Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Highlights from Christmas


First and foremost, let it be known that Kellen and Olivia's puppy, Luna, is a scrooge.


We go all out for Christmas at our house. We also had a lot of people over on Christmas, so lots of gifts to go around.

Christmas present to the family: a computer that works!

All the "naughty"s on the naughty or nice paper are circled. Who could this be for? None other than Savannah, aka the naughty one.

Aunt Julie's dog, Riff, modeling his onesie pajamas.

Dad with his 49ers and Giants cups. SO STOKED.

Kellen's bag: the grinch.
Savannah's bag: coal.
My bag: a cute little Christmas tree.
I think we all know who is Aunt Julie's favorite!

I love Christmas for the following reasons:
1. I get to reflect on the birth of our Savior and all that has been given to me through His sacrifice.
2. I get to spend time with family.
3. Everyone tends to be in a much more cheery mood.
4. We get to listen to delightful Christmas songs.
5. I get necessities such as deodorant and shampoo in my stocking, and get way excited about it.
6. The iPhone I got didn't suck either... :)

Christmas is great for so many reasons, but for me, I love to reflect on all the blessings I have received throughout my life. I'm thankful for this holiday season and for the time I've been able to spend with my family over the past two weeks. I want to try to keep the spirit of Christmas alive all year, because it truly is a magical time!

Christmas Eve


The Gunner household has a few Christmas traditions, most of them having to do with food. One tradition we've been doing as long as I can remember is appetizers for dinner on Christmas Eve. This Christmas Eve was even more special because we had quite a large group!
My grandparents were there, along with my sister-in-law, Olivia, and the rest of her family. We enjoyed a variety of appetizers, most of which were fried or in some other way altogether terrible for your health.

The fruit platter may be the exception to the previous statement.


Mini empanadas! My mom got these especially for me because I always talked about how great the ones we would eat in Ecuador were!

Teriyaki meatballs=delicious

Mini quiches! Yum!

Strawberries, crackers and dip, empanadas


Mexican style pasta salad and Chinese chicken salad...so good!

After dinner we enjoyed some delicious Christmas cookies, which I failed to take pictures of, as I was busy scarfing them down. But I will say the powdered sugar-covered snowball cookies never fail to impress!

Another tradition we have at our house is opening one gift on Christmas Eve. In recent years, it has become tradition to more specifically open our sibling gifts the night before Christmas. Since the kids in our family are getting older (and we are all super broke), we now draw names for exchanging gifts. Here are some pictures from the sibling gift exchange:

Kellen got Savannah this super cute dress! I think Olivia probably helped him pick it out...

Olivia knows me too well...Jillian Michaels DVD and workout mat/handweights!


And Austin (aka my mom) got Olivia almost the same thing. Although she needed a thicker mat to be able to work out on the hard floors at her house!

I had Kellen, and I, knowing his love for skinny ties and mustaches, got him both! I didn't take a picture of the ties, but I assure you they are really great. Clearly, the mustaches were a hit, as he came over the next day looking like this:


Saturday, December 24, 2011

Wrappin' Presents

Saw some things on pinterest... Decided to do untraditional wrapping this year. Thanks to Mom for lending me the brown paper and yarn and thanks to my sister, Savannah, for scrapbook paper!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Marriage!

Everyone knows in the Mormon world, there are two wedding seasons: the two weeks surrounding Christmas and the entire month of May. This is probably because BYU lets out for Christmas break and winter semester ends in April, so December and May are the perfect times for weddings. Tonight I went to the first of many wedding receptions this month. My beautiful friend Jocelyn and her lucky man, Beau, were married in the Salt Lake City Temple (the one in my picture from the previous post) and held their reception at The Manor in the Riverwoods here in Provo. It was a beautiful evening.

The book for all the guests to sign. Jocelyn and her mom bought the flowers and did all the arrangements themselves. Aren't they stunning?

I loved this little display for love notes for the bride and groom!


The wedding party's table. They did all the decorating themselves and it looked awesome!

Here is one of the centerpieces that Jocelyn and her mother put together. They seriously looked professional!

