The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

I seriously love this time of year! Everything about it makes me so happy! I have our apartment all decked out with Christmas decorations and our little tree is so cute. I have been listening to Christmas music nonstop and it kills me to listen to anything non-Christmasy so poor kevin is stuck with FM100 all the time... We just finished all our Christmas shopping today and it's a relief to be done! We're finally getting some snow around here too, so it actually is starting to feel like the holiday season!
Work is going well. I am working full time now and i love the kids in my class. they are so adorable! They are so dang excited for Santa they can hardly stand it. It's so fun to do Christmas crafts with them and talk about what they want for Christmas.
Kevin finished finals up last week and both of us are so happy! He has definitley needed the break and i'm just so happy to get to see him after work now :) He doesn'y go back until Jan 12th, so it's a nice long break.
Last night was the annual Grandma's Cookie Bake at my Grandma and Grandpa Nelson's house. It's such a fun tradition that i look forward to every year. All the grandkids (and a lot of the aunts and uncles) get together and decorate sugar cookies that my grandma makes. It's so fun. It's a ton of work though so i'm glad she works hard every year to do this tradition.
Me and Kevin have been struggling lately with knowing what to do as far as moving to a new apartment or buying a condo/house. Rent just keeps getting higher and higher and it's sooo frustrating throwing our hard earned money away each month. We could probably afford to buy a condo, but then we would have to put off having a baby for a while so i could keep working full time. We have looked at other apartments too, and ours is still one of the best prices for two bedrooms... So we could just stay where we are and barely put anything into our savings, but we have felt like we need to do something else. So we are going to move in with Kevin's parent's around this coming spring. This way we will be able to save a ton of money each month and hopefully by the time Kevin has his associates, he can get a job with an engineering company and maybe get paid a little better when he transfers to the U. It will also allow him to switch to working part time and then take more credits than he is now. Also, i will eventually be able to go part time to have a baby, so i definitely love that. Anyways, we are excited to actually start moving forward with all our plans. We will have a seperate kitchen and a lot of the basement to ourselves at the Briggs' house, so it won't be too bad.
So that's what is new with us. Hope everyone has been having a great holiday season so far!

Kevin's Birthday and Halloween

It's already mid-November and I haven't even written about the end of October! Time is flying by. Kevin turned 23 on Oct 22. We both took the day off work to hang out. He still had school though. He had one class in the morning and one in the evening. I made him breakfast, German pancakes (our favorite!), before he had to go to class. Then when he got home, I had a surprise for him. We rode Trax up to Salt Lake and the whole time he has no idea where we are going. Then we get off and walk a block or so, and he figures out that I'm taking him to the Body Worlds exhibit. He was so excited! It was so cool! Our bodies are so amazing! So that was fun. Then we came home and had dinner and he went off to class again. That night, we went to his parents' house to open gifts. I got him a bicycle trainer. It's a piece of equipment you hook your bike up to and it pretty much turns it into a stationary bike so you can still train during the winter. I got it for him about the beginning of September and he had NO IDEA. his parents and mine both went in on it. He started asking his parents for one about two weeks before his birthday and found one online that he liked and so his parents ended up having to trick him into thinking they had ordered it for him, but it wouldn't be delivered for another couple weeks... In reality, the one i got him was waaaay nicer, and usually double the cost, and already wrapped up as a gift :) I got a great deal on it too, half off! So, needless to say, when he finally opened his gift, he was shocked and SO excited! It was awesome! He went home that night and put it all together. It takes up half our living room, but its OK :) I love him so much and hope that he had a great birthday! He is the BEST!

Eating German Pancakes.

Cake that night at his parents' house, before he opened his gifts.

After he opened his gift and figured out that it was a trainer :)

The trainer all hooked up back at home.

On Oct 25th, Kevin and I had a Halloween/birthday party for our families. We had our apartment so decked out with decorations. We even had a fog machine! We had a costume contest, so everyone dressed up. We had food and a Halloween quiz/game, music, and a lot of fun! Everyone really enjoyed themselves. Kevin and I are so glad that our families like to hang out together! We had dinner too. Pumpkin soup, veggies, rolls, pumpkin cookies, spice cupcakes, white chocolate popcorn, root beer with dry ice. It was way fun. I was worried it would be horribly cramped fitting all those people in our little apartment, but it wasn't that bad. We just might have to do it again next year!

