A Gift for You

Merry Christmas!

Brad and I have been working on a little project.  A photography blog to showcase Brad's best photographs.  It's not completely finished so feel free to give us your suggestions and feedback.  But here it is.

bradpackerphotography.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

* To everyone who got our Christmas email, the link to Brad's blog is wrong.

Merry Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas.  We've been relaxing and spending time with family.  There has been far too much egg nog, beef stick, sugar cookies, and french pancakes.  Christmas morning there were lots of presents to open.  I knitted my mom a hat and scarf.  Gia and Malinda got beaded necklaces.  I got a Kindle and a bunch of cooking stuff!  Brad got lots of photography stuff, including . . .

. . . his new Canon 7D!

I am never able to surprise Brad with gifts.  He always ruins the surprise long before it's time for gifts.  He says that it's a lot more fun for him to figure out what the gift is than to wait.  Not this year.  I had the camera mailed to my parent's house so Brad wouldn't be able to see, touch, or ask about his present.  He was completely surprised!  It was great to see his face after opening the box.

We spent the rest of the day playing with gifts, visiting at my grandparent's house, and eating lots of Christmas food.  Merry Christmas everyone!

My Best Friend's Wedding

Yesterday was a busy, busy day.  It went a little like this.
4:15 Wake up at and start to get ready.
4:45 stop getting ready to help Brad while he's throwing up.
5:15 finish getting ready.
5:45 drive on white-washed roads while it snows so hard you can't see what's ahead of you.
7:10 arrive at Salt Lake Temple just in time to go to my best friend's wedding.
7:40 Watch my best friend get married.  And cry a little because I'm just so excited for them.

It was crazy watching as Holly and Wayne were married.  I had several people ask me how I know Holly, and many people were shocked to find out we knew each other from elementary school and are still friends.  We didn't really become good friends until high school, and even after high school she is still one of my best friends.  And there I was watching my best friend get married.  But Wayne is a great guy who I know will make Holly happy.  I'm so excited for these two.

9:00 Pictures in front of the temple.
9:30 Drive back to Provo to bring Sprite and Pepto Bismal to my sick husband. (Luckily the roads had cleared up.)
11:00 Wedding luncheon. And maybe I cried a little more at their slideshow.
1:30 Sneaking out to decorate their car since they weren't having a reception.

And when we were done, I went home to my sick husband.  But even then, I didn't mind because he's my husband and I'm very lucky to have married to him.  I love weddings.

But that was not the end of my busy, busy day.

My Busy, Busy Day: Part II

Now, my wonderful mother is celebrating her 50th birthday on the 20th.  So, my dear sisters and I secretly planned her birthday party.  We planned for weeks, sending out invitations, baking lots of cookies, making decorations, and even got my dad to get her out of the house.  So even though I wanted to go to bed immediately upon getting home from my friend's wedding, I starting prepping food for my mom's birthday dinner.  I have a wonderful sister, Malinda, who bought all the food and starting making dinner before I got there.  We finished our preparations and headed to Alpine.

My other wonderful sister, Adrianne, had been busy getting the house ready for everyone.  We finished all our preparations, with some other help from wonderful aunts, everything was ready.  We all waited patiently for the birthday girl and got a great reaction.

However, she had her suspicions.  One, my dad brought her to the movies.  My dad NEVER goes to the movies.  I don't think he's been to one in years and years.  Two, saying things like, "We'll we've got to be busy Saturday afternoon," and "The mouse is in the trap," around her usually arises suspicions.  But, she was surprised that there was a whole party for her.

So, we enjoyed dinner, watched a slideshow about my mom's life (thanks Adrianne), ate cake and ice cream, and roasted my mom a little.  Happy 50th Birthday Mom!

A Minnesota Thanksgiving

Things Needed for a Minnesota Thanksgiving
1. Eating Pumpkin Pie for Breakfast
2. Teaching Janet how to use Amazon
3. Puzzles.  This is the one we put together. All 2000 pieces.

4. Snow.  But surprisingly, we came home to more snow in Utah.
5. Banana Cream Pie
6. Decorating at least 2 Christmas trees.
7. Eating a 300 First
8. Shopping at TJ Maxx
9. Bread Baker Bread
10. Watching a Pilgrim's Journey Home with the whole family.  This was a BYU production from a few years ago that finally aired.  If you missed it, you can view it here.

All of these things may not be needed for every Minnesota Thanksgiving.  We didn't watch Miracle of 34th St as is tradition.  But we enjoyed our time in Minnesota very much.

Fall Baking

I've been in a baking mood.  I'm not sure if it's the change into fall or that Halloween is here, but I've felt like being in my kitchen.  Things I've baked within the last couple of weeks include:

Halloween Sugar Cookies 

(Brad and Aaron did the icing while I did the decorating.  Good job boys!)

Super Apple Pie

(recipe can be found here)

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

(recipe can be found here)

Yummy!  I think this is my new favorite pumpkin recipe.  It even used whole wheat flour.  Give them a try.

On another note, it's Halloween and we have had zero trick-or-treaters.  We've had awful weather.  Rain + wind + hail + lightning x Halloween = 1 very full bowl of Halloween candy.  After all these treats, I'm feeling very guilty about my lack of running the past few weeks.  I'm going to have to rededicate myself with the holidays coming up.  There's always next week.  Now where is that last slice of pie?

