a little more from Dwight

pine valley getaway

I may or may not be the happiest girl ever right now! Finals week is over and I survived. My schedule was tough this semester but it feels so good to be done. I am not going to school next semester since I got my associates degree this semester and I have done all my pre-requisite courses for the radiography program. Yay! I have a big break which I am thrilled about. This last week has been a rainy one in St. George which means no work for me! It has seriously been so nice. Alex and I decided we would invite some friends for a little getaway in Pine Valley this weekend and it was so nice to get out of town. We headed up on Saturday, watched the proposal had Papa Murphy's pizza then watched the Jazz game that night! We had Chris and Danica Oviatt, and Taylor and Paige Langston join us up there! We slept over and the next morning we got all ready to go to church but when we got there we saw the sign that said church was an hour earlier. oops. We headed home finished cleaning up the cabin and headed home. The trip was short and sweet but we sure do love going to Pine Valley. There was probably about a foot of snow up there and it was 27 degrees! So cold, but so fun.

NEVER get the 5 meat pizza! It is huge and weird. Just stick with the garlic chicken, its much tastier!

When Alex and I pulled into Pine Valley we headed down our street to the cabin and realized that if we pulled off the street at all that we would get stuck. We ended up tracking down the snow plow guy and I had to convince him to come plow our road for us so we could park!

Gates Family Progressive Dinner

Every Christmas season the Gates clan does a progressive dinner. Except its not really a progressive dinner, its more of a progressive party I guess. We started at my Uncle John and Aunt Michelle's house to eat popcorn and watch home videos of my dad and all his siblings when they were young. In these videos my dad is just a little baby and it is so funny to see all his siblings packing him around, dressing him up in girl clothes, make-up, and gelled hair. SO FUNNY. Seriously I love it. I also love watching the videos of my grandpa and seeing him holding and kissing his kids, i love it so much! Then we headed to my Uncle Tyler and Aunt Mary Dawn's house to sing and play Christmas music on the chimes. We are quite the musicians if i would say so myself. Next we went to Travis and Sue's for the "right family" present pass along. Alex and I were on a team and we won five bucks! We then went to my parents to decorate gingerbread cookies our family is pretty crafty ha! We ended up at my grandma's house for soup and breadsticks. It was such a fun night, we sure look forward to this party every year!

meet dwight

When we woke up December 1st, Alex and I had a little visitor in our apartment! I saw him at about 6:30 and I decided to wake Alex up haha. He wasn't very happy about getting up but I thought it was really funny and I couldn't stop laughing. Our little elf had zip-lined through the door and had made a mess of our laundry. 

The next morning our elf never came. (Probably due to overtired people who really wanted all the sleep they could get due to finals week coming up.) So when we went to bed that night our elf was waiting for us to hop in bed with him.

On the third day of December our little elf got inside the toilet paper roll and rolled his way all around the house and ended up at the foot of the tree. Since it was family night we went to Benja's for dinner and came up with a name for our family elf. We have been really into "the office" lately so we decided to name him Dwight. 

Today we found Dwight sitting on our shelf in the shower with shaving cream all over his face and Alex's razor in hand. Silly elf. 

I know Elf on the Shelf is supposed to be for little kids, but in the book it says that elf on the shelf is a family tradition, so I thought why not start this tradition our first year of being married? We love you Dwight!