The Year 2008

I thought I would reminisce a little bit about this year...It's been a very strange year for me in particular since I've been pregnant for over half of it. Towards the beginning of the year I was still working for eBay and in February I was able to work from home for a little while, so that was a nice beginning. Archie and I also decided to start our family and boom June hit and we were pregnant! I worked at home til September when I decided that working from home was great, just not necessarily for eBay. So I enrolled in an online course to be a medical transcriptionist! So far it is going great. September also took us on a trip up to Oregon for the Portland Pirate Festival as well as to visit family and friends. Then in December Archie received a promotion to be an Engineer Level I. So we are very grateful for this fortunate turn of events!!!

Looks like we have a whole new opportunity for fun and growth this new year of 2009 with our baby boy being born in February (hopefully not sooner!) and enjoying/being frustrated at the new experiences that being parents will bring! I think my blogs will definitely get peppier!

We hope everyone has a fun and safe New Year!! Bring it on!!!!!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone had a wonderful and fantabulous Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!! Archie got both days off this week so Christmas Eve we decided to celebrate! We hit the movie "Bolt" and had a traditional Japanese lunch and we made a mad dash to Walmart right before they turned everyone way for closing to get our Christmas Eve gifts "Wall-E" and "Kung Fu Panda." I made roast chicken and a cheesecake for dinner and we enjoyed the special Christmas spirit by watching both movies and eating yummy food!

Wolfy watching us open gifts!

Christmas day we got up early and found that Santa had left us special presents in our stockings! He always brings us our favorite cereal and breakfast items as well as candy and a few stocking stuffers! He's so sweet!

Archie received a couple of PC games and a Walmart gift card along with Cap'n Peanut Butter Crunch and Pop Tarts!! Yummy!

I received some DVDs and a book to help me in my medical transcription studies!

For a family gift we bought a used computer from Archie's work that we are revamping so we can play more games and have more storage for more fun pictures and music!! yeah!

The kitties got a big helping of food and catnip from Santa as well! He'd never forget about our babies!

Wolfy and Frodo with their catnip!
Me ate another turkey whole!

I also took my kitties out to play in the snow that had fallen overnight...Wolfy wasn't too fond of the stuff, but Frodo loved it!

Wolfy trying desperately to get inside!

After our gift-opening we headed up to our friends' house Sarah and Matt. They cooked the turkey while we brought up rolls, taters, and lots of dessert! We played games and watched a movie and had a great time!

Sarah and Matt with their dog Cooper

Archie playing with their cat Measure
More Archie and Measure

It was a bit scary at the end of the day since it was a blizzard outside! But we made it home after almost a two hour commute that should only take less than an hour! I did a lot of praying and thanking!

Christmas is a special time to reflect on what the Savior has done for me in my life and to reflect on all the wonderful family and friends I have in my life as well! So a big Merry Christmas to all of you!

Oh, The Lovely Snow!

Well, it's official. It looks like we are going to have a white Christmas this year, you know, unless the temperature rises to 90 degrees in the next day or two....We can only hope right??? hee hee! I'm just very glad that I don't have to get up early and head out for work on these very snowy days. Archie had a doctor's appointment so he slept in and then headed out for it. It took him an hour to get there and then realized he had the wrong address so then it took him another hour to get to the right one! And it still kept on snowing and snowing and snowing so by the time he left the office he decided it would be better to just come straight home rather than try to get to work! So glad that he decided that. I was so worried for him. I really wish this year I had some boots to go out and play in the snow with, but since I'm also preggo it makes it a bit more uncomfy to play in. But next year I'll be ready.....but it'll probably be a dry winter knowing my luck...hee hee. But today it is nice and sunny!!! So ode to the lovely snow!

Christmas Survey

I've seen a few Christmas surveys out
there so I thought I would
put down one myself!  Enjoy!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? 
It depends on the gift!

2. Real tree or Artificial?  Nursery trees are really
beautiful and smell really nice, but I'm practical
 so I go with the artificial most of the time.

