Time Out For Turkey 2013

 We had an awesome Thanksgiving this year. It was so much fun! We ended up staying here in Utah to spend Thanksgiving with Greg's family. BUT my little sister, Ann Marie, came down from Logan to spend the week with us too! It was so great! I missed her so much, and we had some fun times and good laughs. I am very grateful for the families that I have been blessed with.

 Before Thanksgiving, Greg and I went to the Riverwoods to check out the Christmas lights. It was magical.

 

 

This is a cute little mail box we saw at the Riverwoods. It was right next to where Santa was taking pictures with everyone.

The Monday right before Thanksgiving, Brooke, Greg's cousin, had a baby shower! I picked Wave up and we headed over to Heather's house to celebrate. Brooke is having a baby boy in March, so it was pretty exciting! I ended up winning "Baby Bingo" and right when I won, Lori (Brooke's mom) said, "You know, whoever wins Baby Bingo is the next person to have a baby!" It was pretty funny.

 Thanksgiving was a ton of fun too. We went over to Grandma Sisco's house (Diane's mom) at about noon and helped put up lights on her house while Diane's sister, Grandma Sisco, and some other adults made the food. Then we started playing soccer in the backyard. There were a ton of siblings and cousins over, so the game was pretty big and chaotic, but it was so great. The dads and uncles even got into it! Then it was time for dinner... IT WAS SO GOOD! I think my favorite food was the yams. They were so sugary and delicious. We also had turkey (obviously), mashed potatoes, stuffing, pie, you know, the works. I really appreciate all of the hard work that everyone put into making dinner. It's definitely not an easy task!

Ann Marie, Chris, and Shaun at Grandma Sisco's!

Even the tables looked really nice.

Don't worry, just because I didn't contribute to the meal, I definitely didn't get out of doing the dishes!

 Having fun during the break... Ain't no party like a Martinelli's party.

Since Ann Marie (or Greg and I, for that matter) wouldn't be going home until later in December, we realized that none of us would be able to help put up the Christmas tree at home. So, we decided that we would put ours up at our own apartment while Ann Marie was with us. It was fun!

Glam shot.

I just love these people (even Greg's nose and eye).

Greg and I also even made our own stockings! Pretend there's a fireplace underneath them. That's what we do.

Another glamor shot.

 Sister love.

 More sister love.

Well, this year we did Black Friday. We went with Janet and Martha. It was fun, despite us getting about 4 hours of sleep and waking up at 5am. We actually got some good deals! They took us out to breakfast afterward, which was awesome.

Ann Marie got this really cute jacket at Target. She's adorable.

 

Yeah, 5am just isn't a good time for us.

Fake sleeping in Macy's. She probably could've fallen asleep if she wasn't laughing.

After we were done shopping on Friday, we went up to Park City to spend some time with Greg's family. We went sledding too, which was way fun!

Lance and Diane

Cutie!

Family love.

And more sister love. On a sled.

I think Ann Marie really liked sledding. She hasn't really been sledding very often, so it was an adventure. 

The next day, we went into town in Park City and visited Main Street and saw the ski resorts.

I love my sis.

 I love my husband.

Park City Main Street.

Saturday night, we left Park City and went down to Salt Lake. We dropped Ann Marie off at the Energy Solutions Arena (where the Utah Jazz play) because she was going with a friend to watch the BYU vs. Utah State basketball game (BYU won, booyah). Greg and I got a couple hours for a date! We went to Temple Square to see the pretty lights and walked around City Creek. It was nice.

 

Thanksgiving was great! We really had a ton of fun and we got to do so much! Now we are almost on to Christmas!!! Woo hoo! Happy Thanksgiving!

October Festivities!

October just completely came and went! It flew by! And now we are on to November and Thanksgiving and then being done with school and then CHRISTMAS! Oh my goodness, I am SO excited! That means the holiday season is upon us: hot chocolate, warm blankets, family fun time, Christmas cookies, breaks from school, CHRISTMAS MUSIC, decorations, and so much more. I just love this time of year (except for the FREEZING cold here in Utah, but even that is bearable). While I'm over here being way overly excited about the holiday season, you can take a look at some of the things we have been up to this October!

