White Elephant 2007

Lance and Emilee were nice enough to have us all over for the annual white elephant party 2007, to there new home. So cute, they just bought a house in Draper. I must say that the white elephant is one of my favorite Christmas traditions! Steve and I are always looking for a good white elephant present. This year i feel that we did a great job.


Another thing that was new this year was so many kids! We sure are growing up. Unfortunately we were not able to snap a picture of Dax before he had to go to bed. But here are the other rising stars....

This is Tommy, he is Johnny and Jane's son. He was so good the whole time.

Here is Talia, she is Bryson and Angela's daughter. She was great the whole time too, contrary to the picture. Hey she was hungry can you blame her, a girl's gotta eat, right?

Here is Abbey and Jon, they both belong to Michelle. Jon made us all laugh with his tricks. He even showed us how Abbey can sing, so funny!

So here is the infamous Umpa-Lumpa outfit. Steve and I contributed this to the lot this year. So the story behind this is when Davis and I used to work at Wells Fargo they had a banking in your pajama's day. The manager went to the DI and got everyone the funniest PJ's. So this was Andrews outfit. Then Andrew went to school up at Utah State and about a year later I found this gem in the basement of the Fargo. I asked if I could steal it and give it to Rachel and Davis for their wedding gift. The only problem was when I brought it home Steve loved it. I convinced him that it needed to go to it's rightful owner....

So this is Bryson wearing his prize after he stole it from Davis.....

This is Davis before the stealing incident. Look at him he is so happy to be reunited with his Umpa-Lumpa.

The Gals

Jon and Michelle and what they ended up with. Michelle has a beautiful cross stitch and Jon ended up with "butt head" This thing was so scary! Davis purchased this at the DI and if you looked at the top of her head she had two huge bald spots making her head look like a butt, hence the name "butt head" Poor Emilee was so scared that Dax would see that thing and want to see what it was. No one wanted to touch it because it had so many weird stains and smells going on!

Rachel and Davis. Rachel ended up with this beautiful Santa. Hey it still had the tag on it from Kohls, she was going to try to get her money back. Davis ended up with Steve and I's present. This is a "testicle tester", it helps doctors to know if you are developing right. Fun, huh?

Steve ended up with Bryson and Angela's present. He stole this by the way, why would you want one of these? This is a huge spider that has been stuffed. I guess one of Bryson's aunts lived in Ecuador and she found this in her bed and had a taxidermist stuff it for her. I ended up with the ever popular Backstreet Boys puzzle poster. I can't wait to put it together!

Jane and Johnny ended up with some "bling" which Johnny is wearing and one of Jon and Michelle's gifts. This is a size 24 Reebok golf shoe filled with flowers. They had received this at a family white elephant last year. I think it will look great as a center piece on their dinner table.

Bryson and Angela ended up with a great movie collection. Angela stole my Buffy: the complete 1st season that Jon and Michelle brought. And Bryson got a Superman classic cartoons DVD. Johnny got this in his stocking last year from his mom. He didn't even open it all year, it must be a great movie.

Here are Luke and Marin. Luke stole the Umpa-Lumpa from Bryson and gave it back to Davis, isn't that the nicest thing that you have heard all day?

Afterwards we all had a Wii tournament. Let's just say that Team Beardshall did not represent! Here are Davis and Steve. Wow they sure were getting into this, I think they were into it the most. I think they are playing tennis right now.

Here is Bryson and Johnny having a go at it. Johnny might be the most competitive person that I have ever met. He can make any game into a competition. You should play cards with his mom, then you would understand where he gets it from.

Lance was the first person to enjoy "butt head" This is a better picture of her, you can see the top of her head here really giving you a feel of where she gets her name from.

And last but not least the best camera faces of the night go to Davis and Jon. Steve usually is the winner of this contest but he was the one behind the lens that night, omitting him from entering this contest!

Wow another great White Elephant party. Can't wait to see what we end up with next year!

The Great Anniversary

Once upon a time I met Steve at my friend Holly's house. We, us girls, were having a sleep over of course (I don't know if you ever get too old for that). I was late coming over but I was in for a surprise, when I walked in I was greeted by Steve. Let me back up a bit here. I worked with Lance Cannon at the U of U Credit Union. We decided that it would be a fun time to get all of our friends together to hang out, which is what we did at Holly's house. What a time we had together. Steve of course pulled the "I think I know you" bit on me....the strange thing was I felt that I knew him.  

