December

Speech therapy has been very fun during the holiday season. There are so many cute activities and crafts to do and it gives me the excuse to read my favorite childhood Christmas books. The downside to the holiday season is that a lot of people cancel or no-show for their sessions but I didn't have the worst of luck.

Candy sleighs that I made for my kids

For my aunt's birthday, we went to Disney world with the family. Blaine and I got seasonal annual passes. I have been dying to get them ever since we moved here. It's definitely worth it considering how often we go. So it was an early Christmas present. We went to Epcot and Magic Kingdom. While we were at Epcot, Kim and Jonathan joined us :) Disney was awesome as always and it was nice to have the whole family there. When we got back, we got together to cut a cake and sing happy birthday to my aunt.

Dragon slayers :) 

It was a gorgeous day and evening

New favorite thing to eat at Disney - waffle sandwiches!

Turkey-leg enthusiasts 

Jonathan & Kim had never ridden Figment before.

We went to several holiday parties this year. My job had a company party that was very nice. Blaine was able to get to know my work friends better and also meet their boyfriends and husbands. We danced a little bit and talked a lot like girls do :) It was a lot of fun to hang out outside of our typical work setting.

Most of the north staff

The next morning, we went to a holiday fundraiser for Best Buddies that was sponsored by one of the dealerships Blaine works with. It definitely made us miss Devin and all of the Best Buddies activities we'd go to with him. It was at Gulfstream Park, a race track for horse racing. We went for free and ate at their delicious buffet while watching the horses race from the inside. It was a really nice experience. I had never been to a racetrack before.

We also had our ward Christmas party. The young women were in charge of decorating and it all turned out nicely. Blaine was part of the Christmas play/program last minute as a Nephite. Somebody didn't show and the bishop's wife asked him to fill-in. If you know Blaine, you know that he hates doing stuff like this  especially without any prepartion. It wasn't a big deal at all but he wasn't excited about it. I think he did a great job  :)

That Sunday, Ivan was baptized. Now everybody in our family is officially a member. Ivan had been preparing for a while to be baptized. We are so happy he made the decision to be baptized. 

I also went to watch Ivan sing in his school Christmas show. It was really cute. I love watching little kids perform. Most of the songs were Spanish holiday songs, which I thought was a little strange and also hilarious. But I guess that's one of the things that happen when you live in Miami.

My mom's birthday was also in December. My aunt and her are the same age every year for about a week. We took her out to lunch at a nice restaurant called the 94th Aero Squadron restaurant. She's always loved that place ever since we were small. I hadn't been to it in years. At night, family and friends came to her house to sing happy birthday. Blaine made it right in time. He had been in Puerto Rico again.

For the last mutual of 2013, we had a Christmas dinner with the young women and their parents. We had a good turnout and had a lot of fun together celebrating the real meaning of Christmas.

We went to the Trochez 2nd Annual Ugly Christmas Sweater Party (its official) this year. Dinner was delicious and we had a ton of fun in the photobooth. We took the sweaters off immediately after we were done because it was hot and no matter how many times we washed them, some of them had a weird stench to them (the mystery of ugly Christmas sweaters is real). Valentina and Oscar were nice enough to let Rue come and play with Millie (their tiny Yorkie) so she was part of the fun too. 

She's a little too big to be carried, but Blaine is in denial. 

Aren't these hilarious? 

the boys

the girls 

We ALMOST went to the theaters dressed up like this, but decided not to in the end. It was a great night with friends. We miss our Utah friends a ton, but we're so grateful for the friendship of the friends we're making here! 

We visited Orlando the last weekend of the year. Kristin and Kathy were in town. Kristin just graduated from BYU-Idaho so we went to P.F. Chang's to celebrate. She's now working in Downtown SLC as a digital marketing intern for Deseret Book Co., so I was so happy to see her before she left again. We're all so proud of her. 

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving was different this year but just as nice. For the last 4 years, we've been going to Aunt Jan's for Thanksgiving. We tried visiting Idaho again, but flights were too expensive by the time we figured out Blaine's work schedule. So we decided to visit Massachusetts because Blaine's parents were also spending Thanksgiving with Brian and Kim.

