Merry Christmas!

This Christmas we stuck (mostly) to our usual traditions. We spent Christmas Eve at my Nana and Papa's house with all the cousins, aunts and uncles. We ate dinner, exchanged small gifts and opened our Christmas pajamas and blankets. It is always so fun to see everyone and spend time with family that we rarely get to see anymore. We also had a chance to say "hi" to my cousin who is serving a mission in Florida! He comes home in June and has been an amazing missionary. We are so proud of you Ryan!

Usually we spend the night in Orem, then spend the morning opening presents and eating breakfast with my family but this year I wasn't feeling too great so we opened gifts from our parents Christmas Eve and gave them gifts from us. We spent the night at home and Christmas morning I made Scott some yummy crepes and hot chocolate. Then we had a fabulous Christmas morning. Scott was happy with his car parts and some other small gifts. And I was spoiled with a whole bunch of stuff from one of my favorite stores- Fossil.

We then spent the day at Scott's parent's house with the nieces. We had an amazing Christmas Lunch (pretty much an entire Thanksgiving meal again!!) And stayed true to our Halladay tradition by talking about the different services we did this year and presenting our Scrapbook pages. It is really nice to hear all that we can do for others.

We then watched the girls open all their gifts. They got some cute toys and were THRILLED. How cute are they?? I just love them! We also got plenty of gifts in our stockings.

That evening we went to the Care Center to visit our Grandma. Tons of family showed up and we had a good time visiting, eating cookies and giving Grandma some Christmas gifts.


I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!! I can't believe this year is almost over!!

The Christmas Spirit

Today was really the first day we've done anything to get into the "Christmas Spirit" this year. It has been a rough month and with school and work and life...we haven't had a moment to go looking at lights or go to a Christmas play or any of our usual things. We haven't even put up our Christmas tree this year!! It's kinda sad...but our activities today put us in a Christmas mood and it was a good time.

Our nieces are in a dance class and they are so adorable!! Their Christmas recital was today and it was a BIG deal. They had it at the High School and the whole auditorium was packed. They looked adorable and they did such a fabulous job. Good Job girls!!!

That night was my good friend Ambria's fabulous Ugly Sweater and 'Stache Party!! We did this two years ago (http://scottandelisehalladay.blogspot.com/2009/01/ugly-sweater-and-stache-christmas-party.html) and it was a hoot. So we were excited for this years party. Here are the awesome sweaters/outfits...

And my FAVORITE part....Scott's mustache. He has been growing this out for a few weeks now and I could not stop laughing at these pictures. I kept begging him to let me color the mustache in with some make up or whatever but he liked the light/blond mustache. Ha ha ha ha. He promptly shaved this off after we returned home from the party. Dang!

I hope you all are having a good Christmas Season. I can't believe Christmas is less than a week away!

Thanksgiving

Now that Christmas is only a couple of weeks away, I thought I had better share our Thanksgiving stories now. We had a fabulous Thanksgiving this year. We spent it at the Halladay's and we were so happy that our entire family was there! Even our Idaho nieces joined us and we even had a couple friends join us as well- Becca and her son Cole. What a blessing it is to be surrounded by family and friends and to enjoy and share a FABULOUS meal together. I have to say, my mother and father-in-law sure know how to throw a party! We had quite the spread.

Here is my man enjoying some delicious Pumpkin Pie. I have never been a fan of pumpkin pie growing up, but I sure do love my father-in-laws special pie! How hot is my husband? I just love him.

One of the best moments of the day was the music portion. Our niece got a guitar for her birthday last month and she brought it down to show everyone. She even played a couple songs for us and she did an awesome job! She will be a rock star in no time. Kim wanted Uncle Scott to show all the girls a few songs as well and it was so cute. All the nieces just gathered around him without anyone prompting them or asking them to or anything. They LOVED it. There was singing and humming and even some dancing! I have the funniest video of little Lexi-pie dancing around like crazy but it was too big to load. I was very disappointed.

Grandma joined in on the fun as well :)

We spent Friday with my family who took us to see the new Harry Potter movie! Let me just say- they waited WAAAAAY too long to get these out, but I liked it anyway. Afterwards we ate out at Five Guy's- if you haven't been there, it is seriously the best hamburger I've ever had (besides the ones we make at home). I love spending time with my siblings and my parents, we always have a blast and laugh so hard. Thanks for spoiling us and taking us out mom and dad!

I have so much to be thankful for in my life! I have the best husband who is my best friend and I don't know what I would do without him. I have the best family with parents who love us and help out all the time. I have such great brothers and a sister-in-law who I love to spend time with. My sister Boots is my ultimate best friend and I love her more than she knows. I am thankful to have such awesome in-laws. A lot of people complain about their in-laws, but you know what... I love mine so much and I am blessed to be a part of their family. I am thankful for my job and the opportunity I have to go to school. I am thankful for this beautiful country and all the blessings that comes with that. And I am so thankful for all my friends (who I rarely get to see or speak with anymore) but I love them all just the same and am thankful for their friendship.

