Jingle Bells! Jingle Bells!

JINGLE ALLLLL THE WAAAAY!!!!

I love Christmas. It's the most wonderful time of the year!!!

So we've been a celebratin! (I say that like I still live in Texas...)

We're watching Elf now and I just finished munching on some gifted fudge mmmmm...

Steve is in the middle of the 2nd quarter of his 1st year of optometry school. He's enjoying actually being interested in the material he's studying, but the classes did become a tinsy-but harder this quarter. So we're friends every now and then, but not all the time. I'm still working...duh...things are better. I start in the ICU next month after we get back from Utah. 

Today I accompanied Steve and 6 other guys in the ward to a pretty medly of Away In A Manger...it sounded really good and Steve and I both really enjoyed playing paino/singing again.

My heart is really aching for some biking, some climbing, some camping, SOMETHING!!! The beach was entertaining enough for me the past few months, but it's been raining and been FREEZING (HA! Like 50s-60s) so Steve and I are both itching for some action.

This week:

Student Spouse Association (basically all the marrieds at Steve's school which consists of, um, our ward members and TWO non-LDS couples) had an ugly sweater party. YES! Love it.  And oh yeah, those are prize-winning thrift-store finds baby! (OK, the 5 of us that dressed up all won.)

 Please, indulge yourself and enlarge the picture to digest the awesomeness of our sweaters.

We also had a work party for the nurses and respiratory therapists put on by some of our doctors (the two guys on the right were two of them), we're on the very end! 

There were two other tables of all of us who went sitting behind our table.

Needless to say, it was interesting to go to a work party where people were actually drunk and 

kinda obnoxious. Highly entertaining.

So apparently Balboa Island in Newport Beach does this amazing boat light parade...my cousins Ann-Marie and Elizabeth and their cute husbands and Steve and I went to eat at Cheesecake Factory then hit up the show! The multi-million dollar homes on Balboa Island surrounding the water were all decorated cute (that lit-up ring above that house twirled around and around!), and the yachts and boats that were lit up were pretty amazing too.

My favorite boat

Disneyland was calling our name. We went for the holiday fireworks show where they had SNOW after it was over (OK it was cold bubbles, but it was pretty realistic).

Cinderella's castle was lit up and looked beautiful! My mom says that when I was younger, Cinderella was my favorite and I wanted to read the book over and over and over again. So we got a picture :)

I love the Christmas lights and activities and music and smell and shopping and gift-wrapping and movies and treats-exchange and our Christmas tree and stockings and nativity and cards from friends and family...so excited to get to Utah next week to see MORE friends and family (of course sad that we're not headed to Texas to see my family/friends there...next year guys!)