Christmas Eve 2009

Amy Jo, Amberlee, and Autumn at the Lawrence’s

 

Momma Kaye and Lila

Autumn hiding out under the Lawrence’s tree.

My Grandma had so many fun appetizers and desserts at her house for Christmas eve.

My brother Riley came home from the Army for Christmas. He gave this sword to the whole family to hang in my grandparent’s house. It is the kind of sword that our anscestors would have used and Riley had it special made. It has the handle with symbols of our name: Andreasen. There is also a family crest embroidered with gold that hangs from the sword. My grandpa was so excited. It was a neat present for the whole family.

My side of the family has a family tradition: Every year on Christmas Eve everyone eats a little cup of pudding. One cup has an almond hidden inside it. Whoever gets the almond is dubbed the king or queen of Christmas. On Christmas day they get special treatment and don’t have to do the dishes or clean up wrapping paper or cook and so on.

Benjamin’s reaction when he found the almond in his pudding.

After appetizers at the Lawrence’s and treats at my grandparent’s we had a fancy dinner at the Romney’s. It was such a fun night. Thanks everyone!!!

Condo 2009

Every year before Christmas my parents rent a suite at a condo just out side of Driggs. It is a lot of fun every year. My brother Riley got to come home for Christmas from his army base in North Carolina.

My little brother and sister are being silly with the sparkling cider.

Emily and Benjamin playing the game cube.

Benjamin took Emily and Joseph on a hike through the woods around the condo.

O Christmas Tree

This is our little "Charlie Brown" tree. We don't have room for a normal tree, so we took the top off of our fake tree and set it up on our end table. It works.

Spaz!!!

We had so much fun playing SPAZ at Thanksgiving Time. This movie is of Kylie and her sister Codi battling it out for the win. Don't they look like Spaz's?

Pioneer Song Pictures!

I had so much fun playing the part of Sonya in the BYU-I production of Pioneer Song. This is a picture of four of us being silly and acting like our characters. Can you tell that my character is sick and abused? Poor Sonya. Every night while everyone got their stage make up on and their hair done up all pretty, I got to make bags under my eyes and mess up my hair.

This is me and little Sam. He was made such a cute little dead pioneer child.

Isn't the set beautiful? The mountains in the back grew as the pioneers got closer to Oregon.

Crescent Creations

Everyone check out my food blog. I am doing a fun experiment through Pillsbury and myblogspark.com. I just have to recreate one of the three recipes listed on my food blog and post about how it turned out. In turn for the publicity they are getting, they send me free dough and a free holiday serving platter so that I can make and serve the recipe. Here is the good part:  they will also send free dough and a platter to one of my food blog readers. I wont be having the giveaway until I make the recipe, but when I do all you will have to do is comment on the post with the new recipe for a chance to get the giveaway. In the meantime, go vote on which recipe you think would be the best on my food blog: www.ediblexperiments.blogspot.com

The Colors of Paradise

Last Sunday I went on a walk with my little sister in my backyard at my parents house. We took these pretty pictures of the willows while the sun was setting.

Original Thai

Gillian Grant is visiting America again. Benjamin introduced her into the gospel on his mission to Wales. She took us out to Original Thai (main street in Rexburg). It was such a fun time! We got satay chicken appetizers and Benjamin got half of a crispy duck. It tasted sooooooo good!!! I got a pineapple duck curry. We love Thai food! I highly recommend Original Thai. Thanks Gilly!

Crispy Duck
(I know it might sound strange, but it was soooo yummy!)

Pioneer Song

This is the journey I will be making this semester. From the east to Willamette Valley, Oregon.
Well, not really, but I am so excited to be in a play this semester about a group of pioneers who travel the Oregon Trail. It is an original musical written by BYU-I's very own Omar Hansen. The show opens on November 17th. I am feeling very healthy this semester and it feels so great to be on the stage again.

Projects

We have had so many projects going on to get ready for the new semester that starts in two days. To name a few:

New Monitor and Desk
For Benjamin's birthday we got a new computer screen. We love it! We hardly ever watch TV and our DVD player is broken so we decided to just watch DVDs on our computer. We bought this desk at DI and painted it black. It is nice to have our bulky old bubble screen and TV out of our tiny apartment.

New Window
To continue the previous story...we put the old TV in the van to take it to DI. We set it on the middle seat. Before we made it to DI we made a sharp left turn and the TV crashed through the window on the sliding door of our minivan. There was glass all over the street and in our car. It was a mess. The cheapest quote we found was for $500. Luckily there was a matching window for $60 at a scrap yard and Benjamin and our friend Scott Peterson figured out how to install it. They did such a good job and it saved us a lot of money!

