Christmas 2008

Christmas this year was a mishmash of all sorts of events.....

My sister Jill and her family drove down to my house from Eastern Washington on Christmas Eve....just in time to have our traditional Weaver Family Christmas Eve Dinner...which consists of going out to Chinese food!  (We were doing it WAY before Ralphie's family in "A Christmas Story")

My mom and Dick were supposed to fly down as well, however the terrible weather in Portland prior to Christmas forced them to cancel their trip.  This was extremely disappointing, however they ended up coming down the first week in January!

Unbelievable that Jacob is already 1!!!  And Jill has another one on the way!

Brooke and Caleb had a REALLY good Christmas....I don't remember getting $100 bills in my Christmas stocking!!

Jill decided that giving herself was the best present ever!

......And Lucie obviously thought the same thing!

I flew to Seattle on Christmas night (which is a story in itself, but one that I don't care to relive....let's just say my flight was supposed to arrive in Seattle at 9pm and due to snow in SLC, I arrived at 3am.....but, I ARRIVED!)

It's just not Christmas unless I make a trip home to Seattle.....I LOVE shopping downtown during the holidays with my family.  My Auntie and I are great shopping partners!

These are my cousin Lisa's daughters, Jessica and Mackenzie, who are obviously great shoppers as well!!  We were enjoying the beautiful weather that day after all of the snow had melted....

My cousin Lisa loves to play games, especially Scrabble.....so we spent an afternoon at a local coffee shop enjoying a non-competitive game of Scrabble (although, I realized early on that Lisa really likes to cheat and make up her own words......so I had to keep an eye on her!)  Uncle Ray was the keeper of the letters and instead of us drawing our own letters out of the bag, he would look at them first and then hand them to us, picking and choosing what letters he wanted us to have!  I really don't think this is in the Scrabble rule book....

Mackenzie is just trying to figure out how to play her letter combination of V, U, X, I, Z, and D.

By looking at her smile, Lisa must have some good letters on her pew! (That's what my grandma used to call the little thing that the Scrabble letters sit on.....so that's what we still call it....I'm not really sure if it has an "official" name)......

Awww....Jessica and her grandma!  



So, it's no secret that I'm turning 40 this year, along with all of my other friends from my high school graduating class......so, we have all decided to throw ourselves some big 40th birthday bashes!  Unfortunately, since I live so far away I'm not able to attend as many as I'd like, but there happened to be a really great one that I was able to attend when I was home at Christmas!  My friend Lisa Schmiedeskamp had an 80's themed birthday party....and it was TOTALLY RAD!  Check out the pictures.....I decided to go all out for this one!

Me and Lisa (the birthday girl!)  Try not to be too jealous of my gorgeous hair!

Yes, she had a "Rubik's Cube" cake!  

Good pals....since junior high!  Lisa, me, Brenda and Mickey!

For those of you who know Kelly.....yes, this is Kelly!!!  I about DIED when he walked through the door with that outfit on!  And that mullet!  SOOOO DISGUSTING!  The best part of this picture is that this is so NOT what Kelly looks like in "real life"....he is 100% Mr. Nordstrom!  That outfit killed me!  And his darling wife Brenda wore all AUTHENTIC clothes that were actually from her high school days (I was obviously very impressed that she still fit into them!)  She even has on a REAL Duran Duran concert t-shirt from a concert she went to!!  TOTALLY AWESOME!!!

Since our 20 year class reunion about a year and a half ago, our classmates have made a real effort to get together once every couple months at local clubs/restaurants/bars near the area where we grew up.  Many people are still close enough to attend, unfortunately, I'm not.  However, they were nice enough to plan something while I was there!  It was SO much fun seeing old friends and catching up!  I loved going to the reunion and seeing people, but was so bummed that I didn't get a chance to really talk to people for any length of time, so this small gathering of WHS '87 classmates was REALLY fun!

Todd Hultgren, me, Brenda
 

Most of the gang that showed up at "Big Daddy's"....(yes, that's the name of the place we met...it sounds kind of scary, but it wasn't that bad!)

Me and Chris Harvill.....I've known him since 4th grade!  He has a really cool job of flying small private planes all over the country......I think he gets to meet a lot of really rich, famous and important people.....however, I just recently found out that the job isn't quite as glamourous as it sounds, as he has to clean the bathrooms on the airplane himself!  Yuck!

Candi, me and Brenda! I LOVE THESE GIRLS!!!

So, this is what Kelly and his wife REALLY look like when they're not dressed like it's 1987!  Are they a great looking couple or what?  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them!  

(For those of you who don't know, Kelly and I have been BEST friends since the 4th grade....we lived in the same neighborhood and were pretty much inseparable all through school.....we even went to BYU together our freshman year!  He has been a rock in my life and I love him more than anything....he is a wonderful husband to Brenda and an incredible dad to his 4 kids.....he's an amazing person!)

.....Okay, so I just had to throw in these pictures from our high school graduation.....

Kel and I ....so excited to be BYU bound 

(boy, was I sure in for a surprise.....but I'll save that for another blog....)