Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Gingerbread Houses

Each Christmas the Pearsons make Gingerbread houses. I made one last year and we combined our efforts this year which was good because we shaved off a few hours.

Our move… Frosted Mini Wheats for the roof. The original plan was that Chris would design the roof (he makes the best ones every year J ) and I would do the landscape, we were short of land so we combined efforts.

Rosette Wreaths

Natalie found a picture of this wreath online:


We decided to make our own and it turned out like this:
We bought the materials from Hobby Lobby. The wreath was $2.50, and we bought 1/8 yard strips of fabric (3 different kinds), and some beaded pearls which you can find in the floral section.
Next, we cut the fabric strips into pieces 3 inches by 20 inches. We then would wrap them to make rosettes.
We laid out the flowers then glued them with a hot glue gun. I then got pearls and wrapped them under the twigs and flowers. This is a close-up of my work. It was so much fun!

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Black Friday Excitement

This year was well planned in Black Friday shopping. I did my research and planned the items I was looking for and the stores with the best deals.
Some of the stores I hit up:
  • Bed Bath and Beyond 20% off of every item in the store
  • Nordstrom Rack
  • Macy (great deal for shoes and coats)
  • DSW
  • Hollister 30% off everything in stores
  • Joann Fabrics

and many more. So worth it and I will definitely do it again next year. I know I saved around $300

Time to be Thankful

On Monday, Chris gave our Family Home Evening lesson about being thankful. As every FHE he gives, I loved hearing his testimony about everything he believes in and stands for. I'm grateful for such a great man who loves the Lord, loves this gospel, and loves me.
I'm grateful for the gospel. I'm so glad that when we do place the Lord first in our lives, that we will become closer to the Lord and to each other. Placing our foundation upon the Lord before anything else (ourselves and everything) we can make it back to our Father in Heaven.
I'm grateful for family. I love my family and Chris' family and I'm so glad we now have our tiny family of Chris and I where our priority is first with each other. I'm grateful with my relationships with family and am glad I have a close relationship especially with my mom who I love so much. My family has been such a great example to me and my parents have raised me always on the gospel and doing what is right.
I'm grateful for standards. My parents have always taught me about choosing the right, to be honest, and on the for strength of youth in being modest, chaste, kind etc. Those values I apply to my everyday life thanks to my parents who taught me from when I was young. They used to teach me that most important life decisions were decided by an individual by the time they were age 14. I'm glad my parents didn't just wait to teach us about standards and values when we were older, but would teach us while we were young.
I'm grateful for scriptures and our living prophet. We have these scriptures to lead and guide us, the most correct book on earth. In Nephi it says that there will be nothing that will be put in the scriptures that won't be for our benefit. I'm grateful for General Conference where we can listen to modern day scriptures from our leaders and especially from our prophet today: President Monson. He leads and guides us and will never lead us astray. He is a true man of God.
Again I'm so grateful for my amazing husband! He is always there for me. He loves me so much and is always so trustworthy, I always know that I can depend on him. Again he loves this gospel and we want to teach and raise our children on these principles that we have learned in our families. He loves the temple, he has a testimony, we have already set great habits from scripture studying, prayer, with saving money, FHE etc. We work things out, we work together as a team. I'm so glad I'm married to such a great man! We have such a bright future ahead and I'm excited to see what life has in store.
We are so blessed!!! It's a great time to be alive and to members of the church. Of course there is and will be challenges, but with the Lord we can accomplish anything and always be happy!!!

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Football: Freshman year till now


2010: Even though it's the last home football game, at least we made it. It was freezing that day. We parked and I wanted to tailgate and of course saw Cosmo the Cougar!
We watched the game with Coleman and Brandon. More pictures of us freezing. I was well prepared though and didn't even touch two other coats and a BYU blanket.


FRESHMAN YEAR



SOPHOMORE YEAR




JUNIOR YEAR


SENIOR YEAR

More Wedding Reception Adventures

Last week we had a few wedding receptions for our friends. It was so fun seeing them date and get married! We had Jessie and Mike, and Joe and Emily. Congrats!

At Jessie and Mike's reception there was an art exhibit in the basement. We had fun looking around... and got carried away. Chris' impression of meloncholy.


Me with the ancient dragon in honor of me being born in the year of the dragon.

Looking out into the sea, for a large whale

We had a blast, we also had Joe and Emily's reception


Joe did a Michael Jackson impersonation, it was quite good!

Us together :) I can't believe we've been married 2.5 months now! Time is going by fast, we love being married to each other!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Good in the World

When I went online this morning I was touched by a story of a homeless man who found $3300 in a backpack he had found and RETURNED IT. I'm sure he was someone really in need of that money, but he decided to be honest and realized that wasn't his.
I thought of this story and how someone's honesty and integrity really counts when you think no one is looking. Even when we think we are not being watched or if something might benefit us more than another person, remember integrity is what counts like this homeless man illustrated.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Highlights of this week

* Chris taking care of me while I was sick
* Two weddings for our friends
* Jazz games
* Hanging out with the fam
* Chris picking me up from work
* New purse
* Watching one of my favorite movies with my husband

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Countdown of October

Coming back from the wedding and honeymoon we've had so much to do and get together so I'm doing the main events in October. for the Pearsons. which were many. This is just a COUNTDOWN

#4 Halloween!

