An Indiana Christmas

As most of you know, or if you didn't know, my Mom Deneen, Step-Dad Charlie, and Brother C.J. moved to Indiana this past summer. Now they live almost the exact distance as when I lived in CA and they were in AZ! So, Jan-Michael and I drove to Indiana while my Sister Kara and Grandma Charlotte flew out. Well, about half way into our trip, I wished that we too hitched a ride on a plane! The weather was awful! Thanks to my Dad who got us a lovely GPS for Christmas, we flowed it's route and watched as the "arrival time" listed went from 4pm
to after 9pm. We spent a total of 11 hours driving to Indiana which should have taken only 6. AAHHH!!! Half way in to our trip, we suddenly came to a stop somewhere in Ohio. The current freeway we were on had been closed. Imagine this- the roads were so icy that the slightest little incline sent semi-trucks sliding backwards! We *illegally* exited the freeway and spent the next hour or so just wasting time by eating or shopping in this little plaza. Thank goodness we were in the boonies with only a gas station to keep us entertained! It was a scary and nerve-racking trip to say the least. I'm pretty sure that any sort of winter driving is worse than the scariest roller-coaster.

















We did have a lot of fun in Indiana though. The kids, meaning Jan, me, Kara and CJ went exploring and shopping. Everyone was ecstatic to find a White Castle and try it for the first time! My husband ate a total of 8, including one chicken burger. My my my. Kara then built a castle out of the boxes. We went downtown, took pictures and shopped. Christmas Eve night, we got all dressed up and went to a candlelight service. Then watched "A Wonderful Life" and wrapped gifts in to the wee hours. Christmas morning was spent doing the usual- opening gifts. I however was so excited for Kara to open her gift from us. I had been working on a scrapbook for her since this summer! C.J. said he had the best Christmas ever (he got a ton of hunting stuff including an air rifle). Even the dogs got gifts =) My Mom made the tradition Christmas breakfast...
strawberry blintzes MMmm Mmmm. That night we played one of Jan's gifts from my parents- Pirates of the Caribbean version of Life. And for the first time, us ladies drank spiked Egg Nog! Merry merry!


The day after Christmas, after hitting some Christmas sales, our family came over for a Christmas party! My Mom made tons of yummy food and family from Peru and Kentucky came- My Aunt Sara and her daughters Ashta and Alaura (poor Amelia was sick so Uncle Jay stayed at home with her), Aunt Jenny and Uncle Steven with their girls, Danielle and Emily, Aunt Heidi and her kids, Hayley and Brandon, Grandma Carolyn, and Uncle Christopher and Aunt Mindy with Cassie and Christopher Jr. I had not seen my Indiana family in about 8 or 9 years! It was also fun being reunited with my beautiful flowergirls =) We ate, opened gifts, and watched Kara rock out! Yes, my brave little sister sang and played for the whole family!



Jan-Michael and I left the next day. Luckily the drive back was much much better!
We hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas!

Ugly Sweater Christmas Party

Our friend Stacey was planning on having a Christmas party. She told us this about a day after I had just read Jody's blog. I told Stacey about how Jody had an ugly sweater party and she loved it!! So, the party turned in to an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party. Thanks for the idea Jody!!! A few days later I was talking to my best friend Janelle- she was going to an ugly sweater party too! But instead of buying sweaters, she and her friend made them. They ended up winning first prize at their party! So, Janelle mailed me her home-made, light up, glitter filled, bow on the back sweater (and matching headband!). Thanks Janelle!

Anyway, the party was the 22nd, which was the night before we left for Indiana. Thanks Stacey for changing the date so we could attend! I purchased a lovely sweater at the Salvation Army for Jan, put on my sweater from Janelle, and we were off! We ate a lot of food, listened to Christmas music, and took tons of pictures. The party was also a chance for us all to exchange gifts, which I must say was quit fun in itself! Some people got some hilarious gifts!





After the party, Jan and I went home, changed, and opened gifts from each other. We didn't want to lug them all to Indiana, so we celebrated OUR Christmas a couple days early.