3. When do you put up the tree?  
Thanksgiving weekend.

4. When do you take the tree down? 
Usually the week after New Year's.

5. Do you like eggnog?  Icky, yuck!

6. Favorite gift received as a child?  My little
 pony stable and a cabbage patch doll!! Family
gift was Super Nintendo!

7. Hardest person to buy for? Don't really care.
So everyone is easy to shop for!

8. Easiest person to buy for?  Archie and myself!

9. Do you have a nativity scene?  A few of them and
am continuing to collect!

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?  Mail, email is
too impersonal.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?  They've
all been fairly nice!

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?  A muppet christmas
carol

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
After Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Sure, back when I was in schoolfor school friends.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?  chocolate
 and pnut butter capn crunch, hot chocolate!

16. Lights on the tree?   Definitely!

17. Favorite Christmas song? O holy night

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?  Definitely
home!

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?  Dasher,
Dancer, comet, and cupid, donder and blitzen, vixen
and rudolph...i think that's all??

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?  Angel, with fiber
optics!!

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? we usually
do a themed one Christmas Eve gift and the rest for morning!

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
People and their shopping craziness and road harassment!

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? Whatever we have I
put on the tree!

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Turkey and honey baked
ham and all the fixings!

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? World Peace!

Happy Anniversary: Five Years and Counting!

Archie and I had a wonderful anniversary this weekend, considering my large condition and the horrible snow storm we received here in lovely Utah! The first snow was about two months ago and then it warmed up and of course the weekend of our anniversary it snows!! Ain't that life for ya! We decided to keep it close to home since I was not in the mood for traveling too far. We headed up to Salt Lake and stayed at the Shilo Inn in downtown. Archie wanted to stay there since they have an elevator that looks outside. We tried it once and never again! It was really old and creaky and I have fear of heights anyway, so I really thought we were going to plunge to our deaths!

Saturday we headed over to the Leonardo Museum for the Body Worlds exhibit. It was amazing! I highly recommend it to anyone who has access to this exhibit. They use actual donated bodies that are plastinated!! Kind of creepy, but very informative. It's a bit hard to stand for long periods of time, but they had plenty of benches to help me recuperate! OK, it's not very romantic, but it was fun and we had lots of quality time together!!!!

Sunday my sister invited us to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert!! That was amazing!!! We got to sit in on the "Music and the Spoken Word" and then the Christmas concert afterwards. President Monson and President Uchtdorf were also there in attendance and the feeling was so special and amazing! It was a great way to finish off our Anniversary weekend!

Sorry no pics from this year's outing due to no pics allowed at the museum and such. But I've added a few from previous years when we were able to get out a bit more!

This is from 2004, we went to Newport, OR and visited the Undersea Gardens and Ripley's Believe it or Not and Wax museums!

Us being goofy on Temple Square last year!

A beautiful pic of the Salt Lake City temple 2007.

2006 we were kind of in between Utah and Oregon so it was a pretty quick trip in Sandy. 2005 we went to Seattle and stayed in a nice hotel and ate at the top of the Space Needle!! That one was really fun too!

Frodo and Wolfgang: Our Sweet Kitties

I feel it is time to give a special blog post to my cute kitties! Frodo has been apart of our family (well, I got him right after I returned home from my mission) since 2003. Archie whole-heartedly adopted him after we were married later that year!

My mom came with me to the pet shop to find a new kitten. Our other cat Princess had gotten sick while I was gone and she died shortly after I returned home. It was pretty tough, so I really wanted a new companion in my life to ease the pain. When I walked into the store they had a lot of kittens available. There were all so cute! I wanted them all! hee hee! But when I looked down at Frodo he had these really big eyes and sweet disposition! It was love! So I took him home with me. He picked me instead of the other way around.

Here are a few pics when he was a kitten!

He actually had to stay with my parents for a few months while Archie and I got situated in Oregon. But my parents brought him up a few months later and he was officially apart of the family! He loves to chew things and tear them up! He's destroyed book covers, boxes, papers, strings, toilet paper and paper towels, etc!

He's our pirate kitty!

Frodo right before eating and destroying this box!
He allows me special lap time privileges every once in a while!

