Mexican Fiesta Christmas Party!!!

We had a Christmas party with some of our friends. We decided to have a Mexican Fiesta party! We had so much good food! Enchiladas, Taco's, Bean Dip, Salsa, and then Courtney even made fried ice cream for dessert!

The boys digging in!


Courtney making the amazing fried ice cream! Seriously as good as it is at restaurants!


The boys watching the Jazz game, Sean, Jason, Shawn, Tom and Brad


Jeff and Chris on the other side of the room


The wifey's! Megan, me, Danielle, Sasha and Courtney



It was so amazing. After we stuffed ourselves with food then we played a game called Cursed. Jason and Sasha brought the game and its one of the best games ever!! Basically all you do is make a fool of yourself..... When its your turn you pick a card and it will have a curse on it and then you give that curse to someone and they have that curse for the rest of the game. For example, I had the hiccups the whole time. So everytime I talked I had to hiccup. Danielle's arms started at the wrist so her wrists were connected to her chest (whish I had a picture of that). Megan had to sign everything she was doing, Courtney had to yell like a drill sargeant whenever she talked....oh it was soooo funny!! Sometimes we'd have 3 to 6 curses at a time! Anyways, its was fun and I can't wait to play that game again!

Annual Gingerbread House!

Every year since I can remember, my family has decorated a gingerbread house. My mom makes the house from scratch so it looks and tastes amazing. In the beginning when this tradition started, my mom used to have control of what went on the house and what it looked like. Now that we are all grown up and have our own kids (well some of us) the grandkids end up decorating most of it. One word to explain gingerbread night-- CHAOS!!! Little tiny hands grabbing m&m's and sticking them on the roof....frosting getting everywhere....slobber getting everywhere because they are eating candy at the same time as they are sticking it on the house....my mom still trying to control it somewhat so that the slobbery candy doesn't end up on the house. My one nephew kept eating candy and then spitting it out because he decided he didn't like it....YUMMMY!!! Nothing like slobbery, half chewed cinnamon bears being put into my hand!

This is my mom helping the grandkids while I stand there with my mouth full of candy....I'm so useles....


Jeffy helping with the roof while the Mr. eats candy......at least he is useless too!


We discovered while we were young that the main focus of the house should be to get as much candy on there as possible because then when we break it in January, there will be twice as much candy on there to eat and it will taste so much better (yes, we actually eat a month old gingerbread house with candy on it.....look forward to it every year)! With that being said, it pretty much explains/describes the look of the house this year (and most previous years).

Harding Beebee's....

Thats right. You heard it right. We had a baby! Okay okay, not really a baby but I went to makemebabies.com and put in pictures of Shawn and I and it showed us what our babies would look like! I honestly was hoping that they would turn out uglier (for comedic affect) but they didn't turn out too shabby. Okay, they are still a little weird looking, especially the little girls five-head, but I thought it would be worse!

Here is beebee girl with a five-head!


Here comes beebee boy--now don't be scared when you see the roundess of the head.....it might bring back memories of a basketball?



I figured if Shawn and I were having kids then Harley might as well right? So I hooked him up with some hot mama and SURPRISE it's HUMAN!!!!! And a construction worker???


at least their daughter is somewhat cute!

The Fam

Why oh why do I suck at blogging so much? I can't figure it out! So much has happened lately, Shawn's hunting trip (and gutting his first deer), Shawn's birthday, Halloween, mario kart....but as usual I haven't blogged about it! Maybe one of these days I will, but since I'm not going to right now then I will post our new family pictures we recently had taken! Shawn's brother is in the army and came for a visit so while he was here we had family pictures. We had some taken with Shawn's whole family (which I will post later because I don't have them yet) and then we also had pictures of our little family taken.

The Pirate House!

