November

November was busy, full of school, work, and more work!  I'm still working at both UVU and FotoFly, but I put in my two weeks at the Roots of Knowledge gallery because things are getting a little bit too crazy.  Sad!  It doesn't help that it is Santa season at FotoFly.  Things are so busy!

It has been fun, though, working at such a festive place, seeing all of the ADORABLE Santa pictures come through.  I'm really getting excited for Christmas!

Nothing super exciting happened this month, but I'll post the few pictures that I've taken these past few weeks.

Here is Bailey, keeping his new shoes clean while working outside.

We haven't really seen any snow yet, which is nice!  Sometimes we get some really sunshiny days and it makes me really happy.  Goats + sunshine = happy Madi.

Goats can be a little bit of a nuisance though.  Not only when they climb on your windowsill in the middle of the night, waking you up!  But they also aren't very aware of moving vehicles, as you can see in our backup camera.

Chanel and I went up with my mom, Jen, Des, Liam, and Ayla to the Christkindlmarkt in Salt Lake City!  We ate some seriously delicious soup, and had lots of fun roaming around, looking at all the little vendor booths.

Thanksgiving was wonderful of course!  Thanksgiving is probably one of my favorite holidays.  We celebrated early at my Grandma's house, so that we all could spend the ENTIRE day together.  We got together first thing in the morning to prepare Thanksgiving lunch!  Even Ayla helped by bringing everything in the fridge to my mom!

It was a wonderful day, filled with family, food, and fun.  My favorite is working on puzzles every year!

On actual Thanksgiving day, we drove down to Mapleton for a big extended family Thanksgiving meal with Bailey's family!  The food was delicious!  The night ended with lots of fun (and tasty food!) with my dad's side of the family!

That's about it for November!

Introducing Yuki the Hamster

Last Friday was Black Friday, and what does that mean?  Well for me it meant a day of work!  I got off a little bit early though, since my whole family was off, and we made time for some fun!

My mom had a couple of errands to run, so Bailey and I went with her.  One of her stops was Deseret Book, and on the way out Bailey told us that he needed to go to Petsmart to look at the hamsters.  Super random!

So we went into Petsmart and looked around, specifically at the hamsters.  Bailey decided then and there that we needed one.  I wasn't so sure!  I liked the dwarf hamsters and thought they were so cute, but I definitely didn't think that we needed one.  We are so busy anyway!  I told Bailey we'd think about it, just to get him to stop trying to convince me.

Well, that night was pie night at Kylie's mom's (one of the best nights of the year!), and by the time we left the party we had decided to buy the cute little white hamster that I saw running around.

We raced over to Petsmart before they closed (we had to get there in time for the 50% off Black Friday deals!) and came out with a tiny little grey hamster.  We were a little bummed when the white hamster I saw was no longer there, but once they handed us the box with our new little friend, we knew she was meant to be ours!

By the time we got home we had named her "Yuki".  Now she's got an awesome little cage all to herself to play and run around in!

And boy does she play and run around.... SHE'S SO LOUD.  We did not expect this tiny little thing to be so loud!  Also, I was unaware that hamsters are nocturnal.  So, Yuki gets to spend every night in the bathtub, out of earshot.

For the first few days, all Yuki did was hide.  But after just a few days she started coming out and taking treats from our hands.  Now she will let us hold her.  However she doesn't stay still, and just tries to climb up our arms all the time!

We absolutely love our little Yuki, even though she's so loud and flips over her food bowl all the time!  She is super picky, and only eats certain things out of her food mix.  Everything else she either tips over or kicks out of her cage.  It gets pretty messy.

So that is our biggest news!  We are a happy little family of three now, as you can see in Bailey's drawing that he did at work.

Travels and (Christmas) Trees

Thanksgiving is over, so it is now Christmastime!  To be honest, my tree has been up for weeks now.  I thought about waiting to put it up, but then I thought about how happy my Christmas tree makes me.  So why should I wait?  I got the husband approval and bam!  Christmastime!

Living in just a bedroom, our tree may not seem like much to behold to the average viewer.  I have been using this same tree since I was a little girl!  There was nothing more magical than going to bed with the Christmas lights on on my little bedroom tree.  Those are some of my coziest memories.  Over the years the colorful lights have been switched to white lights, and my ornaments have gotten a little bit more uniform than all the random things that used to go on my tree.

This year, though, our ornaments have gone back to random!  They are all very different from each other, but I suppose they all belong to the same group.  Travel!

Bailey and I have started collecting ornaments from every trip we go on.  We actually just decided to do this after last year's San Francisco trip, so we did cheat and buy a few online.  In the end it doesn't matter, though, because when I look at my tree I get all the happy feels, thinking about all the adventures we have had since we got married last year!  Here are our ornaments so far:

Portland, Oregon

San Francisco, California

Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Yangshuo, China

Disneyland Anaheim (California)

You see, it isn't SUPER consistent considering we went to 3 destinations in Mexico, and countless destinations in China.  We figure, though, that one ornament per trip is sufficient and can represent the whole country.  Camping trips are another gray line, but ornaments aren't super easy to find unless we go to like a national park or something.  So we pretty much made the overall decision to not buy ornaments for each camping trip.  That would be way too many ornaments!

Our tree lacks a star at this point, and I am debating whether or not I should go buy a cheap one, or if I should make it a goal to get a star from one of next year's travels.  My mom had a good idea - maybe we should go to Bethlehem to buy a star!

Speaking of next year's trips... (unfortunately Bethlehem isn't in our near future), this is what we've got coming Spring of 2018:

 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Netherlands

Belgium

Luxembourg

Merida, Mexico

Chichen Itza

Cancun/Isla Mujures

How grateful I am for my travel partner/husband that is okay with me booking cheap flights on the spot!  We've already booked more than Bailey's PTO allows, as these trips will take over a month combined.  And that's just spring!  We hope to get to Hawaii to visit our BFFs Shey and Petro in the fall.  I'm not positive how we will make it work, but I know that we will!  As Seiji says, "we will cross that bridge when we get to the river".

I'm not exactly sure what the goal was with this post.  Christmas or travel?  Nonetheless, happy Christmas season to all!  Also, come travel with us!