A Christmas Visit Home

This may be a bit late, but better late than never, eh?

Hal and I are so tricky. In his new hire paperwork for his new job, it said new hires aren't allowed to take time off for Christmas their first year, so we told everyone we wouldn't be coming home for the holidays. Only to find out after he started hi job, that his specific office would be closed from Christmas to New Years and we was welcome to take additional time off.

Hollah.

Oh, except he kept telling out families we weren't coming when they kept forgetting, and we bought our tickets in secret.

Cause we're awesome like that.

I wish I had recorded some of the reactions from my family. Hal's family knew we were coming by the time we made it there, but we were able to keep up the surprise with my family, and it was awesome. I highly recommend it, if you ever get the chance.

We had such a blast at home. It literally flew by. It's hard to live away and only come home once or twice a year because then you have to split up your time and try to see everyone, and give everyone equal amounts of time. That was not favorite. But it was still worth it.

It snowed overnight on Christmas Eve. Perfect to wake up to a white Christmas. It was the perfect gift. Well, except for Christ being born. That's the real perfect gift. This was second perfect.

 We got to spend so much time with family and nieces and nephews which is always a favorite. Taking selfies with kids is the best.

 My sister brought wee babe Lillian home with her and my dad gave her a baby blessing while we were there. We were so lucky that the baby blessing overlapped with our time there. The one downfall to surprising your family, no one thinks to tell you about events like that.

We were so lucky that our friends Meagan and Charles actually wanted to pick us up and take us to the airport. Especially because both flights were late at night. It snowed all day the day we left, and we kept hoping our flight would get canceled. Then we remembered Salt Lake actually knows how to live with snow, so our flight wasn't canceled. I forgot to take a single picture in the snow, so we attempted one at the airport as it was still snowing. You might not be able to see the snow, but the picture turned out pretty good anyway.

 It was so good to go home for a visit and see as many people as we could while we were there, and to bask in the snow and the beauty that is the Salt Lake area, and the wonderful mountains that we really miss; but it was so good to go home; and to realize we really have finally established our lives out here. I think our kitties were happy to see us too.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas From Sam & Hal

Tuk Tuk and Pepe also want to wish you a merry whatever you're celebrating at this time of the year, and hope that you get to spend time with your loved ones appreciating the spirit of this season.

Christmas Gift Ideas For Him

Buying presents for boys can be hard. They like practical/useful gifts. Like makeup and pretty things are useful? When we first got married I gave Hal lots of sentimental gifts that I spent so much time making. He always put on a nice face, but seeing his reaction when I made him an emergency car kit for Valentines last year, I knew he liked it so much more than a picture book of our first year of marriage. Whatever.

So here's my little hipster guide for Christmas Gifts for the man in your life.

1. Charles Tyrwhitt Dress Shirt

via                         

Randomly one day we received a catalog with a great coupon for a Charles Tyrwhitt shirt. We had never heard of them before, but we checked out their store in DC. Hal is kind of obsessed with his dress shirt from there. His has a herringbone pattern on it, and he just loves the quality of it. Can't go wrong with a really high quality dress shirt. Plus they often have their shirts on sale for $39.

2. Personalized Tie Bar and Cuff links

via

There are a ton of cuff link and tie bar sets on Etsy. You can get ones handstamped with your initials, and even include a little cute secret message on the inside of the tie bar.

3. Multi tools

via

via

There are so many cool multi tools these days, and seriously, what guy doesn't love one of these credit card sized multi tools? These just scream manly. 

4. Birchbox for Men

via

Hal loves his birchbox. He's had it for two years now and has lots of products he loves, from this face lotion, this shaving cream, to anything by Billy Jealousy. Let's be honest ladies, we want a well groomed man, and birchbox for men leads to that. He always gets a full sized product in his. He's gotten ties, socks, bottle openers and all sorts of cool stuff I wish I got in mine. 

5. Beard Stuff

via

What is up with the beard trend lately? I'm pretty sure Hal thinks having a beard is the manliest thing in the world. But when your man works in an office, he needs a well groomed beard, so get your man some soap just for his beard. I also happen to know this shop has a beard balm coming soon.              

                               
6. Horn Comb

Via

Hal was given this comb as a gift, and he has been kind of obsessed with it. It's manly, but pretty, and as an added plus, he will finally stop stealing your brush.                                                                      

Gingerbread Houses

Remember when we were pretending that it's not January so I can still post Christmas stuff? Well, lets keep that up, because this gem is came before Christmas.

My Mother in Law is pretty darn cool. She asked me to invite my old friends over so we decorate gingerbead houses. My two besties from High School drove up and we had a decorating and Christmas Card swapping party.

My decorating parnter:

My house was pretty much doomed from the beginning when I opened the box and most of the peices were already broken. I'm pretty sure at some pouint throughout the night at least everyone there had to help me hold my house together while I added even more frosting or candy to hold up areas of the house. I was determined to make that thing work.

