Idaho for Christmas

I went to Idaho for Christmas!! And I was so caught up in family that I didn't visit any of my friends. And I'm sorry. I really wanted to. 

The trip started out awesomely at 7:00 when I was told that the luggage weight limit for Allegiant was 40lbs. Not 50. And definitely not 53. Luckily, Brea had put Kaitlynn & Perri's Christmas tutu's in a garbage bag. That I promptly stuffed 13 pounds of clothes and shoes into. Because my Christmas olive oils and shower gels couldn't go through security. The employees made fun of me for my awesome luggage ;-P, but at least I saved $50. Man oh man. 

After that, though, everything was awesome. Bridget came to visit me just a few hours later (my hair's a little crazy here) with John, her new boyfriend, who is super super sweet. (Yes, she drove 3 hours to see me for 1). It was so awesome to see her for the first time since MARCH! And she brought me the cutest little Precious Moments doll because, well, she thinks I look like one. Or I did when I was 4. :-)

Bridget also got me a "Wreck this Journal" which is a very creative outlet for my underused right brain. :-)
 Kaitlynn loved it. Per the instructions, we froze this page. Tate was impressed. 

Candice's kids LOVED the snow. It really hadn't snowed much at all until the 24th. Tate was eager to help Pappa with shoveling. Until he decided to make snow angels.

This is Perri. She's just adorable.

Christmas was good this year. I definitely missed Brad stressing to make sure we got all our traditions done (there was no Jolly Old Santa Claus book, the cartoon Grinch, or ELF for me this year. ;-( ) But I did have so much fun picking out presents for the kids and, ok, well, everyone. I do love myself some Christmas shopping. And hearing Perri say everything was "fretty" (pretty) was maybe my favorite thing. And Candice got me a fabulous cookbook that I want to cook everything in! (It's called The Sprouted Kitchen.) Tonight I made the golden beet walnut salad. mmmm.... (Who knew it took an hour to cook a beet? Not me.) (I also loved my other gifts so much- thank you thank you :-) )

They made for a very reverent Nativity. 

Kaitlynn's Birthday is the 26th. She turned 8!! She gets baptized on Jan. 5th. 

My dad got this humungous salmon from a guy at work. We probably should have cut in in half since it basically could have fed an army, but.....it was delicious. Unfortunately I left the next day. 

Birthday Party. Is she really 33?!

I didn't have too much time to do a birthday party this year.  (Besides, it's 33. Not the most milestone of years.) But I did want to get together with as many friends as possible. Which, if you're wondering, is not very many on Dec. 22nd (many of my best friends here are my co-workers and a lot of them were out of town). So we just met up for a nice little dinner at Liberty Market, which is a great little restaurant and very chill. I still wore my fancy "model" outfit, though. It was my almost-birthday.

Oh, yes, that IS Vanie's new boyfriend, Peter. He might be a big deal.
Speaking of big, Jonmark did not gain 100 pounds. This is just a very weird angle of a picture. 

again, still not dating, but it is a cute picture.

Roxanne and Mina, two of my favorite co-workers from my last job

Creativity at its Best

Christmas is often a time of creativity. For example, we started this season with a little Christmas Primary activity. We met in the morning for doughnuts, milk, stickers, and jeweled Christmas trees. The kids had a blast. Then we took them to a nearby nursing home and sang a bunch of Christmas songs they didn't really know. :-/ But it was still a fun little way to start the day. And I loved the colored snowmen. 

My next opportunity to release my creativity came at Brad's house (of course). Brad invited about 4 of us over to make gingerbread houses. He and Brea had made the gingerbread, the icing, and had gone shopping for the most amazing candies ever. Including little chocolate "rocks."
However, in a sad stroke of bad luck, Brad had misplaced his OCD tendencies that night. What, what do I mean by that you ask? I mean that, not only did our houses have slightly uneven floors, but they also might have been short the squares needed to make a roof. Oops. No worries. We thickened up the icing and went to work. And declared this our Practice Round to make awesome ones next year. However, we still had a blast this time. :-)

Olivia made a roof from Pretzel Sticks. With the help of a glue gun. 