Me showing the food table before the party. I was a ladybug.

Everyone taking their Halloween trivia quiz. It looks a little foggy because of the fog machine.

Chantelle was the Joker and it turned out AWESOME! Everyone loved it! Look how creepy she is! She won overall best costume.
Kevin, Me, and Riley.

My dad was a pimp, haha! He was voted funniest costume.
Logan was Patrick Bateman from the movie, American Psycho. His was REALLY cool too. He had on a clear, plastic poncho/jacket splattered with blood but took it off because it was messy.
Colby was Pikachu haha! He got voted most original costume.
Casey was a doctor.
Jeannine and Chad, cowgirl and cowboy.
Riley was Tinkerbell. She was so adorable! She was so addicted to the white chocolate popcorn I made.
Tyler and Tara. Tyler was a half BYU fan and half Uof U fan (a joke since my family are cougar fans, and Kevin's family is all for the Utes). Tara was a cute 50's girl with a poodle skirt.
Brett was a climber, so pretty much himself!
My mom was a Hershey's Kiss!
Kevin was "V" from the movie, V For Vendetta.
The pre-party atmosphere.

I didn't get a picture of Dave or Brianna because they came later, but Brianna was a cat, and Dave a a scary Ghost/Monster/Grim reaper thing. He won scariest costume. It was impressive!!

Guadalajara, Mexico!

My youngest brother, Logan, received his mission call on Saturday. All my family and a bunch of his friends gathered around to hear him read where and when he will be going. He got called to serve in the Guadalajara South mission in Mexico! He goes into the MTC on December 31st, New Years Eve! It should be interesting for him. I am soooo excited for him! I'm going to miss him so much. More than he probably even realizes. Ever since he was born, he and I were little buddies. We would play everything together! He's truly one of my best friends ever. I just can't believe he is old enough to be taking this step in life. I'm the proudest sister there ever was! I love him so so much! He is an incredible guy and will be such an amazing missionary :)

He's come a long way...

One year old.

Playing in the nursery at church.

Two years old.

Three years old.

Three years old on the playground.

All of the kids.

Four years old.

Swimming with me, five years old.

Soccer player! Seven years old.

Eight years old, Baptism day!

Me and Logie at 12 years old :)

Junior picture i think.

Senior Picture.

Reading his call.

I think he was a little in shock.

He's all grown up :)

His mission is the red area.

His mission even has a temple! The Guadalajara Temple.

LOTOJA!

So LOTOJA was a week ago today. I have been way busy this week and sick for half the week also. That is why i am just barely getting around to writing about it. It was pretty awesome though!!! We (Chad, Jeannine, Kevin, and me) had to get everything ready to go on the Thursday before we went to Logan. It took so much organizing to figure out what food to put in what bags for which feed zones and how much of what food to brings and figuring out the water bottle system to distinguish Chad and Kevin's water bottles and also water bottles from Gatorade bottles... It was intense, but we finally got it all ready and packed. On Friday we left to go up to Logan about 4:30. Traffic to get on the freeway was horrible! But we finally got on and up to Logan. Once we were up there we had to go pick up the race packets with there numbers and jerseys and LOTOJA stuff. That line was sooo long and took about an hour to get through. So finally at about 9 we went and got dinner at this cute little Italian restaurant. I was especially excited because they served Gnocchi, which i have been in love with ever since i had it in Italy. Then we drove out to Treemonton, about a half hour away, to our hotel because everything closer had already booked up way in advance (LOTOJA has 1000 riders, plus all the people in the support crews!) The next morning we woke up bright and early, around 4:30, and got everything loaded. We dropped Chad and Kevin off by the starting line and their start time was 7:34. After that we went and got hot chocolates because it was cold up in Logan, and then made our way over to the first feed zone in Preston, ID. Parking by the feed zones was crazy because there were so many people, so we ended up doing quite a bit of walking before the day was finished. It was so much fun to see them at the feed zones.
I told Jeannine that the feed zones were like a mental/emotional feed zone for me because we were so tired and restless from driving all over and being away from our guys and hoping they were doing well. Then when we got to see them for a couple minutes at the feed zone, it rejuvenated me and got me way excited to see how awesome they were doing :) She agreed. The stops went as follows:

