Let me remind you...

What the weather was like last year on December 30th...

Blue skies and sunny with a 100% chance of happily ever after!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY BABE!

Thank you for the best year of my life.

The Greatest Time of Year...

Happy Holidays!

Hope your December has been as spectacular as ours!

Twilighters....

Oh yes, we did....

... Go shopping on Thanksgiving night/black Friday just to purchase Team Jacob tee shirts.

It's how we roll!

Edward Who?

Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.

Kids table for life!

Uno, apples to apples, inside jokes, rock band, delish food, LOTS of pictures, family, news paper ads, so much fun...

Clearly grandpa's had enough of the photo taking!

What an epic day!

Honesty is the best policy...

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

Ok, I'll be honest about why I haven't blogged in forever....

you see a few months ago people kept commenting on how funny my blog was. I'd smile, feel a little bashful but be pretty excited that people were actually reading it.

Then I would sit down at the computer to write a post and I'd start gulping alot and sweating bullets, and, well trying to be funny is way too much pressure. I mean I've restarted this post 3 times already this morning, I am seriously struggling.

This struggle might have something to do with the fact that I now work in law. I am a legal assistant at The Lance Firm for attorney's who specialize in personal injury law. It's pretty serious business and it is definately messing with my sense of humor...

Take this conversation I had on the phone with my mom while I was at work for example...

Mom: **laughing and the punch line of some story she's just finished telling**
"um Kyra, you're not laughing..."
Kyra: "I know mom. I work in law. What did you expect?"

This lack of sense of humor may also have something to do with the fact that my boss carries a gun around the office from time to time. You'd be a lot more serious too if the man who signs your paychecks also has a gun in his holster.

So anyways it's now "magic burger Brandon's" job to provide the funnies on this blog because it's a downhill slope for me.

There are a few quick updates...

This is the absolute best time of year. Minus the snow/cold part (& by cold I mean temperature as well as the fact that it's the flu season).

Brandon and I have been married almost a whole year and it just keeps getting better and better. Some of the betters: we have discovered a deep love for Costco, Brandon is now used to the fact that I am going to sleep on his side of the bed and we are just pretty much unstoppable from here on out.

Frogurt is life changing.

This was Brandon's last week at NetDeposit (a temporary job that I should have blogged about months ago). He is now on the look out for a job with a gaming company, and by gaming I am not talking twister or apples to apples (lightbulb! apples to apples for the itouch! I'll get Brandon going on that one), think Zelda or Halo. If anyone has any connections, hook us up!

Hope you all have an awesome thanksgiving. It is one of the very best holidays. There is just so much to be thankful for!

Seriously, 2 thanksgiving dinners, a couple rounds of uno/texas hold em, New Moon tomorrow and St. George for the rest of the long weekend! Maybe even some In & Out Burger if Brandon is lucky... :)

We are just living the life!

P.S. Brandon would like me to inform everyone that he hides secret links in his posts. Happy searching!

The IN-N-OUT Event!

Hey everyone, this is Brandon. you may remember me from such posts as "Brandon, you're trying to turn this blog from Brandon and Kyra to Brandon vs. Kyra!" While the urge is still there to try to make this Brandon vs. Kyra, I'm trying my best to keep the peace. Did you see that underline action babe? Anyway, moving on before Kyra deletes this post.

I'm not sure that I've heard rantings about any non-local restaurant as much as I've heard about In-N-Out Burger. Seriously folks, it's the best. Lucky for us Salt Lakeians, the non-local has become the local. I've never been to this burger place, and it does look delicious.... and as excited as I am to try out a double-double with extra toast and the satisfaction I'll feel when they know what I'm talking about when I say that, I wasn't about to wind through the massive drive through line that was formed with what looked like thousands of construction cones.

So yes, Kyra was in the car with me. You might be thinking this long wait would be sweet and romantic and we'd have a lot of bonding time. To that I'd respond that Kyra is only married to me due to our stimulating conversations. If we went through a line that long we would be forced to run out of things to say. If that happened, Kyra would realize that she is married to a boring and useless diabetic. Surely a divorce would follow. There is no way I'm letting that happen, so the In-N-Out will have to wait until the construction cone made lines go away, for the sake of our marriage.

Instead we went to Del Taco for a shake, and while there Kyra convinced me that I wanted a hamburger. Del Taco's hamburgers are surprisingly delicious, In-N-Out might have to be careful.

