New Year's Eve

I went out to the Miner's on New Year's Eve after work. We got all dressed up and went sledding for a bit that afternoon. Alicia and Denelle had snowboards, but I don't snowboard, so we didn't really have any other sleds. Then BJ came and brought a sled, but it was all torn up on the bottom, so it didn't really slide nicely over the snow. Needless to say, it was an interesting time :) BJ and Denelle's little girl Madison was with us, and she had a great time! She's so cute! Then we headed back to the warmth of the house and played games, watched movies and had lots of snacks. We counted down the New Year and then toasted with some 'bubbly.' I can't believe how fast 2009 went! We stayed up way to late playing the Wii and then we slept in late and then played the Wii again in the morning :) I headed home and then went to a party at a friend's house (a lady I work with) and had fun chatting and playing games. I still can't believe it's 2010, but I better believe it, because before I know it, it will be 2011. Happy New Year!

Christmas

I went up to Rachel and Shawn's on Christmas Eve after work and we had sandwiches from Honeybaked Ham with a gift certificate I had gotten from work. After a late lunch, we went downtown to the Planetarium and saw a movie in the Dome Theater - they played the movie on this domed ceiling. It was a light show set to Christmas music. I must be getting old, because the scenes moving around so fast were making me sick...not a good sign. :) Then we watched the Nativity movie Christmas Eve after doing our ornament exchange game. I couldn't sleep in the back room because Santa might not come or I might see Santa, so the boys bunked in Nathaniel's room and I slept in Cade's bed. I saw the clock a few times during the night, and the last time I looked it was 3:00 am and I thought 'oh, I've got lots of time to sleep.' Then before I knew it, Cade and Nathaniel came barging in the room, "It's 6:01, it's 6:01, let's go see if Santa came!" Rachel and Shawn told them they had to stay in bed till 6:00 - so we didn't wait much longer than that! We all ran downstairs and saw what Santa had brought us. The kids were SO excited. I loved watching their faces. This was a really great Christmas.

Me and the kiddos on Christmas morning

I love her little face! It was a Cinderella Pez dispenser :)

I love how they're all standing in a row, tallest to shortest

Cade with his presents from Santa

Nathaniel with his presents from Santa

Adria with her presents from Santa

Me and Adria with her Princess book - I took the pictures from Disney on Ice and made them into a storybook - it's super cute!

Rachel modeling the Snuggie her kids got her - She looks really 'giant' because I was sitting on the floor leaning back to get her all in the picture :)

The best part of Christmas was very last, when Shawn still had 1 present to open and had the kids come help him.....it was a Wii! You can see their faces - they were SO excited! I even think excited is an understatement!

Fuhriman fam with their Wii and accessories - I think they'll have fun!

They also had my name for Christmas and I got some really great things! I got a book I've been wanting for a while, a handheld guitar hero game, and a Harry Potter Trivia Game. Rachel also found a great book about temples, which I'm so excited to read! She also made me a magnet board with cute clips and magnets - I love it! The board in the back is padded and then you can slide pictures, notes or what-not under the ribbon and hold it there. AND I also got a ticket to go see Brian Regan in Salt Lake on March 12th!!!! I'm SO excited! Rachel first introduced me to his stuff, and since then I've listened to some additional video clips on Youtube, and he's hilarious! So Rachel, Shawn and I are all going to the show. It will be great!

It's nice to have some family close, but I really missed being able to be with the rest of the family for Christmas. Maybe we'll be able to get together one of these years. Then Christmas day afternoon, I exchanged gifts with Shelley and her boys and then headed out to the Miner's for the rest of the day. We had great food and played lots of games. It was great to be around family and enjoy some days off work!

Lights on Temple Square

It's a tradition that my friend Stacy and I go see the lights on Temple Square - this was our second year doing it, and we had a blast. It's so beautiful and it was snowing when we were there, so it made things even prettier, if that's possible. I'm so grateful that I live so close and can experience this every year and also attend the temple so often since we have so many within the valley. We first stopped at the manger scene, which is one of my favorites. I never get tired of hearing the story of Jesus' birth. Christmas is one of my favorite times of year. Then we circled around and saw the rest of the lights, nativity scenes from other countries, and the nativity on the reflecting pool. Thanks for a great time Stacy!

Manger scene outside the tabernacle. They also play the story of Christ's birth through speakers and then shine spotlights on the set of what they're talking about. It's really neat!

This is one of my favorite ones - I love how the tree is lit up and the snowflakes look kind of like stars. I love the temple!