About a month ago (I know I suck at blogging) we got to go stay in the Pirate House in Vegas (well near Vegas, its actually in Boulder City). Anyways, it was amazing! It was basically like staying at a Pirates of the Caribbean waterpark!! There were 21 rooms, 2 waterslides, 5 pools, a few hot tubs, a couple kitchens....it was INSANE! There were ships to jump from into the pool, hammocks everywhere and flat screen TV's EVERYWHERE! And they had some of the same set ups that they have on the Pirates of the Caribbean Disneylad ride. So there were pirates and skeletons and stuff all over the place. We were so lucky to be able to stay there! I have TONS of pictures of it so here are a bunch!

Diet Coke Cupcakes?

Is it true? could it be?


Diet coke cupcakes??


Really??


Yes it is true! And the even better part is that they are low calorie (well lower than normal!)



So the other day while I was at my place of employment we were discussing my co-workers (Lara...aka my kbff) birthday that was coming up. It was decided that I would make cupcakes to bring to work. Thats when Brian piped in and asked if we had ever had diet coke cake. Diet coke cake? Why no, I have never heard of it. Well Brian and his wife have lost weight and continue to lose weight. His wife was on The Biggest Loser a few years back. She was the one from Utah that made it to the finale, but was pregnant so she couldn't win. Anyways they are eating healthy and made a cake where they replaced the fatty oil and eggs and stuff with diet coke! I looked it up online and decided to try it! It is actually a weight watchers recipe. Anyways, its a really tough recipe. I don't know if you'll be able to make it unless you're an amazing cook like me. So here it is...

1 cake mix
1 can of diet coke (10-12 oz)
Mix it together and back like normal.

Yep thats it!! You don't add any other oil or eggs or water or anything! Just diet coke! I read somewhere that a whole can of diet coke (12 oz) was a little too much. So I did about 10-11 oz. I made the cupcakes the night before I brought them to work. After I mixed up the batter I tasted it. It tasted a little diet coke-ish but pretty good. I made the cupcakes and cooked them. they turned out pretty good except for they were a little flatter than usual but overall looked like normal cupcakes! I made homemade chocolate frosting (which is amazing by the way) to go on top of them. I was a little scared to take them to work because I hadn't tried them yet so I wasn't sure how they were. My kbff and I took a bite and they were AMAZING!!!




Seriously, they were so so so good! They are soooo moist! I think even more moist than regular cupcakes! All in all I thought it was a big success! Then as the day went on and the cupcakes settled in my tummmy, a little rumbling started to occur and I started getting stomach pains. Thats when I remembered that I had this little problem called phenylketoneuric (thank you amber for finding out the official name!). Considering most of you (or all) don't know what that is, let me explain! Phenylketoneuric is when you have a bad reaction to the artificial sweetners they put in place of sugar. So whenever I eat anything sugar free it makes me sick....including diet coke apparently! I haven't had soda since 9th grade so I guess I didn't really think that putting diet coke in a cake mix would make me sick! Well the night I mixed up the batter I ate a lot of the dough (not much of a surprise if you know me very well). That night I was up until 3:30 to 4:00 in the morning with stomach cramps, and well, lets just say it--some heinous gas! I didn't think that the cake batter could have caused this trauma but apparently it did! My amazing diet coke cupcakes make me sick! Does that make me not want to eat them? Nope! It just makes it easier for me to rid myself of the calories =) he he he....(Plus the actually cake batter made me sicker than the cupcakes. I think most of the soda, if not all, gets cooked out in the oven)


By the way, if you are trying to keep them even more low calorie then use lite or fat free cool whip for the frosting instead of regular frosting. And I read somewhere else to not cook the cake as long as you usually would. Cook it about 5 minutes shorter. I tried that but then ended up cooking my cupcakes as long as you usually would. Maybe its different with cakes? I don't know! Let me know if you try this recipe though!


P.S. We were bored at work which is why this blog has pictures that tells that story!

I LOVE TULSA!!

