A Taylor Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year we went to Arizona and spent it with my family. We left on Tuesday late in the afternoon and got there pretty late that night. Poor Lance had to drive the whole way because we recently got a new car and its a stick shift and I have yet to learn how to drive stick shift.

 The next day was a pretty lazy day, Lance wanted to go eat at this place over by ASU campus where he ate on his mission called Chuck Box. Its a hamburger joint and it was really good.

These hamburgers were bigger than I anticipated, but I  was pretty proud of myself for eating
the whole thing plus fries.

 Later that night we went over to Tempe Market Place to look for phone covers and just walk around and enjoy the atmosphere. I love walking around Tempe Market Place during Christmas and seeing all the lights and listening to the Christmas music playing.

We walked into this store filled with candy, it was hard to resist buying some.

The next day was Thanksgiving so most of the morning was filled with making pies and preparing food.  Normally when it comes to the pies for Thanksgiving my mom takes care of them, but this year Lance asked me if I could make a couple special ones that he likes to have for Thanksgiving. So my mom made her usual three pies that we have every year and then I took to the kitchen and made three on my own. I made a banana creme, coconut creme and a chocolate creme pie. I was pretty proud of myself with the turnout and Lance said they were delicious. 

After we ate, the rest of the day was filled with playing games. My dad started this big contest last Christmas when Lance came down for the first time, we play all sorts of games and try and get the highest amount of points. In the end the first place winner gets $50 and the runner up gets $25. Lance took video of the games we played and then made one big video out of them. It turned out really good and its fun to look back on and watch.

My mom, my sister, and myself debated whether we wanted to go black Friday shopping. There was nothing any of us really needed from the black Friday specials, we were just thinking of going to be part of the atmosphere. In the end we decided not to go, and after all the horrible stories I heard on the radio Monday morning of the crazy customers I'm glad we didn't.

We decided to go shopping Friday afternoon at Scottsdale Mall. It was crowded but not as bad as I was anticipating.

Lance was sweet and didn't complain when he came shopping with us girls.

Lance loves the palm trees in Arizona, and I agree. Especially seeing them in November,

when all you see in Utah at this time are dead trees covered in snow.

That night we met up with my friends to hang out and catch up on life. It was so fun catching up with them and seeing all their cute kids. It's crazy to hang out now with spouses and kids in the picture but I love it.

It was fun seeing Ali's cute new baby girl, baby Kate
Trisha left before we took this picture

Saturday was our last full day in Arizona and that day my family decided we would go paint-balling. I have never been paint-balling and to be honest I have always been scared to go. Lance on the other hand has gone in his younger years and was excited to go. I think the ratio of people who have gone paint-balling to never gone was about even, so we knew this was going to be an interesting experience. 

Don't we look pretty intimidating
I was told that wearing puffy clothes would help lesson the pain from the paint-ball,
well it hurt pretty bad with a puffy jacket,  so I wouldn't want to know how it felt without it.

The first game we played was a little nerve racking just waiting for that first hit of a paint-ball and wondering how much it was going to hurt. The first hit would come soon enough and it was on the top of my head and that hurt pretty bad, but the pain went away and I kept going back in for more. I slowly grew more confidence to start moving away from the wall and closer to the enemy. Each game I would come away with a hit somewhere on me but none so bad that I refused to stop going back in. However  one game I got hit right on my googles, blurring my vision, I was squatted down trying to wipe off the paint-ball splatter and someone from the other team nailed me about 5 times in the bum. That did it I was out. I just wanted to cry from the pain on that hit, I could barely sit down without it hurting.

Lance had a blast paint-balling. He was really good at moving toward the enemy's side and there was even one game that he was the only guy on our team who hadn't gotten out until about 6 guys from the other team all tagged up on him. He came away with several bruises, oddly enough they were all  on his left side. 

 It was a fun experience and even more fun that we went with my whole family. Plus it was nice having my mom and sister there with me because they also had never been paint balling. And for a couple of first timers, we did really well.

For dinner that night we went to a restaurant called Tia Rosa's. Its hard to find a good authentic mexican restaurant in Utah so when we come to Arizona we have to go to at least one.

The day we drove down to Arizona (Tuesday 22nd) was my dads birthday. We didn't get in till after midnight and he was already asleep so I had to wait until morning to give him his birthday gift. I had been waiting anxiously for a month to come down and give him his gift. (A little background), my dad graduated college from the University of Utah, but both me and my sister graduated from BYU. So you can imagine how torn my dad is when it comes to Utah vs BYU games. One day at work a patients husband was wearing this hat that was half Utah and half BYU. I thought I had to get that hat for my dad. 

 My dad loved the hat!

Sunday, the day we had to head back to Utah, came all to soon. That morning we took an updated family picture because my mom had been wanting one since Lance was part of the family now. We went to a near by gated community that had a nice entry way and set up the camera on the tripod and took the pictures ourselves. I say they turned out really good.

It was so fun spending Thanksgiving with my family, we always have so much fun spending time together. We are so blessed to have them as our family!

BYU Football

For a couple of years now Lance, his brother and a group of friends have gotten season tickets for BYU football. This year when it came time to buy season tickets for the 2011 season, Lance took a daring move and bought me a BYU football season pass as well. At the time, we hadn't been dating very long, so he took a risk that we would still be together come football season, and in the end it was a good risk. Whats funny is he didn't even tell me he was buying me tickets; he bought them and then told me, it was a nice little surprise. 