We got together with Greg's family for his mom's birthday this month. It was fun to be together.

I'm pretty sure I already posted something about Greg's Student Innovator of the Year competition at BYU. He competed with his product called the "Oyster." It's a replacement for a syringe because syringes are pretty dangerous to dispose of, and his product stops this problem. Anyway, he didn't win the competition, but he did make the top 8 out of around 40 teams! He also found out that a retired Vice President of BD Medical wants to mentor him (he was one of the judges and was clearly impressed with Greg's product and ideas!) Plus, another company called ATL Technology, which is a worldwide company but has a building in Springville, is interested in him as well. The CEO of that company emailed Greg expressing interest in his product and basically offered him a job there. Pretty exciting! Here's my awesome husband with his certificate from the competition. He got recognized for "Best Product for Scalability." Awesome, huh?!

On to our yearly pumpkin carving tradition. This year, I basically did the best pumpkin I've ever done in my entire life. I carved the Princess and the Frog. I was pretty impressed with myself.

Greg worked really hard and put a lot of detail into his Darth Vader pumpkin this year. He's such a guy.

I sent these pictures to my mom (she was in Utah at the time) to show her how awesome we did. She was really impressed and was happy we were keeping the tradition alive. My dad texted me a few minutes after I had texted my mom and said, "Hey, just because Mom's in Utah doesn't mean you don't send me pictures of your pumpkin carving results!" I guess he felt a little left out of all of the fun. Haha, I just love my dad so much. And my mom. Anways...

 

We got to spend some time with my mom in Salt Lake a few weekends ago. She was up in Utah to spend time with both Ann Marie and me (well, and Greg of course). We had so much fun shopping and laughing and enjoying each others' company. I love my mom so much.

We found these earrings at Old Navy while we were shopping. They each weighed about 10 pounds. My ears were pretty much falling off. We thought they just looked hilarious on me.

Me and my babe.

 

So, I absolutely LOVE Halloween. It's one of my favorite holidays. We didn't dress up or anything, but we did get to go over to Greg's cousin's place to see her and her husband's new baby, Eli! He was about 2 weeks old, and he was an angel. Just completely perfect in every way. They were doing great, even though they seemed a little tired. I don't blame them. We watched Hocus Pocus and ate junk food. It was just great.

I couldn't NOT post these pictures on here. I seriously can't get enough of these two cuties, Savannah and Sterling!

Last weekend, Greg and I went up to Salt Lake with Seth, Kjiersti, and Jake Clark to a haunted house called Nightmare on 13th. It was SUPER fun! It was just hilarious getting freaked out by the monsters and laughing at each other scream. I think Seth was the most scared out of all of us. Kjiersti and Jake were champs. We seriously had so much fun! I love hanging out with these people!

We made some cookies the other night, and I just had to take a picture of this beaut. Can you find someone who is more manly than this? Camo shirt, spatula in hand, and oven mitt. He never wears this shirt, so when I saw that he put it on, I kind of giggled a little bit. Totally not his style. I love this guy.

Happy Halloween! And you better start getting excited for the holidays!!!!

Random Happenings in September and October

Greg and I have been busy, busy, busy! But we have been able to squeeze a few fun things in here and there within the past 2 months. It's all been pretty random.

I decided I wanted some cute Halloween decorations (instead of spider webs, like last year). So I made my own! Here's the sign that's on our front door. BOO! Notice the little eyes in the O's. We couldn't find any wooden O's at Walmart, so we got two Q's instead and then Greg chopped off the little tail on each Q. We thought the inside part of the Q looked cute as little eyes (almost as if to say, "I'm watching you!").

I also made a little hanging sign for inside our house. I added a little spider and bat to the bottom of the sign to spice things up.

