Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, the whole of Mom's family gathered in Colorado for a fun Johnson Thanksgiving. I wasn't very consistent with the camera but I'll share the photos that I did happen to snap.

Ben and I left in a rush on Tuesday afternoon. We were planning on leaving Wednesday, but "blizzard conditions" were in order. BYU cancelled all classes, closed all buildings, and even closed the testing center. After we received multiple emails and text messages from the BYU Police warning us of the dangerous conditions, we decided it would be safer to leave right then and run from the storm rather than attempt to drive in all of the snow. It turns out (or so we heard) there wasn't much of a blizzard - there wasn't even much snow - but we weren't about to complain about an extra day of vacation for we were happily on our way belting "Wicked" at the top of our lungs!

Both Ben & I and the fam bam arrived at the hotel late Tuesday night. I could not wait to see my family the next morning. Ben & I had breakfast with Dad and then I got to see this little champ:

Emily had a nasty cold all week and I couldn't help but think she was cute as she left the hotel with a box of Kleenex in one hand and a bottle of Triaminic in the other. On Wednesday, my whole family wore Giants World Series Champions t-shirts. I am so sad we didn't take a picture of all of us. It was a beautiful thing and a wonderful way to rub our victory in the faces of Rockies fans. Or . . . was it Angels fans this year, Kelly? We spent the morning walking around downtown Durango and the afternoon playing at Grandma & Grandpa's house.

On Thanksgiving day, Durango held their Turkey Trot and we had multiple stars among the Johnsons for running 5 miles in what, 8 degree weather?!

Check out that time - 39:32 for 5 miles, and in freezing weather and 7000 feet altitude! Ben, as usual, was uh-maze-ing. :)

The runners: Jay, Kelly, Reece, Peggy, Creed, Adam, Ben.

The supporters: myself, Scott, Mom, Darren, Grandpa J, Delanie, Jerry, Sara, Kate, Matt, Lucy, Sam, Henry.

That afternoon (after delicious breakfast burritos at Patty's), we congregated at Grandma's for pictures, football, chatting, and Thanksgiving dinner!!! What a delight.

These are all of the cousins, oldest to youngest. (Baby Caden is being held in the middle.) (Thank you Aunt Lucy for letting me steal your pictures from your blog!!)

The boy cousins.

The girl cousins.

After dinner, we had a small impromptu talent show followed by dessert (yummmm). Then, we broke some pinatas! The girls had a unicorn and the boys had a piggy. I love being the oldest cousin because I got to hit first!

On Friday, everyone drove to Monticello where Grandma & Grandpa J are the temple president and matron. The adults did a session and the youth got to do some baptisms. It was wonderful.

Then it was time to say goodbye and we began our drive back to Provo. As per usual, we stopped at Hole in The Rock and ran up! I love my brothers for taking such good care of Emily while hiking and freezing. I totally trust them walking down a scraggy hill with her in their arms. Love it.

On Saturday, we hung out with the Rowans before they began the rest of their trek home to Merced. First we shopped and played at Sports Authority and then we watched some of the BYU-Utah game while dining on Brick Oven pizza and Graham Canyon ice cream - Provo classics. We also played some Uno and Emi decorated our fridge with new pictures. Such fun. Then it was time to say goodbye - thank goodness we will be together again in just 3 weeks!

Back to reality: I woke up this morning, looked out the window, and said "Geez, snow, we would have gotten the point with just one inch!"

Happy Thanksgiving and hooray for Christmas celebrations!

BIG NEWS

BIG NEWS in the Myers family household:

Ben has been offered an internship followed by a full-time position at Ernst & Young in San Francisco! And we have accepted!

After this school year ends, we will move to San Francisco for the summer where Ben will intern in the Financial Services Office's Business Advisory Program.

Following the summer internship, we will return to BYU for one more semester and graduate in December.

Then, we will move to San Francisco permanently where Ben will begin working full-time!

*~*~*~*

This is the day we got the offer in the mail . . . we thought it was the whole offer but just the internship part came that day. It was exciting . . . but a little anti-climatic. Haha.

