But Twin Draftguard Provides an Air-Tight Seal!!

So Christmas happened! Bracken and I went up to his parents' house in glamorous Preston, ID. The festivities included a bajillion-kajillion games (which I actually enjoyed), mountains of never-ending home-cooked meals, lots of extended family, and an AWESOME new Kindle!! Hooray!! It's pretty and black and has unlimited, free 3G! Like I said, awesome. I've been downloading books like mad. After getting a long list of free classics, I have about 47 books and only paid for one of them. Actually, I didn't even pay for it because my $25 kindle gift card took the honors. And I'm sooo not even done! But I will be busy reading those for a while.
Now that the holidays are pretty much over, the wedding planning is back in full swing. And actually, last night Bracken pointed out that I was the one playing video games and he was the one looking up wedding things online. (As you may have gathered, those roles are usually reversed.) Hey, it's not my fault I've become hopelessly addicted to Dance Central, just one of a few games that came with a brand new Kinect that was delivered to Bracken's doorstep this week! And what's more, we have no idea who sent it! Who does that?? Our new anonymous best friend, that's who! If I could play Dance Central while sleeping, I would. It's that addicting. AND, Bracken got Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the Kinect!! I'm marrying a genius. (For those of you who don't know what a Kinect is, it's like a Wii remote game but twenty times better. It hooks up to the Xbox and has some cool laser reader thing that reads how you move your body, so you can play games by actually standing up and moving around with no remote.)
All this talk of Kinect has made me want to play, so I'll add some pictures and leave with a shaking fist at the off-and-on blizzard that's been sweeping Utah this week. Stop it!

This is the game that took over about 90% of our said game-playing. It also teaches Italian. ...no, really.

I'm actually reading the first book of this trilogy they have on the screen riiiight nooow. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. 

So FREAKIN excited about Christmas!!

Cousins Table!! Bracken wasn't invited.

After the initial shock and "What the hell!?" of the self-moving Santa hat, Grandpa was thrilled to wear it...

It's like crack.

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Oh hi, Mark! I mean blog! I just saw Aly's blog and read about a million and one posts and got insanely jealous of her travels and decided I should probably write a new post since my last one was...that one time that I posted last.

As seen on Bracken's blog, TA DA! We're engaged! Let the villagers rejoice and the wedding planning begin! ....or maybe I had most of that done before I actually had the ring on my finger and I'm not a total creeper. I am naaahhht! But the date, venue, temple session, dress, decorations, cake, invitations, and various other things may or may not have already been bought/decided upon before the morning of November 21st. I would mention it's on March 25th at the Logan temple, but hey, my three followers are my mom, my sister and my fiancee himself, so....hmm.

Yesterday was the third Globe University/Minnesota School of Business/Broadview University/work party at Thanksgiving Point. Joy. I came in to work at nine to "help" wrap the Secret Santa presents (I put "help" in sarcastic quotes because I was doing it all before doing the female guilt-trip on those standing by and watching). Whilst ushering in the Christmas Spirit, I snipped my finger pretty dang bad. Like deep. And gushing blood. And it hurt. Mica put ointment and a band-aid on it, thus demonstrating the great Medical Assisting education she's receiving here at our fine institution. Don't worry, I survived. Once the presents were wrapped, I got in Staci's 4-runner and we headed up to the Garden Room at Thanksgiving Point in our business attire. As per usual, the food made me sick, the awards were rigged (don't even get me started on the award our campus got for..what was it? Matt Moon's contributed processes adapted at our campus?.....), the company founders gave some stuffy speaches, blah blah blah it got out a half hour early.

THEN, I went and picked up Bracken...or rather rose him from the dead after pulling an all-nighter to finish a final project...and we were off into the construction traffic on the good ol' I-15 to meet Grandpa at his place for my birthday dinner. I was getting stressed cuz we were running late due to the afore-mentioned construction traffic, leaving Grandpa about 5 messages/missed calls letting him know we were coming. We made it to his house just a few minutes after 5, knocked on the door, and no one was there. After waiting in the car for a good 20 minutes, we headed back onto the 2-15 West. Right as we reach the entrance to I-15, my phone goes off with a reminder that my birthday dinner is in 15 minutes...DING DING DING! My fried brain goes off and suddenly remembers it was at 6, not 5. By this time I had gotten on the I-15 NORTH and got off on the first exit, followed it around and parked in some KFC parking lot in who knows where. I get ahold of Grandpa, tell him the story, and we're off to meet him at his place. Only problem is I'm now lost. We park in a church parking lot and I do the girl thing and cry. Greeeaaat. After I pull it together, with some help from Bracken since he's amazing like that, we find the freeway, get to Grandpa's, and have a delicious dinner at Maccaroni Grill in Salt Lake. (Thanks for nothing, 60-70 minute wait at P.F. Chang's.) It's ok, though, Maccaroni Grill was even better.

Wow, this is a lenghty post. Better add some pictures...uh...here:

Other than that, I'm waiting on a check from corporate so I can get paid for Thanksgiving *shaking fist*, school's almost over, work is...work, and I'm gonna go make more paper snowflakes for the windows now. Promise I'll blog again soon. To all...three of you out there. Get excited!!! XD