It's been almost a year...woops!

Wow, it has been almost a year since I last updated my blog...

I guess calling this a journal was a bad idea! Have you ever seen my journal? No? Well, 

why would you? Haha. I'm pretty sure that we all know how that goes. I am always placing too much pressure on myself to write consistently and then look what happens!

Oh well haha. I can always try to do better next time...right?

I'm not even sure where to start. This really is more for me than it is for you, and most of you already know what is going on in our lives, but I will give you a re-cap of are last year and try to hit all the major events.
(Major as in I did something out of the regular routine for once...ex: Kassi ate a green olive today! Just kidding...but really...randomness abounds...)

This may be a long one..

Year in Review: 2012

Josh and I went to Gateway to see the giant Christmas tree lighting and watch Jon Schmidt.

Josh's mom made us an amazing four course dinner on Christmas eve. She is awesome!

I spent a fair amount of time crafting and making Christmas decorations this year. I loved it and its nice to have things that I made myself that make our apartment cozy.

Some of our favorite gifts this year wet:

Josh: Red dot for his AR 15, scope and case for his 22.

Kassi: Kindle touch, sonicare toothbrushes and new boots.

In January I was able to fly down to Spokane so that I could drive to Alberta with my dad.

I got to spend time with mom and Craig, Dani and her kidlets as well as Carlee and Colton.

This was the first time I got to meet sweet baby Violet since her birth in November.

Haylen is a busy little boy and we sure had fun playing and chasing him around.

This is what happens when my siblings and I try to take pictures...

We are so attractive! Our parents would be proud...

I get beat up a lot...comes with being the shortest! Haha...
After about 500+ pictures we were able to snag a few normal ones.

 Well...as normal as you can get. He is Dani's son after all... Just kidding. :)

On January 27th my sweet husband turned 29!! We celebrated at Famous Dave's and he blew out the candles on his traditional cinnamon roll "cake." 

His dreams came true when we finally bought him an X-BOX we found on KSL (practically new had only been used a few times). It came with two wireless controllers, the kinect, and both of the Halo games he had been wanting. 

Josh isn't the kind of person to sit there and play for hours so I was never worried about it. He is too dedicated and hard working. Im glad I could get him something fun that he can play after a long day of work.

(It also works for me because I use the kinect to play Just Dance!! Such a fun work out!). 

We often laugh about how young our ward is. On some nights we have the Bishop, the 1st councilor, the Executive Secretary and the Elders Quorum President all playing Halo together...I don't think you would find that in most family wards!

Poor Josh was sick for Valentines day this year, that put a bit of a damper on going out but we just stuck to our usual tradition. 

Every year we make heart shaped pizza and drink Henry Weinhard root beer out of champaign glasses. (Insert giggle here). It may be silly but we love it! haha. We had some trouble with the "heart" shape this year so we had to settle for a heart made out of olives. It still tasted delicious.  I also made some chocolate covered strawberries.

In March we we flew to Texas to hang out with Meisha and the boys while Matt was out of town for work. It was their spring break so we had an entire week to play.

We went to the zoo, the Rainforest Cafe, Lego land, ate some delicious BBQ, played at a trampoline place, went swimming and played on the wii. 

Josh and I tried Monte Cristo sandwiches for the first time. Boy were they good!

The highlight of that trip was getting to meet our nephew Jonathan for the first time. He is such a cute and happy little guy!

In April I turned 23! Josh took me to dinner one night, another night we went out for Pizza with a bunch of our friends and then later that week we had a BBQ.
We also went to check out the new Neptune Park in Saratoga Springs. It is supposed to be the biggest jungle gymn in the United States and there are only three of these in the entire world. This is the only one in the U.S. It was pretty crazy. It really is fun for all ages.

Sometime during the Spring Josh was released as the Elders Quorum President and called to be the 1st councilor in the Bishopric. At the same time my step-dad Craig was also called to the same position. They were both set apart on the same day which was kind of special for them.
Josh was set apart and ordained a High Priest by his father.
When I asked Josh how he felt about this he said "It is weird to think that I will never be an Elder again, I will miss serving them but Im very excited and humbled to be in this position."
I am still currently serving as the secretary in the Primary and loving every minute.

For our anniversary in May Josh and I took a trip to Daytona Florida with Dad and Sally. We had been planning this for a long time so we were so excited! Josh had never been to Florida before and hadn't ever swam in the warm part of the Ocean. 

We made sand castles (which were epic if I do say so myself), climbed to the top of the Ponce de Lions lighthouse, toured an old plantation, saw some scary looking snakes, played in the tide pools, watched some crazy lightening storms over the ocean, ate a pizza the size of a large tire, explored some of the old spanish colonies and the Fort,  boogie boarded to our hearts content on Daytona Beach (we stayed in a condo right off the Ocean), ate shrimp at Bubba Gumps Shrimp Shack and walked on the beach every night.
Here is a large smattering of pictures:

Oh no! Save the sand castles!!

 We also took a day to go to Universal Studios: Island of Adventure. 

Harry Potter world was sooooo awesome! I almost cried walking down Diagon Alley! (Every muggles dream!) 
We got to tour the castle and ride through the Hogwarts grounds, try some butter beer and walk through all of the shops. We waited in line for the Harry Potter castle ride for 75 minutes! (That's dedication folks!) 
The ride even broke down during that time but opened just as we reached the front of the line. (So glad we stayed in line!) I was determined to get on that thing. I don't think the line ever got shorter than a 60 min wait but boy was it amazing!! I could have spent an entire day just in the Harry Potter area of the park. 

The Hulk roller coaster was by far my favorite! (Besides the wizarding world of course).  By the end of the night the lines had cleared out so much that we went on it three times in a row. We also spent time in the Dr. Seuss Land, Jurassic Park, the Comic Strip, and the Lost World. Poor Josh was so sick by the time we got home but he had an awesome time while we were at the park. 
We ended the night at Hard Rock Cafe and made to bed around 2:30 a.m. (Josh had the spins really bad. Every time he would lay down to sleep he would become almost physically sick. Poor guy gets motion sickness really easily so it made for a rough night).

                                

The Hulk roller coaster.

How is that for a photo dump? Oh man! I don't think I ever want to do all of this again!

If I ever need motivation to blog I will just look at this post and remember how time-consuming it is to re-cap a year. Im not even to summer yet! More to come haha!