Home for the Holidays

Well, it's Martin Luther King Day and I finally took down our Christmas decorations. (Is it bad that I'm already counting down until we get to put them up again?) We doubled our Christmas celebrations and went to both Ames and Minneapolis over the holidays. It was so nice to go back home and spend some much needed R&R with family.

While in Minneapolis we got to go to Nadia Cakes, the Cupcake Wars winning bakery. Which I'm not saying was THE highlight of our trip, but it was literally the best thing I have ever eaten. 

We tried the cookie dough and triple chocolate cupcakes
along with the cheesecake and salted caramel cheesecake cupcakes.
They're like heaven.
Also they're like the only thing we took pictures of during our whole trip.

Now it's back to work, counting down until our next break and some nice warm sunshine. 

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Maybe not outside--we've had sunny 60 degree days all weekend--but inside our apartment it's been looking like Christmas for weeks now. Brax and I figured that since we'll be heading out of town for Christmas early we'd better get all of our decorations up as soon as possible so we can enjoy them.

I love that our gigantic red wall is finally seasonally appropriate. For a few weeks at least. Haha. And I love that I finally have a place to use my two wooden deer that were a gift from my grandpa, Opa, a few years back. They're my absolute favorite part of the decorations.

After Thanksgiving in Idaho with all of the Excells, Steve, Kelli, and Kaisha came down to spend a couple of days with us. We went up to Temple Square to see all of the lights and really get into the Christmas spirit on the day after Thanksgiving, which just happens to be when and where Brax and I got engaged last year. It was fun to get to be there with my family last year for this: 

and to go back a year later with Braxton's family. 

A Very Minne Date Night

This weekend Brax and I got to go out to a Grizzlies hockey game! (Big ups to Paige and Chels for giving us the tickets. My friends are the best.)  It was so much fun to go see a game and brought me back to my Minnesota roots--surprisingly, hockey isn't such a big deal in Iowa, which I think is a shame-- and Brax graciously came along. He actually knows more of the rules than I do, because you know I'm there just keeping my fingers crossed the whole time for a fight. ;)

Seems crazy to me that there can be a hockey game with this empty of an arena. 

We met Grizzbee, but didn't get a picture. :(
I did love that he rode around the rink on a four-wheeler, though.
Nothing seems more Minne than hockey and four-wheelers.

The Grizzlies lost, but we definitely won because we got to see some Pee-Wee hockey games during one of the intermissions. They were SO cute! Seriously, I think if they turned the Grizzlies into a team full of 5 or 6 year-olds, they would sell out their arena every night. I would make Braxton buy us season tickets!

I wish I had been able to capture all of the times that they just fell over each other trying to skate.
This will have to do. 

October

Oh, hey guys! Remember us? I'd like to say that we spent October without the glory that is the internet, and that's why we didn't blog, but the truth is we're just pretty bad at keeping up with this. Whoops. Anyway- here's a rundown of some of the things that we did this month:

Braxton started a new job! Can I just tell you, job hunting is a %*#!@ (bitch).  Since graduation, Brax had still been consulting as the head of compliance at an aircraft manufacturer, while looking for something else. By kind of a happy accident, an interview at one company led him to apply for a job at a healthcare provider in Salt Lake as a compliance auditor. He was called in for his first interview during their second round of interviews, and he got it! (I don't want to brag, but he was famous around HR as the guy who only had to have one interview.) We obviously feel tremendously blessed! 

General Conference with ShayLin and Kaisha. We were able to spend General Conference weekend with Braxton's little sisters, and it was a lot of fun for us to be able to all hang out together for a few days. We stocked up on Conference snacks, and settled in for two whole days in the living room. Six months ago, Brax and I spent Conference weekend setting up Ikea furniture in our apartment the week before we got married, so we were especially grateful this time to be able to actually sit down and listen. Saturday night during the Priesthood session, the girls and I upheld their tradition of going to get pedicures, and in between sessions on Sunday we all piled into the car to drive the Alpine Loop and see some of the Fall colors. It was beautiful, and just as busy, but we still managed to stop and get a couple of pictures.

Ostler Family Time. My mom came out for a few days last week to dote on her grandbaby help Casey and Jen with Myles after Casey's kidney stone surgery. And luckily, I happened to have Friday off after SEP conferences, so I got to go up and spend the day with them, too. We planned to go swimming at the rec center, but found out it was closed for a Halloween party, which Myles was less than happy about. 

We passed a pumpkin patch on the way out of town, and decided we would check that out instead. It turned out to be a lot of fun- even though we looked a little out of place in our swim gear under our clothes. 

That just about brings us up to date! Now that Halloween is over, we're basically counting down the days until it's acceptable to start counting down the days until Christmas.