In-N-Out is something that must be experienced, and playing around with the Secret Menu definitely gives it added appeal. I can't wait to try it out, but I keep telling myself that it's just a burger so I don't leave disappointed. Sometimes I find myself believing that there will be some sort of magic dust and suddenly I'll have a million dollars somehow because this place is so great. It's just a burger Brandon, a magic, million dollar burger.

Even better than that though, it's awesome to be able to have a night as exciting as going to Del Taco and still be completely happy just because Kyra is there:) She sure is lovely awesome!

Charmed

Pardon my lack of blogging.

I tend to feel like I can only post when something exciting is happening and school has started and killed all chances of excitement.

Work. School. Daydreaming.


That's pretty much our life right now.


I said to Brandon once that I was excited for our struggling years, for the years where he can't afford flowers for me so he picks sunflowers growing along the road and where we anxiously await the ding of out little toaster oven (best. gift. ever.) signaling that the cookies are ready. Well, those times have arrived.


Charming.

Not as charming as I'd hoped, but charming none the less.


We are completely blessed, which I often forget as I'm stressing over the budget and drooling over clothes/houses I can't afford. But we have everything we need and then some. I'm thankful Brandon always keeps his head.

When we go from two full time jobs and a part time job, to one full time job; when school is slowly stealing what little time we do get to spend together, when we buy a car that was worth so much less then we got it for and it attempts to drain every penny we have out of our bank account, when we go from lots of space to no space and I'm near tears Brandon always knows just how to make things better. He's such a silver lining type of guy and is just what a girl like me needs.

Charmed. I am completely blessed & charmed.

Life is wonderful...

( *Taken @ in Jackson, one of our awesome night photos)

Now if you'll excuse me the cookies are done. :)

The Hard Way...

Things I am learning the hard way parts 981-986...

#981. People who are trying to sell you a used car, don't always tell you the whole truth. I guess an oil leak, a shorting radio and a nearly stalling vehicle are minor details. who knew?

#982. Money does not grow on trees. Or on bushes or vines. Trust me, I looked.

#983. Not all textbooks are rentable. Work on that Chegg.

#984. Everything looks better at night than it actually is during the day.

#985. Just because you bought a used/new car does not mean that you still won't get rear ended at a red light.

& hardest of all, #986. It is never easy to say goodbye.

Oh, how I'm gonna miss those kids.

(the young women and men of the Colony West ward, aka: best. ward. ever.)

It's moving week.

darn it.

Hot Dog & Crushed Tortilla Chip Pizza...

that's the combo you get when we're out of pepperoni's at our house...

Atleast on Brandon's half. I'll stick with veggies on my side. :)

He seriously ate 3 pieces.

I wonder what would happen if we were out of pepperoni, hot dogs & tortilla chips.....

A Mobile Update...

Yay for "pixel-ated" cell phone pictures!!!


This is me at my part time ninja job. Pretty fierce huh? Ok, actually this me at the instacare. yes, I to gave into the swine flu hysteria and went to the doctor's office not once, but twice, certain I had strep or swine flu or some other kind of animal named disease. Turns out I had none of the above. I've learned my lesson... That is until the armadillo virus errupts. That one just sounds lethal.

Here are the infamous animal shaped pancakes I made for Brandon on his birthday. Much like McDonald's food on advertisments the animal shaped pancakes I made looked no where near as awesome as the picture on the box. But they sure are fun for special occasions!

Plus look at the excitment that they bring (only mostly prompted by yours truly)!

Album cover anyone?

This is the alligator also known as Trevor. He's pretty dang cute. & he knows it.

See, I wasn't kidding about the alligator part. He's ferocious. :)

This is how Trevor pretends he's a ghost. As you can see he does a pretty convincing job of it. It's pretty spooky.

& this photo confirms what some of you already knew... My father-in-law. AKA Gary Free. AKA Brandon's father. Is superman. (Hence the superman get up, lousy picture I know but of course he's a bit camera shy!) I'm sure he'll be calling me from a phone booth in about a minute asking me how i could just blow his cover like that. But seriously if you were related to superman I'm sure you'd blog about it too. Don't try to deny it.

& This is our lovely painted (by my wonderful dad) living room! It's so the opposite of green and I completely love it. It's so great we got it painted just in time to move back to Sandy! :(

sigh.

