a short christmas post

I am glad Christmas is over- this year wasn't one of my favorites- but I did want to post some pictures from the season.

Our Christmas tree. I like it- I think it turned out pretty! Next year I want a tall skinny tree- I am keeping an eye out for a good deal. We don't have a ton of space for a tree. We had to do some rearranging to make this one fit.

We put the train out again this year- we didn't have the space for it to go around the tree, so it went back and forth across the room.



"The stockings were hung by the chimney with care..." too bad Santa fell victim to the economy this year! They were just for decoration, not for present holding. haha I managed to get 4 of my little holy families up on the mantle too!

This is one of my favorite nativities that I own. It's a music box. =)

Nathan and I decided not to exchange gifts this year, to save some money- we were fortunate enough to get some great gifts from our loving family though. I wasn't able to take pictures of everything, but here are few of our fantastic gifts: (P.S.- just because a gift isn't featured on the blog doesn't mean we didn't love as much as the ones that were! I am just to lazy to go find them all!)

I got these marvelous rubber gloves in my stocking from my side of the family. If you know me at all- you know that I HATE getting my hands wet. I have a phobia of finger wrinkles- so whoever got me these THANK YOU! It makes cleaning my kitchen so much more bearable now!



Santa also got us some new scrabble games! I have been meaning to get my hands on these. I am sure they will get a lot of use. I <3 scrabble!

I am pretty sure it was my Aunt Lara who got me the mini chandelier- since she has one too! =) This little baby is gonna be hanging from my rear view mirror soon. Car bling!!! w00t!


And last of the gift photos- but certainly not least, we have the temple picture that Nathan's sister Amy made us (she took the pic and made the frame and everything! how sweet is that?!) and underneath is some fabulous potpourri that my mommy in law got me. It smells fantastic! I sat my fake candle in it. I love it.

And now my friends, I leave you with my all time favorite Christmas song. I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and wish you the happiest of new years!

christmas eve snow trip

On Christmas Eve, we thought it might be fun to go play in some....

SNOW!!!

And we were right. It was pretty fun. Here are some pics from our day:

Dave & Buster cuddled up in the backseat for the long drive. Dave doesn't like car rides at all so I can imagine he must have hated being in the car for a couple hours straight!

I kept myself entertained part of the time by taking random pictures.

Nathan looks like he's in a hurry to get up there!

and I am just happy to be along for the ride.

Nathan is such a goober!

I wonder if my eyebrow tastes delicious?

I was getting worried for a while that there wasn't going to be any snow to play in- but we finally saw some on the side of the road:

Yay!

The pups were excited to finally be out of the car!

Here is the snowman we built. Not too shabby!

Mostly we just watched the dogs run around- they absolutely loved it! I was worried at first about letting Little Dave run free- he has a tendency to run off, but he did fine! We met Marvin & Sarah up there, so they had their dog cousins to run around with.



Here is a video of them running around in the snow:




And here is a video of Nathan trying to take Dave down the hill on the sled with him... Fail! lol





Marvin & Sarah brought a camping stove and made some hot dogs for lunch.


We tried to get the dogs to do some tricks for hot dogs; TRIED being the operative word. There was so much going on around them, they were having a hard time focusing.




Then we had to turn around and come back home. We had to get to dinner at other Lunt house by 6 pm. On the way back I snapped some pics of the snow on the tree out the window. I have only seen snow on trees like that on Christmas cards! I am such a desert rat! haha




It was a fun day. As usual, I wish I had taken more pictures- especially of the sledding, but my fingers were cold! Being a better picture taker should be one of my new years resolutions!

guessing game

If you hadn't heard yet- Nathan started a new job at Everest Online University as an admissions rep- leaving lil ol' me to run Distinctly Lunt on my own. And just so you know- this is a fantastic thing! We aren't closing our business or anything like that- just downsizing a bit to make it more manageable and with Nathan's new job we get awesome benefits! woohoo!

So anyway, like I was saying- he started this new job and after he was done with his training one of the first little team build exercises he did with his new team was "Guess how old Nathan is..."

