It's Christmas Time

Our first Christmas married and we are having a lot of fun! I wanted our first tree to be fun and so I chose to do a food theme. Sarah came over one night and helped us string popcorn. Tonight we made tons of cookie ornaments! There are still many more things to do :).

Here are the cookies before we attacked them with sprinkles. Matt was a master at making the holes so that we could hang them.

We took the art of these cookies very seriously...

You can't have fun without making a mess, right?
That's me...the famous cookie decorator. HA
Here's the stud at work.
We decided that being serious was overrated and decided to eat some decorations.
We made many, many, many cookies...some were "accidentally" eaten by Matt. :)

CHRISTMAS TREE

This little guy is named "Fern Gully". He is our real tree.

Matt was thinking deeply about how he should make each branch look. In the end, he did a great job.

My job was to put the branched on the tree after Matt "floofed" them for me.

Matt's last look over.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! We sure did have a great day and it is not over yet! This morning we went over to Matt's parents and had a FEAST. Then we moved our way into a much too comfortable living room equipped with a cozy fire and attempted to watch the Pats game and fight the temptation to give into our heavy eyelids. We're home now and Matt is working hard to figure out our new universal remote...oh how nice that will be! Tonight we might go back up to the other Beynon residence for some pie and maybe go to the movies and see Megamind :)!

Dear Massachusetts Family,

We sure did miss you all today! We hope that all of your tummies are as happy as ours. We are thankful for you all and all you do. We love you!

Things we are thankful for:

each other

Gospel

family

our job

friends

the roof that shelters us

BYU-I

USA

...that is just the beginning of our list...

At the beginning of this Thanksgiving week, I decided to get in the spirit and make some Pumpkin Raviolis. First time trying something like this...they were pretty good.

This is the before...

This is Matthew enjoying the end product :)

SNOW!

The first snow! It came just a few hours after I told my little brother Max that I was sad because there was no snow! BLESSINGS :)

This gorgeous tree is found in our backyard where the horses are kept. The smaller tree in front of it is a pear tree that was very kind to us this summer/fall. YUM.

This is our not so interesting door. All I know is that when it snows a lot more, I won't want to shovel...

This is part of our driveway. I love when the snow is still a beautiful fresh white blanket :).

We've been married for 7 months!?

We have been really good at watching the calendar and planning something fun and cute for each month we've been married. I guess after the big 6 month mark, we calmed down and totally forgot about the 7 month mark. Well, to make up for it, Matt picked a rose for me. I love this rose and still have not thrown it away, even though it is all shriveled now :(. Don't tell our landlord, but he picked it from the garden in our front lawn...

Winter Registration

After going through the endless frustration that we know as class registration, Matt and I are now officially registered for some great classes!

Lindsay:
Drawing II
Art History I
Art Seminar
History and Philosophy of Education
Family Foundations
Practical Homemaking
Advanced Writing and Critical Thinking


Matt:
Art History I
Typography
Photography
Art Seminar
Intro to Teaching Seminary
and, hopefully, Design and Color II

Elizabeth Allen Changes to Elizabeth Drysdale

October 22 we had the chance to go to my best friend's wedding in Logan, Utah. I got to get up early with her and get her hair all ready for her BIG DAY! Elizabeth has wanted to be sealed in the Logan Temple for as long as I can remember, her ancestors helped build it! The whole day was amazing. The weather was perfect. Elizabeth was beautiful. Her and Danny's parents were all smiles. The Temple was astounding, so gorgeous. I'm glad that Matt and I were able to be there for this monumental day. Here are some of the pictures that Matt took. This is only just a tease, there are many more wonderful shots!

THIS is the gorgeous Logan Temple and the beautiful gardens.

These are Danny's parents.

These are Elizabeth's parents. Well, they are basically mine too :).

Here is their support system! Look at ALL of those people!

I love this shot. Here is Elizabeth right before she walked out of the Temple with Danny.

Could they be any happier? So sweet.

This is one of Matthew and my favorite shots.

I had to put this one in here! There was a little kitty just strolling around the Temple grounds. Just not something you see everyday!

Salt Lake Temple

We have Thursdays off and have been wanting to get over to the Salt Lake Temple on one of them. Today we finally did! It was a wonderful experience. It was my first time going all the way through the Salt Lake Temple and Matt had not been for years, so it was basically like his second first time!

Harry Potter Day/Halloween

October is now officially Harry Potter month. Since Matt has never been too into Halloween, he decided to change the whole month to focus more on Harry Potter. It makes sense seeing as how Harry Potter's parents die on Halloween. Anyways, we had a lot of fun with the month. We finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. GREAT BOOK! It took us a little while, but we finished before Harry Potter month was over :).
For Harry Potter Day/Halloween, we dressed as Harry and Hermione. It was a blast! Since Matt had to work on Halloween night, we dressed up a few nights before and went to the ward Halloween carnival party!

We sprayed Matt's hair black and painted the famous scar onto his forehead. We bought our outfits at the D.I. and printed the Gryffindor patches.

These were our "serious" faces. I'm still practicing on making my "faces" look believable. Matt's got it down!

Kyle was the theme for Michelle, Kevin, Nate, Sarah, Chris, and Cynthia's costumes. Toy Story! Too bad Cynthia, Sarah, and Chris weren't in this picture...their costumes were amazing!

Pumpkins!

We spent the day a few weeks ago having fun painting pumpkins!

This is Kreature from the Harry Potter books. Sorry it's sideways...

Here is Mad Eye Moody. Matt was having a lot of fun with Harry Potter month!

Mine is hard to see, but I had fun with a little scarecrow! (Those little glasses to the left of my pumpkin are the glasses Matt wore for Halloween this year to complete his Harry Potter costume! FUN!)

"I didn't clean, BUT I did make a mess"

What a crazy crazy day that started last night. Take a breather...ok here goes! Last night before bed, Matt checked his email and found out about a deadline he had for a design project due today. This morning we woke up, Matt was super sick :(, I got ready for work and he got ready to go to work on his design project. I got to work and there was a lot to catch up on, things have been moving slow lately. Right before lunch I received a text telling me that my best friend had gotten into a bad car accident. After having a little moment of tears in the bathroom, I left work and came home to my wonderful husband. He had been busy all day with his design project and said to me, "I didn't clean, BUT I did make a mess". I love him. While waiting to hear if Elizabeth was allowed visitors, I cleaned the house to help calm the nerves. Little did Matt know when he was making his mess that it would help :). HA! After showering and and making a few phone calls, I made my way to the hospital. What an interesting event that was! It was my first time driving on the freeway AND I drove our stick! Although I made it onto the freeway safely, I was not at all safe with the empty gas tank that I, and Matt, had forgotten to fill! ANYWAYS, I got lost getting off the freeway, but was quickly put back on course by the wonderful Kaylin McGrew who was meeting up with me at the hospital to see Elizabeth. Seeing Elizabeth was great. Even though she had a concussion, stitches in her head and hand, a bruised lung, broken pelvis, dislocated shoulder, and fractured hip, she was smiling and happy. AMAZING GIRL! After leaving the hospital, I stopped at a Subway and asked where the nearest gas station was so that I could fill the empty tank. After getting directions that one was just around the corner, I got back into the car and IT WOULD NOT START. Who would have thought that a car with no gas couldn't start!? My knight and shining armor came riding in on his white horse and saved me by bringing some gas to get the car started. THAT will never happen again! ha. We rushed home after that to get ready for the ward Halloween Party. We dressed up as Harry Potter and Hermione, since this IS Harry Potter Month and all. The ward party was FUN. We helped paint faces and then the rest of the fam came and we got to see their super cute Toy Story costumes! I wish that is where the night ended, but then we came home and Matt had A LOT more design work to do. Good thing we have Thursdays off...tonight will be just another late night. :)

Work, School, and Play

Quick Update..seeing as how everything nowadays has to be quick!

• Work at the D.I. is getting better, more interesting. We are becoming closer to our fellow workers and are being able to help them more.
  
• Matt is working on graphic designs for two companies and loving it! His dreams are taking off!
• My classes are great. Book of Mormon II is teaching me a lot of things I did not know before. I love my Color and Design class, all of the assignments are extremely interesting.
• With working 40 hours a week, online classes and other responsibilities, it is somewhat difficult finding time to play BUT we are! We have been watching the Harry Potter movies and are trying to read the 7th book before the movie comes out. Last Friday we went on a date to IKEA, it was amazing. The food was great and it was fun planning out our future home!
• Now the GREAT news from this week: With the help of Matt's parents, we were able to invest in a....get ready for this...27" Mac computer! It is AMAZING! Matt is feasting on the Adobe Illustrator program. What a marvelous blessing family is, to be so generous as to help us prepare for our future.
  

Hopefully we can update more often and soon AND with pictures!

Mom took us to the Newport Mansions in RI. They were HUGE! This is only one part of one of the 4 mansions we saw that day. There were 7 mansions all together, but not enough time in one day to tour them all. One of the mansions we toured was called The Breakers and it was once home to the Vanderbilts. This tree we are standing on was planted the day after the dinosaurs became extinct. Now it is enormous and knotty and very fun to climb. We sure had our fun exploring it!

THE BOSTON TEMPLE! This was a day to remember. I was sealed to Dad and Tracy for time and all eternity. Families are forever and I am so happy to have that knowledge and blessing in my life.

Home in Utah

Unpacked and finally settling into our new home here in Utah. It has been almost two weeks since we left MA and it feels like just yesterday we were there. I will be honest, I am a little "homesick". This will be my first fall away from the New England area and I know that Utah will not be able to compare to the outrageous colors found dancing among the many trees in MA. I have shed no tears though because I am finding beauty in Utah. The mountains are remarkable and much larger than I imagined. The air feels so nice. I'm starting to love living here. AND it is super neat to be able to walk to church in 7 minutes instead of driving 45 minutes!

WELL, the main reason I started this post was to talk about some of the things we did in MA and ME and post some pictures.

Here are just a couple of pictures from the day after we got to MA. Tracy's sister and brother -in-law were going back to VA in a few days and so we all went to the beach with them before they left. It was a blast. This was Matt's first Maine experience. For any of those that know Maine's water first hand, then you know that it's ICY. WELL, this day was like bath water! What a perfect way to introduce Matt to Maine...one of MY favorite places.


I had my very first Fenway experience this summer. It was a blast. I'm still learning the ins and outs of the game, but I have the basics down. Not to BRAG or anything, BUT I was privileged enough to witness a grand slam!...I think that's what it's called...







"We did it, we hiked a mountain"- Matthew Beynon quoting my expression in THIS picture.
Yes, yes I know. This is not a picture of us at the mountain we hiked, but it IS a picture of us when we got home from the hike. We hiked Mt. Monadnock in NH. It was so much fun and got us pumped for hikes here in Utah!


We spent three days with Mom at her house in RI. We had A LOT of fun. She took us to The Gardens where we were able to see and explore many animals and neat things carved out of shubbery. In The Gardens, there was an area full of fruits and vegetables. We found these interesting scarecrows there and HAD to take pictures with them! Matt found a cuddly bear and had to give him a hug.