The Groovy Rents

On black Friday I let John convince me to let us get an early Christmas present. An Xbox 360 with a Kinect for a super good deal. One of my conditions to buy it was we had to buy the dance game...which we did.

We brought it down to California with us and the first night we played with John's family. Needless to say is parents......were awesome! See for yourself! We had so much fun!

Thrifty taken to a whole new level

Found this gem in the BYU parking lot. Gotta love fix it yourself Mormons.

Thanksgiving

I am determined to get caught up with all of my blogging before Christmas so first I have to blog about Thanksgiving. For thanksgiving my entire family was able to travel and be together in Utah. It was a stretch for everyone to come but everybody made the sacrifices to come. We used the Midway house because it could fit all of us comfortably. It was awesome! Here are some of the pics!

The Nichols Family Grandpa with the Grandkids, he is so adorable with them!

The boys playing video games....seriously I have never seen my husband play so much! And not of course they have to scoot the couch closer to the TV because a 60" TV 6 feet away is too small!

Tyler and Brooke brought Ticket to Ride and Britany fell in love so we played literally multiple times a day.
Since we don't get to spend Christmas together we decided to exchange our Christmas gifts to each other early. Mama got the girls scarfs!
And surprise surprise she bought the boys clothes!
And of course Thanksgiving dinner wouldn't be complete without a roll eating contest! Tyler dropped out at like 2 or 3. Brad and John called a truce at roll 8!

Everything turned out beautifully!

And we had a great turnout! We had somewhere around 40 people that came over for Thanksgiving dinner! It was lots of fun with lots of good food!
Hanging out with my family was amazing! I love them all so much it's hard to say goodbye when everybody has to go home. I just have to remember to be righteous and make it to the celestial Kingdom so I can be with my entire family for forever!

Mid-semester Tour

Okay, a little late but better late than never!

For my dance team we had a Mid-semester tour where we left for TEN days in October and missed 6 school days. Seriously so hard to miss that many days of school especially when I got absolutely NO studying done while we were gone. But luckily this year John is a technician to he got to come with the team and with me to Northern California. I can't tell him how awesome he is for coming and for supporting me. We didn't take very many pictures because literally all we did was drive, set up perform, take down, then try to be pleasant to our host families when all we wanted to do was go to sleep.

But one of the fun things we got to go do was go to the jelly belly factory! Silly and fun and stinking expensive. We are still eating a bag of belly flops (misshaped jelly beans, they're cheaper than the regular shaped ones).

Dance is the hidden language of the soul

It is hard to explain in words to others what dance means to me. Especially to those who don't share my passion. I have been dancing since I was 7 years old. I started ballroom at 14. To try and count the hours practicing and performing since then is simply impossible. But it has been no small investment as far as time, money, mentally or emotionally is concerned. I can't tell you how many tears I've shed, how many injuries I've acquired, and how many glorious memories I've had. I've been broken down and built up time after time. I've lost, I've won but it is more often in losing than in winning that valuable lessons have been taught. I've learned truly be a excellent team member. Being on team you learn to be creative and to work quickly always with a smile on your face because, as we are constantly reminded by our coach, we represent much more than ourselves.

My dancing career is coming to an end soon when compared with all the years I have put in. I will never forget the memories and the lessons learned. This past year I have been dancing with Jared Kelson and for the first time I feel like my hard work is actually paying off. We have competed in a few competitions. The most recent was The Dancesport Championships held here at BYU in November. We competed in four events and we exhausted by the end of it. In Ballroom we placed 2nd in pre-champ Ballroom, and made it to the semi in Amateur. In Smooth we shocked ourselves with how well we did and got 1st in pre-champ and got 3rd in Amateur.

So now to the most exciting part... DRESSES! I got a brand new standard gown that is beautiful and even better than the design I created. I had a lady out of LA make it. Svetlana makes dresses for a lot of professionals and seriously I have never seen her make an ugly dress.

The purple one is mine and the silver one belongs to Jen Gulbransen.

First Annual Girls Weekend

As best friend we of course decided we needed to have a girls weekend. So we went up to Midway, ate foods, watched chick flicks, went out to dinner, and me and Amberlyn sewed while we indluged ourselves in Ashley's dating life because she is the only one who has interesting thing going on. Yes, we are married and boring. It was a blast and we decided to make it a tradition even when we move far away from each other. Once a year we have to have a girls weekend!

Dear Amberlyn and Ashley,

You are my bestest friends here in the land of Provo! I love your smiles and you incessant laughing especially when one of us says something that the other two don't understand yet we both laugh....hard....followed by a wait what? So grateful to have each of you! Love you both!


Amberlyn's pregnant craving get a little out of hand sometimes.