...a FESTIVUS for the rest of us...

I hope everyone's Christmas was as Merry as ours! I was thri-i-i-illed to be with my side of our family for the holiday this year! I love our Smith side, too, don't get me wrong, but I think that's the hardest part about being married and having our families live so far from each other, but such is life....ANYWAY, it was fun! Here are the highlights from that glorious holiday weekend:

Avatar...the weirdest movie I've ever seen! This is what we saw Christmas Eve. Was it entertaining? Yeah. Would I ever tell someone to watch it? Nope. Will I ever watch it again? Nope. Will I have nightmares about the creepy "love scene" for the rest of my life? Definitely. But it did leave us with a lot of awkard/funny quotes...I see you.

Mom got us all jammies for Christmas, and we opened them on Christmas Eve, just like the good old days!

Our little ghetto little tree. The white cord on the lights is a nice touch, don't you think?

I've got to be honest, I was expecting another gift dud from Richard (I'm not being rude, it would've fit right in with the other 3 Christmases, or any holiday calling for gifts, that we've spent together), but he blew me away. He did so well that we've decided to never do gifts again - it could only go downhill from here! My favorite present is my Celine Dion: A New Day dvd of her concert in Vegas. It's been on non-stop since I opened it as background music!

Aren't they cute? Chelsea definitely has her snowboarding goggles on over her glasses. Lovin' ya!


I love how my mom wraps the presents we pick out for ourselves!


Rich hit the jackpot on sweaters this year.

I made this picture frame thing for my parents. If they didn't absolutely love it I was going to kill somebody because I'm not a crafty person, and this was a pain in my you-know-what! Luck for everyone in the basement, they did.

Bug's snowboarding gear...now let's hope she even likes snowboarding...at least it looks cool.



The present says "Beefcake" on it. It's an inside joke from our fave show Chuck. I'm pretty sure when he saw this under the tree he panicked and went out and bought me a lot more presents hahaha

It's a new guitar case. I think he thought it was a new guitar at first, and was maybe a little disappointed, but he really was happy for the case - his old one had duct tape all over it!

Boo Boo got a new TV!

Todd hates what she's doing to him, but loves her enough to let her do it. BFF's 4eva!

The first of many gift cards...thank you!

What cute cousins we have!

Scuzzin' ya!

Grandma singing Christmas tunes.

Grandpa/Santa singing tunes with Grandma.

Sarah front and center at the Porter Christmas Sing-Along.

Rich getting Toady - I mean Kody - all riled up.

Where's mom?

Grandpa Tony/Santa on his Christmas throne at the piano...I miss the big tree at the old house...

Here are the Shepherds. Where are the Wise Men?

Dad's goin' rogue! Santa/Mom wrapped this as a gag and gave it to my dad...he clearly loves her. Sarah Palin was the best Christmas gift any of us could have asked for hahaha God bless us, every one!

Awesome Snuggie! Way to go Shirl.

Toady, Dad, & Richard rockin' out to Christmas songs.

Say cheese...

What a beautiful family!

We stopped to see Grandpa at Aunt Sondra's on our way down to St. George for Austin's missionary farewell.

Aus-train, Richard, & friends singing at the farewell...Richard later told me I shouldn't have taken this picture in the chapel. And now that I look at it, I think Austin is looking right at me, thinking the exact same thing!

Family picture time! I'm totally bending down to try and even things out.

Brotherly love.

Ummmm....

Cuties.

24?!, KISS-KISS & JumboTron

Sooooo, I've obviously been a super-slacker on keeping up with this blog of ours - and it's a crying shame because I'm sure everyone's just been dying to know what we've been up to hahaha! No really, this is kind of like a journal for us, so I am going to try and be better. No promises, though. Anyway, today I'm playing catch-up on my birthday, Halloween, and the most recent Jazz game we went to. Here goes:


This year I turned a whopping 24 years old, folks. Sounds like an actual adult age, right? Well, if you agree with that then you couldn't be more wrong! I mean, yes, I am technically an "adult." But so is my sister Sarah, and no one's calling her a grown-up (hahaha love ya, but I'm trying to make a point!), so stop acting like I am. I guess it's not that bad to be a grown-up, but when that term comes to my mind, all I can think of are old people....like parents and grandparents and really serious people. I guess I just like the saying "you're only as old as you feel." Because as I was thinking about that on my birthday, I decided that I don't know what age number I feel, but I feel pretty dang youthful and happy these days, so just don't lump me in the same group as the boring grown-ups, ok. I'm starting the Totally Awesome Fun & Young Grown-Up Club. I'm President, and Rich is going to be Vice Pres. We still need the rest of our cabinet, though, so get in line you other fun-lovers!

Rich met me in SLC for my fave sushi dinner at the Happy Sumo after I got off work to celebrate.

I've been wanting to dress up like KISS for the past couple of years, but we were never able to find another couple to do it with us (you can't just dress up as half the band!). Our friends Rachel & Spencer came to the rescue this year, though! We were a big hit at our ward's Halloween Stomp...they even played "Rock & Roll All Night" while Richard and Spencer danced and sang and got everyone to sing and dance with them. It was hilarious!!! You may be thinking "how fun could a ward party really be?!" But can I just tell you that we have the greatest & most fun ward in the world! It's a married student ward, and we have the greatest activities. At this party we even had a Limbo contest & a Dance-off! Also note, this is the first time that Richard has willingly danced with me in public - literally danced the night away to every kind of music you can think of. So much fun!

