New Years Eve in Vegas

Where do I start with NYE? This year we were invited by Chad's friend Jake to come to Las Vegas, stay in an awesome room, enjoy great food, and my favorite part attend a dinner and Coldplay and Jay-Z concert on NYE. The dinner was overlly fancy foods (Cherry covered caviar, lobster bisque, veal) but I couldn't even focus on dinner when there were TONS of celebrities around us. Both Chad and I noticed that there was not one overweight person at this dinner, I can't believe how small the "Hollywood" crowd is.

After dinner (around 10:45) we went upstairs to the concert, there were only 2500 people there, not a bad seat in the whole place. Coldplay came and performed about 8 songs, then Jay-Z came out and did the countdown. After midnight Jay-Z performed along with suprise performances from Kanye West (not a huge fan be/c he dissed my girl Taylor Swift), John Mayer (dissed Taylor also) and then Beyonce. She has the most amazign voice and is so gorgeous. I couldn't believe how luck we were to be there, Jay-z kept reminding us all of that the whole night.

Some of the stars we saw: Emmet Cullen (Twilight), Lance Bass, guy from Glee, Brandy (DWTS), Kiersten Dunst, and Hayley Duff, Gale (Oprahs bff), Kelly Slater, guy from 27 dresses, Channing Tatum and his wife.

Here are some pictures of our weekend. Need less to say it was tough to come home after such an eventful weekend. Big thanks to Jake for a memorable time!

If heaven were a brownie...

this is what it would taste like!



I made dessert for Christmas Eve and it was delicious. I can't take the credit because I didn't come up with it myself but it sure did turn out good. I bought a trifle dish a few years ago because I thought it was pretty and have only used it once (like over 2 years ago). Well I decided to bring it out since it makes the desserts look so good.

Here are the "cast of characters"

1 box of brownie mix
1 big or 2 small boxes of pudding (white chocolate or vanilla), I used vanilla
1 8 oz frozen whicpped cream (thawed)
2 cups milk
Heath Toffee pieces

1.Bake box of brownies according to the box, let cool.
2. Cut brownies into small squares 1 x 1 inch
3. Combine pudding mixture and milk and stir till thickened
4. Fold whipped cream into pudding
5. Layer bottom of triffle pan with 1/3 the brownies, then layer with 1/3 the pudding mixture, then a layer of toffee bits, repeat 3 times.
6.Refrigerate and serve.

Going back I would have saved a little more pudding mixture for the top so it covered better.

Enjoy!

Christmas 2010

Trying to get caught up on blogging so I am going to give the Reader's Digest version.

On Christmas Eve day we played beach volleyball for a few hours and then we went over to Chad's parents house for a great Christmas Eve dinner. We opened up our presents with them. I got a sewing machine which I am SO excited about. We then headed to my parents and spent Christmas Day with them.

Landon woke us up at 7:00 in the morning he was so excited! After we opened up presents we headed to the park to play frisbee with my Coram cousins, this has become a tradition that I love. We then watched the Laker Game had a great dinner by my mom and played Just Dance on the Wii.

Christmas was so nice to have some time off work and spend time with our families and see friends who came in from out of town.

A Week to Be Thankful For

Last week we were able to spend with almost my whole entire extended family. It was such a great week, not only celebrating Thanksgiving, but my brother and his wife were able to be sealed in the San Diego Temple. We had a great time catching up with so many aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, mom, dad, brothers and sisters. I really am greatful for my family. I love that we can not see each other for months (maybe some even years) but the moment we are reunited it feels like no time has passed. That is the wonderful thing about family, is the bond that you have with one another.

We stayed the night at my parents house one night along with 23 others! Yep thats right! There were bodies everywhere, it was pretty fun! At about midnight Meggan (my SIL) noticed my uncle Shawn went outside to his car because there was no more room left in the house. She ended up going outside and brought him inside, creating just enough room that he would have a place to sleep on the ground, I'm not kidding there was literally no extra space.! I wish i would have taken a picture of the house when everyone was sleeping. But here are a few pictures from our week. Thanks family for making this a very memorable week!

