Vegas Part 2

Right after New Years, Todd and I took another trip to Las Vegas to hang out with my cousin Amanda and Shaun. They came down from Minnesota to spend a week with Shaun's good friend Collin. It was a quick trip but it was a lot of fun! Walker and Lianne also joined us so it was like old times! :) Here are just a few pictures of what we did:

Amanda and I in Cezars Palace

Amanda enjoying the fountains

I hope this picture doesn't offend anyone, but there's nothing to say except Vegas makes you do weird things. Especially if your names are Kara and Amanda.

Todd and the Eiffel Tower

Enjoying some drinks at the bar... don't worry, its just juice! ;)

Besides, I wouldn't drink anything bad with Todd around. Lol.

Just hanging out in one of the Casino's

Now, if me and Amanda were drunk- this is what we might look like. Ha ha.

Todd on one of the slot machines

Then after a night on the strip, Todd and I spent the night with Walker and Lianne in the Stratosphere. It was a lot of fun. Then the next day we went over to Collins where we hung out with them all day.

I love this picture of Shaun. I would think if you didn't know Shaun he might seem a little scary... oh wait. No, no, he wouldn't.

And this is Amanda and Shaun's BEAUTIFUL baby Kayliegh! I LOVE this picture of her. She is soooooo freakin adorable!

Awe, I already miss you Amanda and Shaun!!! :(

We had a lot of fun! But we always have fun as long as we are together.

Thanksgiving and wonderful husbands

For Thanksgiving, I didn't get a lot of pictures. In fact, this is the only picture I got. But as you can see, it was a very "filling" dinner. We had it at my Grandma LaRae's house where we had the best yams ever (Thanks to Jeni)!!! Then we left to go up to Farmington to have desert with Todd's family. It was a lot of fun. I wish I would have taken more pictures...

Then shortly after Thanksgiving, we were invited to go eat over at Todd's friend Steve's house where we at some "Sopes." (I think that's what they are called). Steve's Mom doesn't talk a lot in English, so we spent most of the evening talking in Spanish while Todd translated for me. I really got to learn some Spanish! Todd's good friend Jordan and his wife Angie also came. It was really fun to get together!

Here's a picture of the whole gang.

Then, some of you may already know this story, but I just wanted to write about it because it was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. I was so swamped with school and finals the last couple of weeks in December that I literally had no time to eat or sleep. I was so overwhelmed, exhausted, and upset that I didn't have any time to decorate for Christmas. One night I cried to Todd about all the things I had to do and how I had no time, and by the time I had time to decorate, It would be a couple days before Christmas, and then I would just have to take it all down. Anyways, so the next day was a Saturday, and I had to work all day at my Copy Central job and I was just so upset all day. Todd dropped me off cuz he needed my car to run some errands. When 6:00pm finally rolled around, Todd came and picked me up and had Dexter in the car with him to greet me. Just seeing my Husband and my puppy made everything so much better! Then as we drove home, Todd stopped at my parents house and I asked him what we were doing and he said he was picking up the Laundry that I had also complained about not being done. I know its lame, but I totally teared up cuz I was so thankful he did that for me! Then we parked outside our house and went inside, and as I walked into the kitchen I noticed the living room was glowing! I walked a little further to see that Todd had put up the Christmas Tree, decorated it, along with the fireplace, and cleaned the whole house. I just stomped my foot and started sobbing. It was the kindest most thoughtful thing he could have done, and he spend all that Saturday doing it. One thing I loved about it was the way he decorated it. It was so obviously done by a boy, but I didn't care, I wouldn't touch it. So I just wanted to post some pictures of it.

When I walked in, this is the first thing I saw!

This is the Ugly fireplace you've heard so much about, that I'm going to repaint; But Todd had even gone to the store and bought garland and poinsettia flowers, and made our stockings to decorate the fireplace. I thought it looked great!

Thanks Hun for everything you do!

It was a GREAT Christmas!

