Thanksgiving and Family Visit

I'm a little late posting about Thanksgiving, but that's ok :) We went out to Gilroy for Turkey Day this year and we had ourselves a blast! Jessica and I went thrifting on Wednesday and I got 3 dresses, two cardigans, and a ruffly slip for $18. Not bad, eh? Thanksgiving we spent most of the morning cooking and hanging out, and had our fantastic gazillion course meal at around 2 or 3. After, we mostly laid around groaning from over-consumption while watching the 49ers game. We rounded the day off with a football movie (Invincible, I think?) which made it a good day for Cody: yummy food, Niners game, and a sports movie.

Cody somehow managed to get into all the nice pics
I was trying to take...

Sadie is cracking me up in this pic!

Friday we set out for some Black Friday shopping. We don't go with the crazies at 5 in the morning, or midnight, or whenever they're starting the sales now. We rolled out of bed at 8ish and made our way through Kohl's, Target, and Old Navy. Then in the afternoon, we rounded everyone up and took them (forced them, really) to go bowling, which we all ended up enjoying :) 

That night Justin and Anna put on a Christmas Mystery Dinner, which was super fun. We all had to figure out who killed Jingle (or was it Jangle?) the elf, and we all were assigned a part to play. I was Vixen, who is Rudolph's girlfriend, and Cody played Dusty, a reindeer who was trying to get on Santa's sleigh team and who also happened to be in love with me, Vixen. It made for some fun times :)

Here we have Vixen the reindeer (me), Ivy the elf (Janae),
and Bouncy the elf (Jessica)

Here's the rest of the gang. We look pretty legit, eh?

Saturday we made the Lance annual trip to the Christmas Tree farm! When we go, there is usually a ruthless game of tag involved, which was tuned down this year. We getting lazy or what! Can't even play tag for a few minutes, haha.

Charlotte was being Miss Grumpy-Pants all weekend. Good
 thing she's adorable! 

There's Cody again....

Sunday we left at around 6 and made the looooong drive home, but goodbyes weren't too hard because Mom, Dad, Jordan, Josh, and Julia all came out the next weekend (soooo last weekend) for Evelyn's blessing. They drove out Friday and we spent that night playing games and hanging out. Saturday, we took the fam on tours of our respective Universities (UVU for Jarom and Cody, BYU for me), bowling at BYU, and then went Laser Tagging, which was awesome! When it got dark, we headed up to Temple Square to look at lights, where we promptly made friends with the owner of a street vendor as all 9 of us bought hot dogs and hot chocolate. I pretty sure we made his night, haha.

Dad whupped us all by getting a 191

I think we were the yellow team, so third place baby!
(yeah, it was out of 4)

The next day was Evelyn's blessing, which we apparently didn't get any pictures of. After the blessing, we met everyone out at Courtney and John's home out in Eagle Mountain for some pulled pork sandwiches, yum! That night we headed back to our house for some more games, including Who's On the Couch (haha, I don't really know the name, but it involves names and couches) and an excellent few rounds of Silent Football. We had a fun visit with the fam! Next time ya'll come out, there will be a newly finished basement for you to crash in :)

In more recent news, I am sooooo close to being done with school! As in done, done, for forever. Five more days and I will be homework free indefinitely. Woot! And wish me luck!

And Cody says hi :)

A new baby and Halloween

Jarom and Steph had their adorable baby girl last Monday, Evelyn Hope Lance. We got to go see them all at the hospital and Evelyn is seriously soooooo cute! It made me so happy that they finally got to take home a baby after all they've been through :) Jarom is the cutest daddy, he is seriously a natural, and Steph is just the cutest new mommy. Here are some pics :)

She is just so precious!

Next, we had some fun Halloween celebrations. Cody's family came down on Sunday for pizza and to carve pumpkins. It was fun to have everyone over!

Our Jack-o-Lantern pizza :)

Our winged cat pumpkin. Yeah, we don't really get it
 either, but it's cool looking, haha

The whole fam made it down!

On Halloween Monday, we headed up to Ogden for a yummy chili dinner and trick-or-treating with the kiddos. We decided to be nerds and think we pulled it off pretty well! I cracked up every time I looked at Cody because he was the perfect nerdy professor! We had a fun time with everyone and got some candy out of it :)

Fall is soooo beautiful in Utah, and so we went up Provo Canyon to enjoy the pretty colors. We went for a little hike (like really little, I'm not much of a hiker) and then just spread out a blanket and enjoyed the last nice day of the year.

I had to go through a lot of pics to find this good one. Cody has the
 tendency to make faces whenever I want a nice pic...

Let's Play Catch Up!

