Update

We had a WONDERFUL Christmas. We still had one good sized snowball in our front yard Christmas morning, so Tyler had to take a picture with it, since we technically did have a "White Christmas."

After doing our own thing here, we drove up to Utah. We had a lot of fun visiting with our families. My parents had TONS of snow at their house. There was a huge storm one of the nights, and when we went to get into our car the next morning the doors were frozen shut!

While we were there I decided that I would call my good friend Rachel to see if she could give me a trim. Tyler kept saying "You should cut it short," He didn't think I would so he kept trying to talk me in to it. When I pulled up to the shop I still had no idea what I was going to do. But I decided to be daring and cut off 12 inches of hair! I got this super cute A-Line, and I love it...and as if that didn't make me look momish enough- we decided to buy a minivan from Tyler's dad while we were there. ( I will post some pictures of that once it is cleaned up a little)

Ava had her 2 month check up while we there too. She weighed in at 12 lbs 8 oz, and was 23 3/4 inches long! She has been smiling and laughing a lot. It was so cute- whenever my mom would talk to her about shopping she would get so happy and smile and laugh. And then my Mom said something about exercising in matching outfits or something- but as soon as she said "exercising" Ava stopped smiling and kind of shook her head "no".

Here are some of the pictures from our weekend:

Merry Christmas Eve

I just wanted to show you an early Christmas present Tyler made for me:

He got this mirror for me and then made the frame! I LOVE it!!!

Today is our 5 year Engagement Anniversary! I can't believe it has already been 5 years. Check out the flowers Tyler brought me:

So Pretty!

Tyler's family tradition, on Christmas Eve, is to eat Mexican food and read/act out the Nativity. Since we aren't there to enjoy the festivities with them, we decided to do them on our own.

We had my grandparents and Uncle over for yummy Chicken Enchilada Casserole, rice, beans, Holiday Nog (apparently there is a difference between this and regular Egg Nog, who knew?) and cookies(thanks for the cookies Grandpa and Grandma- they were yummy!)

We watched Mr Krueger's Christmas and decided to just read the nativity story, since we don't have dress up clothes...I may have to start collecting some throughout next year...

It was a fun night and now it is time to get the cookies out for Santa. Nathan is super excited!

Making cookies for Santa

Ava "helping"

SNOW!!!

We seriously could not believe how much snow we got yesterday! It was so crazy. It started around 1pm and went on for HOURS! Nathan was a little sick yesterday so he didn't get to play in it until this morning.

It was fun to see palm trees with snow on them. Our Mesquite tree lost some branches, because of the weight of the snow. Our cute neighbors across the street even went sledding down their driveway.

There was so much snow that McCarren Airport canceled a ton of flights. Tyler's mission buddy, wife, and 3 month old baby were flying from Maryland to Salt Lake, and had a layover here in Vegas. He called Tyler and said "What's with all the snow in Vegas?" Tyler asked "Are you watching it on the news or something?" He said ,"Uh,
No- from my window..."

They had to sit on their plane for like 4 hours before they decided to officially cancel the flight. So they stayed here for the night. It was fun to see them, but we wish it would have been under different circumstances (for their sake). We felt so bad for them! They couldn't even get their luggage. (Can you imagine, all this happening while traveling with a baby??) They decided to try and drive up there today so we hope they can make it!

Here are some of the snowy pictures:

Christmas Fun

We have been able to do some fun Christmas activities this past week. Here are some of the highlights:


Last Tuesday we went to the Magical Forest at Opportunity Village. My Uncle is handicapped and works/does activities there so we got a great deal on the tickets(FREE!!!) We went with my Uncle and my Grandma...my Grandpa was not feeling well, so he stayed home. The lights were so pretty! We have gone two years in a row, and it seems like both times we picked the coldest night of the year. The trees and buildings block most of the wind, but once we left we were on our own, and froze all the way to the car (which we couldn't find...) It was fun to spend some time with my grandparents. I brought dinner and we had hot cocoa and cookies to end the evening.


On Saturday we had our Ward Christmas party. It was lots of fun and Santa even showed up!


Today my cousins cute wife, Angela, came over with their little boy Alex. Angela made the best sugar cookies ever and brought all the stuff to decorate them. The boys had a great time dumping sprinkles everywhere. And we enjoyed eating their creations!

