Dopplegangers.

My mom just after high school.
The Princess of Alderaan.

Major Difference: My mom never made out with her long lost twin brother.

Major Similarity: That hair.

In all reality, my mom looks gorgeous. Right guys? (Here's where you all back me up so she doesn't kill me for putting this up here.)

I just couldn't resist using this comparrison to introduce the beginning of a series of holiday posts I will be posting to help us all get a little more into the spirit of the season.

#1: The Star Wars Holiday Special Finale.

This is especially hilarious out of the context of the film because I really have no idea what is going on, I just know that the idea of Christmas with Princess Leia singing to the Rebel Alliance makes me all warm inside.

It sure looks like Darth Vader blows Leia and the rest of the gang to pieces at the end there.

A Christmas present to us all.

That song was too much for me.

Happy Cyber Monday!

Katie

Family Bonding

(photo by the little brother without a cell phone)

What is this world coming to?

Katie

Happy Thanksgiving

I spent the day yesterday decorating for Christmas.

My sister said this is a blasphemous thing to do on Thanksgiving Eve but I am going to be busy starting Friday until around mid-december when I will move home for the holidays so I gave my apologies to the Christmas-Decoration Gods and went ahead with it.

(pictures to come)

My roommates and I don't turn our heater on during the winter.

We live on the second floor so the 1st and 3rd floor heat us enough that we usually stay fairly warm.

The past few days everyone has been gone from the 1st and 3rd floor (and from the rest of Provo. Holidays turn this college town into a ghost town) and so their heat hasn't been on to help me out.

Even though it was freeeezing outside yesterday I was determined to not cave on the heater policy and finally resorted to turning our broiler on and leaving the oven open. Then, whenever I got really cold I would stick my socks in there for a few minutes, put them back on, and keep decorating.

The life of a poor kid is way more exciting/ funnier/ I singed one of my socks.

Today I am headed to Riverton, UT to meet up with my family for some festivities (eating.)

In 4th grade the state of Utah held a drawing contest for all elementary school students to see who could draw the best picture of their favorite place in Utah. The pictures were to be used for a calendar coming out later that year to promote Utah tourism by reminding everyone that even little kids don't get too bored here.

I drew a picture of my Grandparent's backyard in Riverton, my favorite place in Utah at the time (there was a lot of dirt. Almost too much for my brown colored pencil.)

I remember how offended I was when Allison Davison won for her picture of Arches National Park. Who would want to go to that dumb place when they could play in dirt in Riverton, Utah?

I guess I should have cut her some slack, especially considering her name was Allison Davison, which wasn't as bad as my other best friend Shaylee Baylee (true story), but still fairly unfortunate.

I think the local newspaper reporter and I were even more upset when Allison was quoted as saying, "I never even been to that place. I just seen it on those license plates."

(I was probably more upset about her grammar than anything. Even back then I was an English snob.)

List of things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving holiday:

1. Broilers

2. Riverton. Still one of my favorite places in Utah.

3. Parents with the decency to sound out my name before they wrote it on the certificate.

Man, I feel blessed.

But seriously, I do.

Life is grood.

Katie

I almost die way too often.

I'm going to make this really long story short (No I'm not. You know me.):

We drove through the worst snowstorm I've ever been in, spun off the road, got back on, and then hit a road block in Beaver, UT.

Right now you are asking yourself a few questions.

1. Why did we attempt to drive through this storm?

2. Where/what in the world is Beaver, UT?

3. Why am I watching "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" at 1 in the morning and crying (like any human with a soul does when watching this show) while I write this?

Quite honestly I have no answer to #1 or #3. However, I CAN attempt to answer #2.

Let's start with Arshels...

This is the cafe we stopped at after our brutal last 26 miles (that took us almost two hours) into Beaver through a blinding snowstorm. We were pretty shaken up and freezing by the time we got here and our waitress Patti (the only one in the cafe) was such a sweetheart.

I ordered one of those Scooby-Doo sandwiches where there is three full layers of bread between all the other ingredients. I've always wanted one of those. Who knew I'd find it in Beaver, Utah?

Next stop: a vacant chapel where all the stranded people who weren't smart/rich enough to get one of the six motel rooms in Beaver were camping out.

Yes we were only there for two hours, and yes we were on facebook and drinking chocolate milk for most of it, but I still consider myself a surviving refugee of a natural disaster.

Also there was a moment when I was pretty sure we were on the set of an apocalyptic movie when I looked around the room and saw a group of ethnic minorities in one corner, a woman in a wheelchair in the other, and two awkward looking parents with their teenage gothic children against the wall.

We obviously played the group of young college girls with uncanny scientific knowledge, two of whom will wander off into the dark and not make it through the elements, while the other two survive, meet up with attractive, similarly aged boys (preferably Adrian Grenier in his younger years) and agree to repopulate the earth at some point after the credits.

Proof of the cold: It looks like this man is wearing every layer he owns.

Nine hours after departure we found ourselves back in Provo, Ut.

Thank you Beaver for the adventure.

As far as small towns named after strange animals go, you guys are alright.

I'll close with this funny picture of my parking job at church.

The one in the middle is mine.

At least we didn't have to drive that guy through the storm.
For anyone who is traveling for the holidays, travel safe please.
And should you happen to get stranded somewhere, I hope it is near an Arshel's.
That club sandwich is hard to beat.

Katie

Just call her Mrs. Hafen.

Here she is. Married.

FAIL.

So there we were, cleaning up after Erin's wedding...

I was carrying an armload of presents out to a suburban where a fifteen year old boy named Adam was loading them up. A big crowd of ten or eleven adults (all who were strangers to me) were also carrying presents out.

Someone makes the comment: "Wow, Adam is such a helper."

At first I meant to say, "Yeah, what a champ!"

And then mid-sentenced I switched to deciding to say "What a trooper!"

What actually came out: "Yeah! What a TRAMP!"

It's a good thing I'm not chinese or I would bring dishonor to my family daily.

Katie

Erinariny.

I know I've been talking about this a lot, but I felt the need to dedicate a special post to this event.

In less than eight hours my best friend/cousin/roommate/sister/other half is getting married.

Its funny how there are specific events in our lives that always make us reflect on our relationships with the people closest to us. Marriage is definitely one of those events and there is much to reflect on with this one.

Erin and I have been best friends since birth. Up until I moved away to college, I can't remember a 4th of July, Halloween or Christmas without her. I have slept more nights at her house, using my finger as a toothbrush because of our last-minute planning, than I can even calculate.

She has been there for me through all of it.

Interest wise we have always been polar opposites. She's a little bit Taylor Swift, I'm a little bit Radiohead. She dances, I play soccer. She dresses classy no matter where she is, I would have a hard time finding a sweater in my closet without a hole in it somewhere.

And yet we have never even had a real fight.

Life with Erin is just easy.

(*our favorite thing is that Erin's name is inside my name. Proof that we are soul mates.)

I wish I had pictures on my computer that went further back, ones from the beach in Hawaii as babies, in third grade when I was a skeleton for halloween and Erin was Pippy Longstocking, the time we made the homemade music video of that Aaron Carter song or getting ready for our first proms.

I have lived a short twenty-one years and Erin has only lived a month and a half longer than that, but it seems like so much more when I think about everything that we've been through and experienced.

Erin, here's to Broc still letting us have sleepovers when I come down for weekends.

Thanks for being my best friend and my sister.

Katie