Sophisticated Soirée

Over Conference weekend, the Packers had a big get together at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to celebrate Grandma Packer's 85th birthday.  We enjoyed seeing all the Packer cousins and their families, watching conference, and looking at Grandma's family picture book. We are very lucky to have this wonderful lady as our grandma and we hope we get to celebrate many more birthdays with her.  Happy Birthday Grandma!

Old News

So, this is a post to catch up on all things I haven't had time to post.  Yes, some are a few months old.  But just to remember what this summer was like, I'm putting them up.

This summer my parents bought a cabin by Silver Lake Flat.  I don't have any pictures of the actual cabin or the lake, but we've had a lot of fun up there.

We celebrated the 4th of July with BBQ and watching the Stadium of Fire fireworks.  This is one of Brad's pictures from the night.

I celebrated my birthday!  The chocolate cake my sisters gave me was ridiculous decadent!  Brad also took me out to a restaurant I've been wanting to try for ages.  Loved it!

Brad and I also celebrated our 2nd anniversary.  We went to Cafe Rio (like our first date), bought fruit tarts at Kneader's (that we had our reception), and had a nice evening together.  The next day we went to Thanksgiving Point gardens.  Little did we know there was a car show going on for that day only.  Just our luck for taking pictures of the gardens with cars parked everywhere.  We did get a few decent ones.  And I saw a Delorian.

Also of note, these last 4 photos are my first attempts at doing HDR.  Brad helped me a lot, but I'm learning how to process HDR images.

Anniversary

It's been 2 wonderful years of married life!  I'm such a lucky girl to have Brad in my life.  We've had so much fun together and I know that this is only the start.   In commemoration of our anniversary, I've updated our "About Us" page.  It has a lot more about the story of how we met, dated, and got engaged.  We've had a lot of good times together and I love having such an amazing best friend.  We've had a lot going on this year, but I'm glad you've been there with me for it all.  Here's to another wonderful year.

Zion National Park

Going into summer, we knew we were going to be busy.  The DAT, dental applications, going to Nicaragua, working, attending school, and being put in as Elder's Quorum President doesn't leave much time for much else.  However, we looked at Brad's schedule and found one weekend when he didn't have a test and I could take time off work to go on a little vacation.  We went down to southern Utah to Zion National Park.  We just spent 2 days there, but it was relaxing, gorgeous, and much needed.

Brad and I went on a hike and found a nice little spot to sit and eat our dinner.  We ended up getting surrounded by squirrels.  We had five of them coming within inches of us, trying to get our food.  They kept fighting each other and we were afraid of getting attacked.  They had pictures up everywhere of someone who had been attacked by squirrels and we were not excited at the prospect of being the next billboard.

Sunset at Zion

The next day, we hiked up to the Emerald Pools.  The waterfalls were much cooler than the puddles, I mean pools.

Waterfalls

It was much too hot after that to do any more hiking so we went on a drive on the Mount Carmel Highway.  

Dr. Seuss Rock

It looks a little like this:

And we met this guy on the side of the road.

We also went on a great drive up to Kolob Reservoir.

We didn't go down with many expectations.  Brad had never been to Zion National Park and the last time I went down and actually saw the park was when I was 8.  But for a quick trip with lots to do, photo opportunities galore, and long, peaceful drives, Zion National Park was great.  Arches next?

Brigham City Temple Groundbreaking

Sorry it has been forever since we have had anything new on our blog.  It's not that nothing has been going on, it's just that we've been too busy to edit pictures and compose blog posts.  We've been to Packer Family Reunion, on a lot of cool drives (with lots of pictures), enjoying time with family, celebrating the 4th of July and 24th of July, and we even took a trip to Zion National Park this last week.  We'll try really hard to get our blog updated as soon as possible.  We are still working, going to school, and applying for dental school so it will still take us a while, but it will get done.

Like I said, we went to Zion National Park this week.  It was amazing and it will have it's own blog post once we have the pictures edited.  While we were driving home late at night, we got a call from Brad's dad.  Now, we knew that he would be coming out Friday night and we knew that we would probably have lunch with him on Saturday so we weren't really in a rush to get home at a decent hour.  However, Brad's dad was calling to invite us to the groundbreaking for the Brigham City Temple.  For those of you who don't know, the Packers are from Brigham City and this is a pretty big deal for the family.  We accepted the invitation, not realizing that by the time we got home we would only get 3 1/2 hours of sleep before we would be up again to make it to Brigham City on time.  It was completely worth the lack of sleep.  Neither of us had been to a groundbreaking before, but we are really glad we made the effort to get up early. There was a really special spirit there and it was really nice that Uncle Boyd got to conduct the groundbreaking.

 

President Packer                                                                     Elder Nelson

Uncle Boyd turned some dirt first, and then with Elder Nelson.  The other general authorities were then ask to turn the dirt, followed by other dignitaries.  After that anyone else who wanted to was able to turn the dirt.  Grandma was the first to go.  We all had a turn after that.

Breaking ground in front of the tabernacle.

Thanks Grandma for getting us the really good seats!  We loved hanging out with the Packer family for the day.