf gun war. We had quite a few throughout the day, primarily in our long hallway, and it was really fun! The rest of the day was full of Nerf gun wars, talking, enjoying each other’s company, and preparing for Christmas dinner. The dinner was delicious, and my mom especially, worked really hard to prepare it! After dinner, we had so much fun, talking, laughing, and playing games. It was an absolutely awesome day!!

The day after Christmas Jeremiah had some of his extended family fly into town so the week after Christmas was an interesting balance between both of our families! But I think we did pretty well! I won’t draw out the details too much, but with Jeremiah’s family, Emily took family pictures of everyone that I got to be a part of, we went to Zoo Lights, had appetizers, games, and went in the hot tub at his aunt and uncle’s house. We played a lot of pool at his house, and had a nice time catching up with all of his family!

With my family, we went to Jump Street, Top Golf, horseback riding, had nice family dinners, more Nerf wars, and lots of hot tub! I just have to mention one thing, one of my favorite parts was Top Golf. It’s basically this huge driving range, but there are different games that you can play. We played one where you have to try to hit your golf ball into these big colored circles. It was just really unique and I had a great time at it. That’s just a brief overview, but Jeremiah and I have been very busy with family over the last couple weeks, but it has been so great. We miss out on a lot of family time when we’re at school, so it’s great to get so much in on our breaks.

Jump Street

All of our extended family was gone by New Year’s Eve, but we still spent time with both immediate families. We had dinner at his family’s house and played games, made pizookies, and chatted before we left for my house! All of my family, except Emily and Edward, were over and we went in the hot tub (again, I know!), and hung around together! But none of my family made it to midnight! Jeremiah and I did, so we watched the NYC ball drop at midnight, drank Martinelli’s, and attempted to set off sparklers, but couldn’t find matches. So it was a pretty quiet New Year’s Eve, but it was very nice.

So the last thing I will post on today’s blog is an update on our Europe plans! Jeremiah and I sat down with Heather and George to talk about their experience and planning with their Europe trip. We got a lot of great information about hotels and hostels, trains, timing, packing… A ton of good information! And we also got some reading materials from them too. In the next week or two we will be purchasing our Eurail passes and will start to look at some of the main things we’d like to do in each country. So, not much to report, but a little bit of new information! I’m excited to read up and start to look at some of the things we may be doing! We just have to get through one semester and then we will be there!

I am now back at school and Jeremiah will be headed back tomorrow morning! We have a re-training for our CA jobs and then we will be rolling into another new semester of classes and work! Here we go! Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a very happy start to the New Year!