One (or multiple) Fine Day(s)

Since I last posted here we've celebrated Halloween and Thanksgiving (and now Christmas and New Year...oops), Ben and I both received new callings, and I choreographed a dance for my coworkers that we performed for my boss on her birthday. So lets get started.

First off, Halloween. Recently I was going through some of my client's pictures (we have them send pictures as part of the proof of a legitimate marriage) and decided Ben and I needed to take more pictures together. I had taken it easy on Ben the first year of marriage cause I know he isn't a fan of pictures, but I decided things needed to change. So...that inspired me to start looking for fun things we could do that would have cute picture opportunities. I'm a huge fan of corn mazes, but most of them are kind of lame around our area. Most are designed with kids in mind so they are like 3 ft tall. I found an awesome corn maze about an hour and a half away that became a haunted maze after dark. Ben has always wanted to take me to a haunted house because he loves scaring me so I figured I could convince him to make the drive if I played up the haunted aspect. Being the giving and amazing man he is he gave me half of his Saturday so we could go. It did not disappoint! There were some fun little carnival rides, amazing kettle corn, creepy mazes, and fireworks. There were also nasty farm animals to pet, but we didn't really take advantage of that part.

We also got in the Halloween mood when we went to a Halloween party thrown by a couple in our ward. We didn't really want to spend any money on costumes so we came up with something that didn't require us to buy anything. We are big fans of America Ninja Warrior. I don't know what it is, but that show is so addicting! Ben has dreams to be on it one day and if he wasn't a medical student I would totally be down for that. (Although in order to get on it we are going to have to pray someone in our family gets some life altering disease. They always need an sob story to get coverage.) Maybe 10 years down the road...for those of you who aren't familiar with the show there are a bunch of obstacles that people try to get through so they can hit the buzzer at the end of the course. There are a bunch of levels and if you make it to the end you are named an American Ninja Warrior and you win a million dollars. The only lame part is that there has only been one season that someone has actually completed it. (Well technically two people finished that year, but they gave the million to the one that did it fastest. They obviously made things a lot harder since that year because no one has won since.) So by the end of the season you're super into it and then it's just disappointing when your favorites inevitably fail. I digress....so we grabbed some work out clothes and ironed on some letters and become "Beast Ninjas" for Halloween. (Every contestant comes up with some ninja name for themselves when they go on the show)

This is a picture of me throwing cheese onto Ben's face. We totally won. Although I will say it wasn't because of my excellent aim. Ben was diving for those slices! Commitment people. 

We may have had a slightly lame costume compared to every one else at the party, but we were fine with that. Although I will say we had the best dessert at the party. I saw these adorable "Melting Witch" brownies on pinterest and knew I had to try them. They were basically the reason I convinced Ben we should go to that party...I needed an excuse to make them. So yeah, our treat put everyone to shame.

As you know, actual Halloween day fell on a week day. One of the first things I learned about my job when I started is that they don't mess around with Halloween. Maria and Lakshmi started a contest between some of the other immigration offices and the Dallas Chief Council and his office are the judges. They won last year and needed to defend their crown. There was a ridiculous amount of work time going into coming up with our costume idea and story line. To help demonstrate home important this is to you let me tell you that at my performance review a few weeks later one of the biggest praises they gave me had to do with me coming up with the story line for our costumes. We basically shut down the office that morning and had our photo shoot. Then the attorneys spent the rest of the day in Photoshop putting together the final product. This was our entry:

Hopefully you can read all of it because we were pretty proud of it.

I'm a method actor as you can see

As you may have guessed by looking at the previous photos it's A LOT of fun working in my office. I really lucked out. I'm not just doing work I enjoy, but I'm working with people I really enjoy being around. Because our bosses are so awesome we always want to do something great for their birthdays, but the fact that they can buy anything they want for themselves makes it tricky. Especially Maria, she has expensive taste. So, as we were discussing what to her for her this year Karina brought up a suggestion Lakshmi gave them last year which was to make a dance for her. The minute she said it I insisted we do that. I immediately started listening to some classic 70's and 80's music and the inspiration was flowing. I spent a Saturday choreographing the dance and then a week teaching it to the girls. Then the day of the performance came. Lakshmi ushered Maria into the room that had been decked out to have an 80's disco feel. From the minute she walked in the room throughout the whole dance she was cracking up. It was so. much. fun. The whole video can me found on the Nayar & McIntyre facebook page, but I've put a clip of the ending below for those who don't want to spend 4 minutes of there life watching me dance around like a fool.

After Maria's birthday the big holiday was Thanksgiving! I had seen some pretty cheap tickets to Utah a few months back and decided since it wasn't going to be possible to spend time with both families this Christmas we'd fly to Utah for Thanksgiving instead. The catch was that we had to come home Saturday morning because coming home Sunday wasn't so cheap. We only had about 48 hrs in Utah, but we had all sorts of fun! Wednesday night Matt graciously picked us up even though the airport was a mad house! Luckily, we timed it perfectly and Matt didn't have to try and circle around again. On the way home we were supposed to stop at Ben's favorite wing place in Salt Lake, but unfortunately they were closed (and they didn't update their hours online!). That was a little heartbreaking because that was basically the one thing Ben wanted out of this trip. I felt so bad, but he said it was okay and we settled with Buffalo Wild Wings. If anyone is planning to come from Utah to visit us stop by Wing Coop and grab a few tenders for Ben on your way. When we finally arrived home Ana came over and the four of us had fun chatting.

Thursday morning I went to the gym with Ana because they were letting guests in free. I did my first cardio based gym class in months. Maybe even years. My calves were killing me the next day from all that hoping around. While it was fun, I missed my BodyPump. That afternoon Danny brought over a van full of food he had been cooking all morning. Dane joined us at the house and we had a yummy lunch/dinner. After dinner was over video games were played by Ben and Matt and Ana and I took the opportunity to play around on the piano for a bit. It was an exhausting day! By the end of it Ben and Ana literally woke me up with a bag of tootsie rolls so I would play 5 Crowns with them. I was so tired. We were staying up later than normal and it was even worse than it seemed because Texas is an hour later than Utah so our body's clocks were all out of wack. The next day I opted for not going to the gym with Ana so we could sleep in a little. Friday was pretty chill in the morning. Matt and I played some Super Mario. He was Mario, I was Mario's hat. I'm not usually a big fan of video games, but I'll admit when we were heading home I was already telling Ben I wanted to play that game again. Friday evening was a blast! We had dinner at Zupas! Oh Zupas...how I've missed you! There is nothing in Texas that even compares! Then we headed up to Salt Lake to see Elf: The Musical. It was super cute! We all had a good time. On our way home we discovered that Loren was heading our way so Ben and I got to say hi to Loren, Luke, and Charlie before we left bright and early Saturday morning. Such a quick trip, but definitely worth it.

Now we are back to normal life. I'm getting used to being in the YW presidency and Ben is about to be called as Elders Quorum President. I also still direct the choir...but I try not to think about that much. 😇 I'll post a separate post about all the fun we during Christmas time. Life is fun over here in Texas, but also pretty busy. We sure do me yall! Come visit!!