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!

My Sister

This post is waaaaay over due. Back in August my good friend Kari offered to do a fun photo shoot with me and my sister "Boots". My sister LOVES posing for pictures and modeling, so she was all for this idea. We had such a blast and Kari did such a great job! I believe she has her own photography business and if anyone is interested in her services let me know and I can get you her info!

I am definitely not as cute as my little sis Boots- but I love these pictures anyway and I am glad my sister and I can be best friends. We have such a good time together and we are always laughing.

Here she is- what a skinny, cute, model!


Some more of us trying to be serious, but I can never pull it off as well as she can. I was constantly laughing and Kari was desperately trying to snap shots in between all the giggling. Good work Kari- you are a trooper!
This part of the evening was pretty neat! Boots was lovin the silhouette look- and she got tons of cute pictures but I picked the best one of her and the best one of both of us.

Our last shots of the night were Boots' idea. She got me this cute matching t-shirt and she wanted to do some fun angled photos. Pretty cute.


And the woman of the hour--- KARI! Isn't she adorable? We met about a year ago in Biology class at the University of Utah (I love this school by the way) and I am so happy we are friends. She is so cute and talented and smart. We have a great time together (even though I haven't seen her in a while :( Sad stuff) and I just adore her! Thanks for the great photo shoot Kari!

Hey hey hey!

I am so lame lately and don't have much to report. With this semester slowly coming to an end, that is all that I have time for. I can't wait until December, maybe I'll have a life again :)

At the beginning of October we decided to take one last trip to Disneyland before our season passes expired (Sad Day!). And we were so excited when our close friends Eric and Colleen said they would come too. We love these guys and they are so fun and cute. We had only a couple days planned for California and they were really busy days! We loved all the Halloween decorations at the parks and had a blast in the warm weather. There was one thing about this Disney trip that was extremely disappointing-

This Halloween, Disney decided to throw a Micky Mouse Halloween Party (which he had heard a little bit about), this party is on Tuesday and Friday nights, so they CLOSE the park at 7 pm (which we had NOT heard about). The catch is- you can go to the party if you pay an extra $70 (after the hundreds you have spent on tickets in the first place) and they only do their fantastic, fabulous, wonderful Halloween firework show at this party. This is one of the main reasons we wanted to go in October!! Last year we drove down for one day of Disney just to see this show. Needless to say, we were a little disappointed that day. So when we got the boot at Disney, we spent our evening at California Adventure and watched World of Color- which is also cool :)

I am sure all of you are sick of hearing all about our frequent Disney excursions, but never fear- I don't know when we will be going back now that our passes have expired. I don't know if I'm up for buying another pass just yet, maybe in a couple years we'll try again.

We were pretty terrible at taking pictures this time around, we mostly got photos of all the fun decorations, but these are our cute friends and these are the only 2 photos I got of us. And no one got a photo of all 4 of us... we are so lame.

In other updates, we celebrate quite a few birthdays in October. So here is a birthday shout out to my sister-in-law Shanelle, my boss DB, my good friend Ambria, my cuz Alec and my brother-in-law Shawn! Happy (late) Birthday everyone! Here are a couple photos from Shawn's birthday party. I love Lexi's expression in this photo. Don't mind my extremely tired face.



And all the girls love to help dad open his presents. I can't believe how big my nieces are getting! They grow up way too fast. (Again- don't mind my nasty face... proof that school is slowly killing me)



With the holidays coming up- I hope I have some fun photos and stories.

Celebrations!!

We have been doing lots of celebrating the past couple of weeks. This month was our sister-in-law Angie's Birthday (Happy Birthday Ang!) as well as our niece Autumn's birthday. We had an awesome BBQ in their backyard to celebrate and Ang made this fantastic barbie cake! Professional!!! Autumn loved it. She is such a cute girl and I can't believe how fast she is growing up. She turned 6 and I am blown away by that. I have known Autumn since she was just a few months old. Happy Birthday my cute girl!

We also celebrated another wedding anniversary... my grandparents 50th!! How cool is that? To celebrate my Nana wanted to go to La Caille. We rented a room that had a great view and beautiful decor. The grounds there are really neat and we had the chance to get family photos done. We also set up some fun tables for Nana and Papa. We had some of their wedding photos, family photos and a little book for everyone to write them a note. My Aunt made a slide show as well and man was it adorable!!! I think Nana and Papa had a good time- I know we did! Happy Anniversary Nana and Papa. They are so sweet and good to us. We are blessed to have such an amazing family!

The couple of the hour!

2 Years

September is our wedding anniversary month! This year makes year 2. I can't believe how fast time flies. It feels like we were just married a few months ago. This year we didn't do gifts since we had just spent a week in California and Disneyland. But Scott did take me out to a really fancy dinner at our favorite restaurant- Ruth's Chris.

This place is amazing! Scott told them it was our anniversary and they really went all out. The table was decorated with candles and rose petals and they even had a cute "Happy Anniversary" card for us.

