Winter is upon us

    Winter is fully upon us now! I don't HATE the snow, but it isn't my favorite thing either. Especially when driving. I feel pretty confident in my driving abilities, but I DON'T have confidence in the drivers around me. I swear, every year people forget how to drive in the snow. They may have grown up here in Utah and driven in the snow for years, but somehow by the first snowfall each year they forget all of their snow-driving-memories. Retards. Anyway, we've had a few snow storms that have each dumped quite a bit of snow, but for the most part it hasn't been too bad weather wise. With one of the first storms, we woke up to find like 8 inches of snow on our car. We dug it out so we could go to work, and then at the end of the work day we went out to find the car buried in snow again. Isn't winter fun?

(Giant icicle from our next door neighbor's roof)

    This month went by really fast for us. Each year at work (we both work at a mental health office) the case managers and therapists review their clients' needs and find those that have no family or support system in place to give them a Christmas. They then fill out wish lists and those are submitted to the committee chair. I'm the co-chair, and this was my second year doing it. Once the lists are all turned in, they are adopted out to various people. Usually these people are employees, local organizations, church members, etc. Any clients that aren't adopted out are adopted by work. This year, we had 149 wish lists. Only 18 didn't get adopted and needed to be sponsored by work. The chair and I worked together to fill those 18 lists so those clients would also get Christmas. The whole project is massive and takes LOTS of time & organization. Most of that is done behind the scenes, so other employees have NO idea how much work is involved. It is a rather rewarding program to be so closely involved in, and I'm grateful to have been a part of it. I will say though it was MUCH easier doing it last year when I wasn't pregnant! My body tires out much easier, and I can't do the heavy lifting and such that is sometimes required. So I had to ask for help for things that normally I could do by myself, and that was frustrating. But since there's a good reason for it, I couldn't get too frustrated with it. At least I tried not to anyway. :) I loved doing it, and will love it even more once it's done! ;)

    This year for Christmas we decided to save money and do homemade gifts instead of buying them. So after talking to a friend who makes beautiful embroidery hoops for her Etsy shop, I decided to try making some myself. And I think they turned out great! I was so happy with them! Here are the ones that I remembered to take pictures of. 

 
 

    

There are two others, the one for Ryan and the one for Grandma Deuel that I forgot to take pictures of, but oh well. I plan on making one for Baby's room too once I can decide on a quote for it. As for making these, they went a lot faster than I expected. I started back before Thanksgiving thinking I wasn't going to be able to get them all done in time, but I didn't have a time crunch at all! That made me much feel a lot less stressed, especially with all of the Christmas stuff I was already involved in at work. 

Can't wait for the holidays!!