For Christmas in 2004 we decided he needed a brother. He was getting a bit lonely! So we picked up Wolfgang! We were actually looking at a orange tabby first, but Wolfy looked cute so I just wanted to be sure. While I was holding him I noticed that he had six claws on his paws instead of the usual five! The employee hadn't noticed either because he told us if we didn't get him now they were going to jack up the price since he was a polydactyl kitty. So that clinched it for us. He was ours!

You can kind of see his freakish paws here!

Sleeping with Archie!

He was such a little guy!

Needless to say, Frodo did NOT think he needed a new brother. It was quite the hissy fit for the first month or two. But Frodo finally adjusted and Wolfy slowly took over and butted his way in! He's kind of the passive-aggressive of our two kitties. He's really large now due to eating half of Frodo's food every day, while in turn Frodo has been able to keep his weight down since he has nothing left to eat at the end of each day! Wolfy definitely loves his peoples. He follows us around all day in order to get the pets' every day. While Frodo saves his cuddle time for special occasions! Frodo is a people kitty; he likes to meet new adults. But kids...he's still wondering about and Wolfy won't even go near them if he can help it! So we'll all have some adjusting to do when little Gabriel arrives in a couple of months! But we'll do it since we're a big, happy family!You must love me!

Starting to get along!
Our little cuddle muffins
Wolfy using his passive-aggressive self on Frodo!

We love our kitties and hope you have gained an appreciation for the love they bring into our little family!

Stupid Smoke Alarms!

I definitely almost killed myself yesterday morning. The smoke alarm in our bedroom decided its battery juice was depleted and therefore needed to annoy me early in the morning, of course right after Archie had left for work. They're VERY LOUD!! No way was I going to be able to sleep anymore. It's a good thing I'm tall....OK not at all. I could barely reach the alarm while standing on a chair so I had to add a couple of my thick books in order to reach it. It wasn't very stable and it took a few tries to get it off and then to actually detach the stupid thing from the ceiling! GRRRRR. I wasn't a happy camper. So I chucked it down stairs in the basement with a lot of blankets to help muffle the very annoying beeping sound. I wish they could make the alarms smart so they would only alert you in the late morning and early evening hours! I could've been one of those women "who fell and couldn't get up." And Archie would've found me half dead and insane because the alarm would still be blearing and I'm too large to actually get up off the ground....

Christmas Decor!

This is my favorite!! Setting up the Christmas decorations every year! We love it! We're actually still working on the lights. We have way too many this year so we're trying to come up with clever ways to put them up in our house and on windows, etc! So we took a couple of shots of our tree and of us on the night we put them up! It was crazy hard, though. I don't have a lot of stamina due to being huge and pregnant. So Archie had to do a lot of the hard labor parts with the tree and setting up things higher up. But we had fun listening to Harry Connick Jr.'s Christmas album and eating candy! I'll add more pics once we get the rest of the lights up outside and inside!

Archie doesn't look too happy in this one, but I think it's because he didn't know it was being taken!

Archie looks happier with his Santa hat on!

I was skinnier before Thanksgiving dinner!!! HEEE HEEE!

Our beautiful Christmas tree!!

Photos of Christmases Past!

Since I'm new to the blogging world I thought I would throw up some old photos of some recent Christmases. This one is from 2004, our first Christmas in Gresham, OR. We had just gotten Wolfie a month before, which why he is sooo tiny! We chopped down all our trees from the mountains while we were living up there! They weren't the most symmetrical trees, but we fancied them up the best way we knew!

This one where we are in light blue is from 2005. Our friend Catie took the pic! They turned out nice!
This one is from 2006 in Utah at my sister DeAnn's. This is the family Christmas Party a week or so before actual Christmas. The one in brown is me and two of my nieces Alissa and Ameleya, and Alissa's bro. Matthew. This year was really crazy. Archie had moved down to Utah to start the new job in November, but I still had school to finish so I stayed behind in Oregon. During Christmas break I came down and stayed with DeAnn (where Archie was staying). So it was a very emotional time for us both! I'm so glad we're back together!


