Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Justin and I spent a wonderful 7 days in Chicago with the Blackhams for Christmas! We hope everyone had as great a Christmas as we did. It sure is tough getting back into the routine of life though after taking such a nice break! While on our trip we...

Got stranded in Minneapolis at 1 a.m. on our way out due to SLC delays. Booo....
Once in Chicago we played with these cuties:
And Kristen and Justin playing with these: (I think this is a such a cute pic of his lil' sis)
Christmas Eve we enjoyed the sights under the tree and a fun dinner party with family friends:
Come Christmas morning we reeeallly enjoyed the unwrapping of the sights under the tree..
And Christmas afternoon we had the DeMilles, another family from the ward and the missionaries over for Christmas dinner..
(please pardon my horrible facial expression in the above picture!)
Then the day after Christmas we woke up to this..
Yikes! It snowed just about all Saturday and half-way through Sunday too! Brrr!

On Monday we went here..



Then after the Museum Justin and I decided to drive here.

Because a trip back home isn't complete until we go downtown Chicago! We shopped around until we were dead tired then headed home.

The next evening we went with Mom and Dad to..

We had a lot of fun at the Bulls vs. Pacers game...especially since the Bulls won and we all got free Big Macs the next day from the win! We did fly home the next day...sad day! Thanks Mom and Dad Blackham for the great time and especially for all our fun Christmas presents! AND thank you Mom and Dad Froneberger for the Wii and our other lovely presents. We love you all very much!

Christmas Office Party

This past Saturday evening was Pinnacle's End of Year/Christmas Party. It was held at the Salt Palace and there were about 1600 people there! So there was little to no chance of actually seeing any of my coworkers :-( We did manage to find Justin's coworkers so we sat with them through the evening. We enjoyed a nice dinner, nice Christmas singing by this lady.... I'm blanking on her name but I think it may have been Sonya??..., and then this comedian guy (named Brian something from some season of 'The Last Comic Standing'). Despite the fact that I can't remember any specifics of the evening it was a fun night! And it was really my first ever work Christmas party so it was pretty great for my first one ever.

Where are you MJ??

Last Monday Justin and I went to the Flash Game down in Orem at UVU. Pinnacle (the company we work for) is a big contributor to the Flash so they get discount tickets etc. Anyway one of the owners of Pinnacle announced to the company that there was a good chance that Michael Jordan would be at the season opening game to square off one-on-one against Byron Russell. So naturally Justin snags front row seats asap (don't worry they were free!) just at the mere thought of seeing Michael Jordan play. Long story short... we go to the game and towards the end of the 2nd quarter they announce the half time show of MJ playing Byron so everyone goes crazy. Then at halftime the lights drop and they make this huge ordeal about Michael and Bryon playing each other. Then after a long dramatic and drawn out wait, Bryon comes out with a microphone. He starts to call for Michael saying that he is ready to play him. After waiting a few minutes a entourage of people come out of the tunnel, all guarding around this short black guy in sunglasses. Byron sees him and says he's ready to play... then he moves closer and realizes that that guy is in no way Michael Jordan (all acting on Byron's part of course) so then he say's he's over this and leaves the court. Then the lights come on and the horrible halftime show is over. BBBOOOO! I blame the Flash! I was so excited for Justin to watch Michael Jordan play that it really bummed me out. I knew it was too good to be true! The overall evening wasn't too bad, we did sit front row for the first half of the game and its always fun to get out and do something out of the normal with Justin.

Above is Byron Russell and below is Elder Anderson!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree!

Last night Justin and I mustered up the courage (needed from last year's near disaster) and all the warm clothes we could find (it was freezing last night!!!) and headed out to buy ourselves a christmas tree. The good thing about it being freezing was that it forced us to make quick decisions! We found a beautiful tree, albeit rather short, and with very little effort (compared to last year) she stands in our living room! We bought the tree, had it in it's stand, put up the lights and ornaments all within about 2 hours! whooohoo! We are so excited for Christmas now.. at least more in the spirit of the season. Now if the next two weeks could just really slow down then we'd really be able to enjoy this season! Here are a few pics, including my favorite new ornament that we purchased in Wiliamsburg over Thanksgiving.

We love the beach!

Aside from the Thanksgiving pictures I wanted to post all of our beach pictures 1. because I think Justin took some awesome pictures with our new camera and 2. because the beach is such a great place!!!

Thanksgiving in Virginia

Our Thanksgiving trip went by way too fast! We had a wonderful, jam-packed trip nonetheless. The biggest highlight was, of course, the great food Mom made! We had way too much food for the 10 of the family members eating together but I won't ever complain about too much foo (other than the increase in my waist line...). We hit up some stores on Black Friday, went to the Virginia Beach Aquarium, walked on the S.S. Wisconsin downtown Norfolk, had a picnic on the Nags Head beach in the Outer Banks, ate some yummy seafood, took family pictures at Sandbridge beach, drove through the Christmas lights on the Virginia Beach boardwalk and lastly traveled up to Colonial Williamsburg! Whew-and I think I'm even leaving some things out! It was a great trip, we miss the much warmer weather, the great food and the break! Thanks Mom and Dad for everything over Thanksgiving-can't wait to come back again!

Here are some picture highlights--