Knotts Berry Farm

this is going to be a photo post of our trip to california and knotts berry farm. disneyland and california adventure to come at a later date.

Out with a bang.

For New Year's Eve we were invited to go bowling with my mom's friend and her family and my mom and my family. it was a blast! We bowled for 3 hours straight, and I beat chris! (Or at least that is what we will say. I can't remember if I beat him or not.) Here are some pictures from bowling. and I know that chris is crazy. i have no control over him. It was a fun night. bring on 2011!!

Christmas! (picture overload)

Our stockings that my aunt made. She made chris's for our wedding. I love it!

Chris in front of our Christmas tree. I loved our christmas tree. It was great!!

chris and I in front of the tree. Our first christmas married together.

Here we are in our christmas pajamas that santa brought us on christmas eve.

 Christmas even santa came to visit us! He comes every year. It's a great tradition.

At the beginning of december, we got our christmas ornaments that my mom always gets for the kids. Chris and I are acting out what our ornaments are. ya i know, we are weird. we are used to it!

On christmas eve, we went to my parents house and decorated sugar cookies. It was fun! usually we made stained glass sugar cookies, and this year we did those in addition to decorating with frosting! It was so much fun! we made our stained glass cookies also.

My sugar cookies got put into the oven and then forgotten about, so they got burned and ruined!

Here are some of the others. they turned out a ton prettier than mine did!

My cousin ty was being a stinker before santa came. my aunt told him "You better smile so we can put you on santa's facebook page so he will know who you are." then he smiled for us. what a ham!



Visits...

Right after I got done with my finals, Chris's friend Monique came to stay with us for a few days. Chris met her family while he was serving his mission in Brasil and she is nannying in California and was on vacation and came to spend the weekend with us! We started the visit off with a trip to the Mesa Temple to see the temple lights. We invited Chris's brother Jared and his family and Chris's sister Anna and her family. It was a fun night! And it wasn't even cold, so we didn't need our jackets! (we had them anyway though.)

Me and Monique at the Temple

Monique, Chris and lil Jared

I love this little girl Cheyenne! (and I'm her favorite, she told me so!)

My cute nephews and niece! I love these little guys!

Then we drove home and we drove past the Gila Valley Temple to show it to Monique because she wanted to see where we were married! The next day, I went to work and they came to visit.

Then that night, my sister and I were in a baking mood so we baked some Snicker's surprise cookies. Super delicious! Monique was fascinated by our huge chocolate brick that we use to melt for candy and stuff at Christmas time. Caleb came over and we played a game of phase 10 also. I lost.

We also went 4-wheeler riding and gun shooting!!

 (The sun was super bright!)

We took Monique on the Thatcher tour, which of course included cotton pickers!

The last thing we did in Thatcher was we went to our ward party, where Erica and I stole Moniques camera and took this lovely picture!

On our way out of town, we stopped by the Gila Valley Temple to show Monique the nativity scene that they had.

Thus was the start of our Christmas break! We had a blast with Monique and were sad to see her leave to go back home. We were glad we were able to share a few days with her though! it was great!