Gingerbread Houses, Temple Square & Fun with Friends!

I can't believe that in 3 sleeps and a wake up Santa will have come!  My goal was to have this blog completely updated by Christmas and it looks like I'm gonna make it!  We have had so much fun the first three weeks of December thanks to our awesome family and friends.  I know Logan is loving his break from school and I think I am loving it just as much!  I definitely stress when he stresses over homework and tests.  One semester at a time!


After going to the Festival of Trees and looking at all of the awesome gingerbread houses I was quite inspired to have an FHE dedicated to making a house of our own so we did just that a couple weeks ago!  We had such a good time and hopefully started a fun tradition!

Please ignore the blob above the front door!  That was definitely my fault.

One of the many things I was super excited for this year was going to see the lights on Temple Square.  Logan hadn't seen them since before his mission in 2008 so I couldn't wait to for him to go for the first time in 3 years!  My family has a fun tradition of going out to dinner, going to see the lights and getting hot chocolate after.  Unfortunately Logan couldn't make it this time because he was trapped at home studying for finals but we still had a great time with those of us that could make it!

Going with the kids always makes it 10x better!

For about 3 weeks a group of our friends were working non-stop trying to get a Christmas dinner/date planned.  It's a little tough to get all of us together because everyone is so busy but we made it work in the end!  We all met at the Murray TRAX station and rode downtown to go to dinner and see the lights after.  Riding TRAX saved us gas and parking and it was fun!  Our original plan was to go to CPK at the Gateway but when we called ahead to put our name on the list they told us it was a 2 1/2 hour wait!  There's no way we were going to wait that long.  We eventually decided on Olive Garden, which was delicious, and only had to wait about 40 minutes.

Asking for a picture where everyone is smiling normally is quite a stretch for this group so we had to settle for this picture :)

It was freezing the night we went but once we were outside for a couple minutes my whole body was numb so I couldn't feel the cold anymore and we got some fun pictures so it was totally worth it!

We capped the night off by taking TRAX back to Murray and crashing at Russ' house for hot chocolate which helped us thaw out a bit!  Thanks to everyone who made the night so much fun!

Next in line: Our First Christmas!