Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year we celebrated at my Grandma and Grandpa Paulson's house in Ogden. Every year for Thanksgiving my Uncle Chris and his family come down from Washington to spend the holiday with us, so it was really fun to see them! It's crazy to see how much my cousins grow up in just a year!

My grandma made such a delicious dinner, really was probably the best turkey I've ever had! And even Ryan ate the delicious sweet potatoes that she makes each year (and he's not a sweet potato kinda guy!) I really love my Grandma's cooking...she's so great!

Savannah, Grandpa, Dad, Mom, Annie, Jack, Clark, Jeanette, Royal, Jill, Trish

Alison, Emily, Clarice, Sam, Lauren, me, Ryan and Tommy

Savannah and Chris

Savannah and Nick

After dinner we all headed downstairs to decorate the gingerbread houses. We've done this for the last couple of years, and it's really become a fun tradition! We usually buy a couple kits and team up with each other on the houses while decorating; this year though, my mom found a couple kits that were village and had a couple mini houses in each set, so we all did our own, as well as the big normal houses. They turned out so cute too! My cousin Alison was in there for about 2 hours working on her house, it was adorable!

Alison, Chris, Grandma, Annie, Jack, Me, Tommy and Trish

Jeanette, Emily, Clarice, Mom, Savannah, J, and Michelle

Savannah and her cute house

While there was a majority of us making the houses, the rest were found watching football in the family room. Ryan didn't move from this spot except for dinner!

Grandpa, Royal, Ryan, and Dad

Annie, Nick, Clark, Lauren and Grandpa and Royal again

Before everyone took off for the night, we did manage to get a big family picture all together! It's been a couple years since we've had one, and it's crazy to see how big our family has gotten!

Front Row: Emily, Alison, Clarice, Tommy, Savannah, Scott, Michelle, Jordan and J

Back Row: Chris, Trish, Sam, Chirstian, Jill, Royal, Lauren, Nick, Dad, Mom, Jack, Clark, Jeanette, Annie, me, Ryan, Grandma and Grandpa

Go Giants!

In honor of the San Francisco Giants being the World Champions this year....please enjoy!

We love this song so much, and now it's a Giants song too! Even better!

2nd Annual Park City Shopping Trip!

A couple weeks ago I went to Park City with Ryan's cute mom and sisters for the second year in a row. It was so much fun, we decided to go earlier in the year this time so it was warmer while walking around the outlets, and I think it was great!

We got to Park City Friday afternoon, and went to just a couple of the outlets, and then went to dinner at Red Banjo Pizza on Main Street, the same place we went for dinner last year. It was just as delicious again, and we ordered too much food like always: a couple appetizers, 2 different pizzas, and salads!

me, Lauren, Kim, Julie, Kristin

Red Banjo Pizza

After dinner we checked into the hotel, we stayed in a different hotel this year, and it was beautiful! It was the Escala Lodges at the Canyons. Our room was a 2 bedroom suite, with 2 bathrooms, a full kitchen, dining room, living room, 3 fireplaces....the WORKS! It was just gorgeous! We all brought swimsuits to go hot tubbing, but we just were enjoying our suite so much that we never made it down!

me, Lauren, Julie and Kristin

The Escala Lodges at the Canyons

Before dinner that night, we went back to the same bath and body store we had gone to the year before and got the same Mother Earth face mask, and we put them on again that night in the hotel. Again, this was the funniest part of the whole trip! There is something about those masks that just makes you laugh uncontrollably! It was so much fun!

Julie, Lauren, Kim, me and Kristin

The next morning, we slept in, and took our time getting ready and eating breakfast, we checked out around 11, and then took off for a full day of shopping at the outlets! We did quite the amount of damage and found some great deals! I took $160, and this is what I came home with: 1 pair of jeans, 6 tops, 2 sweaters, perfume, and 2 pairs of boots! I think the boots were the best deal we found! They were from the Bass outlet, and they were having a buy one pair, get 2 pairs free...plus for that day only you could take an additional $15 off the one pair, and we had a 10% off coupon they let us use on top of that too! So when all was said and done, we were getting $100-$140 boots, for just $20-$30! It was AWESOME! Between us we walked out with 7 pairs!

For dinner that night, we went to Good Thymes, a cute and quiant little cafe there in Park City, it was delicious and well devoured after a day full of shopping!

me, Kristin, and Kim

Lauren and Julie

Good Thymes

This years trip was so much fun! I already can't wait for next years trip! I need to start saving now! We did ourselves proud though, and again, filled up the trunk of the Murano (we decided that next year, we may need to drive separately for more space for packages!)

Lauren, me, Kristin and Julie...after about 10 hours of shopping!

back in action!

It's been 2 months since my last post, I promise we haven't dropped off the face of the earth, we've just been super busy! But here are updates of what has been going on!

SEPTEMBER UPDATES

Last time I posted here, we were in the middle of moving. I'm happy to say that we got moved out of our apartment. Everything is now in a storage unit, and we've moved into Ryan's parents house, and it has been great! We have tons of space down in the basement, our own big room and bathroom, and a small kitchenette. They have been so good to us and let us share their entire home with them too though! We love it here! Their dog Tillis has become my little sidekick, while everyone is gone during the day to work and school, we hang out at home, go on walks/runs, he runs errands with me and everything.

I also graduated from beauty school on September 30! It was a very exciting day, that was long awaited! I graduated the same day as my good friend Julia. We started school the same day, June 9 2009, we had stations next to each other the whole way through, and graduated the same day. We have grown really close so it was fun to share the day with her!

Julia and I, the new graduates!

my parents and I. They have been so supportive for me. They made the drive from Ogden to Logan just for a quick haircut, and they'd always take me to lunch afterwards, they are the best!

The four of us are inseparable! Julia, Annie, Melanee, and me. I love these girls and so many of my greatest memories of school are shared with them!

Ryan and me! He has been the greatest supporter for me, always listening to every story I come home with, understanding of my crazy emotions, and of course he put up with my ever changing hair...even though I know he didn't want it to ever change! Such a good sport! I LOVE HIM!!!

For graduations you get to have a couple friends speak about you, Melanee, Annie and Julia were all so sweet, they all made me cry, I'm going to miss being with them everyday!

Me talking for Julia's part of the graduation. I'm pretty sure we both just started laughing because we were sobbing so much it was ridiculous! We are just going to miss each other so much!

OCTOBER UPDATES

Ryan turned 25!! His birthday this year was on 10.10.10! Very exciting! We celebrated by doing Ryan's favorite thing...watching a lot of sports! We went to Salt Lake on the 8th with our friends Dallin and Morgan to watch the Giants in the playoffs. We watched them play at the Skybox restaurant, so we had a delicious dinner and were able to watch the game on the big screen! The didn't end perfectly, because the Giants did lose that game, but at least they ended up winning the series!

Ryan, me, Morgan and Dallin (Giants vs. Braves fans, dun dun dun!)

Saturday night I had to work, and then on Sunday (his actual birthday) we watched the 49ers, and the Giants, complete with game day snacks and everything! That night, his oldest sister Julie and her family came over for dinner with us, his parents and younger sister Lauren. It was a great party weekend!

Then to end out the month of October, the Giants made it to the World Series vs the Rangers and they WON!!!!!! We watched the last game with a couple of Ryan's friends Matt and Jordan. I made dinner and snacks for everyone, and then we watched history happen! GO GIANTS!!!