I had been to some BYU football games throughout my school years at BYU but I never stayed past the 3rd quarter, because of the weather, or I just got bored and didn't really care much. Well all that would change for this seasons games. A little known fact about my husband and the group we went with is that they don't leave early for anything. Not for weather, not if they're losing by 100 points, nothing will cause these men to leave these games early. So I am proud to say that for the first time I stayed for a whole BYU football game, and it wasn't just one football game but all 7 home games. 

The first BYU game this season was in Mississippi against Ole Miss. Lance got invited by his brother to go to this game with him and his friends, and I just couldn't tell him no--he was too excited. They were gone for 3 days and Lance fell in love with Mississippi and the South in general. Plus BYU won the game so that made the trip that much better.

Lance and the guys had so much fun at the game they are starting to plan next years trip. They are thinking of going to the Notre Dame game (I believe), and they even said they'll bring the wives this time, that'll be fun. 

Tailgating before the game against University of Utah

I didn't know I was going to be the only girl at this tailgate, but it was still fun.

First home game against U of  U
Unfortunately that was a pretty depressing game

The stadium was packed

There were a couple of games that started around 7 or 8pm and it got a little chilly

Don't they look excited to be there
Lance's cousin Eric and brother-in-law Gabe

It was nice to have my sister-in-law Megan and cute nephew Ben at the games

This was one of the games that started at 8pm and got so cold as the night went on
The temperature dropped to a low of 28 degrees....

But we stayed the whole game.... and survived (barely)

I can honestly say I enjoyed going to the football games! It was so fun to be at the games with Lance and all the other people in our group. 

Until next year!

New blogger mistake

So as I looked at my new posts I just put up today I noticed that I made a mistake. The post called Golden Birthday should be the first post you read followed by the post Birthday Weekend because that was the order they happened in real life, but I messed that up. So just a little advice, read the post Golden Birthday before you read the post Birthday Weekend, it'll make more sense that way. I'll try to not let this happen again.

Birthday Weekend

To continue the fun of my birthday we decided to have a birthday weekend together since we couldn't really spend the day together on my actual birthday. A little back story, before we had gotten married I had gone to this wedding expo and they had this grand prize for one lucky winner, and what do you know I won that big grand prize. One of the wonderful prizes that was part of the grand prize was a free night stay in a Hamptonn Inn hotel. The only catch was it was only valid at either the Lehi hotel or the Salt Lake hotel (not somewhere real fun like california or something) so we decided the Salt Lake hotel would be the best choice.

We went that same weekend of my birthday and planned to head up to Salt Lake Friday night after I had gotten off work. Come to find out there was a BYU football game on tv that night so we of course had to watch that before we could head up to Salt Lake. So we headed over to Lance's brothers house were a group of people were hanging out watching the game. The game ended a little after 9:00 so we didn't get to our hotel till about 10:30.

There wasn't any ice cream places or even gas stations to get treats around the hotel so we headed down to the vending machines to see what goodies we could get there. I looked in my wallet and saw that I only had about 3 dollars in my wallet so we asked the front desk for quarters and we both just got a Dr. Pepper.

The next day we got up and got ready to go see the Halloween dance production called Thriller. This was another one of Lances thoughtful gifts to me. He knew I liked watching dancing and even found out that one of the dancers from the show So You Think You Can Dance was in the production and knew that I liked that show and might like that this person was in the production (again very thoughtful).

The show started at 2 and we got to the theater hall at about 1230 just to make sure we got tickets because when Lance called earlier in the morning they said tickets were going fast. Once we got the tickets we found a subway close by and just got a quick bit to eat before the show.

We were able to take our seats about a half hour before the show started, and our seats were the last seats possible right against the back wall. Which was fine with me because I felt I had a good view of the whole stage.

As we were waiting for the show to start they have these dancers dressed as zombies and they walk around just scaring people. Lance wanted to get a picture of me with one of them but they never traveled all the way up to where we were seated and I wasn't about to go up to one of them and ask them. The production was about two and a half hours long and my sweet husband sat through the whole thing for me. It was a great entertaining show I enjoyed it and Lance even said there were some dances he enjoyed too.

Sorry this picture is a little blurry

After the show we headed over to the Gate Way and ate dinner at Tucanos. Tucanos is this delicious brazilian restaurant that has this buffet of brazilian meats and when its your birthday month you get a free meal there, so of course we take advantage of that. Also when its your birthday they sing to you and give you ice cream.

I wanted Lance to take a picture when they were singing to me because they made me get on a chair and shake this tambourine while they sang to me but they went so fast that he couldn't get the picture in time.

After we ate we walked around Gate Way (which is a big outdoor mall) for a little bit and we ended up in the Apple store looking at all their cool trinkets. We ordered the new Iphone 4s so we checked out what all the cool new features were on those. 

As we were walking around the Mall we got an invite from Lance's brother to one of his friends Halloween parties up in Salt Lake. So we drove over to this friends house and before we went in the house we watched people walking in and realized that we might be the only ones not dressed up. So we found a Smiths close by and checked there selection of Halloween costumes. After we debated for a while with the selection they had,  we decided to check out the Walmart near by to see if they had a wider selection of costumes. Again we found ourselves debating for a while over that selection of costumes at Walmart and found there costume selection was to expensive. As a last resort we decided to check the Kmart across the street, and if we didn't find anything there then we'd just not be dressed up and would be prepared for the ridicule we would get for not having costumes. Well low and behold we came across these jail inmate costumes that were on sale for $10 each, sold. So we hurried back to the friends house, changed in the car and joined the party.

Cute little Ben wanted in our picture

Me and Baby Ben

Lance's brother Ross and sister-in-law Megan

It was a great, fun filled birthday weekend!