Night at THE ROOF!!

"Food...can look beautiful, taste exquisite, smell wonderful, make people feel good, bring them together, inspire romantic feelings....At its most basic, it is fuel for a hungry machine"
-Rosamond Richardson, English cookery author

Thanks to my fabulous mom, who gave Paul and I gift certificates, we spent the evening dining at a beautiful restaraunt in Salt Lake City called The Roof. It was amazing!!! We had so much fun and the food was absolutely terrific!! My favorites were the chicken cordon bleu, the yummy rolls, and the raspberry salad. Pauls favorites were the honey barbeque pork, the tortellini salad, and the wonderful peach filled crepes. It was so much fun to get dressed up in nice clothes and go and spend a nice evening together!! We were even serenated by an in house piano player, who played romantic music all night. We also had the most incredible view of the temple right outside our window. It was so romantic and I kept thinking the whole night how lucky I was to spend it with the most wonderful and handsome man in the world!! I love you Paul so much!! We ate and ate and ate until we honestly had to be rolled out of the restaraunt.. but boy was it worth it. Hopefully we will be able to make it there soon again!

Fun at the hospital

Ok, so just call me the most anxiety ridden pregnant woman in the world!!! I seriously have been nervous about everything with this pregnancy and I am always scared that something is wrong with my baby! So last week I had not felt my baby kick in about 2 days and of course, this made me panic. I tried everything that the doctor told us to try in order to make him kick (eat tons of sugar, drink orange juice, lie on your side for an hour) but nothing seemed to work! Paul even tried to softly push on my stomach which usually gets him to flinch, but I felt no movement whatsoever. I called my doctor and he said that if I hadn't felt him kick in over a day, I should go to the hospital.. and of course this made me even more distressed. After celebrating our niece Maddy's birthday combined with Paul's family's Christmas party, Paul and I headed to the hospital. The nurse did a stress test on me which measures the baby's heart rate to see what was going on. Thank goodness she found a heartbeat. His heart rate was extremely steady, which she said meant that he was in deep sleep. She gave me a big huge drink of juice which she said should wake him right up.. didn't work. She put a stimulator on my stomach which made a loud noise which was supposed to wake him right up.. the first time.. it didn't work. The second time I barely felt a little kick and his heart rate went slightly up telling us that he woke up. Seriously within a minute.. he was back asleep. The nurse laughed and couldn't believe what a deep sleeping baby he was. Paul and I were very relieved to find out that everything was ok and that he is just a deep sleeper. Hopefully he will continue the deep sleeping after he is born! :-)

DECEMBER FUN!!

So like you all know, I am a horrible blogger, and it seems like I am always playing catch up!! So I am just going to fill you in on some of the fun things that happened in our lives in December.


At the beginning of December, Paul and I, Paul's parents Cheryl and Clyde, and Clyde's sister Lynn and her friend June had the wonderful opportunity of going to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional up at the conference center in Salt Lake. We are so grateful for Paul's parents for getting us tickets. We were privileged to hear from President Monson, President Uchtdorf, and President Eyring. Their talks were incredible and definitely put us in the Christmas spirit and helped us realize the true meaning of Christmas. Afterwards it is always one of my favorite traditions to walk around temple square looking at all of the beautiful Christmas lights. We had such a cozy fun time. There is such a beautiful feeling on the temple grounds, and I love looking at all of the nativity sets from around the world, and being surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of people also walking around the grounds.

So, another fun thing we did in December was going to pick out a Christmas tree with my Mom. My whole life I have always wanted to go up in the mountains or forest somewhere surrounded by beautiful trees and lots and lots of snow and pick out the perfect Christmas tree, chop it down ourselves, and pull it back on a sled to the car. I think that sounds like sooo much fun and sooo cozy.. maybe someday! :-) This year, we went to a Christmas tree lot in American Fork that my family has been buying their Christmas trees from for years. We ended up buying the most beautiful Christmas tree ever and got it for a very good price.

Next comes fun GINGERBREAD HOUSE MAKING!! :) Paul and I had so much fun making gingerbread houses with my little sister Natasha and her friend Anthony, and my little brother Shane. This was honestly the first time I had ever made gingerbread houses in my life!! I feel bad because I didn't take pictures of them fast enough before everyone (I) started eating them!! haha.. but they were super cute and we had a blast!!