Brea was pretty heartbroken when her house fell apart for the fourth time. :-(

My gorgeous home. The tree is my favorite.

Olivia added this cool design on
the side of her house. 

Christin's Christmas Decorations

I really loved decorating for Christmas this year. I got some new (much-needed) garland and some trees from Target that I loved. I was waiting initially for them to go on sale, but then they ran out. Like almost completely.
I declared it a mission.
I hit up four Targets.
After 3, I was still missing the middle tree. So, I thought to myself, which Target is selling the least gold glitter Christmas trees. Which one, you ask? Mexican Target. That one. The one that has all its signs in Spanish and English. And the one that had EVERY SINGLE TREE in stock. Whoo-hoo!!!! (That sounds kind of racist in writing. It just sounded like brilliance in my head.) Anyways, this is the result of 2 hours of hard work of driving to multiple Targets.

It goes well, I think with Gunther the Christmas pig, who is happy to be out again.

 Every year since I've been out of the house, I've bought a real tree. Which, I'm sure you know is awesome. And kind of a pain to put up. And water. And get all centered. And try not to kill. And dispose of. etc, etc, etc... So when Vanie begged me to please not get a real tree for the sake of her allergies, I relented. And when Craig and I found this skinny little thing on sale at Target, I was pretty excited. And a little shocked by the overwhelming sense of relief when we set down the already-assembled tree (2 pieces; that was it) and, well, it was DONE. I mean, that was it. And at that point I realized, sometimes you need to realize that life is busy and you should cut yourself a break. And this was the perfect, perfect break. After it was decorated, I realized it looked a lot like a Dr. Seuss tree, and that made me like it even more.

I found this set of Roald Dahl books at Costco.
Luckily Brad was just as excited as I was about them. 

There always seems to be one last Christmas surprise. For me, that was this picture. Which is really awesome to me. I had showed it to Brad, but didn't buy it because it was a little expensive. But then, Kirkland Home had a 50% off sale. So while I was in Idaho for Christmas (Brad & Brea both had to stay and work), they secretly bought it, snuck into my house via my roommate, and hung it on my wall. So cool!! Thanks, you guys. You are the best. It totally made my Christmas.

Craig Comes to Visit (Surprise!)

One of the most unexpected things that happened this month was a visit from Craig. Craig was the boyfriend of my roommate Tara in Boise, which meant he was over pretty much all the time. For pretty much 3 years. And we were always good friends. We haven't talked much in the last six years, but we do meet up usually when I head to Boise for a bit.
So I wasn't expecting a phone call in late November asking if he could come stay for 5 days 2 weeks later. But, of course, I said yes. I mean, it's Craig.
It was really fun to catch up, and funny how much he remembered. About Christmas decorations and the way I did everything.

We ate dinner the first night at Pure Sushi. We ordered 5 rolls. And could have eaten them all, if the last one "Pure Sunshine" wasn't pure "grossness." Our desserts were also kind of a disappointment, which was pretty lame because usually everything there is amazing. And because they looked amazing. (And our first 4 rolls were sooo good!!!) The couple next to us at the sushi bar couldn't believe we kept ordering, but, um, we were hungry. And it was awesome.

















Saturday night was Mandy's birthday, which was great because she's been really sick most of the year with a weird rare form of MS (Tumective, the doctors think), but she's been doing great this month. And we all had fun time just catching up. 
Sunday was Craig's first 3 hours at Mormon church. And he survived fabulously. We even went and looked at the beautiful Mesa Temple Christmas lights later on.

