First Christmas!!

Who doesn't look forward to their first Christmas together as a husband and wife?  It's busy having two families at Christmastime that you have be sure to visit for the holidays.  I jetted out of work a little early on Christmas Eve day and we headed down to have Christmas Eve and morning with my family.  We went to grandma Jewkes' that night to have our family party over there.  We spent the night at my parents' house, and had Christmas breakfast there in the morning.  Grandma and grandpa Jones came over to have breakfast with us, as usual.  We left in the afternoon to come have Christmas with his family. 

We had dinner at Grandma Schick's house. Jay and Jared and their kids all came down (after totaling their car after hitting black ice shortly after leaving their home in Oregon).  We were so glad to have them there, and safe!  We got money from my parents and Jewkes grandparents, the game "Sorry" from my Jones grandparents, 50 mink females from Brent and Jan (and yes, we were excited about it), food storage from Grandma Beckstead, several things from Grams (Cook's Nursery gift card, Cafe Rio gift card, Orange Sticks, etc), house decor from Ryan and Lou (they drew our name on the Schick side), and a small house tool kit from Clayton (he drew our name for our Beckstead family). 

After dinner at Grams', we went back to Brent and Jan's to open our gifts with everyone. They had got us all a few gifts like new sweats and hoodies, and then the gifts we exchanged names for.  The funny story we'll always remember...Ali had got a "gag gift" at her bridal shower from her great grandma.  At the time she opened the gift, Ali had no clue it was a fake gift.  Her grandma kept saying, "Don't you like it? You can put it on your kitchen table or a front entry table like this."  Her grandma then proceeded to lay out a small piece of shag carpet looking material, a "marble" colored cat, with matching colored vases/candlesticks in different sizes.

By this point, Ali was wondering how she was going to avoid putting this out as a decoration, but not hurt her grandma's feelings. Finally, her grandma starts laughing once she sees how mortified Ali is and tells her it was all a joke and gives her a real gift.  Well, Arin and I both had to leave early from the shower Ali's other grandma had put on for her, so neither one of us saw this "gag gift."  Ali and Alex drew Brock and Arin for Christmas and re-gifted the gag to them.  Arin is pulling out the pieces one by one, and we're all laughing, not sure if we should be laughing or not.  Ali is telling Arin, "You can set it out on your table, It will be so cute. I picked it out special for you!"  Then Ali and Alex finally busted up and told us the whole story.  I'm sure that won't be the last of the marble cat and his shag carpet in the Beckstead family!

The cutest gift was this little horse that Clayton made for Cade! He spent his nights building it. I'm pretty sure it was Cade's favorite gift of the year!

After we finished up at Brent and Jan's, Zach and I ventured back to Payson so we could hurry and open our gifts to each other really quick before heading off to bed. We both had to work the next day...talk about a super bummer!  We had a conservative Christmas because we agreed that our new cell phones and TV we bought for our family room would be most of our Christmas.  Zach bought me some cute new black, sequined Ugg-style boots and a new set of sweats.  I gave him a DVD of "Mormon Messages," a book about the timeline of church history, a talk on CD, and a new pair of sweat bottoms. All-in-all we had a pretty great first Christmas together and enjoyed some wonderful company of our families.  (A few days later we went to the Beckstead part at a church nearby Grandma Becksteads as well.)


 

 

 

 

 

First Snowmobiling Trip

Zach talked a big talk about snowmobiling while we were dating, but never did take me (no snow that season). I hadn't been on a sled in years so I was really excited!  It was like -18 in the parking lot, and when we got the machines out and were trying to get ready to leave, one of the pull ropes pulled out and wouldn't drive with the rope out. The spring that coils the rope back in broke, and so we were minus a machine.

 Brent didn't want the rest of us to waste the whole day, so he was very generous and let the rest of us go out.  Ali couldn't go, so Alex was by himself and Clayton had a date.  We had a great time and the boys helped me learn to drive.  It hurt my shoulder after too long though.  Teaching me to carve wasn't the best idea on our first trip and me just learning how to drive in the first place. I think they had to tip me back up like every 15 seconds. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun and it got a lot warmer when we got on top. We spent a few hours in a little meadow type area that had some untouched powder.  It was a fun trip for my first time going!

