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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