Aloha 2nd Ward Christmas Party

 Vessel played the part of Joseph in the Nativity skit and his friend Katherine played the mother Mary.  They looked so cute in their costumes.  At first he was wearing a peach colored pillowcase, but was mocked for wearing "pink" which was really stupid, I know, but he ended up wearing a brown pillowcase on stage.  Yeah, don't want him to seem less masculine, right?  Dumb.

This picture doesn't really do the decorations and lights justice.  Everything looked really beautiful!

Some family photos taken by our ward photographer Christie Blake.  

Mike's Work Party

Well, now that Mike has a "real" job we got to go to his annual company Christmas party. Nothing like dressing up and going to a fancy dinner, in my opinion! I even got to wear a name tag that read "Jamie Bates - Guest." Sweet, right? Anyway, I thought it might've been a little bit awkward, not only because I didn't know a soul there, but because there was unlimited alcohol and well, we don't drink. Luckily we got to sit with some of our friends in our ward. Marky-Mark works at the company with Mike and Jenny serves with me in the Primary. It was actually a pretty enjoyable time and we got away with drinking soda and cranberry juice without feeling too left out. We even danced a few songs. I also got sweet video footage of some of the dancers who, in Mark's words, were "tanked." I decided to leave the videos out, but you can use your imagination. Hilarious stuff. :)

Girls Night In Lives On

Last Friday I decided to continue the "girls night in" tradition here in GF. We had some good snacks and some good convo while we worked on our projects. I really missed having "girls night in" with my old friends and so it was nice to finally get together with some women here that I could actually talk to. Hopefully we will get together every month. Anyway, this is the project I worked on. Thanks to those who showed up!

Young Women Sleepover

Instead of our usual Wednesday night activity last week, we had an end of the school year sleepover on Friday for the young women and leaders.

Here are some of us playing in Amber's pool. Josie, Trista, Amelia, Tiffany, Theresa, Melissa, and Me (Sweet Valerie was taking the picture.) We had some fun times that involved racing, chicken fighting, dunking, volleyballing, cannonballing, belly-flopping, hot tubbing, and wild splashing.

Trista and I having a backstroke competition.
Tiffany with her come hither stare.

Theresa the pirate.

Me and my fancy poolside hair 'do.

The non-swimmers Michelle and Cara.

Unfortunately Kelli and Emily could not make it. :(

I will miss all of you young women and leaders!

The Grand Kerfuffle

Before the end of the semester the University of Utah threw one last hoop-lah referred to as The Grand Kerfuffle. Mike and I aren't much for getting involved in college events but we decided to go to this one, and it turned out to be one helluva time. There was a live concert featuring Shiny Toy Guns, Hellogoodbye, Augustana, and some local SLC band. It was flip'm freezing outside, but once we got engulfed by a sea of moshing, body surfing, pushing, screaming, sweaty fellow concert goers, we became quite warm. Yeah, any of you who know these bands also know that they don't really play "moshing" music (at least to me.) But the crowd was all about going nutso. Gina and I got separated from Gavin and Mike at one point because they decided to rush the stage. So Gina and I basically got swayed to and fro by the crowd. Gina fell down, lost her shoe and we both endured a lot of body funk. But, I gotta be honest and say that it was totally fun! It's been a few years since I've been to a concert like that and I had a blast jumping and throwing my fists in the air and screaming and wooting and being pushed around. The bands all played great live, and I think my favorite was when Shiny Toy Guns covered a Depeche Mode song called "stripped." It freaking rocked. There was an after party from 10 until 2 for all graduating seniors so we decided to stick around for that. They fed us free food and there were all kinds of things to do. We watched some break dancing, played "Rock Band" (I was lead singer! woot woot,) got free T-shirts and other swag, and watched a group of skanky broads walk around in there barely there shorts and one girl was wearing nothing but a corset for a top. We got a good laugh. Anyway, below are some pictures from our night.

Augustana

The crowd

Me and Teddy (I know what you're thinking, and yes, that is his real hair.)

Mike, Jamie, Gina, and Gavin

Self taken picture

One of these doo-dads would've been helpful for the last picture, don't you think?
There was a face painting booth and her I am getting my face painted by Fi-Fi
I wasn't feeling creative enough to tell her anything cool to paint on my face so I told her to surprise me. She ended up painting a beach sunset. It matched my shirt!

Me with Fi-Fi
Mike's face art was way cooler. He asked her to paint a crime scene on his face.
And Gavin asked for Spider Man.

