Temple Square at Christmas

For those of you whom have never been to Temple Square around Christmas time, it is BEAUTIFUL. They have tons of lights and nativities. Before we left for Oregon, which we leave TOMORROW, we wanted to go up to the temple and see the lights. It was fun and cold all at the same time.

We have gotten a good amount of snow in the past few days.


The pretty temple at night.


The floating nativity on the reflecting pool.


US!
P.S. I absolutely love my hair--it takes like 1/3rd the time to get ready and do my hair. It is wonderful.

Our next adventure: Getting all of our stuff in our two little cars, driving to Eugene, and starting life. :)

HAIR CUT!!

Today I got my hair CHOPPED off. I have not had my hair short for years now. I was pretty excited about it. So here are the before and after pictures.

BEFORE
This was taken at the beginning of the semester, so my hair was actually longer than this.

AFTER

BACK

THANKSGIVING & AN EARLY CHRISTMAS

For Thanksigiving Leigh and I travelled to Loveland, CO which is where my parents live. We had a great, relaxing break there. Since we won't be seeing my family over Christmas, we decided to have our Christmas early. So Thursday morning we woke up, opened presents, then prepared the Thanksgiving dinner. I only took a few pictures of our break. It was so nice to get away and have a stress free weekend. But, now that we are back to Provo stress is insane. I would never recommend moving to a different state, finding a job, and trying to finish all the end of the semester assignments plus studying for finals all at the same time.

Leigh got an XBOX for Christmas--and I don't think he has stopped playing since.


I got a bunch of random things that I love! A cute scarf, new wallet, this cute picture that my mom put our names on and the wedding date, movies, and a cute yellow teapot.

I made my first ever completely homemade apply crumb pie. It was DELICIOUS.

We are both very thankful for the time we got to spend with our family. And we are excited to move and spend Christmas with the rest of our family.

TO: OUR FAVORITE PEOPLE!!

THIS IS TO OUR FAVORITE PEOPLE--PRESTON, ISABEL, EVA, AND TESSA.

(I WASN'T TOTALLY EXPECTING THIS, LEIGH JUST TURNED ON THE CAMERA AND STARTED TALKING AND ASKED ME QUESTIONS--AND I DIDN'T HAVE THE BEST DAY, SO IF I SEEM SARCASTIC, SORRY!)

LOVE YOU, MISS YOU, SEE YOU SOON!!!!

EIGHT, EIGHT, EIGHT...

So my friend, HolliJo, tagged me awhile ago, and I am at the moment waiting for my husband to get home and not feeling up to doing homework, so I thought I would just do this for fun. :)


8 TV shows I love to watch:
I'm usually watching these in the background as I cook, do laundry, homework, attempt at cleaning....
1. The Office
2. Wife Swap
3. Trading Spouses
4. HGTV--any of the shows!
5. Jon&Kate + 8
6. The Duggar Family show

8 Things that Happened to me Yesterday:
Thursday....
1. I didn't have two out of my three classes so I got to sleep in till 8!
2. Went to the grocery store for essentials--milk and bread
3. Took a nap... (like 2 hours after I woke up--I have been so exhausted at the end of a week after being in the schools)
4. Helped a classmate look at engagement rings online and found the one she wanted on overstock.com for 130$!!!! I could not believe it!
5. Went to class--not that exciting.
6. Worked out in the BYU gym.
7. Cooked a DELICIOUS dinner.
8. Fell asleep at like 9:30, not kidding, while reading a magazine in bed.


8 Favorite Places to Eat:
1. Costa Vida
2. Cheesecake Factory
3. Kneaders
4. Mongolian Grills
5. Oregon Electric Station
6. Ottavio's
7. Happy Sumo
8. Panera


8 Things I am looking forward to:
1. GRADUATION. 7 more weeks!!!!!!
2. Moving to Oregon
3. My twin nieces to be born!!!
4. Seeing family for the holidays!
5. Playing with Preston and Isabel!
6. Real furniture in an apartment.
7. My Christmas presents (yes, I helped pick them out.) :)
8. My husband to get home from work today.

8 Things on my wish list:
1. A beautiful house!
2. A vacation to France with my husband!
3. A four door car!
4. More sleep
5. A job in Eugene!
6. A cute little puppy!!
7. Leigh to be done with school--if only--give it five more years...it will happen though.
8. Cute little Leigh&Ally's running around

Alright,
I'm supposed to tag 8 people, but I am not going to. :)

AND now my husband is home...sooo I'm not so bored anymore.

Too Much Sugar for One Week...

Three weeks ago I was in Seattle for a wedding for my friend, Jess and her husband, Daniel. Tonight they are having a get together for friends and other family here in Provo--so like a very informal reception. I thought I would practice my cake decorating skills some more, so I made a cake using their wedding colors--yellow and blue. Here is this finished product.

Side view...

Top! The green was sort of difficult, it was store bought stuff that I tried to use for Leigh's birthday--but the yellow and blue that I made worked perfectly.

FINISHED PRODUCT!

So as I said last week, yesterday was my last day of cake class and we got to make a cake. It is quite the process. Frosting the cake was the biggest challenge--not even the decorating. And I had some issues with my frosting falling off the sides. We learned the basketweave and well, mine didn't look so nice. I thought if I put the rope border covering the top it would help make it look better, but the border was a little too on the side so it just pulled all the decoration off the cake. It was wonderful. BUT, the cake tasted delicious, that is what counts in the end, right?