As we are admiring the setting and the table and the beautiful restaurant, we see our best friends across the room enjoying dinner as well!! We asked them to join us but they had all ready finished. These two are the cutest ever.
Our dinner was delicious and our desserts are exquisite! This is my new favorite food right now... bread pudding with white chocolate ganache. I crave it daily. I loved the message in chocolate!
Happy Anniversary my love. These past 2 years have been amazing, fun, happy, and full of awesome memories! Thank you for being mine forever!

California Part III / San Fransisco

Our final stop in California was San Fransisco! We stayed in Japan Town and we didn't even dare go to any of the Japanese restaurants. The closest thing to Japanese food that we got was Benihana's. Ha ha. It was delicious though and we had a lot of fun.
One of the first things we did in San Fransisco was venture on over to Alcatraz. If you have never been there, or never heard of it- Alcatraz is a prison on an island about a mile away from San Fran. So you take a Ferry over to the Island and take an audio tour. It's really fun and interesting.
Pretty much the only other thing to do in San Fransisco is to wander around the Wharf, go to Pier 39 and visit Ghirardelli Square. I love Ghirardelli Square. It is so delicious!!! This time of year was the perfect time to go because they have new flavors for fall and they are fabulous. Truly.We also wandered around China Town for a little bit one evening. I have never been there before, so it was fun to see all the shops.
One of the last things we saw in San Fran is the "Full House" house! It was just down the street from our hotel. We ran into a couple cool guys from Florida who asked us if we knew that this was "Danny Tanners" house??? They were so funny and were nice enough to take this photo for us.
So that was our latest California trip! We had a blast and I love love love travelling with my honey. Thanks for taking me to all sorts of fun and interesting places!

California Part II / Disneyland

As you all know very well, Scott and I LOVE Disneyland. We always have such a blast there. This trip we were only there for 1 evening and 1 whole day. We still got lots of stuff done and got to see lots of fun new things. We got to eat at our favorite restaurant The Blue Bayou- we rarely had to wait in a single line for the rides- we rode a couple rides that we have never been on before- and of course we rode our favorites. So it was a very successful trip to Disneyland.

One of my all-time favorite rides was closed though- because they are getting it ready for Halloween. I was sad. We also stopped in Pooh-Corner and went to this cute bakery and got chocolate a chocolate dipped apple that said "hunny" for MY honey! (Side note: as we were enjoying this delicious apple, a family had sat down near us and this little boy in his stroller looked at Scott and said "HEY! Can I try that!!!??" It was sooo funny and cute)

One of the new things we did at Disneyland was over at California Adventure called "World of Color". They remodeled a bunch of fountains in this little pond in the middle of the park and you have to get tickets for the show that night. It is about a half hour long and they do a water/light show with music. It was really fun and we enjoyed it! If you are planning on going to Disneyland anytime soon- make sure to get your fast pass ticket to this in the morning and then go see it at night. It is seriously really cool. :)

California Part I

Our trip to California was for business- but we had a lot of fun as well! Our first stop was Newport Beach. We arrived in the evening and decided to take a drive around town and get some dinner. The concierge at the hotel informed us we were super close to Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach as well. So our first stop was Laguna Beach. It was SO beautiful. We found this little cove and walked around in the sand and water and watched the waves roll up. Scott even found this long stemmed red rose that washed up and he gave it to me and we were teasing that it was a rose from the Bachelor. It was all slimy and gross so I left it behind. Ha ha.

We also went to Balboa Island and Balboa Pier (they are right in Newport) and we did some shopping, bought some "Bluth's" frozen bananas. (Give me a Gob!--> If you haven't seen the TV show 'Arrested Development' you should definitely watch it. So funny.) We also took the ferry over to the Pier and enjoyed this amazing sunset.

The next night we actually spent the night at Disneyland- but I will do that in my next post. So really... a couple days later we went over to Huntington Beach. My family went there a few years ago for my dad's business trip and we really loved it. So I was excited to take Scott there. There was a giant farmer's market going on down the main street so we wandered around that for a little bit and then ate dinner at a nice restaurant. Afterward we got some gelato and walked down the Pier. It was freezing and dark, so the only pictures we took didn't turn out so great.

While we were in Newport we also went to the Newport Temple. It is gorgeous and super small! It is also fairly new. We enjoyed walking around the grounds, getting some good snapshots and doing a session. Such a gorgeous place.

After Newport beach we spent a day in Disneyland (which will be in my next post) and later we headed out to San Fransisco. I went there a couple years ago with one of my best friends Ambria and we had a blast! So I was excited to go with my man. We decided to go to the Oakland Temple since that is really close to San Fransisco and we spent almost the entire day there. It is such a pretty place and has some amazing views! It sits up on a hill overlooking Oakland and San Fransisco in the distance. We also did a session here, and it was a great experience!

These pictures are a little out of order... but my next post will finish it up. I know I have millions of pictures, but I LOVE to remember the fun things we did.