Bday/Christmas Hurrahs

Okay, so I just wanna take a quick interlude from Europe stuff and throw in a little hooplah about our holidays. For my birthday, Jared threw me a 24 themed party (who'da thunk that I'd make it to 24???) It was lotsa fun. We ate food, played games, and were pretty much completely out of control :) you know, like any basic Mormon party...But the best part was my cake. Jared came home from work with a blueprint that he'd created to use for the design of the cake. He was pretty excited. Of course, then he appointed me to carry out the actual cutting and such. He did make the frosting, though, and it was very yummy!

And for Christmas, we went to Billings, after the craziness of actually getting there (I had to drive to Vegas, with the roads delayed due to snow/ice and only one snow plow...8 hours!!! And then I almost missed my flight-thank you Allegient for never going out on time. AND Jared's connecting flight into Denver was cancelled and since wonderful United wouldn't comp him a room, he had to spend the night in the Denver airport...during which a fire drill occurred!). We had lots of fun with all the fam, and we definitely had a white Christmas--which is actually kinda unique for Billings. It's always cold at Christmas, but we rarely get much snow around the actual day. Sadly, we did eventually have to return to sunny California and its beautiful weather and sunny beaches...But all in all, we definitely enjoyed our 5th Christmas together! (6th if you count when we were dating)

Here's a few of us CRAZY partiers! Woo hoo!

This is the cake unfrosted. We just thought it looked cool all red and with the airholes that look like bullet holes or something...
And here's the cake post-frosting...Jared was proud of his design, and I'm sure Jack Bauer would be too...
This is the boys hard at play up in B-town.Someone knocked up my 9-year-old niece, Brielle!!! Actually, we reenacted the birth of Christ for Christmas Eve, and Brielle got to be Mary.This is a pic of all the stalkings Christmas morning. Santa really had his hands full at the Ostler household!
Oh yeah, and PS-I cut all my hair off and donated it to Locks of Love (all 14 inches!!!). So, for those of you that haven't known me very long, it's a bit of a shocker, but for everyone else, it's old news.