Christmas in California! (3 of 3)

The last couple of weeks have been VERY busy for Jeff and I and SO fun!  We spent Christmas and his birthday on the 28th with his family in Houston.  We were there from the 22nd to the 29th and we left the 29th for California to see my family courtesy of Jeff's wonderful parents who so generously paid for our flights from Provo to Houston to California and back again!  Like I've said before, we are SO spoiled!  In Houston we had so much fun with Jeff's family!  They're so great!  And his brother, Ben and his wife Caitlin have the cutest and sweetest little 9 month old  baby girl named Bethany!  Of course she just loved to play with Jeff!  He's really great with kids!  Since I'm hoping to get a few pictures of the two of them playing with the bubbles Jeff and I got Bethany for Christmas, I'm going to blog about California now and Houston when I get those pictures from Caitlin.

My parents picked Jeff and I up at the airport on Monday, the 29th and had an exciting new GPS waiting for him in the car as a birthday present!  Yay!  I had a GPS in my car all through high school.  It was my crutch so I never gained a good sense of direction.  I'm baaaaad.

There were MANY more presents awaiting us when we got back to the house!  Jeff and I were each counted as one of the "kids" so the present money was split five ways between us and my three siblings.  After Patrick and Katrina got home (Jared was MIA -out somewhere with his little girlfriend no doubt), we opened our mounds of gifts!  We got a LOT of good stuff: DVDs, board games (GOOD ones! Game night at our place!), a couple good books for me, some car stuff for Jeff, a beautiful engraved "Our First Christmas" ornament (a locket shaped like a heart with our names and picture inside), a framed Proclamation to the World with a black and white picture of us from the wedding in the background, NERF GUNS!, and more!  Jeff immediately started a Nerf gun war.  I lost.

Katrina got us Scattergories

Patrick and Jared each got us an Anberlin CD (one of their favorite bands).  Jared didn't want to try and wrap his so he put stickers over all of the titles and pictures of the band members.  And as hard as I tried, I couldn't tell what CD it was until I opened it!

My parents got us a nice big deep pan!  And we needed it!  Hardly anything fits in the one we were using before!

With our beautiful Proclamation to the Family

The Nerf Guns!  Two big guns that shoot 10 darts and 2 small ones that shoot only 1 along with some pretty sweet glasses and vests.

Like I said, I lost.  The bullets are velcro so I had to wear my shame.

That night we stopped by my friend Jackie's birthday party for a little bit to say hi to all of my best friends from high school.  It was really nice to see them.  Patrick drove us so we could go with him over to Neal and Wendy Holmes' house afterwards to play games with them and a few other people from my old home ward.  We played catch phrase, guys vs. girls and the girls CRUSHED the guys!  Twice.  We had a great time!  There were some fun people over there!  But having just come from Texas, it felt two hours later to Jeff and I, so around 10:00, Jeff turned into a zombie and we got a ride home and went right to bed.

My mom had the next day all planned out for us and it was a blast!  In the morning she, Katrina, Jeff, and I drove out to Norco and rode horses!  I was SO excited!  As was my mom!  If any of you don't know us very well, we LOVE horses and always have!  Katrina was a little nervous and Jeff was kind of indifferent, but they both ended up having fun.  Katrina's little horse, Cowboy was REALLY lazy and would just stop if there wasn't another horse behind him, herding him along and Jeff's horse, Reno was MEAN!  Any time any of the other horses would get to close to him, he would try and kick them!  Jeff handled him pretty well though, and there weren't any major problems.  My horse was named Glory and he was a good horse, but such a follower!  He would only lead when we were on our way back, otherwise, he spent most of his time so concentrated on the butt of the horse in front of him that he tripped on a couple branches and walked right through a tumble weed that my mom tried to move over to the side of the path.  I got him to break out of that a few times, but it was NOT easy!  My mom had the best horse!  He would do anything she asked him to do without a fight!  Probably because she marked expert on the sheet we signed at the beginning.  She and I both got to canter a little bit and it felt great!  Of course, then we'd have to wait for Jeff and Katrina's horses to catch up.  Katrina was lucky if she could get Cowboy trotting and if she did, he would almost immediately start wheezing.

That night we went indoor rock climbing at Rock City with the whole family.  Even Jared decided to grace us with his presence after some convincing!  We had SO much fun, with only minor injuries and as always, Patrick and Jared cracked us all up.  They are so funny together!  I was so proud of my mom!  She recently met her goal at Weight Watchers and has lost a total of about 75 pounds, I think, in the past year.  She looks great and climbed those walls like a pro!  At the end of the night Jeff and I decided to climb through the pitch black tunnel they have running behind the climbing walls after I had already been through it once with Katrina.  I could crawl, but Jeff was too big and had to drag himself along!  I STILL have bruises all over my knees!  When we finally got back down to the end, Jeff had to get down through a hole head first since he didn't have the luxury of turning himself around like I did and it was going to be tricky.  Being the kind wife that I am, while he was trying figure it out, I left him a little present I just gave him the warning "Don't breathe through your nose!" and quickly crawled out of the last stretch of the tunnel!  I was met by Patrick and Jared who thought it was hilarious and were so proud of me! haha It was an accident!  Having Golden Spoon frozen yogurt 3 times in 24 hours wasn't kind to me.  I think I may be a little lactose intolerant.

My studly husband "bouldering" (climbing with a mat under you instead of using the ropes and usually upside down!)  I have zero arm strength so this was NOT for me, but as you can see Jeff's got plenty so he was all over it

The siblings and some expert boulderer guy watching Jeff climb

Jared in one of the tunnels at a part where there was a window looking over the room.  Those were always a relief since the vast majority of the time, it was pitch black in there!

Patrick in the same tunnel haha

Jeff entering the tunnel completely unaware of the stinky surprise that awaited him at the end

Jared taking a breather

Patrick on the balcony one of tunnels led to

Daddy getting ready to climb and Jeff looking like a big pasty white giant

When this picture is bigger, you can see Patrick's face in the little window up there.  It's kinda creepy.

Mama climbing like a champion

On Wednesday, Jeff and I went shopping!  Neither of us really enjoys shopping generally, but we did so good!  We went to several different stores and didn't give up till we got everything we needed!  We went to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought Christmas decorations for 50% off with the gift card we got at our open house in Houston.  Then we went to Kohl's and got me two new sweatshirts for about 70% off, since I wear the same one all the time and I desperately needed some variety.  Then I suggested we look for a couple things for Jeff since I had spent the majority of the gift card we got from the wedding and it wasn't fair.  And guess what??  He let me pick out clothes for him!!  I just picked things I liked and he tried all of it on!  We ended up getting him two nice sweaters and a dress shirt that look great on him as well as a t-shirt that's a really great color on him.  I didn't take a picture of that one, but he wore it on his birthday so I'll blog about that next and you can see it.  :)  We got it all on really good sales!  We are expert bargain shoppers!  Can you believe he even put them on again when we got home and let me take pictures??  He really didn't want to, but he just can't say no to me. ;)  And I really wanted to send them to his mom so she could see how handsome he looked!

Probably my favorite.  Its hard to really tell what it looks like unless the picture is bigger.
Doesn't he look like he should be in some fall catalogue surrounded by leaves?

SO handsome!