Later that week, E&Y had a "congratulations" dinner in the Hinckley Building for all of the students that had been extended an offer. I decided that I approve of E&Y because of the extremely cute center pieces. :)

I ditched Ben mid-way through the dinner due to a stomach ache, and when I came back to pick him up, he was carrying the center piece! They had announced that whoever's birthday was closest to that day got to take it home, but because I was the only female at our table everyone just figured I could have it. We gave most of the cupcakes away and kept the vase/cupcake display so we can use it for our own parties.

THEN, the official full-time position offer came!

Ben signed everything and we sent both the internship and job acceptances on their merry way!

We celebrated our exciting future last night with an outing to Olive Garden and Coldstone followed by the viewing of Rocky IV!

Who knew when we stood on the Golden Gate Bridge on our second date that one day we would be real people in San Francisco!? [GO GIANTS!]

Taco Beef Soup

Taco Beef Soup

(super easy recipe)

1 lb. ground beef

1/2 cup chopped onion

3 cups water

1 (26 oz.) can stewed tomatoes, undrained

2 (16 oz.) cans kidney beans, undrained

1 (16 oz.) can tomato sauce

1 (1.5 oz.) envelope taco seasoning mix

Cook ground beef and onion until meat it browned, drain excess fat.

Add water, stewed tomatoes, kidney beans, tomato sauce, and taco seasoning.

Simmer, covered, for at least 15 minutes.

Add toppings to individual servings:

cheddar cheese

tomatoes

green onions

corn chips

sour cream

avocado

I just adore our Pottery Barn dishes!

Laurel, Jackie, Sami, and me - freezing at Da Ducks' flag football game!

(They won because my husband scored the winning touchdown!)

spooooky socialization

Ben & I threw our first real party last night!

Success :)

With Halloween falling on the Sabbath, we kept it pretty chill. The invitations called for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, boo-nilla shakes, and spooooky socialization. We invited 22 of our closest friends and the turn-out? Amazing! All but one came! Our not-overly-spacious kitchen and living room were packed!

The biggest hit was our boo-nilla shakes. To make, you melt chocolate chips and paint ghost faces on the insides of glasses with a small paintbrush. Then you fill it with (white) vanilla shake and it becomes a ghost!

Don't you just love the pumpkins? They were our only Halloween decoration this year, but I've grown rather fond of them. This was our food table - lots of cookies, bowls of candy, and the big bowl was for candy that guests brought for "communal trick-or-treating!" Haha!

This is one of my dearest, dearest friends Joanna. She picked the "boo face" that Ben thought was a bikini. He said if I drew a string all the way around the sides with a bow in the back it would have been perfect! Haha. We topped all of the shakes with whipped cream, orange and black sprinkles, and a straw for some extra-festiveness.

This is Sami and Blue, respectively, with their cute "boo faces!"

This is a couple I just adore - Sierra, who I've been rooming with since we lived next door to each other in the dorms, and Jeff, the boy she's been dating since their senior year of high school who recently returned from a mission in Switzerland! How lovely. ;) I totally didn't think Sierra would make the drive all the way down from Salt Lake, but she completely surprised me and I may or may have let out a small yelp when I saw her in the doorway! Yess! :)

Just a glimpse of our living room -

Ben manned the blender all night and was the ultimate shake-maker! He got lots of compliments on his shake consistency. Finally, we got to enjoy shakes of our own and he picked this cute guy.

When everyone left, Jo and Si (with their men) stayed for an extra hour and we laughed and laughed about old times living together. Think: troll-like hair do's for past Halloweens and getting pulled over by a cop, many nights of sissy girls wrestling, and Taylor, the latte boy. It was a blast. Love love love! :)

Other Halloween-weekend events included

- our ward party = so much fun! Who would have thought that a married-ward-with-lots-of-kids party would be wayyy more fun than a single's ward party? First, the little kids trick-or-treated to all of the classrooms, then we had doughnuts and hot chocolate while watching the kids parade their costumes across the stage, and then we played several games as a ward. We had SO much fun and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Yay!

- seeing Inception at the dollar theater. Have you seen it? It was so . . . well, I don't really know what happened. I don't even know if I liked it or not! Either way, it was great fun all the same.

Also, Ben had a great visit to the Ernst & Young office in San Fran last week (Perfect, with the Giant's wins and all!) and he is prepping for a trip to PwC in Manhattan this week! Wa-hoo!