There was another booth called "Wacky Wax" where you could get a wax molding of your hand. I made the "I Love You" sign but after I dipped my hand in the wax my fingers moved a little out of position but it still turned out okay. Mike made a power fist and asked the guy to put a rose in it. We gave our wax hands to each other. Isn't that sweet?
Below is a video of Mike trying to get us some moolah from the money machine. They had some $20 and $1 bills and coupons for free food at nice restaurants. Both Mike and I tried it and only ended up with $1.00 each! Rip off! It's harder than it looks. Gavin ended up with 8 bucks, that lucky scumbag. :)

Murder Under the Mistletoe

On Saturday, we went to a murder mystery hosted by our friends Gavin and Tracy. Gavin's birthday is this Tuesday, so Tracy wanted to throw a fun party for him. It was really cool and was a fun excuse to dress up. We ate first and then when everyone had arrived we started the game. We were given clues and had several different tasks to complete, some being quite challenging. With all the information we were given we had to figure out who the murderer was.

Here is the crime scene where the late Reginald Desmond was killed.

Here we are dressed up as our characters. I was DeVine Desmond, wife of the late Reginald Desmond. Mike was Martinique.

Shopping for our costumes was very entertaining. I borrowed some black stilettos and baret from a friend to match the Paris ensemble I was shooting for. I was so excited because I won best costume! Although, I thought Martinique was going to win since he was looking quite ravishing as well.

Here are some of the attendants. Colonel Cream, Jazzy Jingles, Gavin Foreshanks, Biff Lava, Virgo, Cooter Grits, Mother Desmond, DeVine Desmond, and Martinique.
(not pictured: Salty Winkle and Chutney Cheddar.)

Thanks for inviting us to your mysteriously murderous party! We had a lot of fun!

Vessel's Shindig and Halloween (or the longest post of all time)

So I'm finally catching up on posting. I hate the feeling I get after something special ends. Like last month. All month was such a build up to Halloween & it was so much fun and this time it was even more fun because it was Vessel's 1st birthday on the 28th. All October I was very excited for Vessel's birthday and Halloween and they're both over now and it's a little depressing. I get the same way when the Christmas season ends. But let me tell you a little about the month.

Mike and I debated whether or not to throw a 1 year party for our son. I always said I wouldn't do it because at age 1 it's not like the kid is going to remember it and it's basically all for the parents. But since Vessel's birthday is so close to Halloween we decided to throw a combined birthday/Halloween party as an excuse to socialize with our friends and family. I prepared for it all month. Usually I'm the queen of procrastination, but I started early. It was fun decorating the house. I made jack-o-lanterns, ghosts and bats out of construction paper and hung them up all around the house. I made little ghosties from tissue and hung them from the ceiling, Mike covered our living room with cobwebs, and I handmade a Happy Halloween and Happy birthday sign and hung them in the entrance way. It was nice to get all the decorations done early, not only so I didn't have to worry about them last minute, but also because I actually got some mileage out the decorations by having them up all Halloween season, instead of the day before. Every morning when Vessel woke up and I took him into the kitchen for breakfast he would point at all the ghosts and bats hanging up and would "talk" to me about what he was seeing. It was really cute. We wanted to invite a lot of people to our party, but because we have such a small apartment we thought it would be best to have 2 parties; one for family and one for friends. We had both parties on one day. Talk about stressful! I will never do that again. But with Mike's help everything turned out okay, even though I couldn't relax the entire time. Hopefully other people had fun though. We played a game called "guess the scary movie clip" and my friend Tracy helped me compile a bunch of scary movie clips onto a DVD and it played like a slide show. We also played some other games and we had a costume contest and a pumpkin carving contest. Thanks to all those who were good sports and participated! For food I tried to keep things simple, but really it would've been a lot easier on me if I didn't home make the majority of the food. We had a delicious chicken salad that Mike made which we put on croissants. We had blue and yellow corn chips with salsa and a 7 layer bean dip I made, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, sliced apples with caramel fondue, a fruit platter, a veggie platter, punch with frozen hands, orange dream salad, and soda. Plus I made two cakes, one ice cream cake and a 2 layer chocolate cake. I think cooking was the most stressful part of the party, but it seems like most people enjoyed what we made. Some people from both parties were kind enough to bring a treat to share.

Vessel received a lot of awesome gifts from everyone and I think he was a little bit overwhelmed by all the new stuff and all the visitors. By the time the 2^nd party approached he was so tired he couldn’t keep his eyes open so we had to put him to bed during the middle of it. Our friends Sheldon and Michelle came a little later along with my cousin Amanda and we played a game called “mafia.” It was a really fun day, but also very exhausting!