Yes, we are weird, we know!

First Christmas Tree

Charlie Brown has never been so proud as he was of this little guy!

 

We really wanted a real tree for Christmas. Since we missed buying the permits because we were out of town that weekend, we decided to buy one at a lot.  Fredrico's Christmas Trees in the R.C. Willey parking lot in Orem! We walked inside the chain link fence and began browsing.  There were several bushy and beautiful "Chistmas-like" trees, but we didn't fall in love with any of them.  I turned to my left and started laughing and said, "How much do you think they wan for this one?" The salesman started explaining to us that the busy trees are genetically altered to be bushy like that for Christmas and that this was a Natural Fir that you would find in the forest to chop down on your own. 

 

We continued browsing around, but didn't see anything we liked more than little ole Charlie! I said, "Hun, I really do like this one." And we both giggled, and he lit up like a little kid and said, "I do too. Let's get this one."  We paid the man, and away we went, off to Payson to set up our newly found "diamond in the rough."  We'll surely never forget this Christmas OR this Christmas tree.

 

We stopped at Wal-Mart to buy some cheap decorations to get us by this year, and a base to put the tree in.  We had such a fun time decorating and making it all cute as we possibly could. We decided the top looked like a "Christmas Cactus" but we loved the 'lil guy anyway.

 

We were so cheap, we even hung the decorations by paperclips like rednecks!

 

 

The final project turned out so darn cute!

 

And don't forget...our first stockings!  TB and ZB!





Ali & Alex's Wedding

The night before the wedding, they had a dinner at a place called "The Blue Lemon."  Good food, and Blane and Jessie sang a few songs at their dinner too! It reminded us of our wedding just two and a half months before!

It snowed during the day and probably made the pictures at the temple beautiful! I didn't have an umbrella so I had to re-curl part of my hair at Jan's house before the reception.  Zach and I were deemed the task of sitting at the signing book. It was kind of fun since we had just gotten married. it was almost like having our own reception.  We saw everyone that would've come to ours too.  We had a really fun time sitting there chatting with everyone that came through.  We even got a few cards of our own! Doc Heaton and his wife were even apologizing for not coming to our reception and we laughed and said, "Don't worry, you didn't miss anything because we didn't have one!"

First Picture in Front of Our First House

Tayler came to visit and stayed with us for the night so once we got back from church, we had her snap our first family photo in front of our first home.  It snowed the night before and was beautiful!

Londyn!

Brock and Arin's baby is finally here! Unfortunately, we couldn't go up that day with everyone else and had to wait to go to the hospital to see the baby the next night.  There are not many babies that don't come out looking like aliens, but wow, she was beautiful!  Not because I'm biased since she's my niece, but she literally was a doll!  My sister was even with us that night and she thought she was super cute too.  I was just getting over a cold and didn't dare to hold her though.  Zach did though. I think it made him anxious to have his own.

Isn't she cute?

Typical Zach

Finally...a decent one!

A Night in the Riverwoods

Small world! I found out a girl I new briefly at work was going to be getting married shortly after we were. So I congratulated her and wanted to see a picture of her and her fiance.  I opened the picture attached to the email and was completely surprised. MIKEY J! A great friend of mine from high school.  She was marrying (of all the fish in the sea) someone I knew, grew up with, and was great friends with.  In fact, his dad and my dad are great friends as well.  She actually ended up doing her endowment session the same night Ali did hers so we were there when Mike and Jana were there as well.  Crazy!

My parents came up to the reception that was in Provo at The Riverwoods, and we tagged along.  After we went to the reception, we went to dinner with them at Tucano's there and walked around the grounds all lit up.  They have really neat little fire pits all around The Riverwoods, so we actually stayed fairly warm too. It's always fun to get together with my parents and have a nice meal with them.