Holly Jolly Christmas...

It's almost March...but I am bound and determined to post some pictures from Christmas of 2013 if it's the last thing I do!!  We were lucky enough to be able to go back to Nauvoo again...and we had a blast, even if it was FRIGIDLY cold and Bryan was sick for a few days.  Before we went to Nauvoo, we had a really fun Christmas party with Darons family!  We had games and prizes and I thought it was a really good time!!

Playing our snowman drawing game

Daron and his mom relaxing after our fun party!

Present time!

Christmas morning

Kacy loves playing with Grandpas pens he always has in his pocket...

How Daron spent the majority of our trip...

So much snow...and somewhere close to that car, buried under the snow, is Darons phone...

There was no short supply of cookies to eat...

I just love this girl...

January is almost over...

Um...does anyone realize that we are already 1/12 of the way done with 2014!!  Yikes!!  I feel like I am still trying to plan out what I want to get done this year...and I am already so far behind!  I guess that's the way it goes.

 

Here are a couple of fun things that have happened this month.  For Christmas, (OH YA...I HAVEN'T EVEN POSTED CHRISTMAS PICTURES YET.  I guess I better get those up before it's February)  For Christmas, I got Daron 12 months of pre-planned, pre-paid dates!  He is so hard to buy for, and we always have such a hard time deciding what to do when it's just us, I thought I would make 12 decisions for him (and if you know you, you know how much I HATE making decisions) 

 

 

The pizza was SO GOOD!  It tasted like a restaurant quality pizza!  We had a blast too.  I hope he likes the next 11 dates just as much!!

I've still been working with the 9 year old scouts.  It's been pretty fun!  Here are some pictures of our most recent activity; a trip to the bird aviary! 

I was just called as the Ward Camp Director.  Um...scary!!  I don't know the young women at all, but I'm excited for the opportunity to get to know them, and to go to camp!  I have always LOVED girls camp!

Stay tuned for pictures from our Christmas Party with Daron's family and our Christmas vacation in Nauvoo!

Scouts...

I was recently asked to work with the 8 year old scouts, the Bears, in my church.  Scouts is something that I have never ever done before.  To me, Scouts is just all the guys from church playing basketball together on Wednesday nights.  We've only had a couple activities, or den meetings rather, but it's been good so far!  Our first activity was paper mache...yikes.  Our second was make model airplanes.  It was interesting because the kits I got were super crappy (even though they were still like $10) but I think the boys had fun. 

 

 

 

 

On a lighter note...

Here are some cutie pictures of Franklin...who doesn't love seeing pictures of a cutie little puppy :)

 

 

Franklin loves hanging out with his...gosh what would they be...his Uncles I think.  Puggy and Barney are Darons moms dogs...and they love playing together.  But they sure get worn out!!  Now to just convince Daron that he needs a doggy friend at our house!!

He sleeps in the weirdest positions!

He does this all the time!  He can't seem to get his little tail and legs under the bed.  We don't have a bed skirt anymore, so he can't hide as well.

He constantly wants to be held.  ALL THE TIME!!

He gets to sleep in our bed sometimes...and he is a huge bed hog.

He loves to be under the covers...




 Onto other happenings... Bryan hurt his knew back in the middle of August at football practice.  And after battling insurance drama... he was finally able to get to the right doctor and get it taken care of.  He had surgery on Oct 8th and he is doing really well!!  He was able to walk on it a few hours after we got home!  Poor kid was so nervous about his surgery...but who wouldn't be right?! He was a champ!

 And last but not least...on Oct 7th, Daron and I celebrated our 3rd year anniversary!  I just love this guy!!!  He makes me so happy! 

I'm over it...

I am just so very over my life right now.  I am hating everything.

I am really really over my job.  I find work very frustrating to be at every day.  I feel very pressured to ask for a raise and for some reason I just can't get myself to ask for one, even though I whole heatedly believe I deserve one. It's been over a year and a half since the other person that work in the office with me was fired, and I am still getting paid less per hour than she was, and I'm doing both of our jobs!  My bosses do pay for all of my insurance (they usually pay half for the employee), but they other lady in the office was getting her 'bonuses' too; they paid for her cell phone and she got 'bonuses' for selling certain jobs, but my boss specifically told me I wasn't able to get that bonus like she was.  (It was some sort of an agreement we had at one point, and now I can't remember what I was getting out of the deal).  I am alone a lot because they go on vacation frequently, and I don't mind that at all, but I feel like I work hard to make sure everything is taken care of and all I really get is a "We are so glad you work for us.  I hope you know you can never leave!".....  I feel pressured to find a 'real job', and that I am wasting a college degree and I could be making so much more money somewhere else. 

I am constantly trying to talk myself out of wanting a baby.  I try to pretend that I don't care that I probably don't get to have kids of my own.  But every single time I open Facebook or Instagram, all I see are pictures of all of my friends and their cute families and their babies and their pregnant bellies, or any time Daron says "Well, it's different for you because Bryan isn't your kid" I literally want to scream.  I know that Daron really doesn't want to have more kids, even though he has never said we can't and he has been very supportive in trying to make it happen.  We both agreed we would try for a while but at a certain point, if it wasn't going to happen, that we wouldn't try to force it with any drastic measures.  And I'm guessing, three years into trying, that it's just not meant to happen and at some point we will need to do something to make sure it doesn't happen. 

I hate having no friends.  I miss having friends close by.  That doesn't mean there aren't people we like, cause there are plenty of fun people we go to church with, or used to go to church with, or that we just know, but everyone has their own lives and things that keep them busy.  They have a houses full of kids.  We don't.  We have one anti-social teenager who sits in his room and plays video games all night long.

I hate being fat.  I had gastric plication surgery in June and my stomach was sewn pretty much in half.  I have only lost barely 60 pounds since then and it's very depressing.  I feel like I should be losing a lot more.  It was expensive surgery and I feel like I've wasted a lot of money to only loose 60 pounds in just about four months.  I think I'm just destined to be an ugly fat person no matter what drastic things I do.

I love Christmas.  I love every single thing about Christmas.  Music, shopping, gift giving, Christmas stories, Christmas commercials, Christmas movies, decorations, lights...it just makes me feel happy inside.  But Christmas in Arizona is not happy for me at all.  No matter what I do I just don't feel Christmassy here.  Buying gifts at Christmas time has been very hard for me.  Daron is EXTREMELY hard to buy for and I find it very frustrating to get him something good.  Especially since he is such a good gift giver, and always has nice things for me.  All of the kids I buy gifts for are teenagers, and they just want money not gifts, which is no fun.  Growing up, Christmas was two full weeks long.  We played games and watched movies and ate cookies and yummy food and just hung out and had fun!  Here Christmas is a half a day.  And this year it will be just me and Daron on Christmas.  I am 31 years old.  I wanted to have a house full of kids and fun Christmas times, and save the 'just me and Daron Christmas days' to a little later on in life.

I hate that I get so unhappy sometimes. I don't want to be an unhappy person.  I love Daron and Bryan and his other kids and his family and my family.  There is nothing that anyone is doing wrong that makes me sad.  It  just seems to be a lot of things that come together and then I get sad.  I have a horrible habit of comparing my life to everyone else's, and since everyone only puts the good things out for people to see, I compare my worst moments to their best.  It's not fair to myself to do that, but it's what I do nevertheless.