Well the guys left and about 10 minutes later Steve and Davis were back throwing rocks at Holly's window. They asked us to go get something to eat. By the end of the night Steve and I had planned a date the following week. That is how it all started almost 5 years ago.......

And I have been in love with Steve ever since! I won the lottery when Steve asked me to marry him!!!! It's crazy to think that we have been married for 4 years. Lots has happened.....Like the time that I scared Steve so bad while he was in the bathroom cleaning out his ears that he shoved the Q tip in his ear so far that his ear was bleeding and we drove around all night looking for an insta care because we are too cheap to go to the ER, or the time we were coming home on Foothill at 2 in the morning during a blizzard and we helped dig out so many people, we even helped a lady drive her car to her house in the benches, or the time that we went on our Road Trip 2002 and stayed in the scariest hotels in Hollywood and still had the best time ever.....lots of things! We also have moved from a cinder block apartment in the U married housing to a house in Riverton. We have both graduated from the U and worked and gone to school on opposite schedules, and we still made every situation work. We have it all, I can't wait to see what next year has in store for us!

This year for our anniversary we decided to get away on a little road trip to Durango Colorado. A little ski trip. The only thing is, the snow was not so great. We are so funny. So we go to Colorado to go skiing and what do we do? Not go skiing...we are too random. We still had a great time exploring the city and shopping. We also stayed in the most beautiful hotel. Have you ever heard of Super 8? That is where we stayed. Not the worst place we have ever stayed (much better than the time we were in Hollywood!) but it did smell like an ash tray in the hallways. Well we are always on the go, trying to see it all, so we don't spend much time in the room anyway.  

We were also able to go to Mesa Verde National Park, what a place......
This was a great trip for Steve to try out his new Christmas present, his Camera. Good thing that I love Steve and that he is spoiled enough to get his present early!

I think that Mesa Verde was my favorite part of the trip. It sure was cold, not as cold as Druango which had a high the day before of 18! It was a good time of year to go though, no one was there. I was impressed by the wild animals we saw there. Too bad we didn't go before Thanksgiving, we could have gotten a great bird for dinner. 

We also stayed a night in Moab and we actually went on the tour of Hole in the Rock. We paid 5$ each, what a waste! But at least we can say we saw it now. *Note to self: don't ever pay to see that again!

Stay tuned to see what happens this next year....

White Elephant

Amy & Aaron were nice enough to have us over for the annual white elephant party. Crazy enough, this was my first year going, I had to represent for team Beardshall since Steve had to work. Usually it is when Steve and I are celebrating our anniversary. I was able to score a beautiful boustie lamp, the sad thing is that I had to steal it from Holly Ross' daughter Kelsey. I think that Holly was relieved to get rid of it though. I would have taken more pictures but everyone ran when I whipped out Steve's camera (I grabbed his by accident!). Maybe the gals will let me take some more pictures next year. This is the only shot of the night. 

I've Been Tagged!

I've been tagged by Britney

OK, so here are the rules:
A. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning.
B. Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves.
C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 2 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Oh the JOYS of learning about your favorite Amy!

Lets see what are my weird habits or facts about myself?.......

1. I love photography, my dream is to become a photographer. Now all I have to do is find a little more time!

2.My favorite foods are croutons, pez and any type of fruit (are those types of food?)!!!!!

3. If I could choose a talent my dream would be either to be a composer (I love instrumental music....love it, love it!) or I would choose to have rhythm. I can't clap to a beat for the life of me!

4. Surprising as it sounds I am actually a very good longboarder, who knew? (Also one of Steve and I's favorite past times)...... amazing I know

5. Steve always makes fun of me for saying this but Chuck(my dog) is one of my best friends! 

6. I have really bad feet, by this I mean that I have Taylor's Bunions. (On a related side note, my Taylor's Bunions are caused by my extremely high arches!!!! Not because I am a freak!)Now you think that this would be something that one would not like to share with others but the funny thing and the point of me telling this is the fact that I practically have to wear orthopedic shoes! Last time I checked I am not a grandma but a young 24 year old gal! Ha to that, what will my feet be like when I am actually a grandma? Only time will tell, hopefully they will just get me through my dream of running a marathon!

Tag you're it: 

Melynda &

Emilee

.elf yourself.

Check out this website, it's so funny! Go get Elfed!
Click here

.steve being tasared.

Need I say more? OUCH!

.a beardshall tradition.

The finished product, as you can see Steve an I got it crooked in our tree stand! Oh well it gives our "Charlie Brown" tree some character. We like to keep it simple with the big lights and the fake popcorn and cranberry garland, Merry Christmas!