I know shocking right?? Over the past month Tulsa has really grown on me! The first week we went to our ward here the bishop told me, "welcome to paradise." I laughed and was thinking, 'sheyah right' but now my thoughts have changed! And of course I start liking Tulsa right when my time here is winding down! Oh well!
Reasons for liking Tulsa:
1. Shopping: I know right? Who would have thought! Not only is there mall here huge but they have THE BEST shoe shopping ever!! There are these 2 shoe stores that I LOVE to go to! Lisa can testify to that! I think she bought 4 pairs of shoes while out here visiting me!
2. Frozen Custard on every corner. There are literally 5 frozen custard places within 10 minutes of my house. For all of you who haven't tried frozen custard you gotta try it! There aren't very many places in Utah to try it though. I will miss my chocolate frozen custard with brownies from Freddy's...
3. Uncle Vinny's Pizza: it was voted best pizza by the slice and I agree! Plus its cheap!
4. Our neighbors: We got to be friends with our neighbors who have this golden retriever. Harley and and their retriever, Coby, became best friends! Played all the time! I'll post a picture of them soon.
5. Our ward: This is been our favorite ward that we've been in. We love it. There are a lot of young couples and our bishop is awesome! I am sad to be leaving it! Its one of the main reasons why I started loving it here!
6. The Heat and Humidity! I know, I must be crazy right? I actually like how hot and humid it is! Well to an extent! But I love going outside at night and having a hot breeze! Don't know how to explain it and I'm sure if I was going door to door I wouldn't love it!

Things I don't like about Tulsa
1. Heat and Humidity! I know I know, we have a love hate relationship. Today it is 113 plus humidity and thats a little much for me. I'm afraid I'm gonna be cold when I come back to Utah!
2. The Apartments. The first thing you see when you pull in is a big sign that says, "top of the hill, top of the line." HA HA HA!!!
3. The unusually large bugs: Just imagine one of the grossest bugs you've seen in Utah and then times that by 3...or 4. Yeah thats the size of the bugs here. This centipede was found in our bathroom. I freaked out...just a lil' bit!!

4. Looming water heater: I don't so much hate it anymore. It has kinda grown on me.
This is what it looks like though. After we took the picture I was trying to close the door to it and it broke! I busted up laughing cuz that's the story of this apartment!

Viva Las Tulsa!

Here are a few things that have been going on with us in Tulsa!
So a few Sundays ago we were taking a Sunday drive and decided to head down to downtown Tulsa. Well apparently downtown Tulsa is a business district so on the weekends its COMPLETELY dead! Not even a car in sight! And everything was closed...okay well most of the stores were closed--even restaurants and stuff. It was crazy! There wasn't even anyone to take a picture of us down there so we had to set the timer on our camera and set it on our car!! ha ha ha!


We had a great 4th of July. The hubby's all had to work (holiday's are busy work days because it means that people will be home for them to talk to) so all the wives decided to get together for a bbq! All the sales guys actually got home right in time for the bbq and then after we all went down to watch the fireworks at the Arkansas River! I guess its the thing to do here! It actually ended up being pretty cool! It was a great firework show!


And then just last week my friend Lisa came to visit! It was so much fun even though we were completely lazy! All we did was eat, go to the pool, eat some more, shop, and then eat again! ha ha ha! I converted Lisa to the amazing Frozen Custard that they have all over out here! We got one everyday and it was sooo good!!
This is us with one of our daily frozen custards

We went to Cheesecake Factory which is within 5 minutes of my house. Who woulda thought...a Cheesecake Factory in Tulsa!
This was noooot the best cheesecake choice we could have made =(


This was taken at the airport when Lisa was leaving. So sad that she had to go! Oh and we look a little scraggly cuz we'd been at the pool all morning, and then straight to shopping (after stopping and getting some of the best pizza EVER at Uncle Vinny's) and of course had to get us some frozen custard before she left. We had no time to pretty ourselves up!

Love my Lisa!