A DASH OF ASH: the christmas from hell... sort of.

(taken just hours before the puke-fest)

So at around 2AM on the night of Christmas Eve, my husband and his brother woke up having a puke/diarrhea attack. Funny thing about that is that my stomach had been hurting all night... and low and behold I began puking about an hour later. And not long after that my sister-in-law woke up sick. The source of the sickness was believed to be food poisoning from Panda Express. I've had the stomach flu before, and this was a completely different monster. You know when you throw up and then feel a lot better and then you go back to bed and wake up an hour later and throw up again and feel better and the cycle continues until you are done? Well this wasn't like that. I didn't feel an ounce better after I purged myself of my Cafe Rio. Cafe Rio you say? But I though you got it from Panda? Well Spencer and his brother got Panda, me and his sister got Cafe Rio, but we all shared drinks, and food, and utensils, (and kisses) and bacteria was just being exchanged. I guess since we didn't ingest it like those two, me and Holly got off easy (if you can call it that). We didn't have it coming out of both ends; she had one end and I had the other. Lucky us right? My stomach also was in pain for the next 3 days (mostly at night) which resulted in lots of Tetris games on my phone at 3AM. Well when the late afternoon of Christmas came around, and the puking seemed to be put on pause, I still didn't want to open presents because my stomach hurt so bad. I just sat on the couch and made Spencer unwrap them. Oh and to top off the week in Vegas, I forgot my toiletry bag! The contents of which contained all my make-up, shower supplies, hair supplies, hygiene supplies, and everything else needed to make me look this good. I'm not ashamed to say I cried when I realized it had been left.

And here are some gems from our Christmas Eve nativity:

My cute niece wanted to help out on the piano.

Chancho knew he was in trouble for eating baby Jesus' arm.

The Hansen tradition of singing a (train-wreck) version of Pine Cones and Holly Berries

The rest of the week was spent mostly in bed and in bubble baths, but I also got to see Les Mis (amazing) and The Hobbit, and do some hot tubbing with the family. We came home to Provo (from Vegas) to lovely snow and 10 degree weather (psych. hated it.). Therefore we spent the rest of the weekend (inside) having a Lord of the Rings Marathon in our PJs by the fire. New Years Eve we went to Spencer's brother's friend's house who was having a party. We played a hilarious game called "Things" where there is a question and you write down your answer and then the person who is "it" tries to guess who wrote each one. One of my favorites was under the category "Things you would do if you were the opposite gender" and one guy wrote "Get a Pinterest account!" Haha. I laughed so hard. The next day we headed out sledding in 19 degree weather and although it was fun, I coundn't feel my face at the end of it. After that we headed to lunch with my parents, and then off to the mall to spend an H&M gift card (thanks Liz), and exchange a shirt for Spencer. Is it weird that although I love the clothes I got, I'm almost more excited for the fact that Spencer bought a pair of sweat pants at H&M? There is just something about baggy, drop-crotch sweat pants on a guy that just makes me swoon.

My new purse from Spence!

I've wanted a dream catcher for the longest time for my car. I use to have one when I was little hanging over my bed and I loved it. Spence surprised me with this on Christmas. I can't believe that he remembered.

Spencer is amazing isn't he? Look at these cute rain-boots he got me!

These are some coasters I made for my "sister-in-law" Rachel. I bought some stone tiles at Lowes, put felt circles on the bottom of them, then printed out some of her Instagram pictures on photo paper and mod-podged them on to the tiles. I used about 3 coats of mod-podge, and then sprayed about 3 coats of acrylic sealer on top. And Viola! It was my first time doing these and there are 10 million different tutorials on how to, but I just took the best parts of each and made it my own. They turned out really cute.

This was wrapped by my loving husband. Notice the beautiful bow.

This is the wreath I made my mother-in-law. It was pretty easy, but wrapping the H in twine (which I glued down every step of the way to give it a tight hold) took a couple hours (yikes).