Thanksgiving

When we got home from California, Willie had a day off and I went back to work for a day, then headed down to St. George for Thanksgiving!  We had such a fun time with everyone that was able to be there (we missed you Marcie and Jamis!).  We definitely miss seeing everyone, and were so excited and happy to spend time with the family!  

For Thanksgiving day we went out to eat at a buffet.  It was delicious!  We enjoyed the nice weather and scoped out the Black Friday deals while we waited to get in.  

  

That night we went Black Friday Shopping (no pictures), and found some great deals!  We stayed out until 4 AM!!  I had not stayed up that late since college!  It was super fun!  But, when I woke up (at 2 pm) the next day, I was so exhausted.  My body is getting old!  I cannot believe it.  I know I'm not that old, but it is a weird feeling to all of the sudden get queasy on roller coasters, have my metabolism slow down, and now I realize I can't handle those really late nights like I used to be able to!  It is crazy.      

The next day, we went on a hike at Zion's National Park.  I had never been there, and loved it!  It was really pretty.  This is us riding in the shuttle up to where we started the hike.

 The girls,

the guys,

and Willie and I.

We celebrated Kelli, Jacob, and my birthdays that had happened recently, and Jamie's real birthday on Sunday!  

We had fun decorating the tree on Sunday :)

We loved spending time with everyone!!

California

It has been a long time since I posted!  Work was really crazy for me the past two months because of holidays, vacation time, and trainings we had.  I had to get the same amount of work in a much less amount of time, and it was really busy!  But, it was nice to be able to have time off, too.

Willie was placed in his permanent position at work, and got his first choice, Financial Projects!  He is enjoying it.  Before he was placed in projects, though, they gave the Finance MAPs a week off for Thanksgiving.  We were so excited!  Since we knew he probably won't have time off again for awhile, we decided to take advantage of it and headed to California for a few days.  We had lots of fun! 

We were so excited to be able to spend time with our friends Megan and Josh.  They were great tour guides! They took us to some of their favorite places, including a restaurant named Lemonade with the most delicious Lemonade ever!    

And Rodeo Drive!  It was decorated for Christmas and was so pretty.

We also went to Venice Beach...sketchy!!  This was our request because I kept reading that it is a fun place to visit, and I thought it would be more like eccentric artsy people but instead it was kind of scary, and we made sure to leave before dark.  It was still fun to see it, though.  We saw lots of "street performers" doing strange dances with bowling pins and other such props.  One thing we thought was cool was Muscle Beach, where Arnold used to work out!

Josh and Megan live by the much nicer Santa Monica Pier.  It was such a cute beach!

We got LA Go passes for a day.  You pay one price, and it gets you your choice of a bunch of different attractions.  We definitely should have taken better advantage of it, but were a bit lazy and slept in.  We were able to ride the rides at the Santa Monica Pier with it, and had fun on the Ferris Wheel and Roller Coaster!

After the pier, we headed to Burbank to go on a tour of WB Studios.  It was super fun!  We got to see a few streets where they film lots of movies and TV shows.

Anyone watch Pretty Little Liars?  I kind of love it.  This is the door to Hollis College where Aria's dad and boyfriend work.

We went in a museum of cars from movies.  This is the Batmobile!  We also got to go in another museum where they had costumes and props from tons of TV shows and movies, including Willie's favorite, Inception!  We weren't allowed to take pictures in that one, though.

The town from Gilmore Girls!!

This is the WB water tower.  The trailers in front are for the actors filming the Hangover 2 (or 3?  I don't know).  Apparently the tours before us saw them walking around.  I was sad we didn't.  I had high hopes of seeing an actor, but it wasn't meant to be.  You can get free tickets to shows, though, so next time we go up that is something we want to do!  We got to go on the set of Two and a Half Men, which we don't watch, but it was still neat to see what a stage for a show looks like, and how they do it.   

One of my favorite things was seeing The Central Perk, from FRIENDS!  It wasn't where they actually filmed, but for the Jay Leno show after the series ended when he interviewed the cast, they set it up in this room, and decided to leave it up for people to see.

We had such a fun getaway!