Christmas Day

Christmas Day was really relaxed. My sister and her family were coming over to watch us open presents. So we slept in til 9 or 10. We all got up and showered and ready before we even went downstairs to our Christmas tree. My dad got his U2 tickets and he was so excited. They were wrapped up in a huge box and wrapped around a brick, courtesy of my Sister Lindsay and her husband. I love surprising people.


I'm sad that my moms tickets weren't exactly a surprise but she's really excited for the concert. I got some new sunday skirts. I got a book called Outliers. My sister got me some Ugg boots. and I got some new jeans. I also got some new jewelry. It was great. We got to video chat with my sister Erin in Missouri. We chilled and relaxed all afternoon and then went and saw the new Sherlock Holmes Movie. It was surprisingly clever. I'm a huge fan of Robert Dowey Junior.


My Friend Holly is on her mission in the Dominican Republic. She sent me this cool butterfly as a christmas gift. Her sister tracked me down at my work to deliver it. I'm not sure if its supposed to be an ornament or a hair clip. Its pretty massive.
er;curso

Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve was great. I had to work from 12-3. Then i came home. My sister and her kids came over and we had dinner. We listened to a retelling of the christmas story. We read the book The Christmas Oranges. Then we had a white elephant gift opening. We all pretty much got to pick 2 wrapped mystery presents. Then, we could switch or trade with somebody who had already opened theirs. There were two awesome presents. One was Pride and Prejudice with 2 boxes of candy. The other was Home Alone with 2 boxes of Candy. There were books, a puzzle, chapstick, toy planes, a crystal candle holder, toy soldiers, a make up kit, and a slinky which the kids managed to ruin in less than 10 minutes. There was also some windshield wiper fluid which my dad opened. It was a perfect Ken gift so we can't figure out why he wasn't more excited about it. Then We watched the first part of Home Alone. Its a cute movie. I haven't seen it forever.

Then my dad and my brother and I read the book The Best Christmas Pagaent Ever. I had to make some Michael Buble tickets to wrap up for my mom since we couldn't get our real tickets until the day of the concert. So i printed out the ticket master logo and glued it on the front. The I had one side of the ticket had the date and time of the concert and the other side had a picture of Michael Buble.

Temple Square (Saturday Dec. 19)

So we finally had a get together with my friends from highschool. Sara, Holly, Luke, Wayne, and Jokke who is visiting from Hawaii during the christmas break. Travis was busy, Holly is on her mission, Jura was in France, and Alisha and her husband couldn't make it. We all met at 45th south and rode tracks down town so we didn't have to worry about parking. We walked around and looked at the pretty lights and the nativity sets from different countries. We also went and sat in the tabernacle for a minute and heard the acoustic demonstration with a pin dropping. You can hear it from everywhere in the building.
Then we all headed back to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.. Jokke wondered off by himself. He went to the visitors center while we headed back to the JSMB. He said he knew sisters that were serving there. Anyway, we went to the Nauvoo cafe. We got this yummy turkey pot pie with just about the best crust i've ever tasted. I agree with Luke, it was kind of delightful. We saw the Joseph Smith movie, which of course was great. Then we walked over to gateway and hung out by the hobo fires to keep warm. Luke and Holly and I decided all the street performers were making so much money we should haul our instruments down town and start playing. We'd probably make a ton of mulah.

They Make me Smile

SADLY KARL (AKA KARLO) COULDN'T MAKE IT


So this past week Erin and Bianca came to visit. Well she came 10 days ago (dec 8th) and just left Tuesday). It was so fun being able to see those two. I really miss them a lot. I think i'd die without video chat. I just felt bad Erin came right at the end of school with finals to study for and such. We didn't do anything terribly exciting. We got to hang play with Bianca, We chatted, We introduced my Dad to Glee, and she introduced both of us to Top Gear. Karls Parents live just a block from my parents in Alpine. It was sad. While Erin was here their dog Goliath died and their basement flooded.

While she was here we we had a Christmas Dinner with my two sisters Erin and Lindsay, their families, and my brother Jordan. My sisters kids crack me up, especially Jake. WE have an arcade basketball hoop we like to play each other on. My mom told Jake he better practice because she was going to play him on Christmas Eve. This was his typical Jake response. "um.. .I don't really see that happening". The 9 year old was trash talking his grandma. She told him she hoped he was right because it would be really embarrasing to tell his friends that he had been beaten by his grandma. ha ha

Highlights at work. Some cranky old man came in yelling and ranting to me about something i had no control over and was not my fault at all. He was yelling and mad as can be. He told me to get someone to talk to and he threatened to close all of his acounts at central bank because the merchant processor who runs his credit card transactions was holding onto his money and not getting it into account as fast as he wanted.
We also played a Christmas Carol game at work. We had a ton of anagram, and we had to name the song. For example WWYAMC would be we wish you a merry christmas. I think i spent at least an hour trying to figure out BATJI. (bring a torch Janette Isabella. I'm a geek, i even busted out the dictionary thinking that would help, but i had to cheat and use the internet. =-)


So School is out. Finals are done with and I did fairly decent. Phonetics I got a 97 on our written portion. I don't know how i did on my Aural Rehabilitation but i felt really good about it. My beastly Speech Anatomy lab took me at least 2 hours to finish. I was just glad i didn't fail it. I"m really happy with my 83.

Its finally beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. This past weekend (Dec 12th) My parents and my brother and I got to go to the Tabernacle Choir Concert with Natalie Cole. It was a great Concert.