We barely made our flight. First of all, I was working until late that day. When we tried getting our boarding passes, my flight itinerary wasn't showing up. Ends up being that I didn't have a seat on that plane. We had to buy another plane ticket right on the spot for me last minute. Obviously, we were beyond furious because American Airlines did charge our credit card for that flight that "was never bought." We just didn't have the time to complain because we would've missed our flight. Needless to say, we will never fly American again. But, we made it to Massachusetts safe and sound and it was worth every penny we did (over)spend.

We had Thanksgiving dinner at the Cowdens, Brian and Kim's good friends that we've met before. We really really missed Aunt Jan's cooking but dinner was still great. The boys played football outside and we drank hot apple cider. We played with the kids for hours and hours on end. After dinner, the adults played Catchphrase. It was a lot of fun.

Tucker man! 

Watching the boys play football

We snuggled on this couch for most of the day.

The next day, I went Black Friday shopping with Kim, Eileen and little Chase. I didn't get a ton of shopping done due to the lack of space in my carry-on but it was still fun to have girl time.

We hiked Purgatory Chasm on Saturday. It was a pretty cool experience. I've never seen anything like it. It's .25-mile-long, 70-foot-deep chasm of bedrock. There were a ton of abrupt precipices and sharp edges and caves created by boulders. By some miracle, nobody was hurt. Blaine pulled a neck muscle pretty bad but he lived :) At night, we made cookies for everybody with Ashton and Chase's help. 

Sliding down "sliding rock"

This was crazy scary.

It was a beautiful day!

On Sunday, we drove to Hockessin and just hung out at home. We didn't have much time and didn't get to see all of our family or any of our friends. But it was still nice to stay in Hockessin. Kerri, Connor and Jason came over for dinner. Connor is already taller than me and is catching up to Blaine.  The next day we got up bright and early to go to the airport and grabbed some Wawa hot chocolate on the way there. We definitely wish we could've stayed longer. We love visiting our family in Delaware and the Northeast! 

November

I was so bad at updating the blog in 2013, but you bet that one of my resolutions is to be better at keeping this up-to-date.

November was a great month even though I really really missed fall weather. Here are a couple of things we did throughout the month.

I've really gotten better at going for walks with Rue. We go daily if not sometimes twice and our walks have gotten longer too. We live super close to a cool little place called MainStreet and we discovered this French bakery and stopped to have breakfast there. It is so good.

We went on double date to The Melting Pot with Damaris and Bruce. As always, it was delicious.

The youth of our stake had a really nice temple fireside at a park that overlooks the temple. It was such a special activity. We all sang "I Love to See the Temple" and the Spirit was felt so strongly. A lot of the girls in our ward are new to the church and don't know much about temples. But ever since that fireside, they have had lots of questions and a great desire to go to the temple and do the work for their ancestors. It's not "100 % official" yet but it looks like the temple will be open by April! We are so excited.

My love for these girls keeps on growing! 

We ate a lot of pizza. Blaine's very happy that we live in walking distance to a pizza shop. Look at the size of that thing.

I'm still loving my job and get lots of love and gifts from parents and kids a like. But these bracelets have to be my favorite. I wear them every Wednesday when I see the little girls who made them for me.

The whole family went to Uli and Ivan's primary presentation (Uli's last one!).

I had a nice Thanksgiving lunch at my job. I made these little cornucopias with the help of my mom for my kids. I'm so grateful for nice co-workers incredible bosses, and the children I see and learn so much from.

Blurry picture and just one of the many tables. 

Blaine and I went to a Panthers/Flyers hockey game. It was my first time going to a hockey game. It was fun to go on a different date and have an excuse to drink hot chocolate.

We went to Massachussetts for Thanksgiving. We knew we wouldn't be able to travel for Christmas so it was so nice to see some of Blaine's family before the year ended. It was freezing but we didn't see snow. It was a nice change from the monotonous weather in Florida (still love the warmth though!). I'll write more about our trip in another post.

November definitely flew by this year. I didn't eat enough pumpkin flavored things as I liked but November was a great month :)