Takin' It Easy

I can't believe that summer is officially over! School started early this year, so come the 19th of August I started first grade for my third year in a row. This was the first year that my birthday has actually been on a school day, and one of my cuties even gave me a present! Not a bad way to start the school year (not to mention quickly establish your spot as the teacher's favorite.)

After a couple long weeks of first grade, we were ready to take it easy for Labor Day weekend. We naturally celebrated with one of each of our favorite things- a dim sum breakfast (Brax) and outlet shopping (me). Our real celebration came Tuesday, though, when we got to go see The Eagles play in Salt Lake. Brax and I both grew up listening to them and always said we'd go see them if they ever came close, so luckily my students from last year just happened to be silent reading when the tickets went on sale at 10:00 am on a school day. ;) It was so fun to get to see them- definitely the highlight of our holiday weekend!

They were sticklers about not taking any pictures during the show-
 but I think this one basically captures all of our excitement pretty well.

25

While we were on our trip, Braxton turned the big 2-5! We were lucky enough to be able to spend it with his family in Ames and have a great day with them. We started the day off right with some breakfast pizza from Casey's, which I crave on the regular. I ate mine so quickly that I didn't get the chance to take a picture of it, but just imagine: pizza (already delicious) but with a light layer of cheesy sauce and then topped with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and more cheese. It's delicious.

Braxton and Honey celebrated in style. (Neither of them liked it much, to be honest.)

Later that night Steve made us a big family dinner of steaks and dutch oven fries. He made Brax what was literally the biggest steak I had ever seen someone eat in my entire life. 30 oz.  It was huge. And B amazingly ate the whole thing!

Here it is next to a strawberry for comparison. 

We finished the night off with some cupcakes and bowling for a very happy birthday boy. :)

July

Oh, is July over? And it's been a month since I blogged about anything? Weird. I guess I've been a little too busy doing this:

Just kidding- we really have gone out and done things besides just hanging out on our couch singing to our food. (Although, I don't think that L.L. is bad company to be in. Just sayin'.) Let's start at the beginning.

Early in the month the Huang family, who Brax taught and baptized on his mission came out to visit Utah for a week, and we got to spend the day giving them a little tour of B.Y.U. Plus, it was a great chance for Brax and I to practice our Chinese! (They actually asked me if I spoke any Chinese. Embarrassingly enough, I've tried to learn a little bit, and all I can ever remember is the number two. So luckily their English is much better than my Mandarin.)

The Huang Family- Cherry, Louise, and Henry. 

Their daughter, Cherry, is going to be a senior this year, so we even got to ride around campus on a golf cart with a guide from Admissions. Personally, I think Brax and I gave a better tour than our zoobie guide, but every time I was walking across campus as a student and saw one of those golf carts, a little part of me was dying for a ride, so it was good to finally fulfill that dream.

(Excuse the baldy in the middle of the picture- its even more impossible
to take a classy selfie while riding on the back of a golf cart)

The next week, we decided there would never be a better time than right then to go on a trip and visit our families! We had been thinking about it for a while, and realized it would probably be an even longer while before we would both have as many days off together as we did. So we packed up the car and headed out for about 15 hours of this:

(This picture actually makes it seem even better than it is in real life. It's rough.)

It was a long drive, but Brax was a great sport and we made it to the blessed land of Iowa in record time! We spent the first few days in Ames for some quality Excell time and lots of trips down memory lane for B. He went through all of his boxes of things from his mission and downsized so that we could bring it home with us.

The glory that is an Iowa cornfield.

Then we headed up to the Cities for a few days to hang out with my family- which was basically us touring around town during the day when they were all working and then seeing them for dinner. (Which is to be expected when you tell them the day before you're leaving that you're coming out, to be fair.) But we did get to go see a lot of the sights that I hadn't taken Braxton to before, since we've never been out when the weather's warm enough to spend much time outside.

 The White Sox just happened to be playing the Twins at home while we were there, so we got to go with the family as a part of Braxton's Ostler birthday celebration. Normally we have to make bets on these games and try to find them streaming on the internet somewhere, so it was great to be able to see our two rival teams go at it in person! (I lost the bet by the way. So instead of Brax watching the next season of the Bachelor with me, I'll be wearing his Sox shirt to school when we have a sports day this year.)

We decided that for the vacation we wouldn't worry about eating healthily-- there's just too much good food in the Midwest that we can't ever get in Utah! I couldn't even get pictures of all of it- but here are some of the highlights:

Top: Red Cow in Mpls- Brax got the 60/40 burger topped with onion rings AND bbq pork. I got the "Breakfast Burger" which had a fried egg, bacon, cheese, and peanut butter on sourdough. Sounds weird, tastes delicious.
Bottom: Eating a huge cheeseburger in Ames with the girls; sushi- which I totally eat now sometimes; and a cookie from Insomnia Cookies in Dinkytown- the picture is blurry and the cookie is half eaten because it was just THAT good.