Another random thing we did earlier this month was we went to Park City for a night and stayed with Greg's family. We were there for General Conference. It was a lot of fun. Here's a funny picture of Sam with a Halloween mask on. Such a beautiful face.

We went to the Sunday morning session of General Conference. We also got to listen to the Music and the Spoken Word presentation. Seriously, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is amazing. They are so inspiring. And the speakers at our session were great too. It was such a wonderful spiritual experience.

We have been having some very beautiful sunsets this Fall (can we even call this season Fall? It's just too dang cold to be called Fall, but not quite cold enough to be Winter weather). This picture below is one of those sunsets. I remember that time of day was just sooo incredibly beautiful. 

Josh came to Provo a couple weeks ago!! Oh my goodness it was so great to see him! He had an accounting conference at BYU and we got to see him one of the nights he was here. I just miss him so much. I really wish we could fly out to Missouri to visit him and his cute little family. I sure do love that family! And you can just tell that Josh is a great daddy for those kids. He loves them so much.

Greg is amazing. Seriously, he is constantly doing things that blow me away. He is so creative and smart. Below are some pictures of him fixing our poor car a few weeks ago. Our exhaust manifold had a HUGE crack in it and wasn't letting us pass our safety and emissions test. Therefore, we couldn't register our car. Well they wanted to charge us $500 to fix it! Greg was having none of that, so he bought the part we needed online for like $80 and fixed it himself. Just FYI, he has never fixed anything like that, so he was figuring it out as he went. It took him pretty much all day, and he was pretty frustrated. I even asked him at the peak of his frustration if it was worth it for him to fix it himself, even though it was way cheaper. He said, "Ask me when I'm done." Well I sure asked him when he was done, and I got the biggest smile ever from him. He said it was definitely worth it! He saved us like $400! And yes, when he went back to get our safety and emissions test, the car passed!

You can see his little eye in between the engine.

One night, Greg and I went out and saw that the Y was all lit up because it was Homecoming Night. It was really cool! 

Greg and I had the chance to hang out with my old friends from Garden Grove! Obviously not everyone we all used to hang out with was there, but the ones that are here in Utah were there (Jake Clark, Seth Trader and his wife Kjiersti, Jarom Olson, Jacob Olson, and Jacob Matagi and his girlfriend). It was seriously SO much fun! I was so happy to see them all. It's fun to see where we all are at in our lives. It gave me a little bit of home in this somewhat unfamiliar place.

So BIG NEWS! No, I'm not pregnant. But Greg is an awesome innovator! He competed in a competition at BYU called the Student Innovator of the Year Competition. It's a competition where any student can enter an innovative product and try to win some money. There are a lot of judges that go around and look at all of the different things that students come up with. You can really just think of any idea, as long as it's innovative. There are also investors there who are interested in some of the products as well. Well, Greg and his brother, Shaun, presented the product that Greg came up with (Shaun basically just helped with the presentation). To spare you the details because it's kind of hard to explain, he created a prototype of a replacement for a syringe. Syringes are the 8th cause if health injuries in the medical field. The needles are dangerous, especially because they are usually disposed improperly. Anyway, Greg's idea eliminates the dangers that common syringes pose. It's a pretty cool idea. So they competed against about 40 other people and they made the top 8! They present the idea again this Thursday! I am so proud of Greg! He truly is amazing, and he has worked so hard on this. I just love him so much!

Here they are presenting to a group of judges.

We got to go camping with some of Greg's siblings this past weekend. We went with Shaun and his girlfriend, Wave, Alisa, and Chris. It was a ton of fun, except for the lack of sleep I got because I was just so uncomfortable. But other than that it was just fun to be together. We went to Rock Canyon, which was just beautiful.

Here's Shaun and Wave.

Setting up camp, and Chris making some burgers for us!

Gregory loves camping.

And here's us, just loving life.

We have had a lot of fun these past couple of months. We have also been EXTREMELY busy with work and school and honestly it's been pretty tough, but who cares? We can just focus on the fun things we get to do :)