Me with my falling apart, beautiful cake. :)

The flowers that I made the previous weeks in a beautiful bouquet.

Finished product! yay!

I'm hoping to make a cake for my friend this Saturday, so if it turns out well, I'll put it on here too.

CAKE DECORATING!

So I was inspired by my wonderful wedding cake made by Melissa and a cute cake that Kirsten made for Isabel's birthday...and I decided I wanted to be able to decorate cakes in a cute way. My friend, HolliJo, and I are taking the Wilton Course 2 class through BYU. It is a nice break from every day life--school and work. And I feel like I am not too shabby at it. Here are some flowers I made tonight. :)

I am the worst photographer in the world. But I made roses, daisies, daffodils, pansies...and some others.

One of my roses.


My best daisy...I think these are my favorite when they turn out well.

Next week we decorate an entire cake....so hopefully mine turns out well enough to post online.

Good Time in SLC

This weekend my parents came to visit us and we had lots of fun! We spent Saturday up in Salt Lake City. My dad had never been to Salt Lake, so we did the tour of Temple Square and went shopping. :)

My parents at the reflecting pool

Leigh and I

My hot husband. I think he kinda makes these glasses look good...

AND while we were shopping some lady from Channel 5 news stopped and asked if we would answer some questions about the economy. And Leigh was the only one that was willing to do it. Then when the 10 o'clock news came on that night there Leigh was, saying, "I just got a better job, so I'm doing pretty well."

Anyways. That is our exciting news as of recent.

CONFERENCE!

Today we had a wonderful opportunity to attend Sunday morning session of Conference. We also got to be there for Music and the Spoken Word, which the Mormon Tabernacle Choir puts on every Sunday morning. I have been able to go to at least one session of Conference every 6 months since I have attended BYU and it never gets old. And, this was Leigh's first time! It is a different experience than watching it on TV. The Spirit is so strong in the Conference center and it is amazing to see thousands of LDS people walking around Temple Square. There are also the protestors that you don't get an opportunity to experience when just watching it on TV. We had a great time and I'm so glad we could get tickets so Leigh could go!

It was raining, so there were thousands of umbrellas, EVERYWHERE! Leigh made the comment that he never uses an umbrella in Eugene, but he saw on television that everyone was using them, so he decided we need to bring one. :)

TEMPLE SQUARE! The Temple is still beautiful and wonderful on a dreary, rainy day.

My cute (still bald) husband...with his pink umbrella.

I didn't really like Leigh's umbrella holding skills, so I resorted to my hood. :)

MOTAB.

Temple Square with shutter not completely open. :)

The talks were wonderful, the music was wonderful, and all in all it was wonderful!

Our first flooding...

This morning Leigh and I both awoke at about 6:30 to a strange noise coming from outside our room. We quickly determined something with water was making the noise. So our first instinct was the bathroom. And we were correct. It was flooded and quickly getting worse. Leigh turned off the water and we cleaned up the bathroom. So now we are bathroom-less and wondering when the landlord will call back. :) I just thought I should document this moment. It definitely was not as bad as last year when the water heater in my apartment broke in our third story apartment and flooded the two floors below us and we had beyond freezing water in our showers. But, this is still memory material.

The Office Premiere!!

So this past Thursday night was The Office Premiere. When we first moved in to our apartment we didn't have our TV yet so we watched DVDs on Leigh's computer, and Leigh ended up watching ALL 4 seasons of The Office in like a week and a half, and he of course loved it. So we got a little excited for the premiere and had a little get together with a few friends to watch it.

We started our night by watching the finale of season 4, to refresh our minds on what happened.

Jess and I made jello, brownies, and virgin margaritas for the event (I am NOT very good at functioning Leigh's camera)

Note: the pictures from The Injury episode in Season 2 when Michael Scott puts his foot in his george foreman.

We of course had to put office supplies in the Jello--it worked out perfectly. :)

Oh my hardcore husband with his haircut, and me. :)

I neglected to take pictures of the guests--sorry! It was lots of fun though! The show was amazing with lots of laughs and gasps.

Weekend In Eugene!

This weekend we had a great weekend in Eugene! It was definitely nice to get away from school and work for a few days. We left Friday when I got out of class at 1:30 and got into Eugene at 4 am Saturday. The reason for going to Eugene was to see our wonderful family and for Leigh's friend, Sean's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding!

The bride, Christina, and her dad after walking down the aisle. He was crying--it was so sweet.

Wedding

After lighting the unity candle

my hot husband in his tux. :) (note: he HAS hair)

First Dance

Going for the garter--Leigh made sure he got under there with his teeth. haha.

So, on our drive to Oregon, Leigh got this crazy idea that he wanted to buzz his hair. Sunday, after church, we went upstairs to do what he wanted. We decided to make a mohawk first to get reactions from the family--and boy did we. But, if I do say so myself, Leigh looks pretty dang good as a punk rocker. :) Then I left for a moment, came back to find Leigh just buzzing it off, without a numbered clipper on it, short as he could get it. Soooo, I had to help him finish it.

all his wonderful hair--gone.

Outside with the hat Preston insisted he wear. :)

My husband in 40 years when he goes bald.

Either that, or he looks like he just went to jail or into the military or had chemo.

But, I still think he is hot and wonderful. :)
Random pictures my favorite people.