Our new and not so new place

Like the rest of my posts, this one is long over due. Most of you know that in October Todd and I moved out of my parents basement into my Great Grandma's house next door. I've been wanting to post pictures of it forever, but just never got around to it. (It takes a long time to settle in a house!) Anyways, my Dad decided to remodel it and it turned out a lot better than we could have imagined. We feel so blessed to live here. (Thanks Mom and Dad!) It was a lot of fun for me because I got to help pick out a lot of the things, like the paint colors, light fixtures, the flooring, and kitchen cabinets. We were going for a french country cottage type look, so its very colorful! WE LOVE IT!!!

The Living Room

(We also have a fireplace in this room behind the camera, but its old and kind of ugly, so I'm going to repaint it!)

The Kitchen

Bathroom

(My little brother Branden did the tile in the shower! He did a great job!)

The Master Bedroom

(This isn't the best picture of this room, it a lot bigger than it looks and the blue isn't as intense as in this photo. Maybe some day i'll post a better one. Maybe...)

So that's it. Oh, and our little Family

So yeah! There's our new place. We also have a second bedroom but its currently holding all of our junk right now, and then there's an attic that we're going to work on to make it my Art Studio! (I know, I'm spoiled!) So when those things are done, I'll post them.

Then, I attached this picture onto this post just because I wanted to give anyone who cared a small glimpse of what I worked on this last semester. This is a picture of my sister Tiffany holding a baby all wrapped up (or so that's what its suppose to look like...) I build my own canvas, gesso'd it, put a layer of Lace over the canvas, then painted on top of it. I painted her monochromatic (One color, adding white or black), trying to create a timeless scene, capturing her in this "intimate" moment of holding her baby. I had her model for me and I took pictures, then a couple months later she found out she was pregnant. Go figure! :)

Anyways, it was one of my favorite projects

Halloween 2009!

For Halloween this year , Todd and I thought it would be funny to be Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. We don't really know how we decided on it. It just kind of happened. Here are just some pics to compare.

And here is us...

Ha Ha!

I think Todd pulled off a great Malfoy!

As far as me... I just looked funny with really short black hair. :)

This next picture I tried to reenact a scene in the 4th Harry Potter- if your a fan, you'll probably recognize what I'm talking about. (How did I do?)

We had a lot of fun. And the funny thing about all of this is... we're not even really big fans of Harry Potter and we've never read the books!
Ha ha.
Oh well!
Maybe some day :)

Some scenery pics

I love this time of year when the tree's just begin to change colors.

So beautiful!

I love seeing the green leaves mixed with the red, yellow, and orange leaves!

Fall is my favorite time of the year!

Then of course as winter comes creeping up, so does the rain! Followed by beautiful rainbows! I took these next pictures in Salem.

I love seeing the soft colors of a rainbow!

Then come the SNOW!

I LOVE our mountains! Aren't we so lucky to live in such a beautiful place where we can experience all the seasons!!!

:)

This post is WAY long over due...

September 30th came around and we all had to say goodbye to our little brother Branden. He was called to serve a mission in Ventura California, Spanish speaking. We were all so excited for him and know he will be a great missionary! We already miss him so much and are so proud of him! This is a pic I took of him right before he left to go the the MTC.

Right after saying goodbye to Branden, me and my family took a small trip down to St. George where we got to see the play "Aida" at the Tuacahn theater. While the girls went shoping, the guys went golfing. Here is a pic of Todd showing off his great golfing moves.

Then on Saturday and Sunday we all hung out at the Condo where we watched General Conference. (Dalen is such a poser!)

During the St. George trip, Todd and I found some time to sneak off to Vegas! (Wahoo!) Where we got to walk the strip and see my cousin Brent. Here are just some pics of us enjoying that evening.

Bellagio and the fountain show! So cool!

While walking through one of the Casino's we saw this slot machine, and just had to take a picture of it. It was HUGE!

And then this is just a pic of me I thought turned out kind of cool. :)

We had a lot of fun and plan on going back to St. George next May to see Brain Regan perform. Maybe we'll hit up Las Vegas again! :) Any takers???