On Sunday (Vessel’s actual birthday) my dad and Christine came to visit Vessel and we had cake and ice cream and let Vessel open even more presents from Steph, Grandpa Brett and great grandma and Grandpa Hiner. Vessel started walking for real that day. He’s still a bit wobbly and unsure of himself and times, but he let’s go of the furniture or the wall without encouragement from us and takes off by himself. It’s so cute.

Tuesday was the ward party thrown by the Elder’s Quorum. More sugar was consumed. Vessel got to wear his Japanese lion dancer jumper. He had like 3 costumes this year and wore all of them at one point.

Wednesday was Halloween and I substituted for a fellow crossing guard. It was actually fun because all the kids were dressed up for Halloween and I got to see them in their costumes. Mike and I were planning on taking Vessel on his first trick-or-treating adventure, but Mike had class from 6 until 9. He was on campus the entire day, so Vessel and I took him out for a late lunch to give him a break from all his studying. After we dropped him off at school again, I decided to go to the Mount Olivet cemetery which is across the street from the stadium. I used to see it when I rode TRAX to campus and I was always so curious about it. I have a fascination with cemeteries and since it was Halloween I thought it might be fun to walk around and look at headstones. It was the coolest cemetery ever! It was like straight out of a movie or something. It was around 6:00 so it wasn’t dark yet, but the sun was starting to cast long shadows and turning everything gold. The air was crisp and the sky was bright blue. Vessel and I were the only people there and it felt incredible like we were in an entirely different world. I don’t know why it was such a cool experience for me. The cemetery had the biggest, most elaborate headstones I’ve ever seen. I later found out from Tracy that there are a lot of famous people buried there (including historical church figures.) The cemetery was silent except for the crunching of leaves under my feet. As I was walking around I heard more footsteps and was totally blown away when I looked up and saw that I was face to face with a large group of deer. The buck of the family was seriously only 10 feet away from me. There were some doe and fawn as well, and another buck further away from the others. I was a bit nervous because I know that moose can be very aggressive and temperamental and have been known to attack humans, especially to protect their young. So I kept my distance fearing that they might act in the same manner. After we stared motionless at each other for some amount of time, the deer went on their merry way and I continued looking around at the graves. I pulled out my camera phone and took some pictures of the deer, but since my camera uses infrared, I don’t know how to transfer the pics onto our computer, so my apologies that I couldn’t show you all. As I was wandering I saw a huge headstone shaped like the Washington monument and all that was written on it was “Cheesman.” No dates or anything. I saw another one with the name “Gassman” on it. It was awesome. I know it must sound cheesy but I really enjoyed being there at the cemetery. I want to go back when I have more time.

That night Gavin and Tracy got me some tomato soup from the soup kitchen (My favorite!) and we ate dinner together. Then Tracy went with me to take Vessel around the complex for his first trick-or-treating experience. We loaded up on enough candy to last us the next month or so. As Tracy, Vessel, and I were walking back towards our building Tracy said she saw our kitchen blinds close. It freaked me out A LOT so we made Gavin go investigate and it ended up being Mike all along because he got home from his class earlier than expected.

Well, that’s how the party and Halloween went down. Sorry it took me so long to post it! Hope you all had a very festive Halloween season like we did!

The sign I made.

Witches night out at Gardner Village.

Vessel and his aunt Kathy dressed up as an 80's aerobicizer.

Opening presents with Daddy's help.

Vessel with cousin AJ the tiger.

Vessel poking cousin AJ in the eye. I thought this picture was hilarious.

Jenny the prom princess, Karen the hula girl, David the dark mysterious figure, Danny as Jason Vorhees, Steph the army girl and Mike the skull head guy. (Danny won the costume contest at the family party.)

Karen and Mom Bates.

Vessel's ice cream cake.

Chocolate fountain courtesy of the Greens!

Sheldon the hideously ugly doctor.

Scott, Shanna, and Gavin the construction cone. (Gavin won the costume contest at the friend party.)

Casey and Helen the hippies and Sophie the baby rabbit.

Vessel opening some gifts on his actual birthday.

Vessel as a Japanese lion dancer.

Jamie the witch, Vessel, and Shanna as a magical fairy/butterfly.

Vessel and Kyler the frog at the ward party.

Vessel the lion on Halloween night.

Vessel next to Tracy's lantern of Jack Skellington.

Who is that scary little boy?