|{ 2011 In Review }|

January

Niagara Falls

February

The largest grocery store in the US, us in Cincinatti

Black and White party, Valentines Day

March

St. Patrick's Day, Jon's volleyball team

My brother's wedding

April

Jon's scooter, Easter dinner

May

The new Lady Gaga CD

Jon's biorhythms rap group, Jon's birthday

June

Chicago

July

Getting ready to go and see Harry Potter 7, part 2

Painting our new home, my friend Katie's baby shower

Trip to Chicago for Travis and Larisa's wedding, all dressed up for a wedding!

Camping with Ember, Niagara Falls with Ember

August

Detroit Zoo:  Red Panda, Tiger

My surprise party:  Tiger cake, walking in the door

My actual birthday:  Harry Potter presents, raspberry picked with the mosquitoes 

September

Sleeping Bear Dunes

Michigan Football

Raspberry picking

October

Class 1 Killers sand volleyball- Winning the championship!

Edwin Cider Mill with my mom

Bronner's Christmas Wonderland with my mom, fall leaves

Rowing

Halloween:  Pumkins, Angela and Dwight costumes

Our nephew Ethan is born!

November

Movember mustache 

First fire of the season on our anniversary!

Thanksgiving dinner

Decorating for Christmas

December

Italian dinner

Temple Square

Skyping with Ben

Christmas morning

So, in a quick review, this was 2011! It was a really great year and a lot of wonderful things happened!! I'm am thrilled for 2012, I think it's going to be our best year yet! There are lots of exciting things that are coming up!

And, just for fun, here is a random photo that Jon took!

Jon was throwing cards at the cat and this card landed in the space of our floorboards, it was crazy!

|{ The Holidays In Utah: PART III }|

After Christmas we did a lot of things! We played even more games, we met up with some friends, and celebrated New Years!

We ate at In-N-Out twice!

I met up with my one of my very best friends, Mercede, and we went where we always go, Happy Sumo, for lunch!

We went to hang out with Jon's two best friends, Matt and Josh, and their wives, Kim and Jaime.  The both just hand babies last fall!

Josh and Jaime's baby, Keira.  Sadly, I realize now that I did not get any photos of Matt and Kim's baby, Mitchell.

For New Years we went and saw a movie with my sisters! We saw The Darkest Hour, it was super fun! Then we went home and watched the ball fall with my family, p.s. YAY LADY GAGA!!  We rang in the New Year with a glass of sparkling cider and a kiss!

Us at the Movie Theater!

We also went and saw the 'Up' house! :)

|{ The Holidays In Utah: PART II }|

For Christmas Eve we opened our pajamas at my parents house!  We got matching shirts that say 'Peterson University'.  The rest of my family all got matching ones too that said 'Longhurst' instead of 'Peterson'.  They also gave a us a matching onesie for a future baby, it was awesome!!  We played a few games too!

Playing Swedish Twister

After that we went and spent Christmas Eve with Jon's family and slept there that night.

Jon with his parents

On Christmas morning we got up so we could talk to Jon's brother Ben who got to Skype with us from his mission in Estonia! It was so awesome to talk to him!

After that we went over to my parents and spent the rest of Christmas Day with them!

Making Christmas breakfast

Opening presents.  I got lots of Disney movies and Jon put our home video together for me (me thinking we had lost all of our videos)!! Jon got 3 booster packs for Killer Bunnies and I made him (okay my Mom made them for me) that scarf and hat!

Playing games.  Starting at bottom left and moving clockwise:  Jon, Skyler, Kira, Ember, Mom, Shantell.

And more Swedish Twister!!

It was an amazing Christmas!!! I am planning on posting some videos later too!

|{ The Holidays In Utah (In 3 parts): PART I }|

This year we spent Christmas and New Years in Utah! Both of our families live there (about 5 minutes from each other) and it was really wonderful to spend so much time with them!  We did so many things while we were there, it was a busy trip.  Prepare yourself for a lot of pictures...I may do this in 2 posts...

First- A few miscellaneous things we did there:

We made this monster bookmarks and decided to do the 4 Hogwarts Houses! 

We got to meet our nephew Ethan!

We played Killer Bunnies... A LOT!

Went to Desert Star to see 'It's a Wonderful Life'!

Second-  Every year we have a big Italian dinner and this year we did it with both of our families.

Appetizer plates/Jon cooking

My sister Kira taking pictures

The table

Ethan was definitely the center of attention, especially with the women!

After dinner we went to Temple Square to see the lights!!

Jon's little sister Angela was the only one of his family who decided to come.

My dad and sister Kira

My sister Ember

My parents

|{ Stockings Hung On The Chimney With Care }|

If you know me at all then you will not be surprised that the day after Thanksgiving we started to decorate our house for CHRISTMAS!! I definitely listen to Christmas music and watch Christmas movies well before that but I try to hold off on decorating to make it a little more special! :)  It's always fun to be in a new place for Christmas because you get to figure where you want everything to go and how to put the lights up outside!

My husband and I both really enjoy decorating for the Holidays! Today we watched 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' and burned a Christmas scented candle while we put up the tree and finished decorating the inside of the house since yesterday we did the outside of the house!! We got done surprisingly quickly and the only thing left to do is find and hang some mistletoe!! Don't worry, we'll warn everyone about the Nargles.  (Geez, can you tell I'm currently reading Harry Potter again?) :)

Here is our house this year!!!

Our hallway

Outside

|{ Anniversary & Thanksgiving }|

So we celebrated our anniversary on Wednesday the 23rd! It was really fun! It kind of felt like we got to have our anniversary twice as both days were filled with extra doses of love and admiration! We watched our wedding video, made sushi, and looked through this years photos to decided which ones we want to put in our album (all of which are yearly traditions)! We also decided that we wanted to start a new tradition since we have a fireplace now! We want to build our first fire on our anniversary! So we did that this year too, which of course consisted of Jon having to cut wood! It was so much fun and oh so toasty warm!!!

Ripping apart a log

The many funny faces of my husband!

Before we started the fire we found these little ash-y pawprints on the hearth, maybe we shouldn't have left the fireplace doors open. :)

Our first fire! See the little bits of green from the newspaper? We decided that bits of Floo Powder must have gotten on the paper. 

It was a really wonderful day and we really enjoyed just spending time with each other!



For Thanksgiving this year we stayed at home and celebrated just the two of us! The only other time we've done that was the year we got married because we were on our honeymoon!! This year we prepared lots of delicious food and tried some fabulous new recipes, among those were a pretty fantastic gravy made by yours truly and an awesome pecan pie made by my talented husband!! We always have a lot of fun cooking together and we definitely enjoyed the holiday!!