I'm not really sure where I'm looking, since the camera was directly in front of me...

But this is my Eric.

For some reason we call each other hubby and wifey.

He's leaving on a mission to Knoxville, TN.  It was his farewell today.

I was introduced to his parents as his wife.  

Then other embarrassing things having to do with kitchen utensils were said.  

I blushed.  A LOT.

I'm pretty sure my face was red for a good half hour.

I was also interviewed by his dad.

I make really good first impressions.

But if we were to be hubby and wifey, our kids would sure be cute.

Every year each member of my family gets a new Christmas ornament.  We write our names and the year on them and hang them up.  There are three reasons why we love this.

1.  The early years' ornaments are b-e-a-u-tiful.

2.  Recently Mama Les has taken to buying matching sets.

3.  Mama Les also made the mistake of buying ornaments that we could write on.  She assumed we would write things like Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas.  Movie quotes and Mama Les quotes filled the space so much nicer though.

Once these quote ornaments were part of the tradition, we made sure to always hang them in the front of the tree for all to enjoy.  Each year it evolved a little more.  We started hanging all of the ugly ornaments (but as Ali said, "Are they really ugly, or are the awesome?") in the front next to all of the ones with quotes on them.  This year we took it one more step.  We took all of the matching sets and hung them right next to each other.  Mama Les did not appreciate our decorating skills.  (Next year our plan is even better.)

The story does not stop there though.  There are also these gross fake apples that Mama Les likes to hang on the tree.  The only way they would be acceptable is if we could make an entire apple section and clump them all together.  Anyway, as she left the room one time I hid them under the couch.  Later I found this box that she was trying to keep a secret.  It had the most delightful stuffed ornaments (read:  ugly).  Mama Les told us no.  We told her YES!  I saw that one of the ornaments had my name on it, so that allowed us permission into the box.  We quickly grabbed all that we could.  One of the ornaments was this stuffed snowman that had a lot of resemblance to the Michelin Man.  We laughed so hard we cried (and peed a little).  Mama Les took advantage of our weak moment and stole some of them from us.  RUDE!  While she was hiding those, I took the box of apples that I had planned on returning and hid them even better.  

End of story?  I think not.  We could not leave our Michelin Snowman kidnapped.  So we wrote a ransom note.

Either way, we win.  We either get our ornaments back or there will be no apples on the tree.  Success.

Happy Holidays!

Mine is AGGIE BASKETBALL SEASON!

It's that time again, and I couldn't be more excited.

My cute missionary brother is gone.  

It's a little new, so when I think about it I cry still.

I just love this kid.

He's serving in the Zimbabwe Harare Mission.

He's going to be such an amazing missionary.

Right now he's at the MTC in Johannesburg, South Africa.

If you want to keep up on his adventures visit:

http://eldercecilsafricansafari.blogspot.com/ 

 Working up to the best picture ever.

 Wishing to be these two.

 My arm about falling off on Toy Story.

 Being awesome on Screamin'...

See BELOW...

 Sometimes I am funny.

 Eating lots of these babies.

 Getting scared by dangling spiders at Bug's Life.

 Being idiots and going on Grizzly Peak over and over and over.

And doing that several times.

Playing/winning lots of Farkle while waiting in lines.

And yes, we do play with our dead dog Dasher.

And yes, if he was a person, he would look like that.

 Meeting the three biggest idiots ever in front of us.

Yes, she is fixing her hair in that picture.

 Getting the pleasure of meeting Tracy .

 Seriously almost peeing my pants because of Tracy.

She kept yelling, "GET ME OFF THIS THING!"

And then I kept picturing her beating Chris with her cane and was laughing the entire ride.  I didn't see one thing that time because I was crying.

 Answering 5/5 Disney Trivia Questions to win our fast pass.

Well it seems that I am too popular for my own good.

What else is new?

However, it's going to be private.

So if you want to stay in on the adventure, let me know your email address.  

Either leave me a comment or email me (nicleecec@gmail.com).

Also, I really don't care if I know you or not.  Seriously.  Don't be shy. 

I know it's good for a laugh, and we can all use one every once in a while.    

Went to the Brad Paisley concert with some friends, but that's not the point of this.  

I know I should be embarrassed by these pictures that I'm posting, but after how we got started, I don't think I could be more embarrassed.  

Jake came to pick me up from work and had the pleasure of meeting a few my co-workers first (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!)  Words were exchanged.  I  just covered my face and repeated, "I don't know what to do!"  I don't remember the last time I blushed so much.

After that experience my embarrassment status quo was filled for the day, so the rest of the night was for amateurs.  A big shout out goes to Janae for documenting the grossest night in history.  

I put them in order from decent to REALLY?

(This was our monthly meeting.  We get really stressed if we don't see each other at least once a month.  Preferably at a concert.)

