One Million Bazillion Calories of Festiveness!

Well, we're home after two weeks of being in Colorado for the holidays and boy is it cold here in Iowa! At times it is -30 and our apartment is freezing! I thought Rexburg got cold, but this is really burrrrrrr!

We sure did have a PARTAY in Colorado. And by that, I mean that it consisted of eating a lot of food. (Not solely, but I DO love to eat...naturally.) We hit up Yakitori, Smash Burger, Qdoba, Wild Wings, Schlotzskys (twice), etc. etc. etc. Basically it was awesome!!! In between gorging ourselves on the delicacies of America's saturated fat warehouse, we played a lot of board games like scrabble, boggle, Rook (which the Ladies roundhouse kicked the boys on), and a bunch of other fun ones.

One of my favorite things we did one night was make a huge fire in the brick fireplace outside. We roasted a ton of marshmallows which meant a lot of s'mores. I don't think I've ever seen a kid (aka Claire) eat so many burnt marshmallows in one hour. She had those things cranking out of the fire and into her mouth like a shooting rocket.

Christmas eve was awesome! We had our usual almond in the pudding and clam chowder. Bradley got the almond in his pudding this year which meant he won the prize! It was a "Worst Case Scenario" board game, and holy moly is that a crazy game! I now know how to dismantle a caterpillar's head in case I need to eat it on a desert island. Man vs. Wild anyone? The pajama elf also made his usual rounds to our house and dropped off some warm and fuzzy sleeping duds. Anyways, one of the best parts of Christmas eve was that Matt called from Aussie land! He had a lot of good and funny things to say to us! Go Matt!

Christmas morning (drum roll, please) we all woke up at 4:30 in the morning! Yeah, it's a tradition at our house to go through stocking and present goodness in the dark morning hours. And we open presents one by one...youngest to oldest...

My head hurts just thinking about it now, but wow! And yawn!

We had such a nice Christmas! It was fun to see everyone open presents (especially Claire) because she still is in that believing state. I don't know how she's still doing it with all of us older kids around, but Santa still lives at my house people! One of my favorite gifts was the fullsized keyboard my parents got for us. I have really been wanting to play the piano and now both Bradley and I can! Everything thing we got was so nice and fun! Thanks a bunch!

New Years was a blast too. And guess what we did? Eat. The usual wantans and mountains of bubbly and chips and every horribly delicious and heart wrenching thing. Now we are back home after a terribly long drive. Our next task is to get our apartment up to a decent degree so we can ring in 2010 with some energy!

Life or Something Like It!

Everyone! I am SO sorry that I haven't updated this is 1,000 years! I totally could've, I just plain forgot that we had a blog! What! So, let me catch everyone up on a few things...plus a few funny photos that I'm sure the closest friends and family will get a kick out of. (Everyone else will probably just think..."hmmm, weird.")

Anyways, life is awesome and we are gearing up to fly to Idaho for Thanksgiving! We are so blessed to be together! This past month has been great. Some of the Bennion bunch joined us for Halloween. I think Claire was just WAY more excited about that candy than anything else. If you know Claire, you'll understand! ;-) Love her! Also, Sam and Bradley decided to wear disturbing teeth (as you can see). I thought they were totally disgusting, but hey, guys apparently love that stuff?!

But WAY before Thanksgiving, Nathan and Shaleena got married and it was so awesome! It is strange to think that they used to be great friends in high school and now look at them all grown up! Here is a picture of us ladies holding up the groom! Check out the look on his face! He's a happy camper.

Bradley's doing super good in school. Lucky duck. Somedays I wish I had his brain! Hehe! But I count my lucky stars everyday that I was able to earn my degree in something that I am absolutely passionate about and will hopefully be able to use! Right now, I am trying to figure out which is the best option right now! But as everyone says, "You've got time." Well, I hope that's true! We love you all! Even you crazies who I haven't seen forever! Take care and remind me to update soon. I'm sure I'll have stories about pie.

Time sure does fly by

Wow! It seems like forever since we have updated our blog! Things are going well for the Stokes family here in Iowa. Bradley is really enjoying medical school and is doing really well so far. He even got a 100% on his first biochemistry test! Way to go Bradley! His favorite part of school so far is dissecting in the cadaver lab which is a little freaky but oh well! ha ha ha!

Meanwhile we have really come to like where we live. We have the best location that we have ever known since we are just 1 mile or so from the free way and 5 minutes of driving from a huge shopping mall with movie theatre, restaurants, and everything you could ever want to do. There are also some really pretty parks that we like to go to and take walks and pictures.

Ellen is also doing very well. She keeps herself busy and takes very good care of Bradley. All in all life is going really great and we are so excited for the big wedding of Nathan and Shaleena coming up in a few weeks! That will be so fun! Ellen took some awesome pictures today and when they are ready we will post them for all to see!

HOLY SMOKES! Happy 4th everyone! We just got finished blackening our fingers on some majorly sweet fireworks! I forgot how freakishly good the smoke smells. Hmm, but we are back now. We got some sundays and chocolate shakes, ate some pieces of our frozen wedding cake, read a ton of books, watched food network, bought a new couch, drove the old GMC truck, partied like rock stars. You know, the usual. Here are some pictures with us dancing with sparklers. You could say it emulates our stunning personalities on a few levels of awesomeness. "Shnike on a bike" as Matt and Sam would say...wish they'd put it on youtube. Love you all and to all a good night.

Well, we've had quite the eventful week! For our anniversary, we went to the Tautphas Park Zoo in Idaho Falls, went to Chili's (duh), and saw Night at the Museum (it was pretty lame, but we ate watermellon patch kids the whole time so it made it better). After that, Bradley made me the best dinner in the world and we drank a lot of bubbly! Andrea and Nathan also had their baby this week. Her name is Madison Lynn and we are finally aunts and uncles!

This week marks our one year anniversary! We have had a really great year, and it has gone by so fast we can't even believe it! It's funny because a lot of people in our student ward are just recently married, and we call them the newly weds! It seems like we are still in that boat, but in Mormon territory, its a different story. We are old timers now! This week is also exciting because Andrea will hopefully have her baby, which means that Bradley and I will finally have a niece! So exciting!

Also, Happy Father's Day to both Papa Stokes and Papa Bennion! We love you guys!

Hey Everybody!

We are still madly in love! We are doing great! I am half way through my last semester as an undergrad and Bradley is working here and there! We move soon, so we've been on the look out for random, fun furnature. Here is a picture of us at Temple Square, and another one of us eating!