***Christmas in a nutshell***

Yes, this is Christmas morning.......Yikes!

We had a fabulous Christmas!!! Christmas eve, we did have to work but we closed at 4, so it was ok! That night we went to my mom's for a delicious Ham dinner, and some great festivities! We had a much smaller Christmas Eve celebration than we normally do, but it was still fun! After dinner we decorated cookies for Santa, had a white elephant present exchange, the kids all performed a song which included I wanna Hippo for Christmas by Morgan, I'm getting Nuttin for Christmas by Taylor, and Up on the Rooftop by Kelby. It was great! Their kids are so dang cute! Also that night I used the presentation that Christian's sister had made about the nativity with Josh Groban singing, and it was great! We listened to some Christmas songs and at the very end Nana read a new Christmas story and gave the kids new pj's. It was a great night!!! I love the new story tradition as well.

Nana and Taylor

Jamie and Morgan
(and Jon's backside)

That night we slept at Jamie's so we could be there when the kids woke up to Santa, it was very fun to see them get so excited!!! I remember my sister and I doing the same things! That morning we had my all time favorite breakfast! with hash browns, eggs, sausage, and cheese all mixed together and sweet rolls! It was tasty! We all opened our gifts and we all got way too spoiled, but it was fun!

Owen

Look how cute!

He is so innocent!

That night we went to the Smith family Christmas party which was a ton of fun! Another round of great food! It was so nice to see everybody and catch up! I can't believe how many kids there are now! We had a white elephant game there as well and it was hilarious! We ended up getting some very large very scary Santa heads that are supposed to go on your porch lights! Just wait until you get them at the party next year!!! ha ha That's right, I will be keeping them all year!!!

Yes, this is the scary Santa!!!

Robyn and Dale hosted this year

Well, Christmas was excellent! I am glad it is over so we can relax a little bit at work! Also, since it is over we got to take a couple of days off from work to have an awesome weekend!!! Including a great New Year!

****Happy 2009!!!!****

Christian, Jon, and Brandon at our party

We had a rockin New Year's!!! We went up to Layton on New Year's Eve and had a wonderful game night at my sister's! If you haven't played partini, you MUST play it soon! It was hilarious! We also played Mafia, which is ALWAYS included in our game nights and we also had a TON of great food! Just before midnight we watched the very sad Dick Clark and the very weird Ryan Seacrest bring in the new year on TV. Had our New Year's Eve kiss, and went to bed! ha ha! We slept over at her house that night, but we did have to work in the morning so we had to kinda call it an early evening. But it was WAY fun!!! We actually stayed in Layton from the 31st to the 4th! It was very fun too! We had to work on the 1st and 2nd, but went back to Layton afterwards.

On the 3rd, was my Birthday, YAY! But it was also my niece's baptism! That's right the first one to be baptized! Mom, don't you feel old! ha ha. It was a wonderful baptism and even Christian cried! We had all of the family their and Mandy was even able to come out, which Morgan was very excited for! She loves Mandy! After the baptism we had a luncheon with some very yummy food! We were able to visit with the family and play with the kids a little bit. We had a great time! And Taylor was just beaming all day!!!

For my birthday morning my mom decorated the house for me just like she did when I was little, I LOVE that tradition! She had these blocks that said Happy birthday, but for most of the day we kept switching out letters as you can see, many wished me a Rappy Birthdal!!! ha ha Then after the baptism me, Mandy, my mom, and Jamie went shopping, just the girls! It was so much fun to get out with them! I bought a Cheri Call CD, which I love and My mom bought me a cute coat for my birthday! After shopping we went to Olive Garden for my birthday dinner where I had an original Italian love song from our Waiter who was amazing!!! And he was pretty cute! ha ha, no worries Christian! It was great! The whole family came and Mandy and Marie and Lukas even came up! So that was great! Once we got back to my mom's house we watched a movie and Christian had made me a cake!!! So cute!!! It's just not your birthday without a cake! So, I had a great birthday!!! Thanks to all those who sent Birthday wishes!!!

Jon and Jamie

Marie and Lukas

Mom and Jeff

Thorpe Family Christmas Dinner!!!

On Sunday we celebrated Christmas with Christian's family! This is always our best party! It is so fun to get together with everybody! We draw names earlier in the year and the adults exchange with each other and the children exchange with each other. It is so fun to see the gifts that everybody gets. This year it was held by the newest family, The Child's- Natalie, John, Rickle, Reagen, Kortney, Katie, and Emerson (so sorry if I butchered the spellings!) This year we kept the "Fondue Tradition" alive, just did it a little differently. Normally it is meat that we cook, this year we had broccoli, chips, and pretzels to dip in a cheese fondue for an appetizer. And for dessert we had milk chocolate, white chocolate, and mint chocolate fondue dips for pretzels, marshmallows, and bananas. It was so yummy!!! For the main course we enjoyed WAY too much food! Ham, rolls, chips, veggies, cookies, cakes, candy, and an amazing Egg Nogg made by the newest addition John. (Nat, I guess we can keep him!)