Colonoscopy
I got my third colonoscopy last Thursday. The procedure went very well. It was the best one so far! What the doctor saw: A healthy small intestine (yay), no signs of fistulas (yay), a very inflammed colon,
What this means: Chrons is very unlikely, I don't have colon cancer, I don't have bacteria overgrowth, and I do have severe pan-ulcerative colitis (effecting the entire large intestine).
We are still waiting on the results of the biopsies. The results were nothing less than expected, but nothing scary either. I am feeling a lot healthier lately and I am hoping that remission is just around the corner.

Deep Cleaning
Benjamin and I have been so busy since we moved in here last January and we never got the chance to really organize everything and clean things really well. It looks like a bomb went off in here, but we are making progress. Speaking of which, I need to get off the computer and back to work :) Only two days until school starts! yikes!

Snow Bird

Benjamin and I got to go to Snowbird again this year. His parents reserved it for a week for their anniversary, but they stayed in California longer so we went for the first few days of their reservation. Thanks so much Kaye and Ben! We also got to eat at a really cool Brazilian grill called Tucanos, visit grandpops Romney and the Whiting bunch, and celebrate Benjamin's 23rd birthday. He got a new computer monitor. It is so nice. We fixed up a D.I. desk and got ride of our huge, broken, bubble TV. Now we use the computer to watch movies.
Happy Birthday Benjamin!

A week of leave.

My brother Riley got to come home for a week after he graduated from Airborne. It was so great to have him home for a while.We had fun going to lunch, playing lazer tag, watching movies, and just hanging out. He is in the 3rd brigade of the 82nd Airborne division. He will be in North Carolina for a while. The rest of his brigade is in Iraq right now, but they are almost done, so Riley wont be deployed for quite a while.

Romney Family Reunion

Benjamin and Isaac

Our nephews Isaac and Miles

Benjamin on the slip n' slide. I love the look on his face!

We had such a fun Romney reunion. My favorite part was the slip and slide and the Romney's next door neighbors. They flooded the play ground that they put in their yard and let us play. Isn't that the coolest?

WE DID IT!

We made it through another semester!

The Fourth of July!!!

Apricot Cheesecake!

Floating the canal with Amberlee and Autumn

Strawberry Shortcake

Fireworks!

My sister Emily and one of her chickens

Autumn and Anthony heading to the canal

We had a blast during our fourth of July break! We went to the parade in the morning, then went to a Barbeque at the Romney home. We had apricot cheesecake and steaks! Then everyone floated the canal (I took pictures). Then we crashed the next barbeque at my Nikki and Eric's (my aunt and uncle). There was red, white, and blue cheesecake! (have you guessed that cheesecake is my favorite?) It started pouring, so we moved inside. Then we went to the Rexburg fireworks with my family and lit off our own at my parents house.

A call from Riley!!!!!!!!

A couple weeks ago, I got to talk on the phone with my little brother Riley!!! He has finished basic training, and he will finish Infantry training at the end of this month. Then he gets a small break for graduation before he starts airborn training. He is at Fort Benning in Georgia in the army. He looks so tough. He got 36 hours leave and he bought minutes on a temporary cell phone. It was so great to talk to him. I love my brother so much!

Another Great Day at BYUI........

I know I know, it has been months since I have posted. I thought I would post an update real of our classes this semester:

Benjamin:
Organic Chemistry II
Physics
Psychology
Advanced Anatomy

Amy Jo:
Use and Abuse of Drugs
Health Behaviors and Theories
New Testament
Exceptional Students 6-12
Geology 101
Geology Lab

We both love our classes for the most part. Mine aren't too hard and I really enjoy them. Benjamin's are very hard and time consuming, but he is learning a lot. We both have 2 semesters left after the current one. I have to finish my student teaching and Benjamin is aslo going to try to fit in a research internship. Anyway, we spend most of our time at school and apologize if we have been flakey or anti-social. Anyway, I'll get some pictures posted shortly.

Heartless

Well another season of American Idol came and went. I thought I would post a performance by the winner (jk/ its just my 13 year old brother Joseph trying to immitate the winner. He is a spaz).

Shadows Over Camelot

The game.

This is a picture of everyone pouting becuase I won as the traitor night. Usually the players work together to win the game as the nights of the round table. This time I drew the traitor card. I had to secretly help the dark nights progress. I accused anthony of being the traitor to throw everyone off, I pretended to play high cards when I actually had low cards, I purposley lost the quests, and I had to act innocent the whole time. I was so scared the whole time. I hated lying and I was so nervous that they would see right through me. It was a blast!

Little Emme Judd

Kylie and Gracee

Amy Jo and Gracee Judd

Benjamin's cousins Ruffin and Liz Judd invited us over for family night during spring break. We had cookies and milk and played a fun game called Shadows over Camelot. I was the traitor and I won the whole game as the traitor knight.

Thanks Ruff and Liz! We had so much fun!