Christmas!

Well, one hear has gone and another one ahead! Preston and I had a great year! We're down to a year and a half until Preston is a pharmacist and yes, that is a milestone because it's taken us MANY years to get here :) Preston has been doing great in school and has still been tutoring a student in his class. It's good for him, it's been teaching him lots of patience and it helps the checking account too so all in all, it's been a good experience for him. Preston is also the young men's president in our ward and loves it, he loves working with the youth in the ward! I am still teaching primary and still work with the Activity Day girls which I absolutely love doing both. I am now teaching the 5 year old's when last year, I was teaching the 11 year old's.. so quite the change but still so great! Preston and I have explored more of AZ and been on a few trip this year and a couple camping trips. I am still working at the attorney's office and really enjoy it there, the people I work with are great! We booked a cruise, bought a car, cancelled the cruise and instead of a cruise during spring break, we're headed to... I bet you can't guess.. Cali.. again! haha we love that place and with this trip, we love the people we're going to visit even more and can't wait to see them. Preston and I even celebrated our 5 year anniversary! It's been a great 5 years and I love Preston more and more and I'm so lucky to be married to him. He really is my best friend and the greatest man ever! Well, for Christmas, we were lucky to be able to go to Ut, Mt and even Canada :) Why Canada you might ask? Well, Preston's sister and husband live in Cut Bank Montana about an hour out of Canada. We were able to go to the Cardston temple. It was our first time out of the country. Pretty exciting! Let the pictures begin!

Grandma Palmer's house Christmas Eve day. Two of the cutest kid's I know!

Cadence was trying to get rid of her food by feeding me.

Seeing the "moo" as Stockton calls Cow's.

This picture cracked me up. Cadence took a picture of the horse. Well, you can totally tell it's a horse, right?!

Cadence and her daddy.

The crew!

My lovely parents!

Some handsome stud that is my brother Chris!

Love me some Preston!

Christmas Eve at Oma and Opa's. My beautiful cousins. Nichole and Kelsey

Probably one of my favorite pictures of the trip. Oma and Opa!

Time to eat. It's almost as if none of us have ever eaten before...

haha Aunt Annette in the background cracks me up.

Dad and Lili singing "Stille Nacht"

Oma and Opa! New blanket :)

Mom and dad made their delicious "Holiday French Toast"

Christmas morning before church.

Christmas afternoon with Preston's parents and grandma.

Christmas Evening back at my parents for dinner. I love this picture. Preston teaching Stockton how to shoot the nerf gun.

Opa with the babies.

Except, it was NOT cold in Mt. It was cold like it was in Ut but not in the negatives. This sign didn't live up to it's name.

Everybody has their poker faces on for Tripoley!

Jess and Theron opening their new computer!

Leaving the U.S.A

Cardston Canada temple

don't mind the strap from the camera.

Driving home from Montana, we stopped in Idaho Falls. It was colder there then it was in Ut and Mt.

Then, we celebrated New Year's Eve with the Vielstich Clan. Minus the brother's who had better things to do. What 18 and 22 year old find it boring to hang out with your family on New Year's. I just don't get it! We're awesome!

Driving back home to sunny AZ. We took a different route and came across this cool bridge overlooking the Colorado River.

Cliffs.

We made it home safe and sound and were happy to get home and back to the normal routine. I was sad to take down Christmas and know I have to wait a whole year to put it all back up again! We love our families and we were so happy we were able to see everybody!

Good timing and great blessings

Well, this past weekend was quite the whirl wind. As stressful as it was, I couldn't help but thinking of the blessing we kept seeing. As many of you know (through facebook). Friday night, Preston and I were driving home from the Mesa temple from seeing the Christmas lights (which was beautiful by the way) Then we went to dinner and life was good. Nice date night with Preston. As we were driving home on the freeway, our car did a little 'jerking' movement and a couple seconds after, all the lights on the dash came on. I was in a panic. Luckily, Preston is the calm and cool one... I'd be a wreck without him! The power steering went out but Preston managed to get us safely to the side of the freeway. I just kept praying that no car would slam into us. About an hour later, the tow truck came. As we were waiting for the tow truck, we were going over our options with the car since it's an older car and had about 133,000 miles on it and just the weekend before, we had put a few hundred dollars into it for repairs and that's not the first time we had done that in the last little while.

We got home safely and got the car dropped off at our house.