Here are a few more pics from recent years. We love our Santa hats!! We don't actually have any from last Christmas. Not sure why. We spent it with Aunt Jean in New Mexico and Archie's mother Dianne. It was a really fast and furious trip since we could only take so much time off for work (we drove)! So why no pics were taken, I have no idea! Gotta be better about that this year!

Oh Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderfully fun Thanksgiving! We were able to sleep in and enjoy our morning, that's always a plus. All I had to do that morning was chop up some veggies for the relish plate and throw together a yummy whipped cheesecake! My sister DeAnn hosted the fantabulous event and we had all the yummy trimmings of turkey, potatoes and gravy, with rolls, corn, strawberry coo whip salad and lots of yummy snacks, and of course pies with real whipped cream!

We brought up Mexican Train dominoes and Bang! Two very fun games! We laughed, talked, ate, and played, and finally had to leave around nine so Archie could get into bed since he had to work today. It was a nice way to spend Thanksgiving; not a lot of cooking and minimal cleanup!

We're very thankful for the opportunity to be parents here in a few months (though, it's really, really scary to think about!) We're grateful for supportive family and friends, for Jesus Christ and His example so we can better people each and every day! We love life and love this wonderful time of the year that brings so much joy!

Rhogam Shot!

Just went in for the big shot this morning! I was a bit scared, but they were super nice and gave me free juice and warmed up a blanky for me while I waited for the shot to be prepared. I wish I didn't have to get one of those, but I'm a negative blood type and thus the precaution. Hopefully, Gabriel is negative as well, but they've got to take precautions. They made me stay after the shot was given for another 30 minutes!!! They wanted to make sure I was OK. That's when I got really scared. I kept waiting for something really bad to happen, like a heart attack or kidney failure! I think I even saw a crash cart outside the door?? Anyhoo, I guess I'll need to get one more after he's born, but it hasn't been too bad, the hip's a bit sore is all! Now I'm gearing up for the feast of the year! Yummy turkey!

Us up to now!

I felt it was time to start the public blog on my family! Not that too many may care, but there are those not on Myspace who may want to see what's going on in the Crozier family.....

Let's see...Archie and I met in the summer of 2003 a couple of months after I came home off my mission. We were in the same single's ward. He was quite the little dater of all the girls so it took some convincing on my part to get him convinced I was the One!!! We started dating exclusively shortly after that and we got married a few months later in the Salt Lake temple on December 12, 2003.

Two weeks after we packed up everything we owned and headed up to Gresham, OR for Archie's new job! We actually traveled up in the worst storm Portland had seen in years! Right outside of Boise I slid off the road and almost killed myself! And when we hit down into the Gorge I could go no further due to all the snow. So we abandoned the truck and I road with Archie in his beat up 900 dollar Subaru. We had to tailgate a semi truck in order to make it through the treacherous snow conditions. I literally thought death was upon us, and kept my eyes closed and prayed to God we would make it through! Happy to say we did!

We stayed with Archie's Aunt Jean for a couple of months til' we were able to move into an apartment close to his work. My parents also eventually brought up my sweet baby kitty Frodo so he could live with us up there too!

That Fall I started school at Portland State University where I studied Applied Linguistics and Spanish! Super fun! I graduated in 2007.

We also got another kitty while we were up there....cute Wolfgang, aka Wolfy. He's a polydactyl kitty with six toes on three paws and a really big thumb on the fourth!

But alas, our journey in Gresham was to come to an end....Archie got a better paying job with IM Flash Technologies down in Lehi, UT in 2006. He headed down there to start while I stayed in Gresham in order to finish school. It was a very long 4 1/2 months, but we survived with a visit in December and lots of web cam calls! My mother even came up for a week to keep me company. And our awesome friends, Trisha and Jeremy, let me come over all the time and annoy them while I was lonely! In March Archie came back up so we could move everything out of our apartment and we were on our way back to Utah.

His company put us in an apartment until we were able to find a place of our own. We bought a beautiful town home in Eagle Mountain. I also finished off two classes in the Spring one at BYU and on online from PSU in order to finish off my degree!

So one year later we decided it was time to start our little family and I'm pregnant with a little boy Gabriel on the way in February. I am also studying to be a medical transcriptionist so I can work from home after Gabe is born! And that is us up to now!