I LOVE that they used mirrors for centerpieces too. So creative! Also pictured is the bouquet that Kelsey (a good friend from home and Jocelyn's maid of honor) had.

Jocelyn and Beau (and baby Brix!) cutting the cake. I have to say that this cake was absolutely DELICIOUS! Every tier was a different flavor. I went with the yellow cake and it was way yummy.

All the Mission Viejo 2nd Ward girls reunited! From left to right: Me, Jocelyn, Emily, and Kelsey. I'm the only unmarried one...yikes!

Jocelyn looked absolutely stunning! What a beautiful couple and a beautiful evening.

Special shout out to my good friend Michael: Thanks so much for coming with me!

A Temple and Kickin' Hot Chocolate

This past Saturday, a few friends and I escaped Provo for the day to visit the lights at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. It was a wonderful break from studying for finals. We left in the early afternoon and headed up to The Gateway, an outdoor mall in Salt Lake, where we ate dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.

My roommate, Jessi, and I, the kindred spirits that we are, saw FRIED MAC AND CHEESE on the menu and simply had to order it for an appetizer. I didn't really know what to expect, but this is a picture of it:

Freaking fried cheesy goodness. We got this chipotle chicken something or other pizza with salsa and yummy spicy sauce and Mexican food-like toppings and it was delicious. I was just so excited about the fried mac and cheese that I forgot to take a picture of it.

Ryan Hopkin might be the funniest person to go to a restaurant with. My favorite line of his of the night: "Oooh, bendy straws!"

Ed had to suck down a lot of water after dousing his pizza with habanero sauce. He tried to play it off like it wasn't spicy, but his eyes and nose were watering hehe.

Somebody (I can't remember who) hit their funny bone, so I launched into a lesson about what the funny bone actually is, and Ryan managed to snap a picture. Mostly this is just funny because it looks like I'm scratching Jess's nose.
Sidenote: The "funny bone" is actually not a bone. It's a nerve that runs between the humerus and the ulna in your elbow and when you hit your elbow, it pinches the nerve, causing that terrible sensation someone deemed "the funny bone."

This is the crew in front of the temple. You gotta love it when the person you randomly ask to snap a picture has no idea how to frame it up. Completely missed the temple...

Here is a better shot:

Left to right: Derek, Jessi, Vladi, Ryan, Ed, McCall, me, Nick Jones. Still didn't quite get the top of the temple, but much better than the last picture.

After we left Temple Square, we went to this quaint little chocolate store that Derek had heard about. Supposedly they had BOMB hot chocolate. I sampled the milk hot chocolate (which was to die for) but the real winner was the Aztec. It was milk hot chocolate with cinnamon and cayenne pepper! Basically, it was way good and just tasted like hot chocolate, but you got a nice kick in the back of your throat upon swallowing it. Sounds weird, but trust me, I will be adding cayenne pepper into every cup of hot chocolate I drink from now on.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Why I'm bitter towards the snow


This morning, I decided to go out for a run. Since it was barely snowing as I left (we're talking hardly even noticeable kind of snowing) I figured I would be fine doing my usual 4.5 mile run up to the Provo temple and back.

Here is the problem: Every time I decide to run in the snow, no matter how light it is when I leave, it always decides to start blizzarding on me at my turnaround point. I think the weather finds watching me struggle in the snow quite comical, because, like I said, it always begins to REALLY SNOW when I am at the furthest distance from my apartment. No matter what I do, I will have to run the 2 miles back to my apartment. It's unavoidable. Since I ran 2 miles from my apartment, there are no shortcuts to get back.

This is what it looked like by the time I got back this morning:

I don't even think the picture really does it justice, but take my word for it.

Although this has happened to me countless times over the past two years that I've lived here in Provo, I just haven't seem to catch on yet. Perhaps this will be my last time deciding to run outdoors when there is even the slightest chance of snow, because with my luck, next time I will be even further away from home when it starts to blizzard.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Jessi, don't leave us!!

My dear sweet roommate Jessi has decided to broaden her horizons this coming semester by traveling to Madrid, Spain on a study abroad. We are going to miss her dearly. To celebrate our last Sunday all together as roommates, we had our friend Karissa snap some priceless roomie shots to hang above our mantle (the one that we don't have). We wore red and black to celebrate the holiday season.

