dinner amongst friends

Last week Stephen and I had dinner in the lovely home of Richard Bingham. The occasion: Ben and Olivia were visiting from North Carolina. It was nice to spend time with some of Stephen's friends from high school. The last time we were all together was almost exactly a year ago when the Knudsen's moved away. We had delicious burritos, potato salad, italian sodas, and tres leches cake for dessert. Followed by Stephen Groo's rendition of "Street Fighter." Here are some pictures from the occasion, all taken by and stolen from Ren Wightman.

what an amazing film

richard, ren, ben, and stephen

We met baby Cohen for the first time.

Happy times all around.

catch up

I have been away from the blogging world for the last few months. mostly because i have been busy with work and unmotivated to blog. this semester was stephen's last at the University of Utah. Hurray! so he has been really busy with school. we are excited that stephen will be going to graduate school at UC Berkeley in the fall. so we will be moving to the SF bay area sometime this summer! we are planning on getting a couch bed or second bedroom so visitors will always be welcome! our time over the next few months will be spent preparing to move, finding an apartment, job, and enjoying time with our families.

p.s. we are also excited that cal and utah will both be in the pac 12 conference!

Best Birthday Ever!

Last Sunday was my 23rd birthday, and it was probably the best birthday ever. I am so lucky to have my birthday around the same time as MLK j.r. day every year. This year I had a 3 day weekend so Stephen and I planned a trip down to St. George. The trip couldn't have come at a better time because...

1. I was getting so sick of the cold weather and inversion in SLC

2. I really needed a vacation from work (January is the busiest month of the year at the bank)

3. I don't think I had spent more than 10 min outdoors since September

4. I needed to spend some quality time with Stephen.

Even though we could only be gone for 3 days, we definitely made good use of our time. Here are some of the things we did...

1. Played tennis twice

2. I went for a run

3. Went to Vegas Saturday for shopping an dinner at Trevi in Cesar's Palace

4. Went for a hike/walk behind Stephen's Parent's house in beautiful 59 degree weather

5. Slept in

6. Watched Despicable Me on redbox

7. I also watched several reality TV shows including Teen Mom 2, the X life, and cut off. (i don't know why i love these shows so much. ha ha) while Stephen watched football.

It was a greeeeeat weekend, just what i needed.

Here are a few other things that made my birthday especially great...

1. Birthday wishes from friends and family

2. Going to dinner with my Family tonight

3. Birthday card from my Grandma (she never misses a year!)

4. Lush messed up on my Christmas order, so I got a buy one get one free credit and bought all the things i wanted for myself for my birthday. he he.

5. Stephen got me a subscription to the Economist

6. Stephen also got me a platter from John Derian, a designer we discovered in NYC a few years ago and fell in love with. He did a line for target that came out in the fall, but we love the things from his store more.

I know this blog post is boring with all lists and no pictures--I kept meaning to take pictures but was too busy having a great relaxing weekend. I am excited to go out to dinner with my girlfriends next week for more birthday fun! Thanks for the wonderful birthday friends and family.

Christmas Fun

Stephen and I are pretty boring when it comes to Christmas gifts. We typically do all of our own shopping and then wrap our own presents. Our stocking stuffers are the only real surprises we get. This year we finished our Christmas shopping early thanks to a trip to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving.

This Christmas we celebrated Christmas Eve with Stephen's family in Provo. Their tradition is to have tacos and re-enact the nativity. Stephen's sister Lara made awesome nativity costumes for the kids, but I didn't get any photos.

We slept over at Stephen's brother's house on Christmas Eve because we wanted to see the kids open Christmas presents. It was fun watching them open their presents and then helping them put their toys together. We had breakfast at Stephen's Brother's and then went to my brother's house to exchange gifts with my family. Afterwards we went back to Stephen's brother's for dinner and watched Elf. Stephen did a great job stuffing my stocking. This year my stocking stuffers comprised of...

-Beehive Cheese Co Cheese and Rusks

-Peanut M and M's

-A Chocolate Orange

-Riesens

-Socks

-An ornament from Anthropologie

-Pot holders from Anthropologie

-Portugeese Soaps

-Bath bombs and bubble bars from LUSH

-Banksy book

Stephen and I see the lights on temple square every year. This year, we went the same time as Stephen's family. We had dinner at Hires and then walked around temple square. Here are a few shots.

The cute Hemmerts
The Vellingas
The Stewarts
Cute Katherine on Stephen's head

My 3rd annual picture in front of my favorite nativity.

Halloween

This holiday season has been very festive for me. Usually I don't really get into the holidays because I have been in school and haven't really had the time, but this year has been great. It all started in October with Halloween.

For Halloween I usually don't dress up. And if i do dress up, i find something around my house or wear a costume i wore in previous years. This year, thanks to a 25$ gift card to Target from my boss, i purchased a REAL Halloween costume. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to be. I needed to be something timeless that I could wear year after year. And I also wanted a costume that could potentially be a couples costume (assuming Stephen would take the initiative to go costume shopping.)

I decided to be Yoda. I found an awesome Jedi costume from Target in the little boy's section that fit like a glove. And then I went on my search for Yoda ears or headband or something. I visited several Halloween stores, and the only Yoda masks I could find were latex. Deciding that a latex mask wouldn't be best for work at the bank, i decided to scrap the Yoda idea all together and be a regular Jedi. Here is my costume.

We celebrated Halloween at Stephen's parent's house. We had "body part soup" for dinner, which was soup in a pumpkin bread bowl with plastic body parts, and then built a haunted house in the basement. Here are a few pictures.

Spooky witch Elizabeth

Joshua was a Chinese man.

Here are Harry Potter and Dracula reading Calvin and Hobbs.

Donnette Perkins gave Talisa Vistaunet and I tickets to see Dracula at pioneer theatre in Salt Lake. It was great! but a little scary. I also saw Thriller at Kingsbury hall with Stephen's family. It wasn't very scary, but pretty fun.

Dear Santa

Things I want for Christmas....
I would love this Kate Spade "Upstate Fillipa" Cross-Body bag in Eggplant.

Lush is Lush is Lush is the best!

Essie nail polish, especially J.Crew's colors for this season.


Will I get Flowerbomb in my stocking this year???

Leopard print Sammie flats from Banana Republic. Love them.

What do YOU want for Christmas???

P.S. Thank you Heidi for the inspiration!

Sundance

It is time once again for us Utah locals to register for tickets to the Sundance Film Festival. Do it here.

I know this is unrelated, but I also need to mention that Stephen took the GRE yesterday and got a great score! I am proud of him. He will be applying to 7 grad schools over the next month and a half. Good luck Stev-O.