Bubles-tales in Anxiety

So This has been a great week. Let me retell my my story of Ticket Master.
I never thought buying tickets for Michael Buble would cause so much stress in my life. I forgot that opening day of ticket sales each page of the order process is timed. So I only had a couple of minutes to accept the seats that ticketmaster found for me and to type in personal info (address, name, email)
So after I confirmed my order I came to the page where they tell you how much your order actually is and you have less than two minutes to type in your payment information. Well the order for 3 tickets was $312.00 (These were for my mom's birthday. My dad said he didn't want us to go and have fun without him.) So I was going to to use my credit card but it was super expensive, so i called my dad to tell how much it was, and to see if he thought it was a good idea. (he was the one who told me to get the best tickets, closest to the stage as possible). So my dad was really great and told me to use his credit card. So my two minutes are being used up during this conversation. So he gave me his credit card number. He told me his security code but I don't remember the screen asking for it. So i had to put in his credit card number and his address and billing information. So I barely made the time limit, and I put in my ticket order. Then the screen came back up and said, there is a problem with your order "Please enter your 3 digit security code". I only had 10 seconds and I just guessed the 3 numbers because I couldn't remember what my dad had told me. I seriously almost had a heart attack. i bet i would have cried if I had been thrown back into the virtual line. Gratefully it worked. The stress was worth it. And before I get any snide comments from any of my sisters. I am paying half of the bill. Check it out, we're sitting in section FBB

Roommates

This is the madness that happens around midnight in my apartment! Really.

So Funny I had to put this up

Gypsies

So this past Saturday my dad and I drove up North to the Sandy area to pick up my new car. We bought the car from my dad's friend Willis. Willis and his entire family are real life gypsies. My dad first met them under less than desireable circumstances while he was working for the FBI. The entire family love my dad now. They think both my parents are just wonderful.

But, I learned some things about gypsies. They don't believe in going to school. They don't read or write. My dad was talking to them about family history and writing down geneological information, birthdate and place, about their family (parents grandparents. It was really eye opening. Willis does not even know where he was born. His wife was saying that their family had come by ship to New York. She was sure that they had come from Romania. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know where Romania is or she would realize Romania is not anywhere close to the Atlantic Ocean.

My dad was telling me that for the most part the gypsy people actually originated from India. It makes sense but I had no idea. More modern gypsies have come form all over Europe like Spain, Italy, England etc.

One of Willis's sisters was asking me about living with my parents. I explained that I lived in Provo, in an apartment with roommates. She said, "oh rent is so expensive though. I said "yeah, but not as expensive as school can be". She was shocked and responded "oh, you have to pay to go to school?" That pretty much ended the conversation.

But the entire family, at least the one's i met were really nice. They are funny and just really sweet people.

Ups and Downs

So this past week started off by teaching me a valuable lesson.
I know fully appreciate Wal-Mart's Groceries. They are probably the best priced food around. I decided to try shopping at Maceys which was a bad idea. Everyting was pretty expensive and to top everything off, I went to the store to pick up red grapes, because I love them, and all Maceys had was sub-par green ones. I also for some reason broke my big black belt that I love. I was taking it off and thought I had released the little metal clasp but I hadn't. So I ended up going all Hulk on the belt and ripping it and destroying it.

There was one incident at work that really made my day. Some poor older lady came to my window and wanted to put a stop payment on one her checks that she had written. So I have to ask her specific questions like, when was the check made out? Who was it made out to? How much was the check written for? Every question I asked her was met by a what? Sorry? huh? I'm hard of hearing. So i ended up asking her every single question at least 4 times.

Well the rest of the week was full of good news. We got our Christmas gifts at work. Which was a 75.00 dollar gift card to Provo Mall. I went shopping and spent a lot of it already. I bought a new black Belt at Charlotte Russe, I really like that store. I found a very cute red shirt and some denim trouser cut pants that I can actually wear to work. Who would have thought that would have made me so excited. While I was at the Mall, I swear I saw the same guy I had bought my nail buffering manicure kit from at University Mall. It was kind of unsettling, because I'm not positive but i'm pretty sure he also came into my work to get a notary stamp. I also got my balancing incentive which was a 30.00 visa gift card. And I got my new Credit Card this week also.

We also had our work Christmas party where we exchanged gifts. I was assigned to bring a dessert to the party. I didn't want to buy a full supply of baking powder and baking soda so I decided to go to my parents after work to make some sugar cookies. Well my mom's been out of town, and my dad had run out of milk. So I had to go to the gas station and buy a quart of milk. Then I continued making my dough when i realized my parents didn't have baking powder. I felt very resourceful at this point and grateful that my parents had Cream of Tarter. Did you know you could substitute baking soda and cream of tarter for baking powder. The cookies turned out great. I made cookies in the shapes of starts and i made cream cheese frosting to go on them.

So the party was fun. We all exchanged gifts. I gave kelli cute little red soup bowls, two yummy soup mixes and a new book to read. Gaye gave me some lotion and an Itunes card, which i was so grateful for. I love buying music. I felt bad when i found out she had had my name. I realized earlier that week she had secretly been prying and trying to get gift ideas out of me. She was asking if I had my christmas shopping done, and if I had made my christmas list or if I was going to go buy myself something like a new DVD. and I niavely responded Oh, i don't know If I'd have to go look at the store and see what I could find. So i was essentially zero help to her.

Big news though: My car loan got approved. I borrowed money all on my own, without my parents help. This is the car I'm buying. Its a 2008 PT Cruiser


Plus Erin and Bianca are here visiting this week, and I get to buy Michael Buble tickets on friday.