New Year's Eve

We celebrated the end of 2012 with a little history in Washington DC during the day.

And a sea food feast surrounded by proper decoration in the evening.

We all managed to stay up till midnight to ring in the new year with lots of noise.

Much to Max's dismay. He didn't seem to share the same level of excitement as we did about the noise.

Happy New Year!

Zoo Lights

Saturday night we bundled up in preparation to see Zoo Lights. I definitely looked my best. 

So did Megan, thanks in part to the awesome "warrior-princess" braid that I gave her. I think that due to this hairstyle alone we could count on Megan beating Katniss if they were in the Hunger Games together.

Zoo Lights turned out to be a most excellent experience. 

Just as expected, we saw lots of lights at the zoo.

And some animals, like these turtles. 

We saw the sloth asleep up in the corner of its cage. 

We saw a panda bear made out of lights.

Emily and I slid down this hill on tubes. Notice the giant lit up cat that was about to leap over us. 

Success!

Emily, Megan, and my Mom chilling with some flamingos.

I literally hung out with some wolves. Oh, and we were basically matching.

The girls with "Santa Paws" as they called him.

Emily's Birthday

This year Emily turned the high 11 on December 5. We celebrated a few weeks late by going to dinner at the American Girl cafe with our dolls Kit, Lindsay, and Molly.

They sat us down at a nice booth where we snapped these three photos:

Shortly after those three photos were taken, disaster struck. The waiter spilled coke all over the table, splashing it onto the three dolls and me. A very concerned manager immediately had the dolls taken to be pampered and dragged me downstairs to replace my wet skirt. Now, the American Girl Doll store does sell human-sized clothes, but not so much adult-sized as child-sized, so I was a little concerned by what this woman was expecting me to wear. She found a jumper in a size 16 that looked like it would fit me and then followed me to the bathroom where I tried it on. It fit reasonably, so she pulled the tag off and said it was mine - a $50 dress for free! Too bad she didn't give me the matching one for my doll too. 

Here I am in the jumper:

I returned to our new table only to find my mom and sisters laughing historically at the thought of me coming back in some historical nightgown or something. We all managed to recover, that is until they brought our dolls back. Emily's doll looked fabulous, they had curled her hair. Mine looked fine, besides a ridiculous ponytail they had added, which I quickly removed. Megan's doll had left with curly hair and come back with straight hair that flipped out dramatically at the ends - definitely not what Megan expected or desired. We laughed until we were crying while my mom brought the doll back downstairs so they could return her hair back to its original curls. 

After that, everything proceeded as expected. We had a delicious meal in the company of our dolls and Emily blew out the candles in her cake.

Happy Birthday Emily!!!!

White Christmas

For Christmas we all got tickets to see White Christmas at the kennedy center. It was an incredible show. I particularly enjoyed that they had the audience sing along to the song White Christmas at the end - so I guess you could say I participated in a musical this week.

Megan and I loved the show!

I managed to sneak this pic of the whole fam - too bad they weren't all looking. But my mom is always ready for a photo.

Thanks for the tickets Mom and Dad!

Christmas

Emily, Megan, and I did the bulk of the tree decorating. I must say it turned out most excellently.

Max seemed a little nervous about a strange man coming into his room through the chimney during the night.

Christmas morning was excellent as always. 

The highlight for me was Matthew opening the gift I gave him - crocs. He talked all summer about wanting a pair, and now he has them. They are ugly, but he loves them.

Another highlight was one of Matthew's gifts from Santa - a leg nightlight. Hilarious.

Breakfast was literally the best thing ever. We had chocolate croissants the size of newborn puppies!

Mark's gifts came in the mail, and I was most excited to open them.

Best thing ever - a sloth necklace!

Too perfect. 

That night we went into the city to see the National Christmas tree. It looked much better than last year's tree. Nice and symmetrical. 

Here's the fam in front of the White House:

It was a merry Christmas, but we did miss Greg and Liss!

Sister-Twins

Sometimes I just need to match my sisters.

And sometimes Max wants to match us too.

He is so regal.

Winter Semester in Review

The end of this last semester was mostly a blur of Russian and Spanish Literature mixed with a research paper on Andy Warhol. Somewhere in the midst of all that learning, I managed to have some fun. 

It snowed a lot in one weekend, but then hardly at all for the rest of my time in Provo. At least Descartes and Eunice got to experience the snow at least once since their creation.

Mark and I also enjoyed the snow. 

This looks like all fun and games, but we are actually at the Andy Warhol exhibit, so there was some learning involved. Luckily, learning about Warhol is partly fun and games. 

Mark and I went to see Sweeney Todd, the play, in Salt Lake City. While we were in watching the play, it snowed like crazy, so this is what it looked like while we walked back to the car:

Rachel, Megan, and I wen to see Breaking Dawn together. We all found it absolutely hilarious. But somehow, we were the only ones laughing through a lot of the movie. 

Mark and I went to see The Killers concert with Matt and Nicole.

It was definitely awesome. 

We had a surprise bridal shower for Megan Lee after her car broke down - hence why the location was moved from The Chocolate and to Iceberg. 

The milkshakes were delicious and it turned out to be way fun.

We made her open her gifts there, and she definitely enjoyed them.

Mark and I wore matching Christmas sweaters. It really startles our Spanish professor as we are in a class together (along with Megan and Courtney, who also matched on the same day).

We had a roommate outing at chick-fil-a, where we happened to see Cyrus from So You Think You Can Dance.

Ugly sweater party. I think there is a clear winner here. 

I received a most excellent pair of socks from my Aunt Leann. Sloths - you just gotta love them.

Mark and I had part of Christmas early so that he could open one of his gifts.

Matching shirts! He looks so thrilled.

Obviously we wore them immediately.

The day before I left for winter break, I went to one of the sister's weddings from my mission. Here are a bunch of us outside the temple after the sealing:

And after at the reception - all of the senior missionaries love to take pictures of us all together.

All in all, it was another successful semester at BYU.