The Holidays (including Halloween ;)

I know everyone has been checking this site daily to see if the big update was up yet... and at long last I give you... Reed and Natali picture extravaganza! We have a few more that I might post that aren't here but I didn't want to wait any longer to post so here we go.

We will start with Halloween. Yes, October 31st 2009. We need to work on our blogging priorities, I know. Well we dressed up twice, once for a little get together with some friends where we were ourselves on vacation for our 30th wedding anniversary. Yes we both put on a few pounds.

Then for Halloween night Natali's sister Jaimee helped us out a little for our costumes. Since Natali and I are opposites, we thought that we would dress up as opposites. And we all know that opposites attract so we were really attractive that night ;) I was Hot/Cold and Natali was Good/Evil.

I didn't know evil could look this good!


Then after Halloween we went on our Honeymoon for Thanksgiving so you can see the previous blog for details about that.

Natali's favorite time of the year is Christmas. She started getting into the Christmas mood right after Halloween. She started playing Christmas music November 1st and she HAD to have a tree. So one day I surprised her with a tree. We actually put colored lights and bulbs on it later but here is our little tree after we set it up.


For date night we also made gingerbread houses. Being the Future Civil Engineer that I am am I planned it all out... and Natali and I went to work.

And here is the final product!

Haha, not really. That was actually a gingerbread house at the Festival of Trees that we went to. They had hundreds of donated trees, gingerbread houses, and everything else you could think of to sell as a fundraiser for the Primary Children's Hospital. It was amazing.


Here is our "Gingerbread house." It is technically a Graham Cracker house but we were porud of it and it is still standing to this day due to my structural analysis of the foundational grahams. Check out the river with the bridge!

Natali had to take pictures at the Holdman's house in Linden, Utah for the Newspaper. This house is amazing. Tons of lights all synchronized to songs. You tune in to the radio and just sit and watch this amazing light show. Check out this video as a sample. It was awesome.

Music Box Dancer 2008 - Holdman Christmas Display from Richard Holdman on Vimeo.

We traveled down to St George this year for Christmas. Natali and I just kinda bummed around for about 10 days. We would wake up late, sit around, watch a movie, eat some of Launa's great cooking, play some games, repeat. It was great. But after about ten days, they got sick of us and we came back to Provo. We did have a lovely Christmas with them and they made us very comfortable. I couldn't ask for better in-laws. For Christmas Eve we all had their traditional Christmas Eve dinner; chicken and dumb little things (dumplings as Natali called them and the name stuck). We then acted out the Christmas story and I got to play a king, a chicken, and a shepherd. Then we went to bed.

My whole life growing up I was probably the first one to wake up to go downstairs to see what Santa Claus had brought me. Even though Natali has 4 younger siblings, the youngest one being 9, I think I was still the first one up. But this year it was fun because instead of waiting to see what Santa Claus got me, I was wondering what Miss Claus had brought me. But more than that, I got to do a little Santa Clausing myself and I surprised Natali with this popcorn machine. It is great. We use it almost every day!

Well there you have it. A little update on us and hopefully the next one not too far away. It takes way too long to catch up.