Christmas Break = Fun, Fun, Fun

 Christmas Break we had such a Blast.  Liji got out early on the 16th and he didn't have to go back until 

Jan. 3.  It was so much fun to have him home with me.   The plan was to go to Oregon for Christmas and New Years but we took the first few days of Liji's break to spend time together and to finish up some projects.  Here's Liji out front with 2 of 4 of our neighbors dogs.

 He somehow talked me into sleeping outside to watch the stars with him 2 nights in a row.  Can you see the frost that is shaped around my head circle on my pillow?  But we were actually nice and toasty in the warm bed Liji put together for us. 

 (Liji) A month or so ago I bought about 50 square feet of birch wood at the construction thrift store for $20 (birch is normally about $7 a foot so that was really good deal).  I was planning on making something for Christina, but I hadn’t started when she showed me a piece of furniture online that she really wanted.  It was a three sided narrow set of shelves that rotated, on one side was a mirror, on another a cork board, and on the last side a chalk board.  When she said she wanted that, I decided that I would make it for her.  I only needed the piece of hardware that allowed the shelves to spin.  Luckily we found a spinning bar stool at the thrift store for only five dollars.  It didn’t match any of our furniture but Christina let me talk her into buying it.  I took the spinning hardware off of it and Christina never even noticed.  I asked the building trades teacher at school to help me cut the boards to the right length and width on the table saw at school and then I spent a couple weeks working on it in our living room.  I told Christina that I was working on a set of shelves for our living room.  She never caught on. 

Once I had it completely assembled (but not stained) it was too big to hide anymore and I needed to stain it inside where it was warm so I decided to surprise Christina by having it set up in the garage and then asking her to come out and give me her opinion on how I should build our work bench.  It was set up right in the middle of the garage and it’s seven feet tall so I figured she would notice it right away, she didn’t.  After we had talked for a minute or two she finally got around to noticing her Christmas present.  We will finish staining it together (unless she gets impatient while I am at work and does it on her own).

 Liji also had fun building himself a worktable in the garage. 

 Wednesday night we took off for Oregon to spend Christmas with Family.  9 our of 10 of Liji's siblings were all able to make it.  We played A LOT of games; my kind of holiday by the way.  

 They took their traditional 7 brothers picture of their big ;) muscles.

Some of Liji's siblings built up a bunch of tumble weeds at the bottom of the bluffs behind their parents house.  We had a lot of fun jumping off the bluffs and sinking into the weeds.  We only got a few scratches. 

The 27th was our 5th anniversary.  Luckily it was the day the family planned for all the couples to go to the Temple together.  So we got to spend the morning doing sealings and a session and then we went out to eat with everyone.  It would have been nice to have a little more alone time but we got that before we went to Oregon so it was Ok. 

I feel so lucky to be married to this man.  He is such an amazing example to me.  It was also his Birthday this week on the 5th so I guess it's a good time to brag about him a bit.  He does so good at keeping us on track doing the things that we should.  He's mainly the one making sure we're saying our prayers and reading the scriptures everyday, getting a full fast in, that we're paying our tithing, that we're fulfilling our duties in the church, volunteering us to do things all the time, ect., ect., ect.  I love that I can sign up for us to be in charge of or show up to pretty much anything and I can do it knowing that Liji will be full for it.  As long as it involves service I know that Liji will be jumping to action. To me that is such an amazing quality to have.  We have gone through some hard things and Liji has always been so supportive of me and anything I feel like we need to do.  I love him for always and forever, just in case you were wondering :)