The Holidays and 2014!

 Well the end of 2013 went extremely quick.  And by end, I mean the entire months of November and December.  It always seems to do that.  It always goes faster.  I somehow resist the year ending, and yet it still does.  2013 was a good year for me.  I got married- so this is a "we" blog.  I got promoted, we got our first apartment/home together and Ben finished his first year of medical school and started his second.  7 months of married life has been just grand.  Can't wait to see what 2014 has in store for the Fisher fam.  Here's an update on our holidays though:

For Thanksgiving, we went down to Arizona since 4 out of 5 of Ben's siblings live down there.  We spent most of our time in the Mesa area, but we also made a trip down to Tucson, where we went 4 wheeling with the Adam and Sariah fam.  We also got to see our oldest nephew get the priesthood, which was an amazing experience.  So proud of you, Luke! :)

 We also took a quick tour of the Mesa temple grounds, which was awesome.  And if you can't tell, it was much warmer down there than it was in St. Louis! So it was good to have some warmer weather.

 The boys also went on a trip to 6 flags in California to celebrate Luke's 12th birthday, so the ladies had a girls' night with dinner at Zupas and mani/pedi's.

Ben also helped with making the famous Grandma Fisher apple pie.  Grandma Fisher, meaning my mother in law.  I do have to say, it is the best apple pie I have ever had!

After Thanksgiving we went and got our first Christmas tree together! I was so excited.  We got a real tree at Ted Drewes.  A definite must.  We ended up getting a huge 9.5 ft tree.  We have really tall ceilings in our house, so I figured we HAD to get a tall one, right? 

One problem with having a big tree? It requires a lot of lights! After 3 separate trips to the store, and 2700 lights later, the tree was finally lit to my liking and we were able to decorate it.  I am fortunate enough to have a mother who has spent the last 26 years of her life collecting Christmas ornaments, so we got all of ours from her! I absolutely loved our tree.  It definitely put me in the Christmas spirit.  

 And we got our first snow! I tried to capture it with the snow in the background, but as my little brother pointed out, it just looks like we took a selfie with the snow as an excuse.  Sigh... Either way- it DID snow!

We also had fun at my family's Christmas card photo shoot, with props.  These are the props I chose for the Fisher Christmas card that I never actually made.  Maybe next year... 

We also went to the "Journey to Bethlehem."  It is this really cool thing that a church in north St. Louis puts on.  It's all outdoors and you travel in families on a journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  The church has hundreds of volunteers that act all of these different parts out.  So you are in a family and you are going to the census, just as Mary and Joseph did.  You run into Roman soldiers along the way as well as shepherds, angels, wise men and other characters from the Christmas story.  It is really really cool! I quite enjoyed it, even though it was very cold!

I also had my 26th birthday at the beginning of December.  It was on a Sunday, so we didn't really do much on the actual day except for eat this delicious red velvet cake that my mother made.  For my birthday weekend, however, Ben took my dancing at the Mahler ballroom, which is where we had our wedding reception.  How romantic, right? With yummy thai food for dinner as well.  

Christmas was fun just hanging at my family's house with my brothers and parents.  A friend of ours brings us candy cane cookies every year.  So snapped a shot of us devouring them.  

We also went to the garden glow at the Botanical gardens.  The lights were honestly a little underwhelming, but hey it was still fun!

This is us at Christmas Eve dinner.  Ben and the boys made chicken courd en bleu.  And it was delicious! It's a tradition in Ben's family that the men cook chicken courd en bleu for the family on Christmas eve.  A tradition I will gladly accept as our own!

This is us on Christmas day

Christmas finally ended and we had to take down the tree. :( Ben of course needed a pic of him taking it out!

The rest of the holiday "break" was spent playing games.  My family got ticket to ride, so we played that a time or two.  

And then we brought in the new year! 

And then the snowpocalypse happened.  Yeah... over a foot of snow in a city that doesn't plow their streets.  Awesome! Church was cancelled, so Ben and I took the opportunity to have a fun snow day.  The snow wasn't very good snow man snow, so we decided to make snow angels instead. :) 

And then this past weekend we went ice skating for our date night with another couple.  Very fun! The winter is good for some things after all. 

So now it is 2014 and we are busily working on our resolutions.  So far so good.  I have decided to be better at eating healthier, so I have found a bunch of good healthy recipes that I am quite enjoying.  The key is being delicious and healthy.  Not always easy to find, right? But so far I think I've done pretty well for us.  Hopefully it will be more sooner than later that I update.  Love you all!!