Tis the Season for Giving

For those of you with little ones who devotedly write to Santa in hopes of a splendid gift, you can drop off those letters at your Macy's department store's Make A Wish foundation mail box. For every letter received, Macy's will donate $1 to the foundation. Maybe its time I rekindle my relationship with Santa for a good cause...and so should you!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was great. And I was SO grateful just for the opportunity to take time off from work and school...pregnancy makes everything so much harder to do! Kudos to all you girls who have kids and are expecting (Jessi, Heather, Stacey, Katie), because its tough! How do you do it?! Anyway, we spent the holiday in Scottsdale, I got to see my parents and little sister a couple of times :), went to a Suns game where we got lucky again and scored excellent seats (Hey- they won this time!), went to see the lights at the Mesa Temple, etc. I always love being in Arizona and this time was probably the hardest to leave. Why doesn't life just work itself out the way we want it to?

Little Update

Here is our little one! I am so excited to reach my second trimester(finally)--thx heather ;) and hopefully feel better. Although I am sick as a dog most of the time, our baby seems to be doing just fine. We get to find out the gender in a couple of weeks! Yay!!

We still love the SUNS...

Chip and I went to the Jazz vs. Suns game in Salt Lake this past Monday with our good friends Aaron and Naida. I was actually feeling quite normal that night and that alone was awesome. We grabbed some dinner, and headed to the game with high expectations. Sad to say, I may have jinxed them again. This is the third or fourth game Chip takes me to (2 here in Utah and 2 back home in Phoenix where, I may add, Mom and Dad have kller seats...just 5 rows from the court) and they always lose! SO it is Chip's conclusion that it must be me, so he says he will not take me anymore. So sad for me!

First comes Love, then comes Marriage...

Yup...then comes Chip with a baby carriage! We are excited to have a little surprise join our family in June. Although pregancy has not been fun for me at all, I am very hopeful that I will love every part of motherhood. I have been wanting a baby since I was like 5, and now its hard to believe I am getting a real one! I came across this picture of my mom and I, where she is giving me my favorite type of bath..in the sink. It was taken when I was 6 months, on vacation with my parents in Acapulco, Mexico. I look forward to doing the same things I loved growing up with my own little one. I just love this picture, what a great woman God gave me for a mother. Hopefully I will be as good as a mother as she is.Te amo mami.

HaPPy HaLLoWeeN!!

This Halloween was a little different for us. I have not been feeling great lately and yesterday was no exception. We decided to stay home and enjoy a scary movie together. We figured it would be fun to hand candy out, although....we only had ONE trick-or-treater. SAD! We definitely are living in the wrong city. (Another good reason to move to AZ--we love Halloween and its sad not to see any ghouls and goblins walking around at night!)

However, last week we did get to go to a Halloween party and this past Monday we had FHE with Danielle and Todd..We carved pumpkins and ate some very good coffee crumb cake with The Nightmare Before Christmas playing in the background. We loved it! Can't wait for next year.

Daynes Reunion

Chip's late grandmother's family (Dorothy Daynes) holds annual reunions and this years was held on the 30th of October at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake. One of her sons, Uncle Rick is an amazing Genealogist and we learned that the Daynes family tree has been traced back to even before the Church was established, which is a breakthrough that they had been working on for more than 30 years. Coming from a family where I am only the third generation in the Church, I am so amazed and captivated by genealogy. As we toured the museum, we came to an organ that was donated by the Daynes family by Joseph Daynes, Chip's great, great, great grandfather. He was a prodigy musician who in his childhood played for the Queen in England, joined the church and made the trek to America to join the Saints in Utah. Here he was asked by president Brigham Young to play the organ at General Conference, the same one that is displayed at the Museum. Isn't that amazing! I just love church history.
After the tour, we had a family dinner at the Lion House and got to visit with Uncle Rick, aunt Nancy and Jessica. What a neat family I married into.