Here is a slide show of the fun times...

L.A. Temple Protest Good for Church

My Uncle Bill sent me this letter from his friend.

"With all the rioting around our Temples , here is something good...

"This is from Eric and Saurell Jackson. He is serving as Mission President in CA.

"This weekend we were able to spend time with Elder Cordova. He is amazing. He is from LA and refers to himself as a rookie in the Seventy. He is also a recorder at the LA Temple. He told us about the demonstrations outside the temple this past week. He said only good is coming from it. He went out to talk to the police who were dressed in riot gear and who were on the temple grounds surrounding it for protection. As he thanked them they said they were grateful to be there and although the noise from the crowd was loud they felt the peace on the temple grounds. One police officer said he has seen the missionaries in his neighborhood and he is going to invite them to teach his family because he feels there is truth here.

"Elder Cordova also told us an experience he had one night as he was finishing at the temple. The phone rang, it was the LAX airport tower control. He was asked where Moroni was. Apparently the light that shines on the Angel Moroni had gone out and without it as a beacon the airplanes could not land without danger. He said they climbed to the top of the temple to start the light again with a generator that is used when there is a power failure. He was amazed that they asked for Moroni by name. The temple is not only a beacon in our life but those in LA."

The Church is True!

Scammed!

I got scammed by a company called Foneright Voicemail. Without my permission they charged $14.95 directly to my Embarq phone bill as a third party charge for a voicemail program I never wanted. They said I opt-in through a shopping network website. Yeah right! They said the lady on the account was Michelle Williams or something like that. Be careful when you register for websites when purchasing things. The guy at Foneright was too smooth for me to think that this didn't happen all the time. I told him he and his company were scammers and their way of doing business was wrong. He took it well.

Anyway, people, put a block on your phone line from 3rd party charges. This is free and will save you from paying for stupid things that you don't want or order.

This type of thing happened to me before but instead of charging my phone bill they charged my credit card. It was a company called Great Fun. I didn't notice they had been charging my credit card for 2-3 months for about $10 each time. They piggybacked their service onto something I bought online. Again, they said this was with my permission and they told me which website I had signed up on and I'd never heard of it, nor visited it.

I can't remember what retailer I bought the item from, but they let this Great Fun have my credit card information. They are scammers too! If you google these companies there are a ton of complaints about them.

Don't get scammed like we did!

Has this happened to any of you? Please comment.

Ants!

We've been having a little problem with ants lately. It's hard to understand why because Monica keeps our house so clean. I've had tenants who wonder why they constantly have roaches and they insist they keep their home clean. They usually have week old mac & cheese on the table and half eaten gummy worms on the floor. I guess their clean is different than our clean. I guess what I'm saying is our house is clean, not "clean" like our tenants say, but really actually clean. I guess we'd have a roach problem too if our house was really dirty.

They've mostly been by our back door in a couple spots. When it rained a week or so ago they were all over the back door. Thousands of them. It was crazy. I sprayed some poison and thought we took care of them. Or so we thought.

This morning I saw some ants on the counter where I've never seen them. We started looking around and they were everywhere. They were in the cabinets above and below. We took out all the food in the bottom cabinets (see picture) and couldn't find an obvious source of food for them. There was a bottle of Zrii that had leaked during shipping, but there were only a couple ants on them. Then there was a bottle of freshly canned pears from Monica's grandparents that they were all over. There must have been some syrup residue left on the bottle because it was still sealed. Other than those two things it really wasn't obvious why they were there.

I made a trap out of cardboard and honey. I picked it up after a few hours and they were swarming. I thought they were all stuck in the honey or else I would have had the plastic bag right when I picked it up. The picture below is a fresh trap. Hopefully we'll get them all without having to spray poison all inside our food storage cabinets.

Luckily these are really small black ants and they haven't bitten.

Maybe we'll have an ant roast and invite you all over.

If any of you have natural ant killers let us know.

(Food from cabinets)

Honey ant trap (yummy!)

Pictures!

These aren't the family pictures Monica talked about in her previous blog. These were taken on Thanksgiving in Hurricane.


Baby Ava sleeping



Nathan Smiling


Auntie Maria and Nathan


Nathan having a good time.

Enjoy!!