Janae was our mother for the night.

And this is where things really started going downhill...

And I think that sums up the night.
Bless my heart.

He was delightful as always.  However, they kept showing close-ups of his face as he was singing and it was not attractive.  It looked like he had a stroke and one side of his face was all saggy.  But he sounded fantastic and that's all that matters.

And I got to spend time with these girls:

To top it all of though, there was good people watching.

These pictures do not do it justice.  This girl was ca-razy.  During one song she actually cried.  

Here she is just a dancing away.  Notice how everyone around them has cleared away.  I don't blame them.

Then this is where the real fun began. Thanks to the guy we got to see a lot more of her stomach than we wanted to.  Pretty sure that we saw a baby being made. I fell over I was laughing so hard.  

People are great.

It was a good night, John.  Hopefully we can do it again soon.

One time I had plans to hang out with a friend.  He provided me with a few choices of things that we could do, and I made the final decision.

Choice One:  Pay to go to a rodeo

Choice two:  Free concert

I chose free.  Red Jumpsuit Apparatus came.  I only know a few of their songs, but the ones I know I like. Apparently I only know a few of their songs for a reason.  The rest were CRAP.  Way too much scream-o for anyone's good.  It was awful.  I wanted my money back.  They should have paid me to go to their concert.

So I learned my lesson:  All that's free does not glitter.

As GIRLFRIEND would say, "STDs are free and you don't need those."

Long over due...
But here's our last day (oh so sad) in NYC.

We started out the day by wandering up 5th Avenue.
Most of it was all way too fancy pants for me, but I did enjoy this window display at the Diesel store.

Then we went to the 9/11 Museum.
It made the list of the top three things that we did.
It was so interesting.  About three weeks after the towers collapsed the media was not allowed anymore.  But they let one guy go to the site everyday and document the entire thing.  It was just in a little tiny room, but we spent two hours in there and probably could have spent more.  Each artifact was numbered and you could listen to the story behind it.  We each listened to all 100+ stories.
These were a few of my favorites:
This clock was in the first tower that fell and stopped at exactly that time.
This is about all of the glass that was found because of the intense heat.
A calendar found down in the basement.
I wish I remembered the story better, but I know that it made me cry.  The guy on the front right is the father of the man they are carrying out.  The guy on the front left is his son-in-law.
Bah...I can't remember the details.
This was one of my favorite pictures.
He was digging for bodies and had to stop and pray to have the strength to go on.

There was also a piece of one of the planes that flew into the towers, but we were asked not to take pictures of that.  It was very intriguing.

Then it was time to go home.
On our way back to our hotel to get our luggage we played a good game of 1or2 with these guys...

 We actually knew which airport we were flying out of.  Good for us.  Getting to the airport was far less exciting that getting to our hotel on the first day.  It wasn't rush hour and we actually knew where we were going.  Good thing we got to the airport three hours before our flight, because JFK was the biggest joke of an airport.  The lines were all criss-crossing each other and there were no signs anyway.  It was ridiculous.  We finally got through check-in and security with about fifteen minutes to spare before our flight.  Seriously, whoever designed that airport has issues.

When we got back to Utah, we unloaded all of our purses to look at them again.  It had been a long few hours without them.

So the next time you go to New York - TAKE ME WITH YOU!
I loved loved loved every minute.

All Janae wanted to do for her birthday was stay at our hotel and read our scriptures and the Ensign.  We compromised by going here instead:

We went to Sacrament Meeting at the Manhattan Temple.  We were so intrigued by the people at this ward and spent the whole time trying to figure out who was a visitor and who lived there.  Each week about 80% of the people there are visiting.  

We hit up the Shake Shack again after church.  Oh I miss that place so much.

Then we went to another musical.

It was good and really fun, but I wish we would have gone to see Mamma Mia before we saw Wicked.  Wicked was just so incredible that it overshadowed Mamma Mia a little.  I still loved it though.  At the end, the cast does a little mini-concert that Janae and I rocked out to while everyone else started at us.

When we got out of the musical we were still singing the songs and dancing in the rain through Times Square.

It really wasn't that exciting.  But it got Janae out of the rain.  Her sandals got so slippery when they were wet, and she couldn't walk like a normal person.

We tried to find a flea market that we'd read about in the Garment District.

It was closed when we got there though, but I found this fun window.

So we went back to our hotel and took a little nap instead.  It was wonderful.

Took a nap in New York on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

We wandered up the part of 5th Avenue that was right by our hotel.

Then we finally got our New York Pizza at John's Pizzeria.  It was in an old church and very cool.

There was a gigantic black and white mural of the city on one wall.

And our pizza was everything we could have hoped for.

And yes, we ate the whole thing.