We LOVE self-portraits! Me and my bestest bestest friend!

This one is kind of at a weird angle, but I wanted to get the temple spires and the 'light tree.' My camera doesn't take the best night photos, but I still really like this one.

This one is a little blurry, but it's my absolute favorite!! It's so pretty!

Thanks to the Miner's

Crystal and Alicia (my cousins) are 'culturizing' me :) This Christmas season I got to go with them to "A Christmas Carol" at Hale Centre Theatre and to a ballet performance of "The Nutcracker." I LOVE Hale Centre! The first show I saw there was "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and that was amazing and "A Christmas Carol" definitely did not disappoint! It was a great show and was definitely worth seeing. I think HCT is my new favorite place to be! "The Nutcracker" was awesome as well. I had never been to any sort of a ballet performance and this was really neat! We were close to the front and had a great view of all the dancers. It's amazing what ballet dancers can do! So thanks to the Miner's for inviting me to do all this fun stuff with them!

Harland Clarke Year End Celebration

I was on the employee events team at my work and got to help plan and host our year end celebration. It was held at the South Towne Expo center and they did a great job with the decorations. It was lots of fun and I think we had close to 650 attendees. We had great food and gave away a ton of prizes! It was a fun time and I'm glad I got to be on the employee events team.

The South Towne Expo Center - quite festive

Patrick the elf - he volunteered to wear that!

Our center director, Mitch in an elf costume calling names for the grand prize

A few of the girls on the EET - Laurel, Maren, Meg, and Crystal

Crystal, Meg and me

Just the girls!

My friend Meg is getting married, so we had a bachelorette party for her on Dec 5th. My friend Stacy did a lot of planning and it was such a fun party! It was black and white themed and we had great food and lots of fun. We played a few games, chatted, and watched Meg open her gifts. At 10:30 we went downtown to Laughing Stock, which is an improv comedy show. It was hilarious! All in all it was a great time! Meg actually got married today and I went to her reception, so there's a few pics from that too.

All the girls at the party

Stacy and the great food

A bunch of us from work were there, so here's all the Harland Clarke girls

Stacy, beautiful Meg, and me - She's a gorgeous bride!

Joey and Meg cutting/eating cake - they're so cute together!

Busy, busy, busy!

Since my last post I've been very busy. Work has been crazy and I picked up some overtime a few weeks here and there. School was stressful because finals were coming very quickly. I also had lots of events and parties to attend, so everything has kept me running around like crazy. I've welcomed this past week of 'relaxing' as much as I could. It's not my true idea of relaxing, because I still had to work, but at least school was over with. By the way, I got 3 A's for this quarter, which brings my GPA to 3.91. Not quite a 4.0, but I'll settle with 3.91. Here's a few pictures and stories of what I've been up to the past month or so.

Princesses on Ice

I'm a few weeks late with this, but Rachel and I took Adria and her friend Joni to Disney Princesses on Ice. It was really fun! There were tons of little girls dressed as princesses and even some older girls and adults, too. I'm a fan of ice skating, so I really enjoyed it. It was amazing how they could ice skate in some of the costumes.

Here's Adria and Joni with 1 minute left! They were SO excited!

Here's the 2 little girls with the other princesses
Here's the 4 of us - Adria, Joni, Rachel and Me
There were 6 princess stories and then the last hour was the Cinderella story. It was hard to get good pics, so here's a few of the better ones.

Here's Prince Eric (from the Little Mermaid) fighting Ursula

Genie and Aladdin singing and dancing

Beast and Belle

Cinderella, the mice and Cinderella's fairy godmother

Cinderella making her grand entrance at the ball

All the princesses and their princes dancing at the ball - you can see Tinkerbell in the corner too

Here was the finale with all the princesses and princes lined up on the castle stairsAll in all it was a great time. I bought some over-priced cotton candy to enjoy during the show that also came with a mickey mouse crown. :) The girls had fun taking turns wearing it. Thanks to Rachel for scoring us such good seats! Hopefully we can go again when they're in town.

Mississippi

I took a week off of work and made a trip down to Mississippi to see my sister Becki, her husband Paul, and their daughter Natalie. It was a great trip!! My week went by way too fast though...it was hard to leave! Here's a few pictures of the 200 or so that I took. :) If you'd like to see more, I've got the majority of them posted on Facebook in an album. We did some sight-seeing, went to the beach, went bowling, went on a shrimp boat tour, went fishing a few times, and just enjoyed each others company. I also got to baby-sit Natalie on Saturday while Mommy and Daddy were working. All in all I had a great time and I'm hoping to make it a yearly trip!