All but one of my cousins on my mom's side of the family. Cousin Matt is on his mission in Tonga.

Girl Cousins!

Sisters

Me and my hubby! We always enjoy being at the San Diego temple, reminds me of our wedding day Love this guy.

The End.

Im Back!!!!

I have attempted to blog many times but my computer takes so long to download pictures from my camera, and then to upload it just seemed like too much work, but I am finally doing it. I feel like not too much has changed with us (maybe thats also why I haven't been motivated to blog). But here are the few things taht we have done.

1. We went on a trip up the coast (back in September). Along the way we stopped in Pismo, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Davenport (see pic below), San Fransisco and then to Chad's grandparents that live in Castro Valley. We love going up to San Fran riding the trolley, eating at Boudin's bakery, doing some shopping, and walking around Fisherman's Wharf.

2. We got invited to our first Murder Mystery dinner. It was at a gorgeous home in Palos Verdes, Chad's character was Hamlet and I was Rapunzel. We threw together costumes at the last minute, and tried to get into character as best we could.

3. On Saturday Chad played in the last beach tournament of the year, he played great. If only the weather would have stayed as sunny as it is in this picture it would have been a perfect day.

I passed my insurance test and got my license so now I am working full time with my Insurance job. I went super part time @ Cheesecake Factory just working 2 days a week, so needless to say I have been staying busy. (Another reason why I haven't been blogging).

The house that we are living in just sold so we will be moving by December 1st, not sure where yet but somewhere close by.

Wow I feel like I am laundry listing all the things we have been up to; kind of like I used to do when my mom would tell me I needed to write in my journal because someday I would look back and want to know what I was doing at that time. I hope I have not put you to sleep, speaking of sleep I could use some right now. Tonight is the first night of the time change and I am all thrown off. Goodnight.

I love weddings...

...they make me remember the day that I married Chad, and remind me of how special of a day that we had. One of my best friends from High School was married on Friday, September 3rd and it was a beautiful wedding. Ashlee and her husband Chris are an amazing couple who have been together since our Sophmore year of high school. They both are such positive people and truly are a perfect match. I am so glad we were able to be apart of their Wedding Day. I was able to see SO many good friends. I love being able to reunite with my friends from high school, it feels like we were all just hanging out in ASB or going to school dances. Chad likes to tease me about high school because I loved it and when he met me I had just graduated and thought that high school was still a really big deal, so now whenever I talk about it he gets overly enthusiastic.

Me and the bride

High school girlfriends

Me and Chad

The group I hung out with in High School, with our ASB teacher

It's been a while

SO I haven't blogged in a while, and I just wrote an update on what we have been doing but somehow it got lost so now I am frustrated and will have to write a Readers Digest version of what I just wrote.

In July Chad and I both celebrated our birthdays, we went to Las Vegas for our birthdays and we also met up with my family in Huntington Beach to celebrate at BJs. We also had our 3-year Anniversery, I cant believe that we have been married for 3 years already. I don't even really remember what life was like not being married to Chad. He has been such a great support to me. Lately I have been really stressed out with working two jobs, and he is so good at listening to me and my complaints. I love this guy!

One of my best friends from High School is getting married and so we went to Palm Springs for a girls weekend. It was so much fun to spend the weekend with some of my best friends from high school. We decided this needs to be an annual occurrence.

My sisters have been home for the summer and I LOVE having them around. I cannot wait until they are done with school, and hopefully they will move back to California. I always tell them they have to marry someone from CA or someone that wants to live here otherwise I won't approve.

So that's a little bit of what we have been up to this summer. We have been back in California for a year now and love being here. I got a part time job at the beginning of the summer that is turning in to full time position in two weeks. I absolutely love this job, it is for a company called New Empire Entertainment, we provide insurance for the anything that deals with entertainment, like Movies, Recording Studios, Actors, the film equipment, etc. I have an amazing boss, I work right one the beach, I really couldn't ask for more. I am cutting down my hours at Cheesecake Factory which I am really excited about!

The house we are living in has sold and will be closing in the middle of September so we are moving out, but not far...next door! This works out great because we love the area we are in and it will be nice to stay in the same ward.