These are a few of the winners that will probably make our wall very soon!



In front of our dear apartment, Chandell 897 what up!

Urban tradition (with patio furniture!)

More urban... I love Linds in this one.

Kai, our fifth roommate. Love to have girl talk with this one <3

Love you Jess! Can't wait to have you back with us spring term!
¡Buen viaje!

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Lately

With finals coming up, I've been failing at updating my blog. Since I need to get back to studying, this will be a quick update of what has been going on lately.

For starters, this past week was Nikolaus, a German holiday that Lindsey and I both celebrated in our homes growing up. Nikolaus is celebrated on December 6th. Children put their shoes out by the door on December 5th and St. Nicholas comes during the night and fills them with sweets if the children were good, and with a tree branch (or a switch for the parents to beat them with like my mom always told us growing up) if they were bad.

We forgot to put our shoes out on the 5th, but luckily, Lindsey remembered before she went to bed so she took care of it for us. And guess what...St. Nicholas paid us a visit!

We were all very good this year, so we got treats (except for Lindsey...she got treats AND a lump of coal thanks to Katie).

We also planned a little dessert night get together this week. Since we've had a little less time on our hands than usual this week with finals coming up, Jessi decided that in place of dinner group, we could have dessert night. We invited a few apartments over for treats. I can't take credit for any of it, because I didn't contribute anything really (except I did most of the dishes...back to me being a clean freak I guess).

From top left: lemon bars, white chocolate dipped oreos with peppermint, cream cheese gingerbread bites. Katie also made some pecan pie that is not pictured.

Last night we had the ward closing social. It was an ugly sweater party complete with white elephant gifts and a dance party. I don't have much time to write, but I will say that I got a set of finger paints for the white elephant. I brought a bow and arrow set from the dollar store to contribute, and the guy that got it was way excited about it, as was I with my finger paints. Here is some pictures from the evening:

Vladi in his crop top turtleneck

Kai (in his white elephant denim stretchpants) and Jessi

Nick Jones sandwich!

Family home evening sister pic!

We finished the evening by watching The Holiday, a Christmas classic, and dreaming about Jude Law.

Red Shoe Day


Sometimes when we are getting ready for church, we yell out an item that we are wearing that day to our roommates and say "It's ______ day!"
For example: last Sunday was red shoe day. Jessi happened to be wearing red boots as I was putting on a pair of red shoes myself, so in unison we yelled, "KATIE! RED SHOE DAY!" This required Katie to modify her outfit just a little bit, but luckily she had some red shoes of her own. Lindsey was out of town last week, so she wasn't able to join in on the fun.

Left to right: Katie, me, Jessi.

This week we were going to do this skit for church where we were supposed to introduce our apartment to the ward. We decided that we would all impersonate each other in order to tell everyone a little about ourselves. At first we thought that we should dress like each other, but then we realized that we all dress very similarly. Then we thought that we should talk like each other, but we all have the same phrases and voice inflections (according to several people, Katie's voice and mine are indistinguishable from one another). So we decided we would just have to talk about things that each of us likes. Here's how it went: I was Katie, Katie was Jessi, and Jessi was me. Lindsey was still out of town for this activity. Here's the things we talked about:

Me being Katie: Loves animals more than people, went to Jerusalem, Ed Houstman making fun of her all the time and the face she makes when he does it, she sings like Mariah Carey (for realz, just ask her about it sometime)

Katie being Jessi: sweetest person on the planet, avoids conflict except for in sports where she dominates, going to Spain next semester (wahh :( !) has THE MOST ANNOYING alarm clock in the world and likes to push snooze a billion times before she gets up

Jessi being me: my love for the human body (I'm an anatomy TA), totes uses abbrevs all the time, love for running, kind of a clean freak (not really, but according to my roommates I am)

Anyway, that was off topic a little bit, but I just thought of it since we all wore red shoes. Apparently living with each other for as long as we have can morph you into almost the same person. I'm glad that Katie, Lindsey, and Jessi are so great, because if they are rubbing off on me, then I know I am only improving myself.