New Year's Eve 2011

On New Year's Eve our friends Drew and Leah were staying at a hotel nearby and invited us to come party with them.  We met them at Union Station in Ogden for dinner.  It was fun to hang out with them and Berkley had a bast with their girls.  We spent some time looking at the trains after dinner. 

Lillie and Berkley

By the time we were done it was past bedtime for the girls and they were cranky so we just went home.  I was falling asleep on the couch by 9:30 so I did some stuff around the house and we still went to bed before midnight.  I swear we get lamer and lamer every year when it comes to New Year's Eve, I've never gone to bed early before.  Oh well, I'm ok with it.  I value my sleep...

Holidays

We had a lot of fun this holiday season!  Even though Berkley was too young to really understand, it was still so fun to watch her reactions to everything (the tree, the lights, santa claus, opening presents, etc.)  I also had a lot more enthusiasm when it came to decorating this year, probably because I have my own house now so I took ownership in the decor.  Anyway, here is an account of our festivities. 
-Zack and I went to The Forgotten Carols with some guys from Zack's work and their wives.  It wasn't something we would normally do and we really enjoyed it.
-We picked out a nice, real tree as a family.  I'm all about fake trees. They're easy to put up and take down, you don't have to clean up any pine needles, they're cheaper in the long run, and some even come pre-lit.  However, I happened to marry one of those people who refuses to do fake.  So I guess I'm stuck going out in the cold every winter to find a tree and cleaning up endless needles.  I have to admit, though, it did smell amazing. 
-We rode the frontrunner to Salt Lake to see the lights at temple square with Zack's family. 

 It was a pretty cold night but we were bundled up enough.  By the time we got to the lights it was Berkley's bedtime.  She was super tired and I figured she'd just doze off in her stroller.  When I went to recline her, she whined and tried to sit back up.  She wanted to see the lights!  So I sat her back up and she just stared at all the lights in a sleepy daze.  She was mesmerized. 

 The rest of the fam.

 And of course, a temple shot. 

 -We went to three big family parties.  Schvaneveldt, Toolson, and Morby.  Here are a few pics from the big Schvaneveldt get-together. 

Cousin Bree reading Berkley's new book to her.  

 Berkley made friends with her... second cousins?  Shaylee and Hadley.  They were the most entertaining part of the party. 

 -We attempted to take some pictures of Berkley in her Christmas dress in front of our tree.  Zack's mom made her the dress and also made a matching one for a doll.  Super cute.

-The weather on Christmas was not Christmasy at all.  This was my 9th Christmas in Utah and the first one that wasn't white.  We didn't even have any residual snow on our lawn, it was all melted.  The day was perfectly sunny.  It felt so weird.  It felt like April.

Christmas morning sleepyhead.

 Berkley actually did pretty well unwrapping her presents.  She did get distracted though and wanted to play with the wrapping.  Then, when she realized there was a toy, she wanted to play with that instead of unwrapping the next present.  So it ended up going a little slow but we didn't mind, it was pretty fun.  We even shot a couple vids with our new flip video camera!

 (I know it's kind of a lot of video.  Feel free to skip it.  I'm sure the only ones who will watch all of them are her grandparents anyway.)

Christmas evening was the Morby family party.  Here is Berkley with Nellie, the closest thing she has to a cousin.  I have a feeling they'll have a lot of fun together at next year's party!

Berkley is 5 months older than Nellie but Nellie still weighed 3 lbs more than Berkley!

Santa showed up at the party.  It was after Berkley's bedtime and she was way tired and whiney so I thought she would hate Santa.  Instead she just sat there and gave him a couple of confused glances. 

-We were able to have friends over from Brigham City, Salt Lake, Washington, and California!  We saw our Cali friends, the Fullers, on New Year's Eve.  Their son Evan is a month older than Berkley.  This was their second time meeting and I think they hit it off pretty well.  These pictures are for their future wedding video. 

-Our four year anniversary was also over the holidays.  (December 28th)  We've found that by the end of December we're pooped from all the traveling, entertaining, hustle and bustle so we tend to keep the anniversary casual.  We just went to dinner while my Mom watched Berkley.  It was nice to spend some time alone together.  Four years.  Crazy right?
-On New Year's Eve, Berkley was acting kind of sick so we opted to stay home.  (It was a good thing too, she ended up puking all over and we found out a few days later that she had croup and an ear infection!)  We ate yummy snacks, drank our Stewart's key lime sodas, and watched Inception for the first time.  We were asleep by approximately 12:10.  Party animals.

The Holidays

We had a wonderful, busy holiday season full of family, friends, and food. Probably similar to most of you guys. Here's a little rundown of the festivities.

We enjoyed getting cards from our family and friends. This one was our absolute favorite. No, they are not gay, just hilarious.

We had some friends chop down a tree for us from the Uintahs. We requested a short, fat one and this is what we ended up with. Whoops.

After Zack chopped the bottom half off it turned out pretty scraggly. We decorated its 5 branches with our ghetto, homemade ornaments from our childhood and it looked great.

Here's a beautiful mountain view we get to experience often in this great state.

December 14th we took the frontrunner (for the first time) down to Salt Lake with Zack's family. We rode on the top floor. Then we took tracks to the gateway, had some dinner at rumbi, and took a walk around temple square to see the lights.

We heart public transit.

Beautiful...

December 15th we went down to Bountiful to see Merrisa's choir concert after a fabulous dinner at firehouse with the Woodbury girls. It was nice to get into the Christmas spirit with some holiday tunes. It's too bad we didn't go the next night to see the girl who fainted. Risa did a great job as far as I could tell. It was difficult to hear her over the other hundreds of students though.

December 20th was the Schvaneveldt family (my mother-in-law's) Christmas party. It was complete with a nice array of hot soups and a $1 gift exchange.

December 23rd was the 3rd annual ugly sweater party hosted by our friend Nate. We ate some great food and had a nice, rousing game of white elephant. I ended up with this santa door hanger and Zack got a signed photo of his friend Mike Dove, the ultimate fighter, and a mouth guard from his fight.

Close-ups of our sweaters.

December 24th we made our way down to Bountiful again for Christmas eve at Grandma Toolson's. We had an excellent feast, played all the traditional family games, and topped it off with Grandma's homemade chocolates. I was chosen to read the Christmas story out of the bible because, in my Grandpa's words, "Callie's about to have a baby Jesus of her own." Yep.

We spent Christmas morning together at our apartment. We opened presents, had a nice breakfast, and watched elf. Here's Zack playing his new wii deer hunting game on our new tv.

Who needs little kids when he's around? He had just as much fun playing with his new "toys" as any little kid would.

Yeah, he's going to build us a new entertainment center. That tv doesn't quite fit...

On Christmas evening we made our way to the Morby family party featuring all sorts of appetizers and a Santa Claus who really resembles Grandpa Morby.

December 27th was the last of the family get-togethers. We had a nice dinner with the Woodbury family and an intense game of mad gab.

December 28th was our 3rd anniversary. I know, it's hard to believe it's been that long! We were pretty tired out from all of the festivities so we just spent the afternoon together shopping, went to dinner, and watched a movie at home. Yeah, we're old and boring. I did surprise Zack with some Jazz tickets. We've been wanting to go to a game for a long time so we're excited to go in March!

Last of all was New Years Eve. We just went to our friends' house and played games and went home at about 12:15. Once again old and boring. We had a really great month though as I'm sure all of you did as well!