Pizza making in California

Ben is the best uncle ever! We all made homemade pizzas with Amy's kids our first night in California for Christmas. They had so much fun and so did we.

Brother Ben came over with his family also to enjoy the pizza.  Isn't Mackenzie adorable?

Christmas at the Cheney's

Ben put two of my Christmas presents on the wall- WRAPPED!  We have since opened them and moved them.  He is so sweet and framed our marriage liscence and Proc. to the World

We opened gifts on the Sunday before we went to California.  The coolest rolling pin, an 9x9 pyrex, itunes gift card and cool dough measurers for my rolling pin.  I love him!  He had me open our suprise gift in California along with the stocking stuffers.  He bought us ballroom dance lessons as a couple!!! I'm beyond excited!!!

Ben got new shoes, lots of socks, a wrench set, a book light, pjs, new clothes for work and lots of love from his wife. 

Ben is a reader and Stacie is in training

I've added a new app to my blog to help inspire me to read more.  This month: Financial Books.  Ben and I are both reading the Dave Ramsey book and it is THRILLING!!! We find ourselves discussing it and saying things like, "Hey sweetheart, check this out!"  Our next book, that we both already read for a financial class at BYU, is "The Millionaire Next Door"- an absolute favorite- seriously...a must read for everyone!  Wish me luck on this book thing... so far so good. 

My Freezer

Welcome to my freezer.  These are what poor unfortunate souls, like myself, who are not allowed to eat real icecream have to deal with.  These little tiny portions of coconut milk or soy icecream are what I buy at about $5 a pop to pretend like I am eating real icecream.  Don't get me wrong, they ARE delicious- but for a pretty penny. 

O Christmas Tree

We finally did it! We finished decorating our Christmas tree! We have silver shiny and dull balls. We have red spiral stick things and candy canes to top it off. We realized a lot of people decorate with silver and red, but I insisted silver and Ben said it had to have red, so here we are with silver and red. WE LOVE OUR TREE!!! The best thing is we bought it all with a walmart gift card from our wedding.

He's going to be an adorable father

I just had to publish this photo of Ben and his nephew Gavin. I loved watching Ben with all the nieces and nephews this past Thanksgiving. I think this picture is HOT and I'm so in love with my husband who will someday be a father (this is not an announcement or anything... don't read too much into it.. haha)

Our NEW table!

We finally have a kitchen table!!! It is a lot fancier than we would have picked out, but since it is semi-used and was given on loan to us for a while from a friend, we decided to just buy it because we like it so much!! YEAH FOR US!!! It's a tall table and I love the soft leather seats. It even has two drawers on each side to store things, like scissors and study journals!

Ben's Chili

Ben is an amazing cook and any of you who have experience with his chili would agree. Friday night he made an amazing pot of chili. It was such a big pot of it in fact, it fed us until sunday night (Ben even ate it for breakfast on saturday). I made a contribution of making cornbread, which also lasted as long as the chili.

missing two plates

So Ben and I have been wondering where our other two plates were for the past month. One day I realized that we never checked the dishwasher to see if they were there. Well, needless to say, THEY WERE... and they were growing hair!!! It was hilarious! Ben is so sweet and cleaned them. If I would have, I think I would have gagged. (Obviously we never use our dishwasher).

Thanksgiving 09

Ben and I had so much fun in Iowa for thanksgiving with the Cheneys! We flew into Minnesota- Minneapolis and were picked up by Ben's sister Jana. We had so much fun eating dinner at their house, driving halfway to Iowa with James and getting picked up for the other half of the drive to Iowa by Ben's friend Russell. We enjoyed spending time with Mom and Dad for a few days before the rest of the family came into town. Ben helped Dad with the christmas lights and Stacie had fun learning how to make sour cream pancakes and 7 layer jello with mom. The men played in a turkey bowl at Ben's old highschool (apparently they play flag for 10 minutes then tackle, so no women allowed- bummer for me, so I just watched with Dad on the sidelines). After a fantastic thanksgiving we went back to Minnesota to spend the night at Janna and Jame's house, but not before eating our first Dim Sum at a chinese restaurant.