Six of six: Christmas

We spent Christmas up north this year. We spent the two days before Christmas in Coeur d'Alene with Tyler's family and then a few hours on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Spokane with my family. We did, however, decorate our house. Here is a picture of our tree at home:


We had such a good time seeing our families. We had our Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve at the Nobles. I don't have any pictures from the time there but I have a few from Spokane.
Waiting to go in the living room to see what Santa brought for us:



This is after church:



Same here:



"A pile of girls":



We had a great time and our drive was safe, uneventful, and lacking in snow :)


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Five of six: Work Christmas Party

We had a Christmas Party for my job managing the apartment complex. It was at a really nice restaurant called Barbacoa. The food was really good there were different courses of the meal.
They had appetizers out when we got there. They almost seemed like little thin crust pizzas, there were veggies and stuff on a thin crust. There was also chips and salsa. Then the drinks and salads were brought out. While the waitress was bringing out the salad of the guy next to me, she spilled his Coke all over. It got all over the table cloth, all over my pants from my waist to my knees, on my shirt, in my purse, all over the outside of my purse, basically all over. To say the least, I was a little frustrated. The rest of the party was pretty good. Tyler and I both ordered steak for the main course and it was very, very good. We were also served dessert, I got cheesecake and Tyler got some chocolate cake. After that we were offered herbal tea and coffee.
It was a fun party all in all. I'm the youngest employee and I had a hard time feeling like I fit in at all and I didn't feel like anyone took me seriously. I left just kinda feeling bad but I tried to keep positive. We were given a very nice Christmas present from the owner, some cash and two tickets to see a movie at the Edwards Theatre.

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Four of six: Thanksgiving

We went to my Grandpa and Grandma Gillette's house for Thanksgiving. We had a really fun time and ate a lot of great food prepared by Grandma. My Grandma's daughters Nancy and MaryLou were there as well as Nancy's son and daughter and grandkids were there too.
I didn't take many pictures, but I do have a few of the cheesecake that I made for dessert.










Mmmm, yummy! My favorite, raspberry swirl cheesecake!


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Three of six: Trans-Siberian Orchestra

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra played a concert in Boise this year and one of my friends is the subcontractor who hires the local musicians for their shows in the Boise area and I was lucky enough to be one of the violists that she picked. I have been a fan of theirs for a while and I was so excited to be able to play with them. Not only did I get to play, I was paid and fed lunch and dinner. Between you and me, I would have done it for free. But shhhhh, don't tell them that ;)
Here are some pics from the day of the show:
Backstage pass:


Dinner pass:


Lunch pass:


Before the 4pm show while they were setting up and testing all the lights and pyrotechnics.


Door to our rehearsal room:





Door to the break room:


Inside our rehearsal room:


TSO Violas, Emily being silly :)





Front page of our book of music for the shows:





All in all, it was such a fun experience. By far the best gig I have ever played and my favorite too! I hope I get asked to play again next year :)

Random things I have neglected

I was going through my pictures and realized that there are a lot of things that I have neglected posting about because everything was so crazy with school. So, I'm really behind. My series of four that I talked about in my last post has turned into a series of six, the original four plus this random post and one about Christmas.
So, let's start with Halloween. I'm the biggest party pooper when it comes to dressing up in something I would not normally wear. This year our first orchestra concert was the day before Halloween and we were "allowed" to dress up for the concert (gag). I still wanted to wear my concert black so this is what I came up with:








I'm a pretty fierce pirate, wouldn't ya say? ;)

Next is football. We like football a lot, even more when it's our Boise State Broncos playing at home on the Blue. We went to almost every home game :)
















He gets a little into it, lol ;)









Rachael :) love that girl





Rachael and her dad, Mike






Band :D






Players :)


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Hymns of Thanksgiving

I've been a slacker with my blog, once again. This semester has been busy with trying to do well in my classes and job managing apartments and working backstage for the Morrison Center and keeping up my duties as a wife and head house cleaner (lol) and my church callings.
I'm going to write a series of four short posts on things that have happened that I haven't posted on so that everyone will know what we have been doing for the last month.
The first of the four is about Hymns of Thanksgiving. Hymns of thanksgiving, affectionately known as HOTG, is a production that is put on every year by a non profit organization called Celebrations in Music that it owned by a man named Steven Ricks. It's been a really big thing in the Treasure Valley for the past nine years and I have played in the orchestra for the last six years. They always have at least 150 in the choir and probably around 50 in the orchestra. The theme js obviously being thankful and that is what the words in the music are themed around. It is a fairly religious presentation with numerous references to God and how He has blessed us, even by the Governor and the First Lady themselves! I love that idaho isnt so liberal as separate church and state to the point that there can be no mention of Gods blessings and His love for all of us.
There are a lot of big wigs from the community that are there. The governor of Idaho is usually there and there is a recorded narration by the gov and his wife that goes along with the music. This year was fun, Tyler sang in the choir and he had a really good experience.
Here are some pics of us after the event still all dressed up:



Tyler on his new suit:


Here he is again, goofing off pretending to be a conductor ;)


Man, I love my husband!