Although Cody did a fantastic job on our last post, he was pretty happy to give the reins back to me :) So our last month or so has been crazy/busy/fun/awesome. I started school at the end of August (my last semester ever!) and it has been kicking my butt. Postmodernism, Classical Reception, History of Rhetoric, Short Story, and Spanish. Believe me, they're just as fun as they sound. Except for short story, they're all the classes I've been putting off until now. Dang graduation....

So besides my mountains of homework, I have also been doing some volunteer editing for BYU's Leading Edge magazine, which publishes science fiction and fantasy stories, which is just as nerdy as it sounds. I enjoy it though :) Also, my last week was spent applying for an internship with the Church Magazines (Ensign, Friend, Liahona, and General Publications), which included two applications, an interview, a three hour editing test, and a portfolio with 8 writing samples and 6 editing samples. Yes, it's very intense and very competitive, and would be amazingly awesome if I got it! I don't find out for a couple weeks, but we're keeping our fingers crossed!

Cody's been super busy with work. In fact, he had his best month to date in September and he's been getting tons of calls and bids. Nice job babe!

In addition to all this, we've been having some fun on the weekends! A couple weeks ago we went to the BYU vs. Utah State game, which turned out to be a crazy and super fun game. BYU was down most of the game, but then we switched quarterbacks in the 3rd quarter and started making a comeback. Finally, with two minutes to go, we went almost 100 yards to get a touchdown. The crowd was going crazy! That was my type of game :)

Although it was an awesome game, the crowd had a little bit of an
overreaction. You'd think we'd won the national championship
 by the way they were rushing the field... 

My happy victory pose

That Saturday, we had some family and friends over for a BBQ between conference sessions. Jeff and Carlie unfortunately couldn't make it; they were a little busy having their baby boy Max. Congrats guys!

Anyways, we had some yummy burgers and dogs and had fun chatting.

This last Saturday, we went with Carly and her boyfriend Josh to Lagoon for Frightmares. We had some fun with the roller coasters, ate some yummy amusement park food (fudge, mmmmm), and went through a bunch of haunted houses. Cody laughed through most of them, but I. was. terrified. I don't know what it is about enclosed spaces with creepy clowns, but I mostly freaked out the whole time. We had tons of fun with Carly and Josh!

Oh Cody...

Got myself a hottie

Cody can pull off a bumper car...

And finally, this last Sunday Jacque and Tyson had us all over to celebrate Mason's blessing. We had some yummy food and enjoyed one of the last warm days before it gets cold.

We got the little cutie to smile!

I've been meaning to blog more about the house, but I think I'll wait until the next time we clean it up. Till then, farewell!

Excuse Joanna's Absence

Joanna has been taking some guff lately for not updating her blog but she has a very valid excuse. School has kept her extremely busy, being in class most days until about 2 and then coming home and doing homework right up until its time to go to bed. On top of that she tries to find time to help me with work and she started doing some editing for BYU a couple nights a week. Saturday was my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. Here are some pics at the celebration.

 Me and Mason doing some bonding, his face is kind of squished

 Brenna likes to go down the slide head first

Brylee loves to eat delicious BYU cupcakes

We also decided to help try to break a world record. My cousin's company put on a giant dodge ball game, BYU fans vs U fans. Unfortunately everyone rushed the field and broke all the rules so they didn't get to break a record but there were about 2500 people there. 

 Joanna playing inside the giant inflatable Dinosaur, which had this little dinosaur inside.

 Waiting for the game to start, we got free T shirts and J-dawgs.

This is in the middle of the game, we got bored because we were in the back.

I also got a new grill, it was $80 bucks with our coupon.

Isn't it pretty?

Hope your proud Joanna!

Our First Anniversary

So for our first anniversary this last weekend, we decided to take a little trip to Park City! I'd never been and I loved it! Saturday we went to the Olympic Park and had some fun on the Alpine Slide and Extreme Zipline. Here are some pics of our adventures on the rides :)

Going up the chairlift to ride the zipline

The zipline was HIGH! Seriously the most terrifying thing in my life

The Alpine Slide. I went sooo slow the first time until
 I realized I could go faster, haha

I've also been waiting for a year to get my wedding band :) Cody let me have it a day early, and it is sooooo purty! Makes my hand so sparkly :)

Sunday morning we got to see the start of the last stage of the Tour of Utah. We didn't plan it or anything, but it seriously started right across the street from our hotel. So we walked on over and got to cheer on the bicyclists as they started the 5th stage of over a 100 miles. It was really fun! It was totally legit with teams from all over the world, and people that rode in the Tour de France and everything.

Gettin ready to go

After that, we went over to Main Street and had fun wandering around looking in shops. There was also a farmers market.

This is me with some random moose statue thing. Cute, right?

And for a random tidbit of news, here's a pic of our first tomato this year:

Nice, right? We're pretty proud of it :)