Coleman and Lucie were Jessie and Buzz Lightyear



Cute Bryn and Hal as Little-Bo Peep and Sheep!


#3 Birthdays

We had birthdays for friend Mike (here at Texas Roadhouse)



Jeff's birthday the 29th and we had Randy's the 31st
#2 Alexa and Cam's wedding. Sorry all the pics are on Chris' camera.


#1 Whitnie's state tennis match at the beginning of this month. She played so well and placed 2nd

Halloween Murder Mystery Dinner

So the weekend before Halloween Chris and I went to a murder mystery dinner. We received this invitation along with who our characters were.
I was a fortune teller and Chris was a mummy. We went to Nick and Lacie's and were ready to solve the mystery.
Hahah Natalie was a Gothic girl and Jeff was a Frankenstein superstar rocker person hahah.
When we got there we had four rounds where we read secret information about our characters that we would only know about. Then we would have questions that we were required to ask during that round to help us get more information to solve the mystery.

We would go around asking questions about where people were at, what we had seen, and what we found (and all of these were in our booklets). It was so fun and we would find more and more information out as the rounds continued.
We also had amazing food during the rounds which were Halloween or fall foods. It was so good!
Here is all of us after solving the myster. Lacie was a doctor, Nick was the devil, Jeff a Frankenstein rockstar, Natalie a gothic girl, Chris a mummy Pharoah, Me a fortune teller, Brianna a wicked witch and Robbie was a vampirish guy. Pretty good lookin' group!!!

Honeymoon to Cancun

When Chris told me we were going to Cancun I was so excited! It was a surprise and I found out the night before. Our flight was early in the morning but we flew in going through New Mexico and it was awesome seeing the "hotel zone" from our plane.

Our hotel was so much fun! There was so much to do and we loved it because it was all-inclusive. Lots of fun activites and ALL THE FREE FOOD YOU CAN IMAGINE!

This is a view from our hotel room. The hutch thing is the huge cafeteria which had incredible food and so many varieties. Some other huts were poolside food places. They had the pools down below and you can see how close we were to the ocean


The view of one of the awesome looking pools from our balcony. I loved all of the palm trees and gorgeous weather.
Sideview of one side of our hotel (we were up there on the 5th floor)

The symbol of the Crown Paradise hotel was everywhere. On practically every window, on the walls, sconces, pools, and even in the water. Right behind here was the drink area where we would load up on alcohol-free pina colada or tropical drinks.

I'm walking down the stairs taking a picture of the first thing you would see when walking on the beach. We were THAT close. People would be all over us right when we stepped down to see if we would buy anything. They would always say "I'll give you my best price"
So when ppl would try to sell us somethings in pesos we would quickly divide the amount by 10 in our heads (because the exchange rate is like 11.5) to see if it was legit

Some days we would go shell hunting and we found some huge and cool shells. We brought back two big ones that hardly had any breaks on it. The best spot for shells was where the waves break and our feet would hurt from the waves breaking the shells on our legs and feet

We thought it was a shortcut.... but it was longer going down these random stairs in our hotel. Here is the view from our hotel of the south side of us

On the way to the Italian restaurant we took a picture outside of it. They had 5 restaurants and they were only open at night and you had to make previous arrangements to go there. Everything was free it was AWESOME!

The food was so good and always so decorative and beautiful.

I've always wanted to coconut-tree climb so I ran up to the top quick so I wouldn't get caught

We would load up on free drinks. This was the first restaurant we went to (the Italian one). I loved dressing up each night to go to the restaurants

The Mexican restaurant we went to Los Gallos. That's where we were sang too by the mariachi band and they made Chris and I stand up and dance in front of everyone



Crown Paradise had a ton of activities you could do. They had this list up with hourly activities from cooking to dancing to seeing the sunset or whatever

The pool was right by the ocean. I love this view because it looks like the pool and ocean just flow together... besides that pole right there

Going to the beach to play in the water. There was lifegaurds and one day when the hurricane reminents were hitting us someone in the water was getting pulled out to the ocean. They were ok but we still didn't go too deep


I drew our names in the sand


Here is the strip we would drive down to go to and from the hotels in the Hotel Zone. There was water pretty much on each side


Ha we went to the shops/ markets and I made Chris try this on and I died laughing.

So random, but the cookie monster statue was there hahah

An awesome place in the shopping center. The second hottest day is when we went to these stores. They were all outside and we would weave in and out of the stores to avoid the hot sun.

Picture of the ocean from our hotel room. It was beautiful and so darn close!


Putt-putt golf place on our hotel site



The coverings for the places outside of our hotel


Our first picture together at the honeymoon at the Crown Paradise entrance
What a fun time! We definitely will hit up an all-inclusive place again. Hopefully we'll be back to Cancun soon! Thanks for an awesome adventure babe :)