And lo and behold, it did. Take that message kids, deteremination pays off. And so does eating lots of licorice.

And it became indestructable thanks to all of the candy and frosting support. It even survived a dog attack. I pretty much rocked that thing.

We made quite the lovely gingerbread house lane. We made up all sorts of stories of what neighborhoods our houses came from. Mine obviously is from some sort of ski resort, since you know, it was snowed in.

And Hal...well, his came from the other side of the tracks.

Family Christmas Pictures

On Christmas we took an all siblings minus one photo in front of the Christmas tree. You know, it's nice to take pictures when no one is wearing make up and most people haven't even changed out of their Christmas pjs yet.

It always starts out nice, like this:

And then it quickly turns into something like this:

 Or this:

And it finally ends with something like this:

Gosh I love my siblings. It was so fabulous to have all of us sisters together this year. I missed them while I was gone.

Christmas 2012

I almost got way ahead of myself titling this Christmas 2013. I know I'm late posting this, but I'm not that late.

We were both SO excited to be home for the holidays. I had a hard time feeling like it was Christmas time, so I strung lights on the curtains above my bed and just laid in their glow. Christmas lights always do the trick. That, and reading the story of Christ's birth on Christmas Eve with your family in a circle as it begins to snow outside. Perfect moment.

 I love Christmas Eve. I love the excitement that kids have knowing it's almost here. My nephew was so grumpy all night and just kept asking "when can I open one?" He knew he was getting one secret santa present, but even opening the traditional Christmas PJs might have even done the trick. Nothing like ending the night with Hal's family and wrapping presents and watching Christmas movies in anticipation of the morning.

The next morning started bright and early at the in-laws. Hal's brother came into town and it was so great to see their fabulous family. James here didn't waste any time on turns and opened all of his presents before we were even finished passing them out.

 It was a great surprise when we got to Skype with Hal's little brother, who's serving a mission in Latvia. He has less than 3 months left, so we haven't seen him, or heard his voice in almost 2 years. It was reassuring to know he's still full of shenanigans.

We then kicked it into high gear over at my family's house. Nothing says Christmas like a bajillion people, orange rolls, and mountains of wrapping paper.

We were seriously spoiled this Christmas. The kids had to wait one whole turn on the adults opening a present before they got to open all of theirs. It was madness once they started. Of course they wanted to open every single present from every package the moment they opened it. We finally were able to share some of the presents we bought back in China and Vietnam with our families. It's hard to keep presents that good, a secret for so long!

We went to our traditional Christmas move, this year it was Les Mis. It was good, I know people are dying over it, but to me it was just good. The whole theater was literally sniffing at the end of the movie, apparently except for me.

I felt that all too familiar tickle in the back of my throat, so we headed back home to open our gifts to each other and call it an early night.

I made Hal a special book about our time in Peace Corps. It was great to go over the pictures and the stories together and to finally link the pictures and stories for our families to see our experiences. I got spoiled with a total of three pairs of shoes like this and this, this Christmas.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

I hope that you all are able to spend this wonderful time of year with those who matter most to you.

And with that, I'll leave you to your celebrating with this little nugget of goodness.

Wasn't he such a little stinker face?

Christmas Trees

It's Christmas Eve and I'm the only one working on my entire floor. It might be a little boring and lonely, but it gives me time to listen to Christmas music all day long and think about what Christmas means to me.

I have been so excited to be home for the holidays this year. To sing Christmas cheer, and play in the snow, decorate Christmas trees, and spend lots of time laughing with family.

We aren't allowed to have live trees at our apartment complex. BOO! I refused to have a fake tree, so we settled on using a tree we already had as our Christmas tree.

Look at our kitty in this picture. I wish I could have flipped it to video fast enough to catch her attacking one of the dangling ornaments.

Every year we get a new ornament, and this is the one we brought back from Cambodia.

This didn't quite make it feel like Christmas though, so it was nice to help decorate Hal's parents Charly Brown tree.

Merry Christmas Eve to you all!

Christmas Card 2012

Guys, I know, I know I've been a really bad blogger lately. In my defense, I left my camera at my in-laws after we made a gingerbread house neighborhood on Saturday. Until I get that back, I'll share with you our Christmas card.

Haha, ok that's not really our card. We were just sitting in front of the couch watching Gossip Girl last night when all the sudden we felt like someone was watching us over our shoulders, breathing down our necks.

I'll show you our real Christmas card. Have you ever eard of Cardstore.com? Back in October they had a deal where you could get one card free, so I got a card for Hal's birthday. I was super impressed with the card and the wrapping it came with. Then to my luck again, they were giving away 10 Christmas cards for free at the beginning of December, so I jumped on that.

Seriously guys, you should check out this website. You can customize any card, and they'll even mail it to the person for you, for free! I liked my card so much, I bought a few more and had them sent to all of the out of town folks for free.
And now you can laugh at the inside of our card. We had to throw in a little more Cambodian spice in there.

*I was not compensated for this post, I just liked their product enough to post about it.