February

December-March are definitely the most eventful in our household. In addition to the Holidays, these months also include both of our birthdays, valentines day, AND our anniversary (which is coming up in a couple weeks). February flew by, but we were able to squeeze in some fun things in the meantime. 

We said goodbye to the Driscolls and sent them off to their new life in California. We've loved having them in our ward the best few years and will miss them lots!

We had a get together with a few of our ward friends to celebrate/say goodbye. Thanks to the Husbergs, Peckhams,  and (both) Newsomes for coming and to the Cooks for hosting!

We celebrated Valentines Day with our second annual fondue night and it definitely didn't disappoint. We did the same copycat Melting Pot recipes and everything turned out delicious!

We loved just having a night in and not having to deal with crowds and long waits at restaurants. I think we'll probably keep doing our Valentines fondue night tradition for a long time! 

We set a New Years goal with our friends the Cooks to go to a different temple every month for our date night. Last month we went to the Jordan River temple which I had actually never been to before. My grandparents used to spent a lot of time there so it was fun to get to go! It was beautiful and so much bigger in person than I thought it would be!

My little brother, Scott, turned 19 on the 19th! My dad was out of the country on a trip and my mom wasn't feeling well, so we had him over for Sunday dinner at our place.

Even though he lives in Salt Lake for school, we still don't get to see him too often so it was fun to have him in Provo to visit!

We did homemade pizza for dinner and chocolate fondue for dessert (we were still on our fondue kick from earlier that week). It was delicious as always!

Nick's birthday was on a weekday so we decided to celebrate the weekend before. We found out the the Utah Symphony was putting on a "Simply Sinatra" concert and knew it would be the perfect way to celebrate. Frank Sinatra is one of our all-time favorites and the concert was even more amazing than we thought it would be! 

Steve Lippia, the singer, sounded exactly like Frank and in addition to the symphony, they had a big band who tours all over the country. They played all of our favorites and we loved every minute of it.

Happy birthday to my love!

January

January and February have been busy months for us! Here's my attempt to catch up on what's been going on around the Potter household. 

We finished up the New Years holiday with a day date that included a trip to the spa and a teeth cleaning by my dentist-in-training. 

We took a quick trip down to Moab with my brothers -- I can't believe we hadn't flown down that way sooner! The views were absolutely amazing. 

My birthday was on the 27th and my sweet husband sent me a beautiful flower arrangement at work.

We celebrated my birthday with our traditional birthday dinner at Tucanos (yay for birthday coupons!) and Nick surprised me afterward with a party with a bunch of our friends at The Chocolate.

Nick got a delicious chocolate cake for all of us to share. The Chocolate is by far my favorite place to cure my sweet tooth! 

It was so fun to have a bunch of our friends from the ward there. Thanks to the Cooks, Slezaks, Newsomes, Evans, and my brother who all showed up!

My good friend, Sarah and her family just moved away to California. Her husband, Nic just got a job with Chevron after he finished grad school and they are expecting their second little one in May. We're so excited for them but I'll sure miss this girl!

They day after my birthday we met my parents and brothers in Salt Lake for dinner. Scottie was a good sport for being there -- he got in a ski accident earlier that day and was recovering from a concussion and what we found out later was a cracked pelvis!

More to come for February!

The Rest of 2011

I just realized how lame it is that I had this very same "the rest of" post last year, too. But hey, I guess having to play catch-up is better than nothing. This post is quite the eclectic mix of events, so I'll start from the beginning:

The Rest of Fall

Fall is one of my favorite times of year to go flying. Seeing all of the colors from the air is so amazing. Nick's mom was up for the weekend, so we all got to go on a little sightseeing trip. We also got to take Jason, Nick's little "mentee." It was his first time in a plane and he had so much fun. Thanks to Aaron for taking all of us!

My long-time friend, Kirsten, got married! I've known Kirsten since I can first remember. She and my brother, Aaron, met in kindergarten and our families have been friends ever since. Her wedding was in mid-October and the weather was absolutely incredible. Congrats to her and Nurivan!

 

 Nick has been loving his time at Total Care Dental. His schedule was so insane last semester, but he loved being at work every day. He and Dr. Babcock apparently have very similar styles -- yes, the purples shirts were totally unplanned. Hilarious.

Thanksgiving

 We spent Thanksgiving in Colorado this year and it was fun to have Tyler and Jessica there with us, too. We had an amazing Thanksgiving dinner and a relaxing weekend shopping and going to the movies. 

We loved getting to spend time with these little munchkins. They have been growing up so fast! And yes, Nick is styling Adrienne's hair in that picture. Haha. 

And we can't forget little Charlie! Nick and I want a dog soooo bad. We love getting to be with our families because that means we get to be with dogs, too :)

Christmas

Even though our tree barely fits in our little apartment, we still love having all the decorations up. And it helps that Nick is a Christmas fanatic. 

