My Birthday

I just had my illustrious 34th birthday. One of the fun things about my gene pool is I happen to look a lot younger than I actually am. One of the fun moments I experience constantly is when people find out how old I am. I constantly get looks of shock and surprise. Hilarious! The only thing I have to show for my age are a few gray hairs starting. I wish I had inherited the lack of gray hair from my genes as well!

I had a pretty great day! I did a few household chores, and then read my book for a few hours. This is usually something I would love to do, but don't have a lot of time for during the day. I really enjoyed it. When Tom came home, we hung out for a while and then went to dinner with some friends. I love oriental food and one of my favorites is a good Chinese Buffet. We did find one in Silverdale that we would go to occasionally. A couple of months after moving to Port Orchard we happened to pass one on the street. I've been wanting to try it ever since. This is where we went. And I loved it! We'll definitely return. We had a great dinner and a fun time with friends we haven't see in a while!

Thanks to everyone that gave me birthday wishes and gifts! I appreciate all the loved ones I have in my life! Thanks for the flowers Tom. I love you babe!

Our Utah Visit

Because we brought Jake along for the trip, we had to find a place to stay that was okay with a little puppy. Normally, we would have considered staying with Tom's parents, but his mom is allergic to dogs. It's different when she comes to visit us and can leave at the end of the week. But if we brought Jake into her house for an entire week, she'd have a hard time weeks after we left. We asked my friend Shelli to let us stay at her house. Normally, she doesn't like dogs in the house but luckily she felt like she could trust us enough to allow us to stay at her new house with Jake.

The first things we did when we arrived in Salt Lake City was go and visit Tom's brother Shaun. They were very nice and fixed dinner for us. Jake also loved their train set they had around their Christmas tree. He would watch it go around one side of the tree, not understanding it would soon come up behind him from the other side. There were a couple of times he did some fast backpedaling to get out of the way before the tree bowled him over.

During the week we had, we had some great time with our friends and family. With my girlfriends, we were able to get together for several of the nights. We went out for pizza, went and saw the movie Avatar, and played lots of games. Like usual, I loved spending time with them and I wish we could do it more often. For me, that has been one of the hardest things for me about being in Washington. I really miss being able to spend time with my friends and family. These girls are almost like my family in a lot of respects. We've been friends for more than 20 years now, and have been a part of my life since we met.

We were also able to spend a lot of time with Tom's family. We got together with them for a couple of different nights. Because we were able to come to Utah after Christmas, Tom's family decided to postpone their Christmas celebrations until we could be there. We had a fun night of present sharing & food. Then on New Years day we got together with the immediate and extended family for some family time. We were able to hang out with most of Tom's Mom's family. It was great to see everyone and hang out for a bit.

We loved our trip to Idaho (see below) and Utah! We wish we could got more often ans see everybody on a more regular basis!

Christmas with the Family

This is the second time I'm writing this post. The first one I deleted because I was writing too much information and it became too long. So, here we go again!! Maybe with the important stuff this time.

Tom and I were originally not going to spend Christmas with my family. We were going to spend it at home and drive to Utah for the "Week of Tom". Since we moved to Washington about 1 1/2 years ago, I've been back to Utah 2 times but he hadn't been back any time. The shipyard gives most of their employees the week off between Christmas and New Years. He decided he wanted to go back to Utah for the break.

We were planning on spending Christmas here in Washington and heading to Utah the day after. Instead we ended up changing our plans a little bit, left a little earlier, and stopped in Idaho Falls first to spend Christmas with my family. We were able to get there in time for the Christmas Eve celebration at Alli's house, Ashley's sister-in-law. I think it was the first experience I had with a fancy traditional Christmas Eve dinner. We were also able to have a family picture taken. The pictures turned out great! Tom's still finishing the finalization of the pictures. I'll post some when they're done.For Christmas, everyone bunked at Ashley's house. We had a couple of air mattresses and Blake on the couch. Luckily Ashley had a fair amount of space. It was nice to see everyone again and spend Christmas together. I don't know when we'll have that opportunity again. Christmas day was a lot of fun, but pretty laid back. After the present festivities we were blessed with a delicious breakfast made by my loving sister. I think the grand hit of the day was my Mom's creation for the grandkids. They were miniature houses, made from cloth. To see a picture click here. All the kids absolutely loved it! I am not too proud to admit that I spend the entire day in my pajamas and took 2 naps!The next day (and our last day in Idaho) the entire family went sledding. Everyone had a really great time! The high point for me was probably watching my nephew stand in the door of his parents truck, pull his pants down, and relieve himself. Ahhhhh, the class! It made me laugh! Tate on the other hand was fearless. He had already sled down the big hill with his Dad, but when we tried to get him to sled down the smaller hill he was not into it. He pointed to the steep hill instead. He's his fathers son for sure. Kinsey, true to form, was good for a laugh too. While we were getting all our snow clothes on Kinsey started freaking out. Ashley was trying to get all her clothes on her while Kins was trying to climb out the window of the Landcruiser. Turns out Grandpa was on the 4 wheeler with Austin and Tate and she was terrified she was going to get left behind. She was screeming Grandpa over and over. Don't worry, Grandpa waited for her.