Next morning:
We call a tow truck and get the car to the mechanic. After we dropped it off at the mechanic, we went home, and had a feeling we need to look at new cars. Before we went out, we said a prayer that we could make the best decision on what we would need to do about the car situation.

Well, many hours later, we got a call from the mechanic saying our car's timing belt broke and since we were on the freeway going fast, it did a lot of damage to the engine and would need a few thousand dollars in repair. We hung up with the mechanic and decided the best thing to do would to buy a new car. We said another little prayer to confirm that the decision we made was the right one. We got a comforted feeling about it. So, we told the mechanic to hold off on repairs and we would find a way by Monday to get it off their hands.

Longer story short... We bought a new car Saturday night. It's a beauty. It's a 2010 Mazda 3 with very low miles and it's in almost perfect condition (other than it not being brand new) It's a certified car which goes to show, it is in pristine condition for being a used car. We got a killer deal on it and got an awesome package to go along with it like free oil changes for 3 years, 24-7 roadside service also free. a100,000k or 7 year (whichever comes first) bumper to bumper warranty . And, many other perks. The car also has traction control which will be great in snowy weather for UT.

To Yesterday (sunday):
Preston called the guy who towed our car to the mechanic because he was interested in it since it was very clean and in good condition other than it not running haha. He is buying our car later today for a pretty good deal considering that it doesn't run.. so we scored there too.

Here is where the timing comes in.. We had booked our cruise which now we aren't going on due to buying a new car and we had until this Tuesday the 13th to cancel the cruise and get all our money back and since I hadn't booked anything else like plane tickets and excursions, we were able to put all our cruise money towards our car. If it was any later in the week, we would have been out quite a bit of money. Also, we're driving to UT next week for Christmas.. can you imagine if that would have happened driving there in the middle of nowhere in SNOW?!?! I'm also so glad Preston was with me and the one driving when the car had it's melt down. I would have wrecked the car for sure.

We were definitely blessed and watched over this weekend and guided to making the best decision. As bummed as we are that we can't do the cruise, we're really happy with our purchase and LOVE having a new car! I just kept reminding myself that this is just a little trial and that everything would smooth over. Once we get the Ford off our hands tonight, we'll be good to go! I'm definitely grateful for how much we were watched over and that Heavenly Father had all this happen at perfect timing for the situation.

I know this is super long but I just can't get over how perfect the timing was and that this didn't happen driving to UT and that we weren't out all that money for our cruise.

Well, I probably won't update again until after the new year as we will be enjoying all our family in Ut and Mt and having a white Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Best part of the weekend.

Poor lil' green machine! You've been a great car up until... NOW!

Our newest addition to our family.

Thanksgiving in Veags!

Preston and I were able to go to Vegas with  my aunt and uncle and cousins. My uncle has time share's and he was able to get two condo's in Vegas. We had my cousin Josh and his two buddies Josh and Sergio who live on the Marine's base in CA and Preston and I and My aunt and uncle and Nichole and McKenna.. we all met up and had a blast. Seriously, Preston and I didn't want to go home. We were able to have the full Thanksgiving feast with having two kitchens between the two condo's so it worked out perfect. We played on the strip, ate, swam, ate, shopped, ate, slept, ate, watched movies, ate, played games, black friday, ate, swam, ate... do you see a pattern here..? Anywho, here are pictures :)

The boys always had their nerf guns on them. They had a little too much fun with them!

First glance.. I think Josh is flipping off the camera, but he's not!

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My Puerto Rican cousin Sergio. Sorry ladies, he's taken!

Thanksgiving feast!

I sure love my man!

We went black friday shopping. This is the cart of my uncle and husband. Lego's, hot wheels and nerf guns. Dorks.

camera phone picture.. not the best quality.

After walking the strip 2.5 miles. Good times!

Lazy River fun!

our super hero's!

Kenna was a little cold!

The Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay!

notice the sharks!!!

We played Tripoley off and on through the whole weekend. So much fun.

AND, Preston ended up winning. He's protecting his stash with his nerf gun.

We went to one of our favorite buffet's. MGM Grand. Check out those desserts!!! That's just one of my plates ha.

The trip was a blast!! Thanks Craig and Annette and fam for letting us join you guys!


I transitioned the house from Thanksgiving/fall to Christmas/winter. I LOVE when the house is all decked out in Christmas. It's so cozy and romantic with all the twinkling lighting!

Garland and lights above dining room window.

Merry Christmas