Monday I actually hosted Midsingles FHE at my house. We decorated Christmas cookies, and somehow this is the only picture I felt was worth taking. I was a little nervous, but it turned out good, and the cookies were delicious. Despite an interesting conversation on the legalization of medical marijuana led by the possibly most ignorant person I have ever spoken to. oh man. 
We also did a little Christmas shopping at Scottsdale Fashion Square and even re-enacted this Carl's Jr Commercial (kind of). Don't you judge me. :-)
It was a great trip, and so good to see such a good friend. :-)

Mud Run

One of my first Saturdays off was a Mud Run. For his birthday, Brad wanted us to use a groupon to have me, him, Brea, my friend Kristen, and Brea's sister Sierra run in this race. So we did. Even though I had gotten some sort of horrific flu 3 days earlier. (One negative about my new job is how hard it is to take off work. So maybe I was seeing patients in between puking. It was awesome, let me tell you.)
So this race was actually a little lame for a mud run. We probably won't do it again. Because there were much cooler ones on the same day, we found out later. But this one was cheap and still pretty fun. It was basically a 4 mile run through the desert with a couple little obstacles and a big mud pit at the end.  It wasn't really until we were there that I realized we were actually about to run 4 miles. And the only one ready for it was Kristen. Crap. Brea had bought cute shoes at Wal-mart for $12 so she could throw them away after the race. What she didn't plan on was the shoes being made out of cardboard and completely killing her formerly broken ankle.
We ended up switching shoes in the middle of the race.
Whatever it was, it was definitely a bonding experience. We probably should have waited for the hoses afterwards, but that was a 45 minute wait, we were freezing, and Brea had to get to work.
So we lined my seats with towels, threw down my plastic floor mats leftover from Idaho, and tried not to touch anything until we got home.
I had to wash the clothes 5 times before they were clean.
And I had an awesome layer of mud in my tub.
But we had fun. We were all very good at jumping in the mud pit.

And the pictures are awesome.

I got a New Job! (The ultrasound is not a baby in me)

I promised to write about this, and I'm a little late. I have a new job. And I love it. And it's stressful. And very different. But good. It's here: http://www.arizonamaternityclinic.com/
I'm paid much better. My schedule is much better (about 8-4:30 every day and no Saturdays.) At my last job, they paid me hourly and cut my hours a lot and I worked until 7 or 8 a lot and every other Saturday. It was killing my social life.
However, at that job I loved my beautiful office, my co-workers, my patients, and our easy-peasy charting system.
This office is a little more chaotic :-) It's just me and the doctor running 2 locations. (The second one is open only two days a week.) She's currently looking to hire another ob/gyn physician because whenever she has to run out to delivery a baby, I take over her patients and it can get a little crazy.
I don't have an office anymore. I sit out in the open with everyone, which was super-stressful the first week or so. I'm a stuff person and I need my books and my handouts and all that stuff. And I didn't have anywhere to put anything. But the medical assistants were really sweet and cleared out a drawer for me and helped me get adjusted.
And then the other NP retired four days after I started. So I absorbed her whole schedule. Not crazy at all. I thought I would be seeing about 10 people a day. Instead I saw about 28. Ahhh!!
And I get to do first ultrasounds now. And I'm getting much better. This one is my favorite ever.
My medical assistants are in their 20's and they have pink hair. Well, pink stripes :-) Their names are Alexis and Alicia. And they are awesome. And now they read this blog. They have put up with my millions of questions and do all my referrals and room my patients and order my labs and call people about their lab results and basically fix everything I haven't figured out how to do yet.
Stephanie also sits near us and she draws the blood on everyone, so we bond, too.
And Dr. Brar is a trip. I wore this outfit to work the other day and she literally screamed in the office. "Oh, Christin, you look like a model. So elegant.....Your shopping is Perfect." (It's much better in person. She has a fabulously thick Indian accent that makes everything better.)
So, anyways, it's great. I'm learning so much, I feel very appreciated, and it's just good.
I drive an hour each way to work (until my lease is up in July at least), but I'm right next door to a gym so I'm usually still home after my workouts before I would have been at my last job. Here's to life!! Yay!

Halloween is different in primary....