We were able to bring Jake along for the ride too. Luckily he is a good rider in the car, long though the trip may be. He loved hanging out with everyone, but especially Kinsey. They bonded over the weekend. They even went so far as to both sit on the floor and scratch their ears with their feet together! Too cute!

Thanksgiving Weekend......a little late

Thanksgiving was a very exciting time for us. We had a pretty big group staying with us and an even bigger one at Thanksgiving dinner. The excitement started Saturday night when T's parents showed up. We hung out for the rest of the week until his brother and sister-in-law showed up around midnight the night before Thanksgiving!

In preparation for Thanksgiving I made potato rolls (a Higginson family tradition) and a cheesecake recipe we got off the back of a Candy Cane Kiss bag (Candy Cane Kiss Cheesecake). I messed it up a little bit, but it still turned out great! On Thanksgiving day I had the opportunity to cook my first real Turkey (I had only previously made a Turkey Breast...not quite the same). We bought a roaster so we wouldn't have to use the oven for the turkey and would have room to cook everything else. It turned our really good, thanks to the help I received from my mother-in-law!

Later that afternoon T's Aunt, Uncle, and two of his cousins joined us at our new house for our first T & C Kruger family Thanksgiving! Everybody that attended brought or made lots of food! We had more than enough for all of us! Plus plenty for everyone to have for several days to come! I personally ate way too much! I don't know why I do that to myself. I think everyone really enjoyed the food and the company!

Tom's brother also brought his WII along with the country band game. I was happy he brought the country version, because I actually knew the songs. I've played these games before, but I never could sing with them because I didn't know the old rock and roll songs that are on those games. Country however is up my aisle. Everybody had a great time!

My New Table and Jake's Fun with a Wrapping Paper Roll!

As a lot of you already know, I was finally able to purchase a new kitchen table (or I should actually say, my husband purchased one for me with his hard worked overtime hours). I've been wanting a new table for a long time! Like most things involving our furniture choices, it took quite a while for us to come to a mutual decision. Sometimes we have very different tastes in furniture!

Jake loves to play! We discovered we can recycle our old empty Christmas Wrapping Rolls into toys for him. Here are some pictures of him thoroughly enjoying himself.

An Exciting Sunday at Church

We've been in our new house now for almost a 3 months now. This week we were finally read into our new ward! We just never gave them our information until recently. The awkward part about getting read into the ward was that we also gave a talk this week. So not only were we read into the ward, but we got to see everybody staring at us while it happened. Then we got to give our first talks in the ward. I gave mine on "the Ministry of Jesus Christ" and Tom gave his on the "Atonement". I think they went pretty well and through it I think we both learned some things. That's the way it's suppose to work huh?

Also that day we got new callings. Tom is the new 11-year old boy primary teacher and scout master (or something like that). He's very happy with this new calling. He was really hoping for something with scouting. My new calling I am less excited about. It is the activities chairman. I am not the most creative person, so this sounds kind of painful to me. I was on the enrichment board once and did not enjoy it. Luckily in this ward instead of doing a lot of different activities they just do a monthly pot-luck. This aught to be interesting......

Present Wrapping

First of all, you can thank my lovely sister Ashley for the beautiful scenery change on this blog! She's got the creativity gene inherited from my mother. I always look at stuff like this and would love it do it, but never get around to it. Thanks Ash!

Yesterday evening my new ward had our Christmas Enrichment activity! Tom decided while I was gone he would wrap a few of my presents! Lovely job huh
There actually were other packages he had fully wrapped under the tree, but I got a kick out of this one!