Lightscapes and Egg Nog Fudge

Those of you who live in AZ, do you ever visit the Temple lights??? I love it! Obviously this year, we missed out. Instead, we joined Matt, Maggie and Aidan and headed to Rich's Farms for their Lightscapes. You just drive through their entire farm and look at all the lights they put up. They had reindeer, horses, ice-skaters, a train, fish, birds, and all sorts of lit up decor. They even broadcast a Christmas radio station for you to listen to as you drive through. Afterwards, we went to their Christmas shop and visited Santa! As you can see, poor Aidan was scared to death! But Santa was pretty young, so he wasn't fooled! Do you like the ornament I bought?! haha!

Yesterday I became Mrs. Claus and baked goodies for my hubby to take to work. One turned out so yummy, I thought I'd share it with you! If you like egg nog, you will love this egg nog fudge! If you don't like egg nog, you will still probably love this fudge =) I found it online and tweaked it a bit based on it's reviews. It's really sweet, so make sure you cut it in to small pieces!

Egg Nog Fudge

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cup egg nog
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups mini marshmallows
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (or a dash more!)
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 cup butter, chilled
1/2 package white chocolate chips (approx 6 oz)

Spray an 8x8 baking pan with Pam.
Using a large saucepan, spray the bottom and sides with cooking spray. Heat egg nog and sugar over medium heat. Bring to a rolling boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Boil for 2 minutes.
Fold in marshmallows, cinnamon and nutmeg. (note- have these all ready to go in a bowl to dump in!) Return to a boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. As the mixture boils it will become brown.

Remove from heat and quickly stir in butter and white chocolate chips (I had these combined in a bowl waiting in the fridge). Stir until well mixed and glossy.
Quickly pour in to prepared pan. Cool at room temperature (I also stuck mine in the fridge before I started cutting).


By the way, just thought I'd add that it was -7 degrees this morning!!! OK!!

Early Christmas Gift, The Nutcracker Ballet!

I've always loved the Nutcracker Ballet. I went for the first time with my Dad when I was about 4 and have tried to go as much as possible since then. I loved it. In fact we got the soundtrack cassette and I danced around to it in our livingroom. I wanted to be a ballerina more than anything. Obviously, you all know how tall I am... that dream never came true. But, I do still love a good ballet and nothing beats the Nutcracker!
So this past Saturday, we saw the Nutcracker Ballet at the Palace Theatre. Don't you just love early Christmas gifts?! The theatre was darling, all old looking and yet so beautiful. Of course they had a gift shop set up in the lobby and I ended up with an ornament of Clara holding her nutcracker. So cute! The ballet was actually performed by a ballet school, so some of the kids were as young as 4. They were just darling! And the oldest ones were so amazingly talented. It was wonderful! The costumes were so gorgeous and the backdrops were perfect. They spent a lot of time on this show. We had great center floor seats too!

Now if you want to giggle: Imagine me all wide eyed, like a little girl again, hardly blinking so as to not miss a beat when suddenly I see a head nodding beside me.... Yes, my husband was falling asleep! He did it a few times throughout the performance and I just laughed! He said the music was like a lullaby, besides he had been up since 4 in the morning!

Don't worry, he got an early Christmas gift too. Actually, he has had it for about 2 months now. An XBox 360. I tried to keep it in the box so that he wouldn't be able to play with it until Christmas, but that didn't work. He said he needed to make sure it worked... and it has been out of the box since. One of his co-workers sold it to him for half the price of a brand new one. He got all these extra gadgets with it too. It was a sweet deal!

If Only....

My brother in-law, Wesley, sent this video to me. Isn't it hilarious?! Thanks!!