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:(


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New Bed

Tyler and I got a new bed. We had been sleeping on an air mattress for the past 10 months and we are definitely ready for a real mattress! We are so happy with it :)






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Hurt Hand

I've been meaning to post about this for quite some time now but it seems that every time I try there is some error. So hopefully this works...
About seven weeks ago I hurt my hand while I was working backstage for the Morrison Center. My friend and I were pushing the nine foot grand piano to a spot where you normally wouldn't have the piano. While we were doing so, my hand got caught between a metal reinforced corner of a wall and the two thousand pound piano on wheels. It swelled really bad and I ended up going to the ER that night to make sure that it wasn't broken.
Here are some pictures of my hand throughout this process.
This is at the ER the night that it happened. My left hand, the one on the right in the picture, is all swollen and puffy near my thumb.






This is a couple days afterwards. The swelling was so bad that I couldn't wear my wedding ring for about a week and a half.












This next one is two weeks later. I had new bruises show up two weeks to the day. And yes, all of this is real.





This is a little over two and a half weeks later:






This is how it looks now:






You can see some residual wanna-be bruises. Two weeks ago it started feeling like it wasn't really getting much better so I told the doctor I was seeing and they referred me to a guy for hand therapy. They didn't really do much as far as exercises go, they thought that my strength and range if motion were good but it was mainly just hurting still. They found this spot that I'd they pressed on it and then moved my wrist side to side then it would click really badly. They think this is because either I damaged a ligament or broke one of the small bones in my wrist and the particular bone that they think I fractured wouldn't really have been visible on the X-ray. So, they have me immobilizing it in a wrist splint for a while :(






I can't really play my viola much, which has been really hard for me. I used to practice three to four hours a day and play in rehearsals for an additional two hours a day. Now I'm just playing in rehearsals and lucky if I can practice for thirty minutes in a day. I have been really sad about not being able to practice as much as I want to or should. Hopefully I will be able to practice again soon.
Everything else is going well :) more updates again soon, I promise it won't be as long this time :)
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I love getting little texts like this in the morning :) I have the sweetest husband :)


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So, this is something that has been on my mind a lot for the past month or so. This post is more for me than anyone else, so feel free to stop reading at any time. I have gone back and forth about posting about it because I know that my blog is public and the person that it regards could read it at any time. But, I'm going to do it anyway so that I can get it off my chest and feel better about it. I'm going to be purposely vague. Like I said before, this is more for my benefit than anyone else's.

I have this friend that I used to be really close with. We would hang out, tell each other our fears, dreams and problems and try to support each other through our trials. I valued this friendship and continue to do so. As the years have passed we have grown further apart. Distance is a factor. This person lives a good few hundred miles away and I never really get down to her neck of the woods. Recently, this person had a big change that was happening in her life. I wanted the friendship that we once had and tried to be there for her and help her with things that needed done. I just wanted to be closer to her, like we used to be. Something happened and the big change that was going to happen was put on hold. I figured something was wrong and tried to ask about it. A wall was put up by this person and when I tried to chip away at it and show this person that I cared and wanted to be there for her if she needed anything, even if she didn't need anything. I just wanted to be there. In trying to do that I told this person some feelings I had been having about our friendship. And I picked a really bad time to do so and this person got upset with me. Understandably so. I tried to talk to her. I tried every form of communication that I know to try and talk to her and apologize and make things better and talk things out so that we would both feel right about everything. I tried to call but didn't get an answer so I left a message. No call back as of today. It's been over a month. I tried to text and asked this person to call me and told her I was sorry. No response. Facebook wall posts and messages. No response. I feel bad and part of me is still beating myself up over this. But the other part of me knows that I have tried to mend things. I have done all that I can do. I am still this person's friend even if it is not reciprocated or acknowledged. The ball is in her court. I don't know what else to do. But I am tired of feeling bad about it. If she decides to talk to me then I will be her friend just like I have continued to be her friend this entire time that she has been upset with me. I understand that friends go in different directions and grow apart. That doesn't mean that you can't still be friends though.

I'm writing this here in acknowledgement that I have forgiven this person and myself and that I have done what I can do to make things better. This post is symbolic of me letting this situation go and moving on. Since it is here on this page it is no longer in my mind and can no longer continue to cause me sadness.

Family Reunion Fun!

We are at Bear Lake in Utah this weekend and having a fun time! Here's some of the fun stuff that we have been doing:
This play area makes up part of the second level of the cabin we have been staying in.






Tyler and Uncle Jason:


This slide goes from the second level deck to ground level out back.


These two go from the ground level deck to out back.


Playstation room:



This is the entrance to the inside slide that goes from the second floor to the bottom and the exit of the slide from the top floor to the second floor.



Cute room:




Wanna go on a slide? ;)



Exit to bottom floor slide:


Pool:

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