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.