Hershey Anniversary

For our wedding anniversary, we decided to go to Hershey Pennsylvania. My Aunt and several people had told me that Hershey is beautiful at Christmas. Neither of us had been, so we thought "why not". We didn't have to pay much to go since gas prices our down and we used points to stay in a hotel.
The only thing we didn't prepare for was the rain. It rained the whole drive there, the drive back, and the whole time we were there. This is why I love snow- at least you don't get wet (well, not really). As soon as we checked in to our hotel, we went to Hershey Park which is called Candy Lane.I'm sure it's booming during the summer, but it was dead when we were there. Most of the rides are closed during the winter, but because it was raining, pretty much everything was closed. It didn't bother us much though because it only cost $10 to get in and we mainly wanted to see all the lights anyway. The highlight of my night was drinking this yummy hot cocoa! I mean, I've never had any so good!
Of course we had to visit Santa! We were the only people there, so I bet Santa was glad to see us =) Finally before we left, we waited on a show called Home Sweet Home. It was amazing! I just love theatre shows! The set was so cute and the house actually spins and opens. The show was based on Christmas stories they would read, including the birth of Jesus. Then at the end, the "Dad" got to come home on military leave for Christmas =)
After the park, we went to a reastaurant near our hotel. It's called Friendly's and I couldn't stop laughing about the name. So cute!




Day 2, on our actually wedding anniversary, we went back to Hershey. This time we went to Chocolate World. Inside there
are a ton of shops, food courts, chocolate galore, 3D movie, and the chocolate tour. The tour is actually a ride. You sit in a buggy that takes you around their "mock factory" with singing cows and all! It was really cute. We bought a cake to cute for our anniversary, put our picture on a chocolate bar wrapper, and headed home. Believe it or not, but we didn't eat any chocolate at all! I'm not a huge fan of Hershey's candy, but you'd think with the smells and chocolate everywhere, we would have eaten something!












I got out all our wedding stuff to celebrate our anniversary. I wore my wedding jewelry at Hershey Park, and my wedding tiara the next day on our actual anniversary. It was fun! Maybe I'll do that every year. My tiara is already looking fake and old though, so we will see. We also cut cake and toasted with champagne. You only get one first anniversary, right? In order to avoid the whole eating frost bitten year-old cake, I saved coffee favors from our wedding to brew on our anniversary. The coffee was yummy =)


We didn't get eachother gifts for our anniversary besides exchanging cards. But my wonderful husband did get me some beautiful yellow roses. We figured Christmas is around the corner, we were going to Hershey, and we both just got new coats recently! But we did get some wonderful gifts from my Mom, Charlie, C.J. and my in-laws. Thank you!!

Happy Birthday Charlie!

Happy birthday to my Step-Dad Charlie, who said he enjoyed his special day by doing... nothing! Hope you had a relaxing day =)

Another special birthday wish goes out to Janelle on December 10th! Wish we could go to Disneyland with you!

First Anniversary

One year ago today, my happily ever after began...

Early Christmas Shopping

On Monday, Ellen, Stacey, Jan-Michael and I drove two hours to the Grove City Outlets (they're actually called Prime Outlets, but everyone calls them Grove City Outlets). We got there around 11:30am and shopped until after 6pm at night! It was quite a lot of shopping! The hardest part was trying NOT to shop for ourselves when there were such great deals in our faces! My favorite store happened to be everyone's favorite store of the day- Jimmyz. I had never heard of them, even though they're based in L.A. and NY. I just never saw it I guess! They had the best deals and the nicest clothes. If you have one in your area, go! By the end of the day, we all had bags and bags and bags of goodies. That's probably why we were approached by a NEWS STATION CREW to be interviewed, which ended up on the 11 o'clock news that night! I give props to my actor husband- having a camera in your face was the most nerve racking experience of my life! How do people do it?! Anyway, all that discounted shopping has just got me even more pumped fro Black Friday! Watch out stores, here I come!

4th Picture Tag

I think I was tagged by a couple people for this........
The 4th photo in the 4th picture file.

This picture is from the Enchanted Premiere event at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood last November. Jan-Michael, Domonique & fam, Janelle, Nathan and I all went opening day of one of the BEST MOVIES EVER! Afterwards, they had a "ball" filled with princesses, princes, movie props, fun stations, a beauty salon, shopping, etc. It was really one of the most fun days I've ever had. In this picture, Janelle and I just entered in to the "ball" and couldn't have been more excited! If you remember, the painting in our picture is from the movie.

Now I tag Steven, my Dad, and Kim (who need more excuses for blog posts!).