So life in Primary is a little different than life in the singles' ward (Did I mention I'm the second counselor in the primary presidency now?). Take, for example, this crazy week. When the Halloween party, the primary program, and my turn for Sharing Time, all fell in the same week. It went a little something like this:
First off, the party was originally supposed to be on Saturday night, but we switched it with another ward so it was on Friday, which meant I was at work until it was halfway over. Which I think kind of gave the primary president a tiny heart attack.
So Thursday night after the spa, Brad and Brea nicely agreed to come help me decorate my "scary tunnel" that I was in charge of. We did all get to choose our "game," and this was the one thing I remembered best from my Primary halloweens.
First, we had to stop at Walgreens to get some decorations: lights, spider webs, glow-in-the-dark stickers and streamers (thanks to Brea for those last two). And cornbread. And then we headed to the church. I had picked the boxes up from a friend on facebook on my lunch break on Wednesday so we unloaded them and went inside (I actually have building keys, thank goodness :-) ). As we were starting I realized we forgot the cornbread mix (we remembered the other ingredients), so Brad ran to the store to buy some while Brea and I got to taping. (Luckily, the grocery store, the church, and walgreens are all within a mile of each other).
Now, we all know that one of the main reasons I asked Brad to come along was for his creativity (and the more pumpkins I see of Brad and Brea's, the more I realize what good competition Brea is in the creativity department). The other reason I asked them, of course, is because it would have been completely miserable to have done it alone. So anyways, I stepped out for a second to go get tape and came back to see Brad carving individual holes for each spider with his drywall saw. Brilliance. And he then cut tiny little holes to hang each ghost the same way.

Meanwhile, Brea hung streamers and made curtains out of black garbage bags for the doors. She's in the picture below if you look hard enough. 

I crawled through and super-glued in the glow-in-the-dark stickers to the walls. It was a little tighter fit than I had imagined. And at 11:30 at night, we were done. 

Friday after work, I ran home and got into this outfit. (I couldn't untangle my "Tangled" wig.) It worked :-)

The kids loved the tunnel. I loved the 4-year olds who came out and were like, "That was awesome!" or "You have to go through this...it's amazing!" It made me happy. Most kids went through it like 4 or 5 times. :-)The kids below here are my favorites ever. They are the primary president's kids and I basically think they are beautiful. She calls them "my little salt & pepper"

Zack is the blonde boy. He discovered the cake below.

And then he looked like this :-)

This little lady is also in my ward. And she's funny. And she said the skull dude on her shoulder was her lover. Basically I just loved that she would say that so I took her picture. I love my ward. 

After the party, we all cleaned up and then went back to the church Saturday morning for a Relief Society broadcast followed by primary program practice. Afterwards, I went shopping at ULTA 'cause it was the last day to use my 20% off everything coupon. A lot of Christmas shopping got done! Then I ran home to meet up with Vanie and get ready for another party. Last minute, we decided to make me Pebbles. So I ran back to Walgreens and bought their "bag of bones," stuck a couple clavicles in my hair, and we were good to go. The party was typical mormon party times, but it was fun and we saw a lot of fun costumes. Afterwards, about 5 of us went and got some appetizers at Arcadia Tavern and then went to our friend Silver's house and roasted Nutella S'mores on his backyard firepit. mmm.......

Did I mention I still needed to do Sharing Time? Well, before the party, I used my phone to take pictures of old photographs of my ancestors and used the Walgreens app to send them over on my way to the party so that they would be ready in an hour. After the s'mores, I ran to walgreens and picked them up, along with gold candy coins and foil stars. (I created a treasure hunt of finding out about the Carbiener family in France). After picking them up, I ran and met Jonmark across town and went dancing for a little bit before we both decided we were completely exhausted. 

Sunday morning, I got up and went to the primary practice, which luckily turned out great. And I think the kids all thought sharing time was cool. 

AND. I have a new found respect for all callings. All of them. 

p.s. I love Walgreen's. I cannot believe how much this store comes through for me.