Christmas "Break?"...

We know we haven't "published" in a while, and since it would be very hard to try to give an update of everything we've done in the last month, I'll just begin by naming a few that come to mind:

1. I bought a digital camera for Suzanna for Christmas and had to hide it for two weeks before Christmas came. Speaking of Christmas presents...

2. We bought a Christmas Story and brought Grandma Jessie's old toaster for/to the Holdaway family Christmas party/gift exchange on Thursday, the 20th. We had an awesome time stealing each others' presents and laughing about the crazy things we all brought. That was the same time that...

3. We had a very stressful end-of-semester frenzy. Finals week I had my infamous Statistics final on Monday morning, an Econ final Tuesday morning, the Linear Algebra final Wednesday morning, and I wrapped it up with a 100% on a Doctrine & Covenants final Thursday afternoon. Suzanna had a project, presentation and three finals that week as well. We were both grateful on Friday night when finals were over and...

4. We traveled to North Salt Lake so I could get a haircut. Really we were meeting with one group of Suzanna's friends (the Ecuador group). We met up with Josh and Jade who were visiting for the week from sunny Mesa, Arizona, Kyle and Tess, and Jason and Merryn. We all went to dinner at a great Chinese restaurant, the Mandarin. Suzanna and I stayed over night with Josh and Jade at Josh's grandparents house and played Thurn and Taxis twice. We had a great start to the vacation before...

5. We became the proud parents of six! Christmas day was fun! Suzanna and I had our first Christmas together as a married couple (fourth together as a 'couple')! We went to the Ogden's in the morning for the annual Christmas morning feast (omelet's, bacon, sausage, pancakes, fresh fruit, OJ, etc) brought to you by Dr. Jeff himself. In the afternoon we hung around at the Holdaway's, acquainting ourselves with the Meacham's new dog, Duke (whose name has since changed) and in the evening stuffed our faces again with more of the Holdaway's. The morning after Christmas day was when Jeff and Shauna left for their 25th wedding anniversary trip to Israel! Suzanna and I got to 'house-sit' and make sure her six younger siblings didn't kill each other. On the way back from the airport on December 26th...

6. We stopped at Old Navy and Target in American Fork, which began a whole string of post-Christmas shopping for deals. We bought ourselves pants, shirts and socks and found time to return the things that didn't fit. This all happened before...

7. New Year's Eve when we took the kids up to Embassy Suites in Downtown SLC where we celebrated the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. We played Thurn & Taxis again (this time with Jeffrey and Steven) as well as more of the Wii. What a fun game! We went swimming and had dinner at the Plum, the restaurant downstairs next to the atrium. Now that 2007 had ended...
8. Suzanna and I got to get a day's worth of work done and the office and then head back up to SLC the very next afternoon (the 2nd of January), where we began to celebrate our anniversary. This time we were without the kids because Julianna was recovered enough from her adenoid surgery to make sure the kids didn't kill each other. We ate dinner at the coffee shop and were served by a nice kid named Alexsei from Ukraine. We watched lots of Law & Order, upgraded our room to a really nice suite in the tower (1501) where we had a great view of the city and explored the Gateway for my first time. On our way back from the Gateway, we got off of Trax one stop early to get some pizza from Pier 49. We carried it back to the hotel (with Rootbeer, of course) and watched more Law & Order. It was a wonderful, relaxing way to spend our anniversary. We were sad to leave Friday morning, but...
9. We still found time to get more work done at the office and prepare ourselves for the new sememster which was to start the next Monday. Where had the break gone!?! We did some minor shopping and cleaning (at our apartment) and instead of picking up Jeff and Shauna Saturday afternoon when they were supposed to be back from Israel, we had to wait until 11:30 pm on Sunday night when their plane finally arrived after all sorts of mechanical problems in Tel Aviv. We found our way home after midnight with two tired travelers in the back seat, and...

10. We got up and early on Monday morning, the 7th of January, to be back at school by 8:00 and 9:00 am. We have a Business Marketing class together this semester which should be fun. We bought ONE textbook for that class for $70. It sells for over $100 in the bookstore (we used the book exchange), so we figure we saved a lot of money. Anyway, I'm back in crazy classes with tons of homework, and Suzanna has a wide variety of classes as well. We're happy to be alive and grateful for one wonderful year together so far as a married couple! Suzanna really is so caring and considerate. I love her a lot...