This is the closest picture I could find to what he looked like at the time (I am pretty sure he had the goatee- it keeps disappearing and appearing randomly:)


He told everyone a little bit about himself- things like he's married, owns his own business, held a management position for like 5 years, etc. Can you guess the average age???

31!

Crazy, right?! I know he has a pretty impressive resume for 23 and the facial hair makes him look a little older- but I didn't think it added 8 years! The youngest guess was 20 and the oldest guess was 39. Whoever guessed 39 had to have been smoking something- no freaking way he looks even close to 40- though I do find an occasional gray hair on his head....

When Nathan told me about that I just thought it was funniest thing. I thought you all would get a kick out of it too.

christmas card- merry christmas!

Well- here is our Christmas card... I had every intention of mailing them out to all our family and friends with personalized messages but alas- time has run out. I can't believe it's Christmas eve already! We have been so busy with work we haven't had time to do any holiday stuff- kind of a bummer.

Believe it or not- I have actually had the card made since back in October, I added the picture back when we got family photos done in November, I downloaded it beginning of December-- and that's as far as I got.

We do want all of you to know how much we love and care about you this holiday season. We are grateful for all your love and support as we have been working on maintaining and growing our business. I don't think you can understand how much your help and support has meant to us these past 7 months. If we had the time and the means we would deliver this card to everyone with a big Christmas hug! Love you all!!

<3 <3 <3
Tarin & Nathan

25 years!

This post should have been done a while ago, but better late than never I guess!

Back on November 29th, my parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. It's kinda a big deal- that's one of the important ones; the silver anniversary- so we decided to do a few special things for them.

First, Nathan and I decided we would arrange a family photo shoot. My family hasn't had a real family picture since I was like 10- we have added 2 husbands and 2 babies since then, and obviously have all changed a lot! It was time for some new pics that my parents could hang on the wall. Here are a few for you to check out:

(my nieces are so stinkin' cute! it's ridiculous!!)

(you would never guess we are sisters- we look NOTHING alike. lol- but we love eachother to pieces. That's what really matters)

(I think my dad is really happy to have some other guys in the family now)

(This is Nathan's favorite)

Our photographers were fantastic! If you like the pics, check out their website. They did a great job- and their prices are pretty reasonable.


A few weeks later, we had a surprise anniversary party planned for them. I am super lame, so I didn't have a camera prepared to take pictures. Luckily my Aunt Lara was able to get a few on her phone. It was pretty awesome:

This was my anniversary present to my parents, aside from the photo- shoot. A BIG wall sign with a couple of the family photos. "All because two people fell in Love" I thought it turned out pretty well for having to throw it together last minute- dang work schedule!

A couple shots of the fabulous food line. We had a TON of stuff. 3 types of cupcakes, cream puffs, cheesecake bites, fruit cups, brownie buttons, fudge, cherry and apple turnovers, and one of my dad's favorites: creme brule!

We also had a hot chocolate bar with a few different flavors, marshmallows, wafer sticks, whipped cream, and chocolate dipped spoons!

We used as much silver as we could in the decorations- thank goodness it was around Christmas time- it made that part fairly easy. The hardest part about the decorations was finding old photos of my parents. I put random pictures of them from throughout their marriage all over the place. Hanging on walls and sitting on tables as part of the center pieces. All framed too!

We had been planning this for like a year, we tried really hard to keep it mostly a secret- especially from my mom. My dad helped us get a guest a list together (since we don't know all my parent's friends and their addresses and stuff.)

I think my mom was surprised. It was pretty funny when she walked in the door she looked so confused. She thought she was going out to dinner with a couple from my parents ward. They told her they had to stop at this church building to drop something off to one of the bishops. As they walked up my mom was like "This is the building we had our reception at 25 years ago." Then she walked in and saw me and Jess and Nathan- and was like "What are you doing you here?" She just looked so confused! It was funny! Then they walked in the cultural hall and everyone started clapping. It was cute.

There was a pretty good turn out- probably like 40-50 people? I am not sure, I was too busy chit chatting, and keeping the food full to count. There was family, friends from the past, friends from the ward, and even friends from my dad's work! It was pretty neat! They got lots of cool gifts too. =)

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad! From your favorite oldest daughter!