Mom's Surprise Graduation Party

This past weekend we threw my mom a surprise graduation party! With it being my first surprise party I've ever given anyone, I thought it was a success! She had absolutely no idea it was coming.
David and mckenzie got her to our house by telling her that we were going over wedding plans. She totally fell for it! No matter that we were all hiding in the dark for 20 minutes (due to some miscommunication), the surprise was priceless.
We were so lucky to have everyone there and are grateful for everyone who helped make it happen! We are also so proud of my mom who decided to go back to college a few years ago and has pursued her degree to the end with flying colors. She is an inspiration to all of us!

Welcome to Our Home

This will probably be the longest post ever but at least it's mostly pictures!
We are finally in our home! It has been a long time coming since we have been looking at houses since the summer. We are so excited to finally be home owners!
We decided to build our home and we did it through Woodside Builders. We have loved every minute of the building process, it shows with how many pictures we have taken! Our decision came in June, after looking at already built houses in bountiful and salt lake and taking in all of our options, we knew that we definitely wanted to build our first home. Then it came to deciding which company we wanted to build with. Obviously woodside took the cake!
After we made our decision, picked our plot of land, and designed our home, we had to wait for our street to be put in so the building of our house did not start til Sept. 17. We were so excited when we found out and decided to celebrate at Wingers!
The next step came on oct. 11 which was our first walk through of the home with our superintendent. We invited Mark and Joan Johnson to come with us since we are a little naive when it comes to building homes. At this point all of the framing was up, roof on, and garage and windows installed. Also the plumbing and electrics were all done. By Oct. 18 they had completed all the dry wall in the home.
Ty and I had three options to choose from for what the outside of our house would look like. We started by picking a brown tone for our house but after seeing it on another house we decided that we wanted to design the outside ourselves. Even though it cost us more money it was one of the best decisions we ever made! We got to go down to the design studio and pick out the color of our siding, stucco, trim, garage door, and front door. We knew that we wanted a grey house with white trim and a black door and black shutters. We could not be happier with how it turned out! We have gotten so many compliments and love that our house looks different than the others. Although, when we were at the design studio there was another couple there and after seeing all the things we had picked, they decided to bag their design and copy exactly ours. Luckily they are building in a different location!
A couple months went by of finishing up the house and on Dec. 13 (right on schedule) we had our final walk through. This is the one where we check everything in the house and make sure there are no dings in the walls and all the doors and sinks work. The superintendent gave me a roll of blue tape to tape anything I wanted fixed. That was a mistake since I taped any little ding in the wall that I found and anything that I wanted them to clean again, I was a little picky :)
On Dec. 19 we closed on our house and immediately started the move from my mom's house to ours! We were so excited to finally be able to move in that we made sure we would be able to at least sleep in our new home. Then the next day we completed the move by taking all of our stuff out of storage and bringing it to our house. We had so many people come to help us even though it was on a work night and we are so grateful for all of them! If it hadn't of been for them, we would have had to wait until Saturday and I was just way too anxious for that!
After all the moving, we worked super hard to get all unpacked so that we could have Christmas Day dinner at our house and the mission was accomplished! We would stay up till all hours of the night completing all of our little projects that we needed to do. That list is never ending!
Anyways, the first few nights of sleeping at our house we felt like we were staying at a hotel! All of it was so nice and new! But now we are getting into the swing of things and are still in love with our home! We are so grateful for all of the people who helped us to get where we are now and are so grateful that we could start out with such a beautiful home. We are spoiled!
Here are pictures for the grand tour of our home. I put them in order of progress for each part of our house. Thanks for stopping by at our lovely abode!

Merry Christmas!

Look at these two little cuties at their Christmas Program! They are the sweetest and did such a good job. It is one of my favorite things going to Preschool Christmas programs.

For Christmas this year we had four family Christmas parties to attend. Luckily they were all on different days so there was no rushing around like Christmas usually is. We first had a Christmas party at my Aunt Lora's house. It was different being without Dani and Connor this year, but we know they are celebrating Christmas in an incredible way being on their missions. It was a fun filled night eating lots of food and playing our favorite German game, Elferaus.

Christmas Eve was spent at Linda's house. Just look at Ty with these cute girls. He is definitely the favorite uncle.

Again, we ate TONS of food and played lots of games. I made a pretzel jello salad that is to die for and it showed how much people liked it with how many times throughout dinner they asked what the ingredients were. I ended with a count of about 10 :) We decided to just post the recipe next time so everyone can see all at once what the ingredients are.