I said the "M" word in type.
I think I'll go cry now...

"Well that kicked our a**!"

and by that I am refering to the river.

oh the river.


I'd say that our river tubing trip can be best filed under "worst. yet most hilarious. idea. ever."


I'll start at the beginning.

Brandon & I were lucky enough (understatement of the century) to get work off so we could go join my family up in Jackson Hole for the weekend. I love Jackson Hole, it can be filed under "most. awesome. place. ever. period." We've been going every year since I can remember and this year we added Brandon and the Beeah's to the mix. so of course it was epic. Next trip I will be there for the whole week. vacation days or no vacation days you can count on it. you miss a lot of hilarity in my family if you're late by even a minute.

It was a weekend full of suprises, card playing, shopping, huckleberry ice cream, extreme night photo shoots, death defying (unless 8 years old or younger) intertubing trips, hostpital visits (don't ask), celebrity moose, same room facebook wall posts, picnic table formal dining and so much more. basically it was a weekend so radical it can only be truly described by photographs...

This was right before we got in the river, before all the of red flags started popping up. For instance, it took us 20 minutes of getting adjusted in our tubes before we could finally get going. Once we had floated oh, 20 feet down stream we realize there was a bridge we could not get under. So we had to climb out of the river, walk around the bridge and start all over. The best part was at the very beginning as we were all trying to get settled an intertube- clad- group- averaging- the- ripe- age- of- 8- years- old passed us, pausing every now and then to watch and giggle over our struggle. We wondered why they weren't getting in the water. We realized why as soon as we got to that wall of a bridge. Thanks for the warning kiddos. We floated calmly down stream for a while, laughing and taking pictures with our water proof cameras. All was well, we even got off to a better start than the 8 year olds and had taken the lead! Then the river decided to challenge us a bit. It started throwing rapids our way, suddenly we weren't just floating we were hanging on for dear life. There were huge rocks to avoid, bridges with beyond low clearance, water falls to tumble down. At one point my cousin Sariah yelled "were going to die!". it was terrifying. Tubes were going everywhere. Clearly the river owned us. & boy did it want us to know it. The most dramatic moment that I can't even think about without laughing was when we were all hanging on to reeds on the side of the river, anything we could hold on to, trying to figure out how to get Karissa's tube (which had floated further down stream) to her without any casualties, and all of a sudden those 8 year olds came floating down stream not even struggling at all, screaming and laughing, there were even 2 to an intertube on some! I can just imagine how hilarious we river rats must have looked! All in all, we made it about half way before my cousin Karissa lost her tube for good and we all decided we were done. We climbed out of the river, wet, bruised, bleeding, minus 2 pairs of sunglasses, down one intertube, paralyzed from the face down in Lena's case and Preston pretty much summed the river trip up for us... "Well that kicked our a**! We all couldn't help but laugh.

Well played river... well played.

But you better believe we will beat you next year!

right guys?!

.....

guys?

:)

Our night photos rock!

Such an AMAZING trip! Can't wait for the next one! San Fran here we come!

This is Brown Torpedo callin' Free Fallin'...

Now that my password's been changed and Brandon is no longer able to post cheeky blogs about my blogging skills, I will soon be changing my background to zebra print and renaming my blog "Kyrampage", or "Kool Kyra" or some other alliterationally charged title.* :) However before any of these changes take place I want to take a moment to tell you all...

LAKE POWELL IS AWESOME!!!

it was my first trip ever & I already want to go back...

my dad thinks we should blow this picture up and hang it in our living room! :)

There's cute Hailey and London!

Pretty!
I am such a tree hugger!

Skills. enough said.



Here's the kiddos driving the house boat!

wait, who let the kids drive the house boat?!

Alyssa and Kyle!

Me and my Whitney!

There are just a few highlights of the trip, I meant to take at least a million photos but I found out just a little too late that the mysterious cell phone charger that appeared in our bedroom wasn't really a cell phone charger after all! It was my camera charger! At least I'll be prepared for our next trip!

It was a wonderful week full of laughs, card games, trips down the slide, sun shine, boating, smores, camp fire games, walky talky's, trying to scare away fish, swimming and so much more!

It was an absolute BLAST!

* joke folks, I am joking. but i do so love zebra stripes!