Sometimes, I forget I created this to document our lives...

So, looking over the blog...I've only written about our lives in the past post, at the end of November since like...August! And it wasn't in the normal style I do, either! But knowing me, I'll go WAY overboard if I don't limit myself so I'll try to sum things up with as few words as possible. Here we go:

• September...I can't  really remember very well. ?
• October, we had a lot of fun doing a "Murder Mystery" night, playing one of the How to Host a Murder games. The first one we prepped for for like, 2 weeks, and did it the Friday before  Halloween with old mission friends of Sam's and their wives. The second one we only thought of it 3 days before, and did on actual Halloween night with some ward friends. Both were great. :) I wish we could do one with every different set of friends we could think of: old roommates, old high school friends, family, etc.
• Jori was a little Chinese lady for Halloween. That doesn't sound politically correct but not sure how else to say it. You know just beautiful, decorative Chinese dresses? She just wore one of those we have for her and some shoes that match. It's beautiful, and she was absolutely adorable. 
• I signed up for 9 credits this Fall Semester, which was the most I've taken at one time since Jori was born, with Sam gone most of the time. (Last Spring I was a full-time student, but Sam was home almost all the time.) It ended up being nuts because my religion class (Survey of World Religions) was interesting but (for me) WAY hard. Bah! 
• One of those 3 classes in the 9 credits was an Independent Study class, Writing in the Social Sciences, which means you set your own schedule...but because I had Pell Grants paying for it, I still had to get it done by this past Friday, December 14th. This ended up being a recipe for disaster: I put it off for far too long, and then we moved, so I did...something like 75% of the class, in a week and a half. Phew. Never again. Good thing I have an amazingly supportive husband! 

• Thanksgiving we spent with Sam's parents and his sister, Melanie and her family. It was great, I just didn't enjoy as much of it as I would have if I didn't have the Independent Study class hanging over my head. I was trying to work on it a lot of the time. At least I won't have that dilemma at Christmas.
• We drove down to St. George Nov. 30th, then the rest of the way to Dana Point, CA December 1st. We got to see one of my very favorite old roommates, Sydney Jackson, and spent the night with her; we also got to see one of Sam's very best friends from forever, James Hess, and his wife Jenna and their kids. I also love them a lot so I was thrilled to get to spend some time there. 
• Our place is on a really...well, hoity toity road, you have to have a lot of moolah to live here (unless you have a sweet deal worked out like us), but it's one of the smallest on this whole long road. Thank goodness-it's surreal enough to live in a beach house, but at least it's about the size we're used to (just 2 small bedrooms and a living room and kitchen). It'd be hard to call it home if it was super huge or something-we're just not used to that or ready for it just yet, I think. It's been so cool to be here-Jori loves the ocean. I'm just terrified she's going to drown every time we go down to it, because she runs right for the water and then it comes in and if I didn't grab her she could be swept away so easily. This reminds me of the other one I wanted to say...
• Our neighbors are wonderful. They'll only be here till the end of the month, which makes me sad, but they're this family from Oregon who comes down to California to sell Christmas trees every winter. It's actually an older generation and their two kids, and then their kids' families. So there's one girl that's only 2 months older than me, and she has two kids, the oldest of which is a month younger than Jori. The other woman is older and has six kids, and she's wonderful too. They aren't LDS but I swear they could be-they dress very conservatively, home school their kids, highly prioritize the Bible...it's great! I'm happy to have neighbors with such strong morals that I can relate to, and that there's someone Jori's age. Even though Jori thinks she's older than she is, I swear. She'll steal the older kids' bikes, particularly this one trike, but then cry cause she can't reach the pedals. Silly girl. 
• Our first weekend here, we spent with my uncle Kelly and his wife Marlayna, and their two boys (Seth and Ammon). Seth did something way funny, to me: he told me "You better watch your step, because there's mistletoe hanging in some places!" I told him "Watch out, I might jump out and smooch ya!" Then I left the room. Sam said something like "Careful Seth, she really might kiss ya!" And he smiled and said "That's what I was hoping for." Then I found him "nonchalantly" hanging out under the mistletoe, so I kissed his cheek and he did the 'cha-ching' with the arms sign, you know the one? And let out a huge "YEEEESSSSS!" silly boy.

That's about it for a catch-up. I do hate driving on the freeways down here, just as I suspected, but I have hope I'll get used to it eventually. Oh! And one of my finals? The one for my Independent Study course, actually. I had to have it proctored, so it was shipped to the closest place they had listed in their system...but I had to pay fifty bucks to take the test at this testing center! Fifty!! I thought a five dollar late fee that BYU charges was bad...never again, geeze.