Richard as Gene Simmons

I was Ace for the night.

His spandies came from the same Girl's department at Target that mine did hahaha

We did each others' make-up! Impressive, right?

At the end of November, right before Thanksgiving, our ward had a Turkey-Bowl football game (yes, I played, too!). After the game, someone in the ward gave our friends Todd & Lacey 4 tickets to that night's Jazz game, and they invited us to go...well, I overheard the whole thing go down and started freaking out, so they probably felt obligated to invite us, but whatever, we went with them! We ate dinner at Litza's Pizza downtown, and then headed to ESA for the game. Our tickets were in the upper bowl, but I say pretty much any seat at the game is a good one. That being said, we couldn't help but notice how many empty seats there were in the lower bowl...even entire rows! Richard and Todd were busy scouting out the seats, while Lacey and I watched the game, but it paid off because at half-time we moved on down to the 17th row without a hitch! The seats were great, and it was an awesome game. That's not even the best part, though. The best part is that we got on the jumbo-tron! It's pretty much a goal of mine at any sporting event I go to (happened once at a Ute football game, but I was totally unprepared). We were watching the camera guy, flagged him down, and then it happened...all I could see were the stripes on my shirt jumping up & down, Richard's red hair, & one of Lacey's bright yellow sleeves. Good times! Thanks Lacey & Todd! And thank you cameraman!

3 down, eternity to go!

Clearly, this is WAY overdue, but better late than never, right?!

It was August 9th, 2006 when our sealer in the SLC temple said something about us going to "infinity and beyond," and let me tell you, we are well on our way! Originally, we had planned a trip to NYC for our 3rd anniversary, but long story short: it fell through at the last minute. We had no idea when we woke up where exactly we'd be going, but we found a pretty sweet list of "25 things to do on the Redwood Coast," so we decided to see how many of those things we could cross off the list in a long weekend. We knocked out 16 - it was AWESOME!!! I'd never been to No. Cali before, and can I just say that it's beautiful!!! Because it totally is. So anyway, we had a blast on this little adventure together, and we hope to make many more spur-of-the-moment/fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants roadtrips in the future! Here are most of the highlights:

The Good ol' Salt Flats
Yep, Rich seriously licked the nasty, salty, dirty dirt!


Stuck in traffic in a little town I don't care to remember the name of.



Beautiful Oregon - it was seriously so silent on this mountainside! I used to hate Oregon just because my psycho, tree-hugging, shower-hating, laundry-neglecting college roommate was from there, but now I'm over her, and I love it!

Paul Bunyan & Babe the Blue Ox. This is the one thing Jan told us about before we left, and wouldn't you know it was the very first thing we saw to the side of the road when we started our first day of exploring?!

The Redwoods are very large, my friends.
Very, very large. p.s. like my lumberjack shirt?!

And I have to say that they are seriously so much cooler than I thought they would be! It felt like I was little tiny Thumbalina in a giant's world.

The Corkscrew Tree - it seriously grew like this.
Fern Canyon...or as we like to call it...Fern Gully.

And I didn't even get a sliver! hahaha

Rich, just chasing the birds on one of the many random beaches we stopped at.

Here we are on the very same beach...loved it!

Oh man! We stopped at a State Park and toured this little Indian Village replica, and I seriously got stuck in this little hole/door on my way out!

Richard, doing a little Rain Dance inside the building w/the little tiny door.



This is him laughing at me as we were climbing out of that same building...I just love his face in this one!


Richard = John Smith Rachel = Pocahontas



The little fishing town of...I don't remember! We stopped in so many fishing towns!!!

Our night on the town in Eureka...another fishing town.
Zoltar, from the movie "Big"

Yes, I ate this entire thing by myself. Don't judge me.

Jogging along the boardwalk in Eureka.

Richard, loving every minute at the Loleta Cheese Factory. We definitely sampled 38 different types of cheese here, and we suffered for the rest of the trip hahaha but it was totally worth it!

Me, and the only souvennier of the trip...our brand new cheese slicer!

Here we are in the little Victorian town that the movie "the Majestic" was filmed in. We didn't know that little tidbit until after our trip, but we were still excited.

Part of the NYC plan was to visit the restaurant Serendipity, this was so not the same.
Sitting in a hollowed-out Redwood during a stop on our drive through the Avenue of the Giants.


These trees were so massive - but I kept forgetting how huge they were until we got to a patch of regular sized trees because there were so many of them!

Not your typical Tree House...People have actually lived in this thing!

Indian Man

We drove through this tree!!!

Super cheesy, I know! They guy that took this pic of us was so weird!!!

Our view as we drove into San Fran - so cool! Totally made me think of Full House hahaha

Jogging along Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco...Alcatraz is in the distance.

Nuaghty mural...I didn't do a very good job of covering them up hahaha

The windy Street of Lombard - we jogged here and climbed up...it was so steep there were stairs for the sidewalk!

The most delicious breakfast EVER at the Home Plate!

The most dedicated homeless man in the world - look at all his stuff! And it cannot be easy to pull it up and down those crazy streets!