Holiday's are da best!

Justin and I LOVE finding reasons to celebrate... we go out to Tucanos (lunch special 12 bucks a person! Thats a deal!) after every semester to celebrate being done with the semester. We like to party after hard tests, by getting ice cream or going to see a movie. And if we don't have a legit reason to celebrate, we'll just make up a random reason! Why you ask? Because celebrating is ALWAYS fun, so why not celebrate things more often?!

Anyways... That is why I LOVE the later part of the year, there are so many legit reasons to celebrate that you don't even have to make up fake holidays! So this post is all about our 3 main holidays that we celebrated in the later part of 2010! Kwanzaa, Hanukah, and Ramadan!

just kidding! we actually celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas! (I was going to write that we celebrate these holidays because we are Christian... but that really only applies to Christmas. I don't know why we celebrate Halloween... I've heard it is a pagan tradition... but I like the idea of people giving away free candy and giving children across the country a sugar high that lasts at least a week. And we celebrate Thanksgiving because we are American and we are grateful that the pilgrims survived that first winter in America!)

Halloween

Anyhoo... sorry I got off on that Tangent! But here is a picture of mine and Justin's pumpkins that we carved this year for Halloween! If anyone knows Justin they will know that he carved the Darth Vader! I think his looks awesome! It totally looks like Vader and it looked amazing when it was all lit up!

Mine on the other hand is kinda struggling and lame! Haha I tried to carve a pirate... and I thought I did a good job till I took off the pattern I used to carve it and noticed it was lop sided and looked more like a dead cow skull... seriously though! Oh well! Note to self... let justin carve next year! haha

Thanksgiving!!

The next holiday was Thanksgiving which we celebrated in Vegas! On thanksgiving day we celebrated by playing Football and Ultimate Frisbee with my Uncle Dave's family. Funny story, Justin and Nate really wanted to play football and Dave's family really wanted to play ultimate frisbee and we got dominated in Football, but did real good in ultimate! Anyways, the Doug Robison family needs to work on their football skills and maybe we'll do better in a couple years! haha

Here is Justin and Nate looking all manly and intimidating before the games

Christmas!

This year we celebrated with Justin's family in California! We had an amazing time! It was so fun to visit and play games with Justin's family and I have to brag because Adam and I beat Justin and Jerry in Rook, which both Justin and Jerry said was "Impossible"! Yes that victory was definitely a highlight of the week and brought Adam and I much closer together he now says I'm his favorite sister in law (which is not hard because I'm his only sister in law... but I'll take it while I can!)!

So one of my favorite christmas traditions is to make a gingerbread house! My mom always makes them and I would always help her but since this was my first Christmas away from my family It was also my first solo gingerbread house without my momma! It was way fun and I had a lot of help from Justin, Adam and Momma Martin! Anyways it looks a lot like my families house that they made in Vegas... but I have great plans for my next solo gingerbread house! And I think it will become a fun competition with my mom and sisters in the future!

This is a pic of Justin and i with our Christmas PJ's! They are very comfy!

Anyways! All-in-all we had an amazing time in California during Christmas, in Vegas for Thanksgiving, and in Provo where friends and family help us celebrate all those other random holidays!

I LOVE FENG SHOOOO (in the words of Justin mimicking Kung Fu Panda)

This semester i took a History and Philosophy of Biology class at BYU... it was an interesting class to say the least, but looking back now, I think I enjoyed it... I'm sure I'll have fonder memories the farther in the past it gets! anyways! A big topic we covered was the differences between Science, and Pseudoscience. And to learn/proove our knowledge in this area our professors had us pick an iffy idea that people swear is science and then check it out to see if its a bunch of hooey or not. So my group chose feng shui! It was such a fun topic to study and I learned alot about it, but you guys probably don't care and/or want to be bored to death by me telling you ALL about an old Chinese custom... so instead I'll just say this... for the project I feng shui'd (feng shooeyed?) our bedroom and I think it looks a TON better!

BEFORE

AFTER

(Thanks to Kayla for Lending me the wall art!)

I wish I could show a virtual tour or something cause there are other things too that make it look good... and the light in that last picture isn't great but you get the idea!!

Oh, and if you are wondering my group decided that feng shui is definitely a pseudo science... for real!

Also..

I just posted 3 posts in one month... now make it 4!

That is a BIG deal!

That is all...

Happy Birthday to Justin! .

¡feliz cumpleaños! (spanish)

Boldog Szuletesnapot! (hungarian)

Happy Birthday! (english)

Justin recently turned the BIG 24!

This year is going to be an awesome year for Justin for a few reasons! First, he is graduating from BYU! Which is an amazing feat, seeing as how he has lived through both O-Chem's other crazy science classes! Second, he won't be 23 anymore... which for some reason he claims is the worst age ever (I think he just says that to scare me because I am going to be 23 in January). And third, he is one year away from getting cheaper car insurance!! Hurray!!

To celebrate we had parties all weekend long!

On Friday Jenae and her girls came over to watch the Heat game, and then our friends the Neff's and Kayla and Trent came over for some cheesecake and BANG!

Here are Justin & Rachel chilling on the Love Sac

And here is Ashlin who decided that everything tastes better with popcorn on it! Including cheesecake and water! :)

It was a fun night! Thanks to everyone for coming to help us celebrate!