The hunt is on! For Christmas trees that is. Now if you all remember last year when we went to get trees our clutch went out right when we got there, in Evanston that is. So you can imagine how Joanne was skeptical when we mentioned driving together. She was sure that we would break down. We had to remind her that we had a different car this year and she reluctantly decided to go with us in the same car. We had a great time. Where we go there is not a lot of blue spruces, the state tree of Utah, but Roger was convinced that we would find some. These are the traditional Christmas trees that you see at all the tree lots. Well we drove and drove and drove some more and we actually found some!

Do you like my kids boots? They were on sale!

.givethanks.

The stuffing has landed, I repeat the stuffing has landed! Thats right folks. You know that stuffing was voted Americas favorite side dish of Thanksgiving. You can imagine how I felt knowing that I would have this huge responsibility of making this side dish. Luckily Steve's mom Joanne has the best stuffing recipe in the world! To be honest I used to hate stuffing until I married Steve and had Joanne's! I must say that I did get a lot of compliments, which is always good. 

I also volunteered to make the Jello salad. This is a tradition in the Christopherson house. Basically it's 5 Jello flavors; each flavor is divided and half of it is added with sour cream. Each layer, according to the recipe, must set for 20-30 minutes. I decided that this was way too much time and opted to go for 15 minutes. This strategy worked for me for the first 6 layers or so. Now when I got to the green layer things went south fast! When I took the Jello out of the fridge and poured the green in it shot through all the layers! No more pretty looks. I decided that there was nothing that I could do so I put it back into the fridge. My next problem is that I ran out of sour cream. I had already added the sour cream to the lime and decided to put it in the fridge while I ran to the store. Well I got the sour cream and when I got home to add the green layer it had already set up in the fridge, so I added it to the rest. It was all lumpy and set up, as you can see in my picture. Wow I decided that I don't have enough patients! Next year I will wait about 30 minutes between layers, the good thing is that everyone said that it still tasted good. Except Gage, he said he didn't like it. Josh said it was probably because it was all lumpy in the middle! Thanks Josh!

So I didn't get a lot of pictures this year. I was being lazy I guess! I did shoot this one of the infamous "black friday" browsing of the adds. Notice Josh's shirt "The Impregnator"....Brit had already told us that she was pregnant! Yeah! This is how they told Josh's family, funny huh? So we did go shopping the next day and had a blast. I went my own way, Mom and Brit went their own way and Josh and the boys went to Home Depot. Steve and Katie opted to sleep in. We all met up and had breakfast together. We had a great time. Can't wait for next years shopping. I got some really great deals! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

.ghostbusters.

Happy Halloween! This year was really fun. Wendy and the Olson's had us over on Halloween night for soup and memories too! Since Steve dressed up the weekend before he opted out. He said that I only get one dress up a year from him. I dressed up in Rogers old flight suit from the Airforce, I forgot to take pictures. 

Steve with Jordyn, can you guess what she is? 

Paige enjoying the food

Wendy, Heidi and Steve having a good time

While Britney and Josh were gone we babysat Gage and TJ. We told them that we would take them out to dinner, guess where we went? McDonalds...why do kids love that place? I was so impressed with their good manners. Gage at one point asked me, "May I go and play now?" Who asks that? Once we were done eating we headed over to Gardner Village. It was all decked out for Halloween. There were witches everywhere. Tj said his favorite one was the witch on the toilet, go figure! I would have gotten more pictures but TJ kept saying "no more pictures!" I guess Britney takes too many of those at home. Later that night we went back to our house and carved pumkins. TJ and Gage wanted Transformers and Ninja Turtles, they turned out really good but I didn't get any good picutures of them. We really had a great time, plus I think that Gage really liked Steve. He kept asking him all sorts of questions....very unlike Steve's police graduation. I guess Gage doesn't like uniforms!

.monster mash.

We decided we needed to have a Monster Mash this year, and boy did we have one. We actually ended up watching Office Episodes, they are so funny to watch with Steve and Luke becaues they laugh non stop!

Here Steve is making home made root beer....Spooky!

The Kidlets...Dax, Talia, and Abbey

Woody and Bo Peep from Toy Story AKA Rachel and Davis

50's Baby! Luke and Marin

The Preacher and the Prego Nun along with Donald Duck AKA The Cannons

Prison Mike (The Office) and the Po Po AKA Steveo and Amster

Janey and Johnny the Thug

The Duncans

Steffan and Steve

The Schmidt's AKA......I'm not quite sure but it made me laugh!