I went up to Logan the week after Thanksgiving to help my mom get all of her Christmas stuff us. Clearly just watching us put up the decorations was enough for Kona to get tuckered out. Haha.

Christmas in Logan was pretty low-key this year. Luckily there was at least a little more snow on the ground than there was in Provo. Hopefully next year Mother Nature will cooperate with the holiday spirit!

Christmas Dinner

Nick was very particular about our gift wrap this year. We had to make a special trip to Tai Pan before we headed up to Logan just to get it. I can't complain though -- wrapping presents is one of my favorite parts of Christmas!

All of us got spoiled this year. You wouldn't suspect it, but my dad is quite the shopper. He brought back lots of loot for us from his overseas trips. My parent's surprised Nick with a new guitar, and Nick surprised me with an iPad! It's fun to have a new addition to our Mac family.

Here are my cute parents with their stash.

Casey and Dianna's Wedding

Nick's brother, Casey, got married on Dec. 30th in the Logan Temple. He and Dianna met in D.C. but ironically her parents live right down the street from mine! We are so happy for both of them and excited to have Dianna in our family!

We loved getting to see Casey's boys, too. They are such little gentlemen. Little Ammon even asked me to dance at the wedding dinner. So cute.

Brian Head for New Years

We were so excited that we could make it to Brian Head this year to see our friends! We met the Yagers and the Fields at Emily's family condo in Brian Head and spent the New Years weekend there. It had been about a year since we had see them, and it was so fun to be together again. Sadly, we were missing Jo and Aaron, but hopefully one day all 8 of us can have a reunion!

(our New Years Eve bash was more of a pajama party)

Every New Year's Eve, Brian Head Resort puts on an awesome light/fireworks show. I had never seen anything like it before and it was so fun. All of the resort employees ride up the ski lifts with bright flares and then ski down the mountain as they put on a firework show. Such a fun way to kick off New Years eve.

 It was also the third anniversary of our engagement!

 

 We had been to Brian Head in the summertime before, but it's amazing to see the red rock in the snow. This lookout point was beautiful!

We're already looking forward to next year. Thanks to Kiel and Emily for having us!

Life Lately

Well, we're back full-force into the school year - well, Nick is at least :) I have to admit, I haven't missed homework one bit so far. This is a super random posts with jumbled pictures we've taken between our camera and phones... sorry in advance for the iPhone pics. 

Between both of our jobs and Nick's night classes, we usually just count on seeing each other on the weekends. Nick is a trooper though -- I don't now how he lives on so little sleep! 

But the good news is that Nick absolutely loves work. Every day I get to hear crazy stories about mouth surgeries  -- these aren't just cavities and root canals I'm talking about, either. The dentist he works for does a lot of cosmetic dentistry and mouth restorations, so Nick is getting a lot of hands-on experience with really intense surgeries. We're so grateful he has this job because  he gets to learn so much before he actually goes to dental school.

We also love the dentists he works for and their office staff -- such great people. They had a 10-year anniversary luau party for their practice at the beginning of the month:

And speaking of jobs... I got a new one! I've been working at Epic Marketing, a full-service marketing agency in Draper for about three weeks now. I'm working as an Internet marketing specialist/account coordinator and I really love it so far. My work also had a bbq/get together a couple weeks ago and it was fun to meet the families with everyone I work with at the office. It was the day of the BYU v. U of U game, so we had a little office rivalry going on, as you can see from everyone's outfits. 

 

And on a side note, I got this very expensive piece of paper in the mail a few weeks ago -- so I guess that means I'm really an official graduate now! 

A few other random events:

Nick's good friend growing up was in SLC with his engineering firm working for the Dew Tour. He was actually the one in charge of designing/building the motocross track and was able to get us VIP passes to one of the motocross events. I had never seen motocross live and it was actually pretty amazing. Scottie and Aaron tagged along with us and loved that we got passes to the VIP booth for the event. 

The other cool part about the VIP booth is that we were chatting with Pink (the singer) and didn't really even realize it at first -- I guess her husband was on of the motocross racers. Nick snapped this pic of her after we realized who it was. Haha.

It was really fun to meet Eric for the first time -- I always hear childhood stories from Nick about all of his good friends growing up. We're excited that he'll be back this winter for the Dew Winter Tour!

We also went up to Idaho Falls for our nephew's baptism. We hadn't seen these little guys since our wedding so we were excited to get a chance to see them -- they've grown up so much over the past couple years! And this was the first picture Nick's mom has had with "her boys" in quite a while, too.

Last weekend I got to go to the General Relief Society meeting with some good friends in my ward. It was my first time every going to the RS Broadcast and it was so great -- I especially loved President Uchtdorf's talk. It was such a perfect day outside, too. 

The weather this weekend was also incredible, so in between Saturday conference sessions we drove the Alpine Loop, which is one of our favorite things about fall. The leaves were incredible -- pictures never do them justice! 

I wish this season would stay around a little longer each year!