And last but not least.. CHRISTMAS!!!!! Christmas is my absolute favorite time of the year. I honestly start the countdown until Christmas in May!! I cannot believe how quickly time flies. Christmas came and went before I knew it. I love Christmas for so many reasons. It is the season of spending time with family and friends and those that we love, remembering the birth of Christ our Savior, reliving old traditions, and giving service to those in need. I love the smell of Christmas treats baking in the oven and the spirit of happiness and peace that seems to fill the air. I JUST LOVE IT!! :-) We had a wonderful Christmas this year. Paul and I spend Christmas Eve with my parents each year. We have a tradition of having a huge Christmas Eve dinner full of all different kinds of foods. Many of the foods are Norwegian (My mom is from Norway) and we all just eat and eat until we pop. My mom always works so incredibly hard for days and days before Christmas Eve making sure that everything will be cozy for this big day. I appreciate my Mom and all that she does for our family in making Christmas such a memorable experience. After dinner, my mom makes a Norwegian dessert call Rickrem! Riskrem or Rice Cream is a wonderful traditional Norwegian dessert, especially served during Christmas time. It's creamy, sweet, smooth, light, fluffy and a little chewy. My Mom hides an almond in the Rickrem, and then dishes it out to everyone. Whoever finds the almond gets a prize, generally a marzipan pig. Because not too many people in our family like marzipan, my Mom usually buys a big bag of chocolate or some other kind of yummy treat. This year my little brother Shane won. After dinner and Rickrem, Paul and I had made a video clip on the birth of Jesus Christ which we all watched and I feel like it really helped us remember what Christmas is all about. After that, out came the loads and loads of Christmas treats that we have been baking for days. Yummy yummy!! And since I am pregnant, I had an excellent excuse to eat as much as I wanted! :-) Another tradition in my family during Christmas time is the incredibly amazing Norwegian Christmas breakfast at my Mom's house. This breakfast is to die for and honestly I seem to look forward to it even a little more than the big Christmas Eve dinner. My parents buy tons and tons of Scandinavian foods including yummy white big sausages called Svensk Korv, and small tiny sausages called Engle Tisser. We also have tons and tons of specialty cheeses such as Edamer, Haverati and Geit, and tons of specialty meats and breads. We also have makrel tomat, sild, Italians salat (my absolute favorite sandwich spread), caviar and deviled eggs. My brother in law Geoff always brings yummy swedish pastry rolls that are to die for and Scandinavian knekke Brod which are like big thick crackers. ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!! I forgot to mention that before breakfast we all opened presents. I got Paul a new keyboard that has back lighting of 3 different colors (purple, red and blue). I also got him a soldering kit, a t-shirt that says "obey gravity.. it's the law", some monkey butt powder (haha.. fun gag gift) and a cordless wiimote. He got me the most beautiful ring in the world. It was a band with tons of little diamonds right in a row. On the outside of it it has the word love spelled with 2 hearts on either side. Absolutely beautiful and it matches my wedding ring perfectly. He did a dang good job. After breakfast we cleaned everything up and headed to Paul's mom and step dad's house up in Centerville to spend the rest of Christmas Day. We were able to catch Paul's sister Cerra there before she left, so it was a lot of fun to see her. We then ate yet another wonderful meal of the absolute bestest chili in the whole entire world. Paul's mom's chili is to die for. I could eat and eat and eat that chili the rest of my life and still be totally satisfied. We also had delicious clam chowder, yummy delicious rolls, and a wonderful vegetable platter that I honestly ate almost the whole thing all by myself. We then pigged out on tons of Christmas cookies, fudge and candy, and ate some delicious cobbler that Paul's mom had prepared. I honestly look like a huge over sized whale but it was all worth it. I bet my little baby boy is pretty happy eating all of this Christmas food!! :-) We ended up sleeping over at Paul's parents house because we basically were snowed in and didn't dare to drive home in the blizzard. We watched Mummy 3 and had tons of fun! The next morning, we were spoiled yet again when Paul's mom made us a delicious breakfast of bacon and eggs, and yummy raisin toast.I LOVE CHRISTMAS and am so sad that it is over already. Next year it is fun to think that we will have a little 10 month year old boy running around.

I am so sorry that this blog ended up being a novel, but thanks for reading. I will try and stay more caught up in the future! Love you all!