Mom and Dad

Bridger

It was a very fun night and it was great to spend time with the family! We wrapped up the evening with the "Puppet Song" Which Bridget and I agree we should do EVERY year!!!

Yes, they are paper bag puppets!!!

Natalie ended the evening perfectly by showing a presentation she had made about the nativity with songs from Josh Groban singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It was an amazing presentation Nat, way to go! Thanks for Hosting Johnalie!! Thanks for the gifts Family!

Hope Everybody has a Merry Christmas!!!!

Happy Birthday!!!!

We also celebrated earlier that week!!! Christian had his 24th birthday on December 12th!!! That day we did have to work, but I embarrassed him over the P.A. and brought him donuts to work. That night our bestest friends Mandy, Troy, Marie, and Lukas joined us for dinner at JCW's and games back at our place. He had a great birthday and walked away with some great gifts! "Thanks for all who gave gifts, and sent birthday wishes" - Love Christian!

****Happy Holidays!!!****

Hope everybody has a wonderful Holiday Season!!! We have picked up at the store so I definitely won't have time to update again until after Christmas, possibly after New Years!

I hope everybody is doing well!!! Christian and I are doing very well! Just working, and playing a little in between! We are both VERY excited for Christmas.

Remember the reason for the Season when you celebrate this year!

Set aside some time for our Savior dear!

Love you all! God bless!!! Love, The Thorpes

3 years!!! Let's get to 53!!!!

Happy Annivi-vegas-ry!!! Happy Plane-aversary!!!

Christian and I celebrated 3 years on December 1st!!!! I can't believe it! No, not that we lasted this long, but how fast it went by!!! It has been nothing but fun too!!! What an adventure we have had! In three years we have accomplished more than I could have ever dreamed!!! 6 months after we got married, I received a promotion! We moved to Federal Way, Washington where we met some amazing people, and had an amazing time! We lived there for a year. While we lived there we were able to accomplish the #1 priority on both of our lists~ Getting Sealed in the Salt Lake Temple for Time and ALL Eternity! Best accomplish by far! After Washington, we moved back to Utah to be with our Family. Here we purchased our first home! A dream home at that! Soon after that Christian received a promotion. In March of this year we completed the #3 priority on my list (#2 is kids, nope not yet) go out of the Country. We went on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. BEST VACATION EVER!!!!! We have been able to do so much, and I am so glad we were able to be together for it all! I wouldn't trade Christian for anybody! (well, maybe somebody who ate more, but I can live with that I suppose) I am so glad I was able to find somebody who can make me do my two favorite things~Smile and Laugh! And I think he does a darn good job! Even at work when he paged, "At the risk of getting in trouble I would like to announce that it is our anniversary! Thanks for 3 years, hopefully we can make it to 53!!!"
Luv ya hun! And we better!!!

Christmas Christmas Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you don't know me at all, you wouldn't know that I am completely obsessed with Christmas! I love it! I love the mad rush of shoppers! I love the angry people trying to drive and getting mad because there are too many people trying to do the exact same thing as them...shop!!! I love that the radio starts playing Christmas music the day after Halloween! (and I love that my car never leaves that station unless I have a Christmas cd in) I LOVE decorating the tree, and I love that I have a job where I get to decorate three trees every year and get paid for it!!! I love driving around or walking around in the cold weather looking at the lights! I love that we have a Christmas Eve celebration every year with my mom's family in which most of the time there is an argument about something before hand, but once we get there it is nothing but Holiday Cheer and the Spirit of Christmas! Decorating Christmas Cookies!!!! Watching Christmas movies!!! Buying gifts for people and watching their face when they open knowing it was exactly what they wanted!!!! Buying gifts for children I will never meet, but knowing that I just made their day!!! I love the Holiday season and I can't wait to share it with my friends and family!

I love that I have roped my husband into it right along with me! I came home from work today and All the lights had been put up on the outside of my house!!! So cute! Later that night he said, I expect to see a tree decorated in here by the end of the week! I decorated the rest of the house about 2 weeks ago, but yes that's right, I have yet to put up the tree. I can't believe I have waited this long either mom!

So, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!!! Have fun decorating, shopping, and getting in the Christmas Spirit!!! Oh, and Have a Happy Turkey Day! Jamie will be upset if I skip right over that. haha

*****MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*****

Fun calm before the storm!!!

We had an EXCELLENT Week off of work!!! Since we work in retail it is nearly impossible to have a day off after Thanksgiving because it is so busy for the Holidays. So, we decided we needed a little break before the crazy holiday rush happens! So, that is exactly what we did!!! We hung out and relaxed!!!

We did get to have some fun to though!!! We went to the BYU game!!!! We decided not to go to our seats until we absolutely had to, and guess what? We never did!!! That's right! We sat on the front row, 50 yard line, right behind the team!!!! It was great! We went with Mandy and Troy and we had an awesome time!!!
We Went and stayed at my mom's house one night, where we went to the Ogden Temple for the first time with my mom and Jeff. Afterwards they took us to the Farr's Ice cream shop across the street from the temple. It was super good! That night we played games with them and Jamie. The next day my mom colored my hair (looks great, thanks mom!) Also that day I went shopping with Jamie, we played with her kids, and then that night we stayed at Jamie's and played games again. It was awesome to be able to spend some time with my family!

This is my mom and me outside the Ogden Temple

Kelby sure does love his uncle Christian!

On Friday, Christian and I had enjoyed the Temple so much that we decided we wanted to go again. So, we went to the Timpanogas Temple for the first time. Christian and I decided we want to go to all the Temples in Utah, if we can make it to the ones outside of Utah even better! So far we have Bountiful, Salt Lake, Seattle WA, Ogden, and Timpanogas checked off the list!



What comes before Part B? PART-AY!!!!!

Our last activity for the very fun week, was a game night with friends!!! It was a great night too!!! We had great food, fun games, and tons of laughing!!! When you put Dave and Christian in the same room, you can only guarantee laughter!!! It was so great to have so many people come to our house! We started the night off with a very funny game of Mafia! We love that game! We could have played it all night!!! The next game was Buzz word, Girls against boys!!!! Then we played Whoonu, and we really didn't know each other very well, but we had fun guessing!!! The night was a huge success, and we plan to have a game night once a month so if you missed it, you better come next time!!!


Cory and Pattyanne
Mandy and Troy
Sarah and Dave
Natalie and John
We had a great turn out! Unfortunately I can't put up a pic of everybody and everything! Wish I could! So, our week off of work was awesome! We had plenty of time to relax, but also had a great time!!! I'm so glad we were able to spend time with family and friends! Now bring on the Holidays!!!!! HO HO HO!!!!

Halloween Fun!!!!

This year for Halloween we decided to really get into it! We had fun times the whole month of October!!!! So, we will cram it all into one blog since i have been slacking!

Our first activity was carving pumpkins with the Hargetts. We had a blast too! Christian made a scary pumpkin, Mandy made a cute pumpkin, and mine was the dorky one, of course!! Troy supervised. We enjoy having Family Home Evening with our best friends! We also had spaghetti and meatballs that night for dinner, mmm....mmmm!!!! Thanks for the fun times guys! Tinkerbell!!!!

The pathetic homeless Bum!!!

For Halloween I dressed up Tinkerbell, and Christian was a Homeless Bum!!! We had 4 parties to go to and a Murder Mystery Dinner. It was a great Halloween!!! We went to our Friend's house Rachel (Newren) and Curtis for a party, where they had all sorts of fun games, Tarot cards, great food! and cool costumes! We have gone to this Halloween party every year for the last 6 years, so it is always fun! We also attended, that same night our friends Kellie and Mark's party. There were so many people from high school there that we have not seen in so long, it was great to catch up!!! We had so much fun playing Mafia, and laughing I thought my insides were going to burst!!! Our last party was our Friends Joe and Jessica's house where we again, played some awesome Mafia, had some killer food, and a pumpkin carving contest that we failed at miserably! But it was fun! It was so great to get together with our High School buddies! I'm so glad we have kept in contact and can still have so much fun with them!!!

Kellie was Strawberry Shortcake




Me, and Rachel the painter




Joe and Jessica - Sweeny Todd and Ms. Lovett


On Halloween we had a costume contest at work, and had an awesome turn out of 25 costumes, and a ton of food at our pot luck! It was a very fun day at work! Also this month I went to Jamie's house and we colored pumpkins with the kids!!! It was very fun!!!! Also, while I was there we went to see the New High School Musical 3!!! It was a ton of fun and the girl's loved it!!!


All in all, we had a great October and had some very fun Halloween activities!!! Now we can't wait for Christmas!!!!! Woot Woot!!!