Decorating for Christmas!

I absolutely LOVE the Christmas season! It is such a joyful time of year! I love the decorations, the holiday spirit, the songs, the christmas lights...it's all so wonderful. Lee and I are so excited to be here in Idaho Falls, preparing for our very first Christmas together.

Our cute little Christmas tree!

And don't forget the best part of the whole season...

the classic Elvis Presley Christmas album!!! :)

First Thanksgiving

This was our first Thanksgiving as Mr. and Mrs. Durtschi! (I just love saying that!) Our friends, the Richins, invited us to go out to dinner with them instead of the traditional Thanksgiving feast. It sounded like a great idea to us considering it was our first Thanksgiving and having to cook all that food and then all the cleanup seemed daunting to me. So out to dinner we went!

Yes, it was at the Chuck-A-Rama! For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a buffet type restaurant. It's like Golden Corral in Spokane. Anyway, we had a great time with them and it was really yummy food.

Then we went back to their house to play some games. We played Scrabble and Dread Pirate and then some Wii.

All in all, it was a lovely day!

We had so much fun with the Richins!

Now, not to worry, Lee's work gives all the employees a turkey for Thanksgiving and since we didn't use ours, we'll be making it for Christmas dinner! Oh boy! :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Golly, I feel like it's been forever since I've posted anything on here! I'm excited because I have a minute to share with you what we've been up to! :)

Lately, it's been doing a lot of this outside:

We just got 6 fresh inches this weekend! I just LOVE the snow...but I don't love driving in it. It's so beautiful when it's softly falling and it's so bright outside!

So, since Lee and I would much rather be inside than outside during the wonderful snowfalls, this is what we do!

Lee introduced me to the game: 1313 Dead End Drive. I know, sounds fun right?! It's kind of like Clue, with a few different twists. I thought it was pretty fun! I love to play games with Lee, even though he beats me most of the time!

And this is what I have been working on:

Stockings! I'm pretty proud of my accomplishment because 1) I actually finished something and 2) I think they turned out pretty darn cute! I am so excited to decorate for Christmas this year. I have been collecting a bunch of Christmas things for the past several years and now I finally get to use them!

I just love the holidays! It's going to be different being away from family this year, but here's to new experiences and traditions of our own!

Lee's Birthday Weekend!

Last Friday was Lee's 23rd birthday! We had been planning a mini vacation to go down to Utah for the last little while and we figured his birthday was a perfect time to go do that! Both of us requested the weekend off so we were able to spend some real quality time together! I LOVED it!!! So here's what went down:

This is what Lee woke up to on the morning of his birthday :)

Gassin' up for the drive! We spent the morning driving down to his grandparents house in Sandy, UT. We were greeted with hugs and a yummy lunch!

After that, we visited the Hogle Zoo. I just love the zoo! This is where Lee wanted to take me after going to the Tautphaus Zoo in Idaho Falls. It was pretty neat!

This dude was huge. Seriously.

That night, Lee's grandma made a delicious dinner for us of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. We played Skip-Bo and visited with Lee's aunt "Teens" and his Uncle Russ. It was so fun just to relax and spend time together!

We spent most of the next day in Salt Lake City. We went to the Salt Lake Temple in the morning - which was absolutely magnificent!!!! But that's a whole other blog post... Anyway, after we got done at the temple we walked around temple square. I hadn't been there in a couple years so it was nice to see everything again.

This was in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Lee was pretty insistent that we get a picture of me in this chair! He's so cute. :)

This is the inside of the tabernacle. This place has some pretty amazing acoustics! There was a sister missionary at the pulpit who was demonstrating how awesome the sound is without a microphone. She dropped pins and a nail and tore paper and we could hear it all as if she was using a microphone. Neat!

Lee got an iphone 4 for his birthday so he's been having so much fun playing with it! Almost all of these pictures were taken with his iphone and they turned out pretty good! I can't wait to get one too!

We had a good time just walking around and seeing the sights. We also went and saw the Joseph Smith movie. I cry every time I see it! It is so powerful and really puts everything into perspective as far as what the saints were put through to bring the gospel where it is today. That's a whole other blog post too. :) So after we got done in Salt Lake City, we went to Chuck-arama to eat with his grandparents. It was so nice to be able to spend the weekend with them and get to know them too! They were so hospitable and we are truly grateful to have had the opportunity to visit them.

That night we drove home and got milkshakes. I made him a chocolate cream pie...but it didn't quite turn out how I wanted it to unfortunately :( But the weekend was wonderful and we had such a great time together! We've gotta do this more often!!!

Traditions

Lee and I spent last evening at our friend's apartment across the yard. They invited us over for dinner and family home evening and we sure had a great time! For family home evening, we talked about traditions. We talked about the ones we grew up with, the ones we wanted to continue in our own families, and new ones we wanted to create. This has been a topic of conversation for Lee and I lately, as the holiday season is coming up. It's so important to me and to us to continue those traditions in our new family. Not only are they usually fun and sometimes silly, but they also helped me feel so much closer to my own family. It felt like we grew closer together because of the things that we did together. For example, my dad is a pretty big gamer...as in he likes to make his own games! So he made this Trick-or-Treat board game that has all these houses on it. Everyone would move their piece through the "neighborhood" and collect candy and do whatever was on the space that was landed on. Anyway, super fun! We would always play that every Halloween while we were answering the door for the real trick-or-treaters! One of Lee's favorite traditions is going to dinner with the whole family after the general priesthood meeting of conference. He also said that after Thanksgiving, all the Christmas decorations go up! I love that because we did that too! The weekend after Thanksgiving, we would go pick out our Christmas tree. That has always been my favorite thing to do because it ushers in the Christmas season.

I love being with family around the holidays! I love the traditions we share and the moments that bring us all closer together. I am so thankful that our families taught us the importance of being together and sharing those special traditions with each other. I, being the home body that I am, am going to miss that this year being so far from all of them, but I am so looking forward to brand new traditions too!

Scrub-a-dub-dub...

Whomever invented washers and dryers is a genius. Seriously. Lee and I were able to purchase a new set a couple weeks ago and they got delivered and installed today! I am absolutely BURSTING with excitement to finally have our own washer and dryer! Oh, it's wonderful!!!

Laundromat runs once a week: $6.00+

Cost per year to trudge to the laundromat: $312+

Having perfectly clean and dry clothes every single time without having to go anywhere: priceless.

Wedding Pictures!

We received our wedding pictures in the mail the other day and I got SO excited! Lee and I were going through them and the whole time I had the biggest smile on my face. They brought back such wonderful memories of our special day! I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

My wonderful, amazing, incredible friends and bridesmaids!

Lee's wonderful family...

...and my wonderful family! We were so thankful that so many people could come and be a part of our beautiful day!

Haha!

Our reception was held at the Corbin Mansion on the south hill of Spokane. Such a beautiful building and perfect for our reception!

The "line."

Having our yummy cake...

and dancing...

The bouquet toss! These girls are hilarious! (Jackie - the one in the center - totally got it!)

The garter toss!

And the day finally came to an end! It was the most wonderful day of my life!!! To be married for time and all eternity to the most perfect man on the planet (for me) :) is more than I could EVER ask for! I am also thankful to all our friends and family for their support and love! I know we couldn't have done any of this without them...we love you all!!! Yay for being married!!!