A Bama Christmas

Christmas was a blast this year! It was great to be home in Alabama to spend Christmas with the Winberg crew this year. We missed spending the holidays with the Hale family, but we are grateful for technology and the ability we had to Face-time with the family in Wyoming on Christmas Eve. We went to 3 different Christmas parties this year; one at our house on Christmas Eve,  and two on Christmas day, 1 at my brother's house, one at my Brother-in-law's mother's house, and I guess another little gathering at my aunt's house. It was wonderful to visit with all the family. I also got to go see Les Mis with all the girls Christmas night, and Eric went and saw Jack Reacher with the boys. Les Mis was amazing!!!! I can't stop singing the songs. Did I mention that we did all this while surviving a deadly tornado Christmas day. Petty scary and made for an interesting night. Here are some of the pictures from our southern Christmas.

My nephew Gabe with his Uncle Eric 

Allie with her aunt Nina

The grand-babies

My handsome hubby opening gifts on Christmas Eve!

Host and hostess with the most-est!

Winberg Kids

Winberg kids with the parentals

My mom with her grandkids…believe it or not this was the best picture I could get of the 4! haha

Aunt Lala loving on her baby Allie! She has the Winberg eyes!

My Christmas loot from Santa!!! Love my new Kitchen Aid!! I feel very spoiled and very blessed!! Eric is anxiously awaiting my first batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies using my new mixer!

Christmas dinner at the Wilson home! AMAZING food!

Loving on my baby Gabe! Wish my sister's fam didn't live in Ohio, but very grateful for the opportunity to see them for Christmas!

Here is the tornado caught on tape! We are all safe and experienced no damage, but my mom's boyfriend's house was barely missed…1 block away roofs were ripped off homes, giant oak trees were ripped out of the ground, and his church was destroyed. We pray for those who experienced any loss do to this storm.

Eric and I are excited to be getting away this weekend. We are traveling 3 hours for a little weekend getaway in New Orleans! It will be a first for Eric, so hopefully he will enjoy his first real taste of cajun food, beignets, and anything new he might experience…Bourbon street, cough cough :)

We are very blessed to have wonderful family who love us, and been very blessed this Christmas season! We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas.

First Semester Down….The Hobbit

I Just completed my first semester of nursing school and I couldn't be happier!!! It was a very long semester! Coming from BYUI where semesters are shorter to begin with, add in starting class 1 month before the rest of the school began Fall semester, and then ending a week after everyone else finished…makes for a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng semester. So needless to say, I am pooped! I completed 29 of the total 72 credit hours it takes for me to graduate just this semester, and I have winter and spring semester left and then I'll graduate with my BSN in nursing!!! I can't believe it honestly! These last 5 months have been really like a roller coaster. We started with 32 students in our class, and we've lost 3, soon a 4th…she is having a baby, and gained 1.  The program is grueling and you have to make the grades and can't miss any days other wise your dropped from the program. We are constantly taking tests, some of which you have to get a 100 or you don't get to move on to the next course, and believe me, they don't try to make these tests easy. But I guess this is what I signed up for when I applied for an accelerated nursing program that takes 1 year to complete a Bachelor's. Some days I'm stoked to be back in school and other days I'm complaining to Eric, asking him why I ever talked him in to letting me go back to school! hahhaha But I am so glad we made this decision and I know it was the right one! I love working in the hospital and taking care of the patients and feeling like I'm actually helping them heal. I can't wait for next semester because I will begin my Maternal Child rotation, working in a local hospital in labor and delivery, NICU, and PICU. But I couldn't attend school without the support of my wonderful family, especially my mom! She is renting her house out to us fully furnished for hardly anything a month, gave me her car to use since we are now a one car family till I graduate, and always treating us to dinner and trips. Most of all I am grateful for a husband who supports me and works his booty off everyday at a job he loves, but would love more if it paid better! :) He is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me aside from the gospel of Jesus Christ and I love him more and more everyday. He is my best friend, my rock, and the one always making me believe in myself and my abilities. He knows exactly how to cheer me up, handle me when I'm stressed, and love me when I'm unloveable. He is the glue that holds us together when I feel like falling down. I'm so thankful Heavenly Father brought him into my life 6 years ago. It's hard to believe that 2 years ago he dropped to one knee and proposed to me in front of thousands of people at Epcot. I love you ERIC to the moon and back………for forever! :)

On a side note, we went and saw the Hobbit last night! We loved it of course, but I told Eric we need to do a Lord of the Rings marathon because I've only seen the first movie all the way though and it was years ago. You should have seen his face struck with awe and horror! hahaha I know that sounds nerdy, and these are so not my typical movies I watch, but my husband loves them and has read all the books, and well, it's our little secrete, but I actually really like the movies!

Also I have to share this because I would be doing you all an injustice if I didn't, but here are 2 music videos from one of my new favorite duo I've been listening to! They're amazing and can literally sing any genre of music! Enjoy, and spread the word about their awesomeness!

Sleigh Ride!

Hello!

Filler Friday

Time to do a little filling in on us Hale's here. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family this year. Lots of family came in from out of town; cousins, aunts and uncles. It was a blast just getting together, doing the traditional cousin movie night, and cousin pictures! This year after thanksgiving dinner, all the Winberg cousins got together and went and saw Red Dawn. Thankfully we were able to go to the 7:30 movie so Eric was able to come along too before he had to go in to work to manage black friday madness! I love family time and we can't wait to spend time with family again at Christmas.

Black Friday was…… not my favorite this year. I did get to go…but not at midnight like I usually do. I picked up a few things…and was able to restock on my Bath and Body work soaps like I do every year. Just can't beat the 4 for 15$ deal.

The saturday following Thanksgiving the Winberg family hosted a bridal shower for my cousin Marissa, who is getting married in April. The shower was held at this AMAZING sandwich restaurant called Panini Pete's. We had a fun time celebrating this special time with her.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Photos to come!

As for the filler: (Random News)

Eric and I have started watching House a lot!

We decorated the house for Christmas

I got to spend time in the O.R. this week in clinical, one of the nurses looked just like Addison from Grey's and Private Practice so I was really excited about that! Bahahaha!

Friday Song of the Day

Can I Catch a Break

Sometimes I question why I  ever thought it was a good idea to go back to school? WHY????????? Especially on nights where I am up till 1:30 AM doing homework and have to get up at 4:30 AM to go to the hospital for clinical. So far it is great and really love working with the patients. I am learning so much in such a short amount of time. On top of being stressed, with a lack of sleep, I wonder every day when I'm going to break out with shingles, or get a stomach ulcer. But, I know the Lord loves me, and has directed me to this very path, to be a nurse!! Who woulda thought??? Not me! But just FYI, if you know someone looking into an accelerated nursing program tell them to run in the opposite direction. When I heard that this would be the hardest year of my life….I thought "yeah yeah, I can total handle this!!" Wrong! I totally broke down in tears at the hospital on Friday due to stress, lack of sleep, and the emotional roller coaster I was on! It is so not easy as a woman to control emotions!!! But, it's all good and I hope I look back at this year in 7 mo. and think it was all worth it! When Christmas break rolls around I will be halfway done with the program!!! This is seriously the fastest year of my life thus far!!! and THANK GOODNESS! I hope I will have the same experience with this as some people have with giving birth or a traumatic injury! Just please let me forget this whole experience as soon as I graduate!!!! The work isn't the hard part! It's the lack of time to get it all done, and the stress of being perfect and making the good grades to stay in the program, and not having time for yourself, husband, family, and barely time to shower some days! Anywho, sorry…I just needed an outlet to vent for a second! It really is showing me how mentally tough I am, and just how determined I am to succeed! The best part is that I graduate in 7 months with my BSN in Nursing, from one of the top Nursing schools in the country!!!

 Well to add a little joy to this post, Eric and I were able to have some of the family over on Sunday for dinner: french toast, with strawberries, bacon, and OJ! Can't beat breakfast for dinner! Here are my cuite pies I got to enjoy an evening with!

Love my Allie Bean!

Thomas is in K-garden…Can't even believe it!

Thomas Photo bombed me! Bahaha 

Happy FALL from the deep South! or (LA-Lower Alabama as we call it.)

And how could I forget…Star Valley!

Eric and I are so blessed to have both grown up in such beautiful places!

Fall Festivities

So here we go! Finally some pictures of what we've been up to! Wednesday night with the youth we painted pumpkins. These are just a few pictures of our fun night with them!

 

 

This past week was my dad's Birthday so I picked him up on Monday, we went to lunch at this cute little deli and then went down to Fairhope Bay and walked on the pier and around the walking trail. It was great for my dad to get out and walk and it was such a beautiful day, I really enjoyed the time I got to spend with him.

 

The boys have had some fun in the yard fixing a sink hole and I did a little decorating of the yard and house with some old Halloween decorations I found in the attic.

I also went to a pumpkin patch this past week. Eric has been sick for the last week and he really didn't feel up to going, so lucky me I got to go alone….I guess not so lucky :( I hate it when he is sick!!! Poor thing but I've been working my nursing skills, tips and tricks, and he is doing much better now! We also hosted a Halloween party at the house for the family and had a great time! Here are some pics of the treats and the good time we had!

 

 

Such a good sport! You can't even tell he is sick in this pic. I love this man more and more everyday! No matter what he is always supporting me in every decision!

Baby Allie and I. Love this cutie! She makes me want to have my own babies right now. I can't wait till I graduate so Eric and I can begin to start our family!!! Woohoo…. 8 months and counting!

Getting our pumpkin carving on! My mom is missing in this picture cause she wanted to carve her's on the other side of the kitchen! bahaha

Eric and I were busy hosting that we didn't get to finish carving our pumpkin till everyone left! Here he is hard at work.

Some of the finish products!

Eric and I decided to do a Monsters Inc. themed Pumpkin. This was my side I carved.

This was Eric's side! Bahaha Ok we know its not our best work but we still have one pumpkin left to carve for Halloween so maybe the next one will look better…maybe.

The Ward had a Fall Festival/Trunk or treat on Friday night. I was a paper doll. Thank you Pinterest for the idea!

One of the YW with me! Bailey was a werwolf!

There were all sorts of food and games. My nephew Thomas was a cowboy, here he is doing the cake walk!

Trunk or treat

My SIL and neice and nephew. Allie was a cupcake!

Taking the kids around the trunk or treat!

Our ward even had a haunted house that the YM put together. It was in the back of 18 wheeler equipped with blacklights, strobelights, fog machines, zombies, and all sorts of scary things. So FUN!

Some of my family and YW at the trunk or treat! i felt like a little kid again! Oh yeah, and I promise I was not the only adult dressed up hahaha. Oh and Eric couldn't go cause he had to work :( BOOOOOO!

Saturday morning I was up early at the butt crack of dawn for the youth temple trip to the Birmingham, AL. temple. It's a 4hr drive so we met at 6 am to drive up, and it just so happened to be the coldest day we've had! I actually loved it! Made me feel like I was in Idaho for a day!

Here are the youth after the temple. We were missing a lot of youth who didn't come and a majority of the YM who did come for some reason are not in this picture!

Love working with the youth!!!! I have the best calling and the best group of kids! 

I went to Hobby Lobby and look what I found!!!!! Could have spent all day in there! Can't wait for Christmas! I know we still have Thanksgiving…..oh and BLACK FRIDAY….but Christmas is just around the corner!!!! Tis the Season!

MIA Lately

Sorry we've been MIA for so long! Definitely not like us! Life has been so stressful and busy between school, clinicals, homework, church, my calling in YW, family, and finding time for each other that I haven't made time to blog. Life is going on as normal for the most part and we are finally enjoying some cooler fall weather in our area. Last weekend Eric and I went down to Gulf Shores, a neighboring town, and attended the shrimp festival. It is on the beach and they have tons of seafood for sale, arts and crafts to buy and it's a lot of fun. We didn't bring our bathing suits and we later wished we had because it got so hot with the huge crowd. After we left the festival we went and ate an early dinner at Lulu's. If you follow this blog then you know by now that it is one of my favorite restaurants down by the gulf and Eric had never eaten there. We both loved it, and it was nice to just chill in the shade, listen  to good music, and watch some football. Eric also took me to go see Pitch Perfect last weekend cause I had been bugging him about it, and we LOVED it!!! This weekend we will be spending a lot of time at home for me to study for my psych final. I had my last day of my psych clinicals on Thursday and I am really going to miss all the patients I was able to work with. Mental illness is so fascinating to me, but I don't think I am meant to work in that kind of setting. Here is a picture of me with the other nurses in my clinical group! We had a blast and hope we can all stay together in our next rotation, however unlikely that will be!

Sorry for the horrible picture but it's a moile pic!

Hopefully next week after my final and I finish writing my Pharm paper I'll have some more time to update this thing!

 

Atlanta Braves

Thursday night I got a call from my mom asking if Eric and I wanted to go with her on a spontaneous trip to Atlanta on Saturday to see the Atlanta Braves play the Washington Nationals! "ugh, yeah of course!" hahahaha! Which probably shocked my mom because I'm always so busy the only thing I have time for is school! Well Friday night Eric finally returned from his week long training in Birmingham, and we took off again Saturday morning early, headed to Atlanta. We had such a blast! Our hotel was right across the street from the Turner field so when we arrived at the hotel we walked across the street and boom! we were there! The game was wonderful, the ballpark food delicious, our seats were great, and the company was even better! The Braves ended up winning 5-4 and it was a very entertaining and exciting game, so we were so glad we made the trip. Plus, I think my mom has made it her mission to entertain Eric with all the fun things to do here in the South! Maybe she has a hidden agenda, like convincing him we should stay here forever hahaha! Eric has experienced quite a few culture shocks since we moved here, but his favorite thing so far is going fishing with my brothers. Not just any fishing though, gigging for flounder. Basically you walk in knee deep water at night with head lamps and spear flounder. This has now become a weekend tradition with the boys! I'm so glad we are living here, and I know it won't probably last for long so I am soaking up the fun and family time whenever possible! Life is Good!

Turner Field

I love Ballpark food! Maybe cause I was raised on it…years of sports and nights and weekends at ballgames will do that to you! :)

Special edition Chipper Jones cup, autographed on the inside.

Waiting for the game to start!

So excited when I found out my best friend Brittany was going to the game too this weekend! The shirt I have on is hers!! haha She let me borrow it for the game! Our seats were pretty close to each other too, but not close enough!

We had such a wonderful weekend! Can't wait for more adventures down here in DIXIE!

Naps

It is Sunday afternoon at the Hale & Winberg house, and EVERYONE is napping, except ME. Why? I can't take naps! It's weird I know. I'm still trying to figure this one out. I was up till 2 AM with Eric last night watching my new favorite show Downton Abbey and woke up early at 7 AM for church. I'm running on a solid 5 hours of sleep and yet I am the only one who's eyes aren't closed and curled up on a bed or couch. For as long as I can remember, I just couldn't fall asleep in the middle of the day. There are of course a few exceptions a year I might actually fall asleep for an hour MAYBE, but its like when I wake up in the morning my body is in power mode till 11 PM. I just think I'm weird….and I'm bored cause I'm the only one awake in my house, and of course it is the most beautiful day we've had here, since we've moved to Alabama and it's a Sunday. GRRRR! Don't tell I may go outside and wash the car. So, if you all have any good ideas on how you can wind your self down in the middle of the day the take a nap, please share. I would like to enjoy a nice sunday cat nap with the hubs sometime, instead of my leg being the permanent pillow for his peaceful afternoon rest. Especially on fast sundays when sleeping would aid me in not thinking about eating for hours after church. Okay, THE END.