Start- Logan, UT
Feed Zone 1, 34 miles- Preston, ID
Feed Zone 2, 61 miles- Strawberry Canyon, ID (Neutral, means that support crews couldn't go to these, only racers)
Feed Zone 3, 80 miles- Montpelier, ID
Feed Zone 4, 106 miles- Allred Flat Pull Out, WY (neutral)
Feed Zone 5, 125 miles- Afton, WY
Feed Zone 6, 159 miles- Alpine, WY
Feed Zone 7, 180 miles- King's Wave Pull Out, WY (neutral)
FINISH, 206 miles- Jackson Hole, Teton Village, WY.

They did so incredible! At the feed zones toward the end I was almost expecting them to be dragging themselves and wanting to stop, but it was the opposite! Kevin seemed to get more pumped up the closer he got to finishing. I was so happy they did so well. Between the last feed zone and the finish, they definitely slowed down a lot, which is completely understandable, they had gone about 160 miles already and still had 47 to go... At the finish line, it was crazy. There were a ton of people waiting to see their cyclists finish. There was a ton of excitement in the air though. Kevin and Chad finished in about 10 hours 50 minutes of actual ride time. I was so impressed! Kevin placed 24th and Chad, 25th, in their division! I was totally annoyed and sad when Kevin finished though because I didn't actually get to see him cross the finish line! There was a shuttle that went from the parking lot at Teton Village to the finish line. It would go past us every couple minutes or so and block our view of the road. As we were standing there waiting for them, I started getting worried that Kevin would finish right as the shuttle drove by us. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened... I felt so bad that after all the training and everything he had put into this, i didn't even get to see him finish! I almost started crying! Stupid shuttle... Oh well, I guess there's always next year!
Between feed zone 4 and 5, there was a King of the Mountain competition to see who can make it up the mountain in the fastest time. Kevin did so well on that! Out of 1000 riders he got 103rd and climbing it in 19 minutes 20 seconds! WOW! He is so good at climbing hills!
After the race, we checked into our Hotel, The Inn at Jackson Hole, in Teton Village. We had dinner and then went right to bed, we were all exhausted. They has an awards ceremony the next morning. It was pretty boring. We had breakfast at Village Inn and drove up to Jenny Lake, rode on the tram up the mountain in Teton Village, and just hung out. It was nice and relaxing, i loved it! We ate dinner at an Italian place and then got ice cream at Haagen Dazs. That night we sneaked into another Hotel's hot tub because ours was broken. It was fun! The next morning we went out to breakfast at Village Inn again, and drove home. It was a fun trip and sooo beautiful up there!
I'm kind of glad that LOTOJA is over because now Kevin isn't going to be gone training all the time. At the same time, I'm a little sad because it was such a huge thing to look forward to and now it's over. But in another 6 months or so, the training will start up all over again for next year!

The Thursday before we left, getting all the food ready. Look at all that!

rd 11">On the drive up to Logan, Kevin REALLY had to go... ewwww!

We wore matching pink shirts so the guys could find us easily at the feed zones. Some lady along the way even nicknamed us "The Magenta Girls"

Doing a bit of stretching right before the race :)

All ready to go and lookin good!

Feeling fine at feed zone 1, 34 miles.

The feed zones were crowded, busy, and a little crazy. This is feed zone 3 in Montpelier, 80 miles.

Kevin is all smiles in Afton, WY at feed zone 5, 125 miles.

The finish line, 206 MILES!

The sky and the mountains were so beautiful!

Another picture of the sky while we were waiting at the finish line.

My Kevers after he finished! WOOHOO!

Chad and Kevin. These guys are amazing :)

Jeannine and Chad riding the tram up the mountain.

Us on the tram.

At the top of the mountain. What a view!!

>This sign was hanging outside the Italian resturant in Jackson. I'm not sure what a celery phone is... haha!