A new adventure

We have started a new blog! Don't worry, our Georgia blog will remain (and I'll try to get better at posting), but our new blog has a specific purpose, to describe our journey of becoming parents. No, we aren't pregnant, yet! And we aren't "trying" either, we are just preparing. Feel free to check it out, hopefully we'll get some fun content up there soon.

Pardon our dust

Please pardon our dust. We're making changes. We're adopting our theme from Pushing Daisies. The art direction of that show is unsurpassed by anything else on TV right now.

Magical Nights of Lights? Maybe

I really wanted to experience more Christmas in Georgia this year than we were able to experience last year. Unfortunately we didn't have time to get to it all, I guess that means we have more to do next year! We did however make it to the Magical Nights of Lights at the Lake Lanier Islands Resort. We would not have gone because tickets are a ridiculous $40 per car! But I got a free ticket from my work. I'm glad we went, because it's worth going once and witnessing the bizarre spectacle that they call magical. I'll post a few pictures here (warning! the pictures are horrible and my camera died right at the beginning, so most will be with my phone camera), but we'll put the rest on flickr.
First of all, it's sponsored by the McDonald's, Publix (local grocery store), and I think Georgia power.
You might think having sponsors for lights would make it totally awesome, but it doesn't mean that at all. Basically all it consisted of was driving around the resort looking at bizarrely shaped wire figures covered in lights.

12 Days of Christmas "land"

5 gold rings

8 maids milking?

I tried to get excited about it, and did kind of when I saw Wizard of Oz stuff, but seriously, who goes to look at Christmas lights and hopes they have figures from the Wizard of Oz? Not me.

"There's no place like home"

But, once I settled into the fact that this was in no way going to compare to lights at Temple Square, I was ready for the experience, and what an experience it was. I was amazed that the place was packed! We were in a huge, slow moving line of cars, winding our way through the resort.

Waiting to drive through the tunnel of lights

This is driving through the tunnel of lights

At one point you get dumped into the Holiday Village which might look appealing, but it's actually kind of scary. We got out and saw our friends (the MacPherson's) who were also "enjoying" the drive; they were on a potty break, so Joe and I left and took in the sights. There was a huge Christmas store, where I was finally able to find some candied nuts (I'd been looking all over for them, and these were actually fresh) I got cashews, pecans, and almonds, I was super excited. Then we went out to what has to be the strangest part of the whole night, the carnival area. Amazing! Pony rides, a fun house, and a plethora of diesel fueled rides!

Pony Ride, $6!

A scary looking slide

Fun house?

It was crazy to witness, but I'm glad we did. After taking it all in, we got back to the car and finished the drive. I'm not sure I could say what the best part of the whole night was, it was all so amazing, but perhaps it's just that we got to see it all for free.

Primary Christmas Presents

Since I'm in the primary presidency in our ward, I was a participant in coming up with and creating our gift to the primary kids and teachers.
A few months ago our ward ended up with several boxes of chair covers (the soft padded chair covers that everyone wants to sit on during stake conference if you miss your chance at a bench. . .) Anyway, you'll see what I'm talking about in the pictures. So the other counselor thought that she would take a box and hide it in our closet until we could figure out what to do with them, but she knew they could be used for the kids Christmas present. Well, after some thought and some internet searching we settled on making lap desks. Diana came up with our final design, and although it was ambitious, we decided to do it. And here's our final product after hours of building and help from lots of people, I think they turned out really cute. We had a little Christmas party for the kids on the 21st and gave the kids the gift.








































We used melamine for the white board part. You can buy huge sheets of it at a Home Depot type place and have them cut it for you. Then we had vinyl lettering made with the 2009 Primary theme "My Eternal Family" along with each child's name. We also gave the children a zipper pull with the theme on it, you can find it here, they are really small, but totally cute. Each year there are a new round of songs that the children learn from the annual Primary Program in Sacrament meeting, so we put those songs along with others, like the Article of Faith songs, on a CD so that they can learn them at home too.

Here's a picture of most of the primary kids with the primary president. It's not a little blurry, but still fun.













The teachers unfortunately didn't get as awesome a gift as the kids, but we still thought they deserved something good for all the work they do. When I was visiting Utah in November I saw that my father-in-law got a teacher appreciation gift (he's the music leader in their ward, awesome!), it was this cute bowl of Hugs and Kisses, with a little poem. I decided to steal the idea. I found these really cute ceramic baking pans at Michael's and Joe helped me put the gifts together. I think they turned out nice.

A Braselton Christmas

Well, I guess since I've been a total slacker, I'll have to get back to posting our Disney pictures once I blog about Christmas. So here we go.

For Christmas Eve, Emily was nice enough to invite us over, so we went over to the Nicolich's for dinner. We settled on having ham and potatoes, just like what we would have if we were back in Utah. It was fun to spend the evening with Bill and Emily and their girls. And of course the food was awesome. Emily did a spiral ham with orange-horseradish glaze, and Joe decided he wanted to make "funeral" potatoes and a yam & apple casserole. It all turned out awesome.















I unfortunately ruined the pumpkin pie! It looked really good, but I totally forgot to put in the sugar!
After dinner, Joe had a quick violin lesson from Emily, which was totally fun. He wants to add violin skills to the guitar and banjo ones he already has.





















Sally and Alice got cute matching jammies, which Sally wasn't exactly excited about, but really, what 2 year old is excited to open a present of jammies? Still, they both looked cute in them














We watched Mr. Kruger's Christmas, and I helped Emily build some awesome blocks for Sally. Joe and Bill got some video game time, which is always necessary. It was a great Christmas Eve party, Bob wants us to call it, The Griglich, which is fine.


Joe and I went home and slept on one of our presents to ourselves. . . a new memory foam mattress topper! Super exciting! But really, it's totally awesome. In the morning we woke up to open our 3 brown boxes that we received in the mail from family and Rock Band 2!
Joe really wanted Rock Band, and when we saw the last one in Costco we decided to just do it, another gift to ourselves. We got jammies, a San Francisco puzzle & an awesome "card" from Joe's parents. My parents sent us a great book of art from James C. Christensen, Joe is really excited, he's one of his favorite artists.
My brother bought me the Gospel Art Picture kit which I had asked for, I'm excited to have it.






After opening all of our stuff we started on making our Christmas day meal. We sort of missed a traditional Thanksgiving, with turkey and what not, so we made up for it. The meal turned out nice, and Joe is so good to touch the nasty gross turkey!















Later in the evening we went over to the MacPherson's, Emily and Bill came too. We played some awesome Fusion Frenzy and had a nice Christmas chat.















Our Christmas was really nice, even though we weren't around family, which would have been the best. But it was low key, and virtually stress free. Joe and I made a pact that we wouldn't buy each other any gifts. Not having to stress about buying gifts for each other was great, we were able to focus on just being together. We also decided to do the 12 days of Christmas for a family this year. I had done this growing up and decided we should do something special for someone else this year. It was a lot of fun, it's about the only time you can doorbell ditch someone and feel OK about it. I hope the family enjoyed it as much as we did.
Here are a few Christmas day photos:


































Joe actually bought me this Willow Tree Nativity last year, but this was the first time putting it up. I totally love it.


Find the hidden Mickey!