That Sunday we went over to Brett and Jenae's to celebrate his birthday with them and Alyssa and her kids! Kate was so cute, she really wanted to have cake with Uncle Justin, so Alyssa made this amazing pumpkin cheesecake (by the way, cheesecake is Justin's favorite which is why we had so much of it over the weekend! haha)

Then we all celebrated by dancing to one of our favorite Youtube video's! We danced to this video last year on Justin's birthday, and of course we had to carry on the tradition! I didn't video our dancing but I thought I'd share the youtube video with everyone, it makes for a great DP (dance party)

Ode to Doc Holliday: my favorite outlaw relative!

On the way to Colorado Springs we were driving through this tiny town and I saw this sign for Doc Holliday's grave site... now to a normal person this would not have been a big deal, but I am distantly related to Doc Holliday, so of course we had to stop to check it out!

Doc Holliday was a famous gambler and gunfighter in the old American West! He was also a doctor, hence the "Doc" part. I have always been very proud of this relative even though we are very very distantly related... but hey, not everyone can say that they have a famous gambler and gunfighter of the American West in their family tree! :)

Here is me taking a picture next to his face on the sign!

Can you see the family resemblance?

Pikes Peak and Beyond!

So a couple months ago Justin and I took a road trip out to Colorado Springs to visit one of Justin's friends Kyle, and I am just now getting around to blogging about it! Colorado Springs is GORGEOUS! I would totally live there one day... it's a big city but it has a small town feeling, loved it!

While we were there we did a really hard hike called The Incline or as Kyle called it "natures stair-master". The trail is a mile straight up the mountain. A train or something used to go up the same path because there are just old wooden rail road railings all the way to the top! It was so hard, but definitely worth it for the view!

Here's are some pre-hike pictures...

Justin and Kyle

I took some pictures throughout the hike, and at the top, but they didn't really turn out... too bad!

The next day we helped Kyle propose to his girlfriend Keri Lyn. So we drove to the tope of Pike's Peak which is the highest peak in Colorado, or America, or something like that! haha

It was an amazing view from the top, and the park rangers had to check the temperature of our brakes on the way down to make sure they didn't give out on us... I guess it's a really steep drive and brakes are a common issue!

Oh ya I almost forgot, we set up a blanket with flowers on it for Kyle and Keri to have a picnic on and then he proposed to her, and she said YES! so happy!

Also at the top of Pike's Peak there was this funny mountain man statue that I thought was cool... so here's a picture!

I wanted Justin to pose like him, but he didn't feel good... so instead just look at this mountain man and pretend that Justin is posing next to him

... I'm sure it would have been a really funny picture!

Kid's Say the Darndest Things!

Justin and I are primary teachers in our ward and we LOVE it! Kids just say the darndest things sometimes! So I thought I'd take the time to write down some of the hilarious things we've heard in the past 6 months.

1. The primary kids sang a song in sacrament meeting for mothers day, and they sounded really good! Later in primary the primary president Sister Smith said "Wow! You guys did such a great job singing today! You sounded really good!" and this little kid whos probably 5 years old yelled out "That's cause I wasn't up there!" haha sad thing is it was probably true cause this particular kid likes to sing random words at the top of his lungs during songs which makes the other kids laugh but drives poor sister smith crazy!

2. Justin and I specifically teach the 8 9 and 10 year olds which is awesome cause we actually get to talk about spiritual things sometimes when they are calm enough! But one day in class justin was teaching and I was sitting in between the girls to keep them from talking too much. I thought this one girl had been paying attention the whole time but then she turned, looked straight at me, and exclaimed "I've never had a piece of pie! Isn't that weird?!" then she turned around and didn't say another word for the rest of the class... yes it was weird...

3. A couple months ago I was incharge of the lesson on David and Bethsheba. This was a hard lesson to teach cause for the previous three lessons we had taught the kids about how David was this awesome Stud of a guy! they loved him in David and Goliath, and now I had to explain to them that he messed up, BIG TIME!
So I'm reading the lesson manuel and it says "don't explain the fullness of David's sin" and I thought well how can I do that? So i decided to just wing it and let the chips fall where they may.
During class I start to explain that David sinned and the kids ask "What did he do?" So I tell them that there was this beautiful lady named Bathsheba and that David liked her alot. But then I told that both David and Bathsheba were married. And right after I said that this boy in the back yells out "Oh! so he Cheated!!! And after he said that all the other kids go "Oh, he cheated! Oh I see!" Justin and I looked at eachother and didn't know wether to laugh or be sad that all these kids understood the concept of cheating... I still don't know!

4. Last story! We were singing a song during singing time last week and the chorister said "we'll sing it without any help (in reference to posters she puts up with words on them) and if you can make it all the way through we won't have to redue it. But if you forget the words to any of the verses we'll have to sing it again with help." Of course all the kids are excited to prove their singing and memory skills, because using the words is just so "uncool"! So we start singing and in the end she makes us sing the second and third verses over again. One of the boys asked her why we had to sing them again and she said "Because you guys were struggling with these verses." the kid then yells back "We weren't struggling, Brother Martin was struggling!" haha he totally called Justin out! I laughed so hard!
Justin and I struggle through the songs sometimes, but we are working on it.

If you're looking for a good time in a couple Sundays we're having our primary program which will feature Justin basically singing a solo (a song with the one senior primary boy and all 3 of the male teachers). And me doing sign language while singing a song with my 5 activity day's girls... it's gonna be a seriously hilarious sacrament meeting!

Anyways, these were just a few of the funny things that happen in our primary! The kids are so fun, and we love working with them!