Sam... what did you get for Christmas?

Well... let me tell you what my favorite was. When I open up not one but two Sonicare toothbrushes. Why would you buy me two I ask? Dad replies... his and hers... a good omen for the future. All I had to say was wow.

I brought the blizzard home with me...

So this NEVER happens here in Vegas... its a pretty big deal. We are not quite sure what to do when the snow actually starts sticking to the road... let alone when some inches of snow start piling up. We don't quite own any snow plows here in sin city. Might be staying in all night...

Your grandpa is a ballerina?

Nope... my grandpa is a ballerino.

Not even sure if that is a word but Lexie and I came up with it years ago. Thought is sounded right.

So one of my favorite parts about Christmas is making the trek up to utah to see Ballet West's Nutcracker. Most of you know that my Grandpa was a ballet pioneer in this country... starting the San Francisco Ballet along with Ballet West. Yep he was pretty cool. Anyways... Ballet West still performs his choreography of the Nutcracker ever Christmas. I remember going to it quite often as a child and thought it would be fun if we could get the whole family together and go again this year. Its always fun to be with my moms side of the family, especially at the Nutcracker. I never really understood how much my grandpa accomplished in his lifetime when I was growing up but it is always fun to get together and honor him and his works.

HELLO CUPCAKE...

For mothers day my mom bought me this book... and I became inspired to decorate cupcakes...

So for Christmas time, I roped Brinley (who just took a cake decorating class) into helping me make these... (this image is from the book)



So we got creative with the decorating sugars as they are called in the cake decorating world. I also rolled out with a rolling pin some airheads and used a pizza roller to cut up some fruit roll-ups and this is what we got...



Except one of them ended up looking like a firecracker... and according to Preston they looked like turtles...



All in all though it was one of my favorite nights ever.... despite Brinley telling me all my cupcakes were ugly. Which some of them most definitely were.

BESTIES...

There are so many reasons to love the holiday season, but these girls are one the of reasons that this time of year really is the best! Its not every day you meet some girls in Junior High and over ten years later you still find yourself sitting on the same blue couches (thank you Lori for handing them down to Natalie) with the same people like time has never changed. Except now three of you are married, and two of you are moms. Crazy. So here are my shout outs to my besties...

Erinita Lita Cita - it saddens me that you live so far away, but really I am just jealous cause you are living out mine and Kendals dream. There is no way to put down all of the memories but I can't believe how much time has gone by and we sit down after months of not talking and pick up right where we left off.

Kendal - even though natalie chants "fight fight fight" whenever we start to bicker and even though you did punch me in my mouth once, I still love you. You are my indian outlaw friend and for that I will always love you too. No one else shares the joy in that song like we do - and we love to make others mad by singing it.

Jennifer - the girl who shares my love of crafts and art and anything that involves anything at Joanns. You guys can thank jen cause it was in fact at one of our craft nights where I felt inspired to start a blog. I love that I can call you anytime and chat just like when we were sixteen and you would call me at midnight to talk about boys while watching party of five.

Natalie - Your decision to move .7 miles away from me was the best of your life. Or my life. Either way. It was a good one. I love that you still have those blue couches and I love that we get together when we are 25 and you pull out the pictures of Jen with her bangs or me covered in all you crap while sleeping on the church history trip. Thank you for always keeping the memories alive and for giving us a chance to laugh at ourselves.

I hope everyone is fortunate enough to have their own set of besties...