Here's one of my first views of the Gulf Coast.

Here's the beach along Hwy 90 from the top of the Beau Rivage (one of the casinos).

Isn't she the cutest girl in the world?!?! She loves her swing.

Natalie and me as we were fishing - pretty sunset too!

This is a big blue crab that Becki caught one other day we were fishing. They're really strong guys - hard to reel in. She got this one up on the pier and then Paul grabbed it so we could take some pictures.

This was on our shrimp boat tour - our guide explained how they use the net and then he also showed us his catch. It was really neat!

Our catch - there was everything from shrimp to fish to a jellyfish and a sting ray. We got to see him feed the pelicans and seagulls too!

This is Shirley, the boat's pet pelican! You can see the fish in her mouth. She tends to be spoiled they told us......can't imagine why.

Here's a small video of the pet pelican Shirley getting some lunch.



We enjoyed a bit of time on the beach the day before I left. We hunted for seashells and enjoyed wading in the water. Here's a picture of me, Paul, Becki and Natalie enjoying the sun!

Me and cute little Natalie! She was so much fun!

Here's me in front of the Hurricane Katrina Memorial. The top of the marble is how high the tidal surges got during the hurricane. The case is filled with items donated by Katrina survivors. So much of the landscape is still missing. As you drive along Hwy 90, you see empty cement slabs, or 2 steps leading up to nothing, so much that was destroyed hasn't been rebuilt yet.

For Halloween Natalie was a killer bee and Becki and Paul were killer bee catchers.
What a cute little family!

Paul is big into Halloween and he loves to get dressed up and enter the Halloween contests. This year we went to one Friday and Saturday night, one at the Beau Rivage and another at the Hard Rock. Here's a picture of Paul (he's the Dark Lord from the movie Legends) and Becki dressed up to match. I'm a party pooper, so I didn't dress up at all. Unfortunately, Paul didn't win either contest, so that was a bummer.

Here's a video of Natalie 'crying.' She cries, but she also screams....it was cute at first....... :) We found out at her doctor appointment that she had an ear infection so I'm sure that was part of it. She was still pretty darn cute even with the screaming. And no, I'm not a mean Aunt, Becki was on her way to get her out of her carseat while I was taking this short video.

Here's another little clip of Natalie in her crib. I think she was teething again, so she likes to chew on everything. She's so darn cute!!!

Like I said earlier, it was a fun time!! I wish they lived closer so I could see them more often, but I'm glad I had the chance to make a trip down there and see their little corner of the world. Thanks for a great time guys!!

Girls Weekend!

My cousins, Alicia and Crystal, have an apartment up in Ogden, so I went up there for the weekend and we had great time hanging out and having fun!

Crystal and Alicia giggling as we're playing cards - we were ALL laughing sooo hard! We played '1st to 13', Pictionary, Cranium, Rummikub and laughed the whole time. Crystal made us a gourmet dinner and then we watched The Scarlet Pimpernel after enjoying milk and oreos, and chocolate. Crystal had to work on Saturday, so we all slept in till about 10 (it was wonderful!) and then Alicia and I played Xbox and lounged around, listening to the BYU game till Crystal got off work. Then we decided to take a hike up behind Weber campus.

View of Ogden from the trail

Along the trail that we took, they had signs for different exercises you could stop and do. So, me, being goofy, thought it would be funny to stop and get pictures of us doing the exercises. Towards the end of the trail, we looked at the sign and realized the copyright was like 1975.....too funny!

Here's a picture of me showing the "sit and reach" exercise

Me and Crystal demonstrating the "hop-kick" exercise

Alicia demonstrating the "hand-walk".....this one was waaay hard, and the railings were coming loose, so not the safest!

After our strenuous work-out we went to Beus Park and had a picnic dinner. There are ducks and geese (I think that's what they were) that love to have you feed them, so we fed them bread and then Sunchips once we were out of bread. Most of them didn't seem to like the Sunchips, but they went crazy for the bread.
Beus Park behind Weber campus

Ducks and other large creatures - as soon as we threw one piece of bread, they all started swarming us!!

This guy was kind of ugly - and they were very loud when they started squawking!

Me, Crystal, and Alicia

Sunset as we were driving home from the park

It was a really fun weekend and now that I know where they live, we'll have to make it a regular weekend thing as often as we can. Thanks for a great weekend girls!!