A Weekend of Holly Jolly Festive Fun

It seems like the more fun stuff we're doing, the less motivation I have to blog about it.  Then when NOTHING is going on I wax philosophical which basically means a boring blog for ya'll to follow-sorry.  I'm trying to repent.
This past week we went to Cody's work christmas party.  It was way more fun than our last work party.  In Houston when we were with Exxon, the party was at some hotel downtown in a banquet room.  There were 100s of people.  Everyone was formal dress and they had this huge buffet broken up by geography of where the food was from.  We sat at a huge table with 6 other couples 90% of whom where way older than us with loud music playing in the background so you couldn't really hear anyone.  Bleh.  Don't get me wrong, it was way nice/fancy I guess....just not my particular style, plus the food wasn't that great.

So flash forward to Vivint Marketing's xmas party last friday night.  It was at a lodge up in Sundance (a nice ski resort that's just 20 min away) and about 50 showed up.  First thing we do is wrap some presents that the company had bought for sub for santa for a local battered women's shelter.  Then we had a yummy mexican buffet.  Then they had an auction where we got "1000" bucks to bid on whatever.  They had movie theatre packages (tickets/candy/bucket etc), mexican coke (apparently that's a big deal?), nice watches, gift cards to diff restaurants, some big ticket items too like a nice nikon camera/lenses/backpack for it etc, mini ipad, google tablet, weekend getaway to park city, date night-dinner and gift cards for shopping after etc.
The trick was, some of it was wrapped/so you didn't know what it was, and some of the nicer gifts were thrown in on a less-cool thing.  Like a guy bought some fuji water and got a mini ipad thrown in after he bought it.  For the REALLY nice things like an ipad air and the camera package, you had to bid to compete for them-survivor style and if you lost you still lost your money etc.  We were saving our money for the end-there was one more pack of water and we assumed something big would come with them, when just before they got to it they said: auction is over-it was a decoy, there's nothing else.  DOH!  We were THIS close to going for the camera but we were worried we'd have to eat gross food or something, turns out it was just a brain teaser puzzle which I'm sure code would have rocked-dang it!  But it was still fun.
Then we had "our favorite things".  everybody had brought 5 of their "favorite" things.  We put 5 slips with our name on it in 5 different bags.  Each employee went up on stage and explained the favorite thing they had brought and then drew 5 names so we all got 5 diff things.  We got mostly food: jug of milk and oreo cookies, traderjoes peppermint cookies, oreo and peppermint choc bark, a cafe rio gift card, and a martinelli's/symphony bar.  We brought BYU wristbands (since there are a lot of U/UVU fans at work haha).  It was lots of fun, and as party favors the employees each got a nike jacket (shrug-who comes up with these things?  clearly a man-and a framed steve jobs' quote, and the spouses got a gift card to one of their fav places (as told by their husbands)-code did good and I got a 50$ card to downeast outfitters. :)
Sadly I have NO pictures cause my phone died, but I took a pic of my hair that I got done earlier in the day:

oh and I got these before my phone died

 the dining room:

It was REALLY cold up there-man! but it was fun and the roads weren't too bad-I was worried since we had just gotten a lot of snow.

The next night (Saturday night) we went to see the BYU Choir Christmas Celebration.  All the choirs performed along with the symphony, and it was REALLY good-it will def be an annual tradition from now on!  You have to be ready to buy tickets tho cause it's only one weekend and they always sell out.

Sat morning we got some christmas pics done of our family for xmas cards etc and they turned out really cute-Jake ACTUALLY smiled!  a miracle.  I won't post the one that's going out on our cards but some of the others:

Thanks Tyler! 

Then after church on Sunday we watched the Christmas devotional and had cookies and later Steve came over for a cut-throat game of monopoly and the movie: a Christmas Story.  We better slow things down or we wont' have anything festive left to do later in the month :)  We're getting excited tho as it's Code's last week at Vivint and my parents are coming to town next week and staying through the holidays!

New Beginnings

well, the Nolden household isn't waiting til the New Year to start new ventures.  In the past month after a lot of research, fasting, and prayer, we've decided to quit our current job at Vivint and start a web application development and digital marketing consultancy.  Cody has always preferred working on his own verses for a company, and the stars seem to have aligned at the right time.  We were happy to stay with Vivint but too many opportunities presented themselves and were too tempting.

It's kind of funny cause everyone we've told has had pretty much the same reaction: excited for us while at the same time are like: wow...you're crazy/brave.  The funny thing is I'm not nervous....like at all.  It's just like when we were in Texas and then all of a sudden the idea of moving to Utah didn't bug me anymore/ didn't make me nervous.  I feel like if it's right, it'll feel right.  I'm honestly excited to see what Cody can accomplish while he's not held back by upper management/red tape etc.   Ultimately the goal is to get enough clients to where Cody (and his friend Brant-who he's going in on this with) can hire other developers to help keep up with it all and he will have time to create products/other ways to earn money etc.  It also helps that I have 100% confidence in Cody's ability to get any job thanks to his skill set/contacts so if it doesn't go well/work out we'll just get another job before we have to dip too much into our savings.  (Seriously, knock on wood, he's gotten EVERY job he's ever applied for-I mean we had to choose between 3 different jobs coming out of college-the boy's good, and it helps that he's good in an area that is really hot right now-technology).

So in a few weeks we will be moving into our new house, and starting a new company.  Life is definitely not boring.  My parents are coming for 2 weeks for xmas so we're excited to spend time with them.

On the home front, Jake has had a rough week.  It all started on Sunday when he started teething really bad.  He was MISERABLE-red cheeks, low grade fever, lack of appetite, and we could see one of his canines coming in right by his front teeth.  All day he was whining/crying/whimpering, and being held by one of us and sleeping.

Monday and Tuesday he continued to be in a bad mood but the symptoms seemed to be less.  Today he woke up in a better mood but seems to be congested/ has a bad sounding cough.  I'm waiting to see if he continues to have other symptoms/has caught a cold or if it's just from the extra runny nose he's been having from the teething.  Either way, we have basically watched a LOT of Winnie the Pooh.  To top it all off we've gotten a ton of snow in the past 24 hrs-up to 6 inches in the valley!  It's exciting and nerve-racking all at the same time...it's been awhile since I've driven in snow-I don't like it when I can feel the automatic brake system kicking in.  So for better or worse we'll be home bound for the next few days.
Glad this mood is over:

We've put up our Xmas tree and so far so good-we'll see how long it takes for Jake to not listen when I tell him no when he inches closer to the tree :)

our porch: