stealing candy from children.

A few months ago we had a really cute primary activity--pAjaMa pArTy! Everyone came in their "pj's" and had breakfast, then we split up into classes to play games and make classroom rules. Well, instead of playing games the Anderson's CTR 5 class created a {{treasure box.}}


The kids decorated it and I filled it with dollar store goodies. They love it.

 If the kids are good/reverent/pay attention/keep the rules (((that they made up))) during class then they get to choose something from the treasure box before they go home. That's right. I'm not too proud to admit that we bribe our Primary kids. It works.every time. We also squirt imaginary glue onto every chair at the beginning of class and play the reverent game aka the quiet game to keep the kids in their seats and teach them to raise their hand if they want to talk. It works.sometimes. 

This super fun treasure box was once filled with tootsie rolls.

whoops.

I have a problem with knowing that there is a box in my house filled with little candies that are oh so tasty. Whenever I have a craving for something sweet (and I'm feeling too lazy to run to the gas station or make some cookies) I sneak to the treasure box and grab a treat. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I steal the kid's candy. So now they won't have any tootsie rolls to choose from after they have been well behaved for the whole class...I'm a terrible person. But the first step to breaking a bad habit is admitting it right? There. That is my confession.

p.s. I'm really obsessed with >>> this <<< song right now                

listen to it.

love it.

friend-filled weekend

This past weekend was a good one. Nick and I didn't get to spend it together but we did get to spend it with some great friends.

He spent the weekend at a cabin in Utah with a group of his boy man friends from Provo. He misses getting to spend time with them and always comes home with great stories after these weekends away.

Sorry about the partial nudity in this picture--these boys are crazy. Literally.

I started off my weekend by spending time with my childhood best friend Lane. We like to say that we are "best friends since birth"--because, well, we are. I always have the best time with her...talking about memories, boys, and exciting plans for the future. I hate that she lives a whole state away.

My parents were staying at the Trump Tower for my dad's law firm retreat and they invited us to come stay...so of course we did. The room was amazing. Check out these views...

                      

The bathroom was my favorite part--a t.v. in the mirror, huge shower, and a view of the city from the bathtub!

  

Saturday was such an exciting day! After over a year of waiting, Brooke's best friend and our good family friend, {{Carly Whetten married Andrew Buckley!}} The ceremony was beautiful, the luncheon was amazing, the bride was flawless, and the couple was glowing~perfect.

And **BONUS** Sister Nelson was even able to make it for the special day...

Okay, not really. But this fabulous cut out helped to make her feel like she was really there. Needless to say, it made me miss my sis way too much.  

  

                                            

 But even at the end of this super fun weekend I just couldn't wait to spend time with my very bestest friend of all...

this stud. mmm.

Do you notice anything different about us?

You don't? Oh, I thought you'd be able to tell. Well, since the New Year Nick and I have had some notable changes in our lives. ((No, one of the changes is NOT pregnancy. Hold your horses people.))

1. We are officially, official Nevada residents. After living here for 5 months and driving around with expired plates for 4 months we decided it was time to stop breaking the law and register our cars. Which meant NV plates & licenses. It feels good to be a true Nevadan once more.

Bet you can't tell which one belongs to who...;)

2. We have finished LOST. It was a very thought/time consuming obsession. All we ever wanted to do was watch it or talk about it --come home for an hour lunch break? watch an episode of Lost. come home from a long day at work? grab some dinner and eat while watching Lost. no big/important plans for the weekend? spend all day watching Lost. can't sleep at night? watch Lost. Okay maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I wasn't kidding when I said "obsession". It's been a month since we've finished the series and when we find ourselves with nothing to do we look at each other and say we wish we were watching Lost. Basically, we are kind of crazy and we feel like the characters are our friends-- we feel lost without LOST.

3. We got a new primary class! We were called to the the CTR 5 class right when we moved to Vegas and we've always loved it but our new class is extra special this year because we get to teach our nephew Nixon! And he is so proud that we are his teachers :)..every week he loves to tell the class that we are his aunt & uncle and he gets to see us after church  (it takes everything I have not to favor him and hold him and kiss him all through class). We have so much fun teaching and the cute kids crack.us.up every week. Here is the latest example: Trace's prayer- "..I pray that I will get 130 green cards and school. I pray that we won't all hate church. I pray that in the last day we can defeat Satan..." haha. One of these days I'll tell you all the hilarious quotes I've written down from these adorable kids.

Dallas-Bro Anderson-Nixon-Trace-Lydia-Lucy

4. We have been introduced to our new favorite game--DrawSomething. If you haven't gotten the app yet, get it...and play me! We love to just sit on our phones and send each other drawings back and forth. >>The game seriously makes me laugh so hard.<< Take a look at the drawing Nick sent me...I'll give you $20 a hug if you can guess what it is...

Give up? UFO. haha! So entertaining.

5. I got bangs.I am never brave with my hair and have had it the same--long & blonde--since I was probably 10 so adding bangs was kind of a big deal. Thanks to Angeleah Bertoldo they are perfect and exactly how I wanted them. 

I feel awkward adding cropped pictures of myself--that's why it's small. :)

6. I got to meet our future President of the United States *hopefully* Mitt Romney! He looked me in the eyes, shook my hand, and thanked me for all my help with the campaign. No prob, Mitt.

Those are some big changes people, big changes.

a bratty wife + a good husband

Last week I was complaining to my poor husband about how I hate really don't like being poor and all I want to do is go shopping. {{I told him I was craving a new pair of shoes.}} He laughed and then issued a challenge...the very most challenging challenge. He said, "If we can go a whole week without going out to eat once--that means breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert-- then you can go get a new, reasonably priced, pair of shoes." I fell in love ♥ with him all over again and accepted the challenge. Um, it was really hard. >>It's no secret that I'm no chef.<< I just have such a hard time coming up with quick and easy recipes that I know we will both like, but somehow we did it and it was actually really fun! (I sound like a terrible wife right now. I getting more domestic, I promise.) So last night Nick took me to get my reward...

As we stood in the shoe section of Target (real high end shopping right there...but I love it) I held two beautiful pumps in my hand and racked my brain trying to decide which pair to get. I was so stressed out and I could tell my patient husband was ready to leave so I said "Babe? Have you ever felt like you were going to cry because you can't decide between two pairs of the exact same shoe-just different print?" He just laughed and said "Just get them both." Whaaaat?! I couldn't believe my ears but he was serious. Then I fell in love with ♥ Nicholas Ross Anderson all over again and we bought the pretty shoes.

Oooh the perks of being married to a sweet man, who's madly in love with you.. :)

--E. Stone Nelson--

 

 

On 2.17.2012 our big Nelson family was blessed with another adorable, sweet, precious little nephew. His name is Erven Stone Nelson--named after my Dad ("Erven" has been passed down for 5 generations now!) but we will call him ~Stone~. I could not be more in love with this precious little baby. I just love being an aunt. :)

Joel Erven Nelson and his first son.

These silly girls are big sisters!

The newest man in my life. I'm so in love.

We love you so much Stone! Thanks for coming to our family. :)

i ♥ love

Hooray for Valentine's day! Don't you just love that we have a whole day devoted to celebrating love?? It's also super fun to have an excuse to get flowers and chocolate and sappy love notes/cards/poems. :)

Remember Valentine's day in grade school? Making and passing out all your valentines (saving the cutest one for the cutest boy) and getting your bag filled with candy and cute little valentines from your classmates (inspecting the message on the valentine from the cutest boy hoping that he really put as much thought into passing out the cards as you did and that he was really asking you to "Be Mine")-I miss it. Remember Valentine's day in High School? Getting cheesy stuffed animal valentines and flowers or getting your car decorated and notes from a secret admirer ooorrr not having a valentine or goodies and taking a blow to the self esteem every time you would see one of those girls struggling to carry her 3 balloons, extra large bouquet of flowers, a huge stuffed animal and an over sized card.- I miss it. Which reminds me...yesterday I saw 2 different girls trying to walk home from school with teddy bears that were bigger than them. I'm not kidding. >>They basically had to give their bears piggy-back rides.<< Seriously? I just do not believe that a boy can walk into a store, see a life size teddy bear and honestly think, "Yes. This gigantic animal would be perfect for my girl. There is no better/simpler way to say "I love you. Happy Valentine's day." And I think it would be a good idea to give it to her at school, that way she can carry it around all day-even when she's walking home- and everyone can see what I got her. She will love it." Crazy.


Well, what's even better than grade school or high school Valentine's days are married Valentine's days. :) This was mine and Nick's 3rd V-day together (1 dating, 2 married). The 1st year...uh I'd rather not talk about it. Let's just say I was still trying to decide whether or not I wanted to seriously date Nick and he had already made up his mind, which resulted in an uneven gift exchange. He was romantic and gave me an empty photo album with the captions already filled in -like "going to a baseball game", "Picnic in the park", "on a hike"...- to tell me that he really wanted to date me and fill this photo album. Beyond adorable, right? Plus, he gave me a sweet card and a whole bag of Reese's peanut butter cups. What did I get him? Uummm, a lint roller. That's it. The memory still haunts me and I still feel the embarrassment. For some reason we had talked about how he needed one but didn't have one or something so I thought it would be cute to get him one for Valentine's day??? No Paige, not cute. LAME. Yeah, I wanted to die. So I made up for it on our 2nd Valentine's day together. I planned at super fun dinner with our best friends and made chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. Remember>> this < post?

This year was wonderful too. Our celebration started this past weekend when Nick took me to lunch,'The Vow', and bowling. **side note: I may or may not have forced Nicholas to vow that he would take me to 'The Vow'.** We had such a fun weekend. >>p.s. I don't understand why some people hated 'The Vow'. It was cute and funny and romantic and made me cry. What's not to love? I really liked it. Of course you're going to be disappointed if you're expecting it to be as wonderful as 'The Notebook'...duh.

Valentine's day was so so {romantic ♥ and fun}. I loved coming home for lunch and seeing this on the table...

Ahh, I will never get sick of ~roses and chocolates and sweet cards.~ He even got me 2 packs of gum, because he knows I'm an addict.

My favorite part was making my presents for Nick. They weren't anything too exciting but it was just so was fun being sneaky...

I had this waiting in the fridge for him in the morning. This was an extra special treat for Nicholas because I'm usually anti-energy drinks, but I caved for my sweetheart. :) I even used his nickname for the pink lemonade Rockstar--"Pink Lady".

Then, at the end of the day I snuck to Nick's work and put this on his car...

Sorry about the scandalous "p.s."--I told you married Valentine's days are so much better. ;)

We finished the day by going to dinner at Carrabba's. The wait was long but totally worth it. Not to mention, we had the sweetest waiter who gave us a box of {Sweethearts} with our check. Thanks, Zach.

{{I'm so grateful for my sweet, handsome, funny, romantic, thoughtful, studly, forever Valentine. ♥}} What would I do without him? :)

xoxo

Anne of Green Gables

I drive a lot for work (runner for my Dad's law firm) and sometimes the music gets old so that's when I become an old fogey and turn on an audio book. I love it. It makes my drives go by so quickly. The latest book I just finished was {Anne of Green Gables}. What a wonderful book. I would find myself just driving along with the biggest smile on my face and giggling to myself. Always put me in a great mood.

If you haven't read it...>>read it.<<

confession-->Sometimes I day dream that I live in the early 1900's on Prince Edward Island and I am best friends with Anne & Diana. So if you hear me call someone a kindred spirit or bosom friend, you know why.

My new goal = have the same dreamy outlook on life as Anne does. She's always so imaginative and curious and positive. She's by far one of my most favorite charaters in any book. I know what you're thinking - "nerd alert". I know, I really do sound like a total nerd right now but I just had to get this all out there.

Thank you Lucy Maude Montgomery for bringing us this happy book. :)

p.s. I'm watching the movies asap.

the waiting game.

After months of seeing this --> every night, Nick has finally finished all of his Law School applications! It has already been such a long process with studying for the LSAT, taking the LSAT, waiting for the scores, guessing what schools we have a shot of getting in to, narrowing down the options, getting letters of recommendations/transcripts/application fee waivers, filling out applications-- I guess I can't complain too much since Nick has had to do all the work but it has been stressful and so time consuming! And now we just wait. and wait. and wait. It's driving me crazy. I just want to know where we will be for the next three years of our lives so I can start planning! Wouldn't you be anxious with this exciting range of options?...

University of Tulsa (Oklahoma)
Samford University (Alabama)
Florida Coastal School of Law (Jacksonville, FL)
Wake Forest (North Carolina)
Charlotte School of Law (North Carolina)
Elon University (North Carolina)
University of South Carolina
South Texas School of Law (Dallas, TX)
Phoenix School of Law (Arizona)
University of Syracuse (New York)
Gonzaga University (Washington)
UNLV :)

So, pleeeease Law School admissions departments, put my nerves to rest and just give us the news! >>We are sick of this waiting game.<<

{{Hawaii}}

Where do I even begin?? I know...Hawaii=paradise. We had such a fun week with my family. And you won't believe it but --no major problems on this vacation!-- Okay fine, you caught me. But we really only had one problem-- we kinda got mixed up on what day we were flying out to Hawaii (red-eye flights can be really confusing). So Nick & I kiiiinda missed our flight. But after ridiculous fees and two very generous parents we were able to get on the same flight as my family and it all worked out. :)

Remember how Rex & Nina had no idea that we were even going to Hawaii? They thought that they were just tagging along for the ride to the airport "to drop Nick and I off for our flight to Utah and to pick Hayley up from her flight to Vegas." Here's the video of us surprising them...

The real video is longer and so funny but you get the point-they were shocked and SUPER excited. It was definitely the highlight of the trip.

Once we got to Hawaii everything was a dream. {{The hotel, the beach, the pool, the sun, the sand, the water...I just want to go back.}}

Here are just a few pictures showing all of our favorite memories. (I'll put more on my facebook. It takes too long to put them all on here.)

Laying out:

Visiting Dad's favorite mission companion:

Breathtaking Hawaiian sunsets:

Playing football:

Delicious Snowcones:

Matching tattoos:

Playing in the sand:

Visiting Pearl Harbor:

Polynesian Cultural Center:

♥Lots & Lots of family time:

>>I cannot thank my parents enough for inviting us on this amazing trip.<< Thank you x infinity! Best Christmas present ever. :)