This is Christmas morning with me in my Moose Caboose onesies and peppermint slippers :) Ty and I love our matching onesies!

He looks like a kid again, all excited to go down the stairs and see his presents.

Me and Ty spent a little of Christmas morning at our house and then went over to my mom's to open some more presents. She served a yummy breakfast and we definitely got spoiled with gifts! Ty surprised me with winter boots that I was in desperate need of. My mom and I surprised him with a jacket that he has been wanting from Solomon for about a year now. I think I was most excited to see his face when he opened that present.

Then in the afternoon we went to see Les Mis. An incredible movie but it definitely needed an intermission. I had to talk to Ty throughout just to make sure that he stayed awake!

This year I put it upon myself to make sure that our house was ready for Christmas (post to come of our new house!). We worked so hard and got everything put together just in time to serve dinner at our house. Here are some pics of the place.

We served some yummy ribs and then played some more games. Our families can never get enough of games!

Which leads us to our next Christmas party at the Yorks house, which turned out to be a game night! They had a new game called Balderdash and people were going crazy with funny comments and outlandish answers! It definitely is a game we need to put on our list to buy.

I love the holidays. It is always when I remember how blessed I am and how much I am grateful for. I truly have a blessed life and I hope that I can keep this attitude with me as we go into this new year.

Here are some cute pics that I just recently got and wanted to share :) I am the luckiest aunt in the world!

Dancing With the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Wow what a week!! After practicing for two and a half months we finally got to perform at the Mormon tabernacle choir Christmas concert. The concert went for 4 days straight and resulted in a very tired maddie but it was one of the best experiences and I am so grateful that I was able to be apart of it.
It started with auditions back in December. I had not danced for about 4 years so I was feeling like there was no way possible that I would make it but, Heavenly Father must have known that I needed to do it, because I can not thing of any other way that I made the dance group. And I am so grateful!
Then we started practices being 2 nights a week for 3 hours each and I thought I was going to die! As soon as we learned the dance, carol, the dance choreographer, took pity on us and brought it down to once a week as the concert got closer.
Soon followed December and we found out finally who the guest artist would be. Alfie Boe and Tom Brokaw!! I was so excited even though I didn't know who Alfie Boe was at first :)
And, finally we made it to the week of the concert! I felt so special being able to perform in the huge conference center and be right by the booming voices of the Mormon tabernacle choir. There is just something about being in the same room as them and feeling the amazing spirit that they have.
During the concert performances I was able to meet Alfie Boe in person and get a picture, say hello to president Monson, shake president Uchtdorf's hand, and spot Mitt Romney! It was incredible! I was speechless in a couple of my encounters :)
So anyways, if you went to see it, I was one of the dancers in the aisles. Super fun place to be since we could wave and talk to the people next to us. We got super lucky that Tyler and Linda got seats right by where I was dancing so I got to wave to Tyler and watch him the whole time I was dancing.
Speaking of Tyler, he came to every performance but one and that was because he was feeling sick!! Talk about a supportive husband. I am so lucky.
I also ran into a couple of unexpected friends who were in the performances as well. Cute Adrienne was my buddy throughout the whole thing. And my "sister" holly was in the orchestra!
Seriously, so much fun. I could go on and on about it, but I won't! Here are some pics of the fun event.

Christmas Happenings

This Christmas has been a busy one and I don't even feel we have been doing all the celebratory things we normally do! With Ty having a final coming up and school and me practicing for the Christmas concert we try and fit other fun things in between.
A couple weekends ago we went to the Christkindl market that was at This is the Place park. We got to go to the market with our friends brad and rachelle and their cute baby Avery. We had never heard of it before and were very pleased with how it turned out! Basically the market is a German tradition every Christmas and vendors come and sell all of their christmasy projects. Ty and I bought homemade soap that was the best smelling soap I have ever gotten! We hope they keep the market going for years to come. It was kind of like a Christmas Oktoberfest!
Then this last weekend Ty and I went to the Dickens Festival. We had done this last year and loved it! This year it was a little more mellow and for some reason I was still on the homemade soap kick but I didn't find any! We did meet a cool blacksmith who made us a leaf though!
After the festival we got invited to spend the night with our friends Chase and Laura at a hotel and go hot tubbing. It was a fun little get away for us.
Now we are back into the grind this week. Wish Tyler luck on his final and wish me energy for practices and concerts every night this week til Sunday!