Yay for Christmas!

Christmas has got to be one of the best times of the year. We had such a fun time! We got to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, and then another time went to see the Salt Lake Temple lights-- always a favorite.

















We finally got around to decorating our Christmas tree. We had been so busy with the end of the semester we didn't do it until like the 21st. Better late than never though! I love having it up.













We also made the famous annual Lee family Christmas sugar cookies! This is always a big project, but SO FUN! I made the dough, and we later rolled it out, cut the shapes, baked and frosted the cookies with homemade cream cheese frosting. It's the best!



























Digging into our Christmas dinner! We decided to make it on Christmas Eve to avoid having two dinners on Christmas day- the 2nd being his family dinner in Salt Lake. Our dinner was sooo good. We made ham, mashed potatoes, my Dad's famous stuffing, sunshine carrots (carrots with an orange glaze) and had bubbly cider. mmmmm!













Here is Jimmy Joe with the tool set I gave him. I was so excited to give this to him! I researched drills and tools for about a month before buying one, and he was so excited when he opened it!! That made my Christmas right there.

















And of course this blog post wouldn't be complete without some representation of the immense quantity of snow here. This is a picture of us playing outside on Christmas Eve. Any doubts of a White Christmas were swiftly obliterated by the time the first snow storm hit! 3 storms later, this is what we were left with.













I am still clinging to Christmas music on FM 100.3; I'm not ready for it all to be over yet. It seemed like Christmas came and went too fast this year!

Ready to Par-tay!

Finals are DONE! Hallelujah! Jimmy Joe and I both finished this morning. My last one today was eventful- the test started at 8 am, but because of the snow, it took the bus an extra hour to get to Salt Lake, and I walked in at at 8:30. I finished and left school by 10 am. Then it took me 3 1/2 hours to get back down to Provo via a ride from a classmate and two late buses trying to make it through the snow! Crazy! Now I know why people hate snow so much. Or maybe they hate it when I-15 doesn't get snow plowed like today. People were sliding all over the place especially this morning. But, what's important is I finally made it home, and I'm going to settle in, watch Oprah, and go sledding later. YAY for no school for 3 weeks and 1 day!!!! I am so excited!

Festival of Trees

Last weekend we went to the Festival of Trees in Sandy. I think this is the third year we've gone. We love it! Primary Children's Hospital puts it on. People decorate gorgeous Christmas trees, often dedicated to a lost loved one who was treated at Primary Children's, and donate them, and then other people buy them to raise money for the hospital. It is something I support, and everything there-the ticket price, the activities and treat sales- goes toward the hospital; I love going. It always puts me in the Christmas spirit. We had a great time.

The obligatory picture by the all-penguin tree (penguins were my favorite animal growing up)

















One of my favorite trees. I love the colors!

















We even made Santa Faces! (we were probably the only ones in the kids section without an actual kid)

So I was looking through some old yearbooks and I found some pictures. It is funny to think that this is what we looked like in high school.

Jimmy Joe 1978


Joanna 1960


Davey 1968


April 1964


Jimmy Joe 1970 (or is that Dad?)

Chem-E Car Philly Trip

So for those of you who don't know, I was on the Chemical Engineering car team. We went to Nationals in Philadelphia to compete with our car. All the finalists from the nation were there. We ended getting about 10th place out of 35, but we were fine with that because we got a free trip to Philadelphia. So here is a slide show of my trip. I loved Philadelphia. I got to see the beginnings of our nation. My favorite part of the whole trip was being able to be in the same room where our Forefathers first wrote the Declaration of Independence declaring our independence from England. Then after the Revolutionary war with George Washington sitting at the head, the constitution was written and signed in that same room. It was such an amazing feeling to be in the same room where the American government was invented by men like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, and 37 other representatives from the 13 original colonies. We also had a chance to go to the church built in 1727 where George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would go to church every Sunday. America and Chemical Engineering rocks!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Halloween

I realized that I never posted pictures from Halloween, so here they are. We had a lot of fun this year! For our ward Halloween party, I dressed up as a ladybug and Jimmy Joe dressed as a pirate. Those tats look pretty real on his arm. He was pretty proud. We came up with our costumes one hour before the party, at Honk's the local dollar store. That's the best way to do it!

Here we are we the fabulous pumpkins we carved. Many of you may not know, but Jimmy Joe proposed the same day that we carved pumpkins for Halloween 2006 (no pumpkins were involved however). Anyways, just a bit of Orgill trivia.













At the Ward party. We won a dish scrubber in the cake walk. It was very exciting!


















I even won the Best Idea award, judged by our Bishop.

















In the above picture we are in the car going from the ward party to Witches Night Out (WNO) at Gardner Village in West Jordan. We left the Ward party a tad early to get to it while it was still going. It was a very Halloween-icious night. The most exciting part- among probably 500 people, I won a pound of fudge at WNO! I got to go to the candy shoppe at Gardner Village and pick out whatever flavors I wanted. It was pretty much my dream come true. At the BYU Bookstore fudge counter, when I'd walk by, I'd always ogle and wish, and a few times I'd dig in my pocket and get as much fudge as my change was worth. I love fudge. So, I was pretty excited to win it.



































And on the Halloween night, we planned a murder mystery dinner with 2 couples in our ward. It was WAY fun! We all dressed up like our characters. Thanks Kendall and Halie for the awesome dinner and Trent and Liz for being in our mystery!













And this is a picture from American Fork Canyon. We drove along the Alpine Loop to see the fall colors. Although we missed them and most leaves were off the tree, it was a gorgeous day and so pretty.

Learning to suture

So last week we learned how to put in sutures in my wound management class. I'm not gonna lie, I felt pretty professional, even though it was only on a pig's foot. I think my stitches looked pretty good too! We each made incisions on our selected pig foot and then learned and practiced different types of sutures to sew it back up. I really enjoyed it. It's times like that that get me through ridiculous days like today. We had a Therapeutics exam today, all about medications and how to prescribe them, and it was tough. I spent a good part of the weekend studying (apart from the BYU football game!), and it paid off, but I am exhausted! I am living for Thanksgiving break; it's almost here!

Election Day

We went out and voted tonight after I got home from class. I am so grateful we live in a democratic country. It's such a great thing to have a voice in the selection of your national and state leaders. Hopefully the elected President will lift up our country and do some good things. I hope you all voted. Go America!

Last Saturday we volunteered for the Special Olympics. It was really fun. I loved it. We want to do it again. We did the time and scoring for the basketball tournament. We also cheered really loud for the teams. Some of the players were really good and it didn't seem fair to the others who weren't as good. I got a picture with the Utah State team. They were so cute. It was so fun to watch all the teams play. If you want to see good sportsmanship go watch a Special Olympic game. They would always say sorry and help each other up and even cheer for the opposing team.

Joanna Keeping score

Utah State Team

Rock Climbing

A couple weeks ago, Johnny, Jimmy Joe's brother, took us rock climbing at Big Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake. I have never been before, so I was really nervous. (please note the first picture of me looking really nervous). But Johnny knows what he's doing, and we also went with some of his friends who are hardcore climbers, so I felt safe. Nevertheless, it was a new adventure for us. But I conquered my fears! We ended up climbing up lots of times, and it got easier every time. It was so much fun! My feet hurt from being jammed into those tiny little climber shoes, but other than that, no worse for wear!

I am very unsure about what's to come...














Jimmy Joe is ready to go!

The mountain was roundly conquered



















Mid-climb picture posing


















Look at that arm/leg span!














Chillin at the top

Lots to catch up on: the circus

Back in September, we went to the Barnum and Bailey Ringling Bro. Circus. It was AMAZING!! Indeed, it truly is the greatest show on earth. My mouth was hanging open more often than not during it. I haven't been to a big circus before, so it was doubly exciting for me. My favorite parts were the elephants, the trapeze artists, ribbon men (they climb up the ribbon all the way to the ceiling, and wrap around it and do all sorts of twirling), and the 9 motorcycles in the cage! We even got a deal on lower bowl tickets, thanks to Rochelle, Jimmy Joe's sister.I recommend the circus to anyone and everyone!

First blog

So I have no idea what I am doing, but I created a blog for us. As tentative as I am with all this blog stuff, I am pretty proud that I came up with the existing blog header. I would love to know any websites and tricks that you all have discovered in all your seemingly professional blogging endeavors. Please comment and help me!