Happy Easter!

 Last night, we had tons of fun coloring Easter eggs with these guys! It was my first time ever mixing up the dyes myself, and I was probably way too excited about it. John made an awesome egg that kind of looks like his face (pictured above). To get the letters, we used my Cricut to make vinyl stickers and put them on the eggs before we dyed them. My favorite egg I made was an ombre blue one. Can you spy a picture of it?

Church today was also absolutely wonderful. It reminded me of the true meaning of Easter. One of the speakers in Sacrament Meeting shared this story that I had never heard before. It really touched me today, so I thought I'd share it on the blog if you'd like to read.

Wait Three Days

On Easter Monday morning, I paused for a moment on top of the steps leading to the avenue, now crowded with people rushing to their jobs. 
Sitting in her usual place inside a small archway was the old flower lady. 
At her feet, corsages and boutonnieres were parading on top of a spread-open newspaper. 
The flower lady was smiling, her wrinkled old face alive with some inner joy.
I started down the stairs--then on an impulse, turned and picked out a flower.
As I put it in my lapel, I said, "You look happy." 
"Why not?" she answered. "Everything is good." 
She was dressed so shabbily and seemed so very old that her reply startled me.
"You've been sitting here for many years now, haven't you? And always smiling. You wear your troubles well." 
"You can't reach my age and not have troubles," she replied. "Only it's like Jesus and Good Friday..." She paused for a moment. 
"Yes?" I prompted. 
"Well, when Jesus was crucified on Good Friday; that was the worst day for the whole world. When I go through troubles, I remember that and then I think of what happened only three days later - Easter, and our Lord rose from the dead. So when things go wrong, I've learned to wait three days and somehow everything gets much better." 
She smiled good-bye, but her words still follow me whenever I think I have troubles...Give God a chance to help...wait three days.


--Author Unknown


In our primary lesson today, it mentioned that the news of Christ's resurrection was the best news the world has ever received. I'm so grateful for that news, and what it means for each of us. Hope you are all having a fabulous Easter!

Valentine's Day

My Valentine's Day went something like this:

[1] Going out for ice cream sundaes with the 6th graders.

[2] & [3] Exchanging valentines in creative boxes - remember doing that in elementary?!

[4] My husband sending me flowers at work (a.k.a. the sweetest thing ever).

[5] Eating even more sugary treats.

[6] Coming home to find a little blue box on my laptop with a note from Daniel. That little blue box happened to contain the Tiffany & Co. earrings I had been coveting for years!!

Best Valentine's Day ever? I think so.

Best husband in the world? Most definitely.

Love you, D!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Love, 

M & D

A Christmas Potluck.

Can I just say how much I love the people I'm doing my student teaching with? I've laughed harder than I have in a long time at our late-night study groups and I've seriously had to kick my cooking skills up a few notches this semester to keep up with them at our amazing potlucks. You see, potlucks are kind of our thing. So, naturally, we decided to have a Christmas potluck and movie night to celebrate the end of the semester. My parents were kind enough to let me volunteer their house for our party, because let's be honest, 10+ people wouldn't have a prayer of fitting in our one-bedroom apartment. So there you have it, my first-ever Christmas potluck!

It was so much fun! I borrowed my mom's Christmas china and made centerpieces to make it extra-festive. The food everyone brought was a-maz-ing! For my contribution, I made these bacon-wrapped chicken bites I found on Pinterest, and warm artichoke dip using my mom's recipe. All of the fun Christmas decorations you see were already up. (I love how my mom decorates for Christmas, especially because it reminds me of Christmas growing up!)

After we ate (and ate and ate...) we watched the movie Freedom Writers. That movie makes me want to be the best teacher in the world! If you haven't seen it, there's this one scene where the teacher has her students make a "toast for change" at the end of the year. At the end of the movie, one of my friends busted out Martinelli's and little glasses for us to make our own toasts for the coming year! It was the perfect end to a perfect evening.

Resolutions!

This free printable from the blog eighteen25 is making our home super festive right now. Is anyone else as excited for the new year as I am?! Maybe it's because I'm really looking forward to the New Years Eve party we're going to, or maybe it's because I'm excited to start 2012 off with a clean slate. But I really think it's because I know 2012 has a whole lot of crazy adventures and new beginnings in store for us, and I can't wait to experience all of it. I can hardly believe this is the year I'll graduate from college!

Every year around this time, D and I make New Years resolutions. This is something we've been doing together since we were dating and I really like it. We each make our own personal goals for the new year and share them with each other, and then we make a set of goals for us as a couple to accomplish in the coming year. (One year, one of our goals was to get married! It was fun to check that one off the list :). I love sitting down and talking about how we can improve our lives and strengthen our relationship together. If you haven't tried it with your significant other, we recommend it! 

Here are a few of our resolutions for the coming year:

1. Make new traditions together.
2. Go on more little dates.
3. Be more active.
4. Attend the temple once a month.

Do you make New Years resolutions? Do you keep them? What are some of your goals for 2012?

P.S. Some tips for making your resolutions this year: make sure they are specific, measurable, realistic, attainable, and that you have a time-frame in mind that you are going to accomplish them by. I'd also recommend not making more of them than you think you can keep! (I'm totally guilty of that). Write them down, and post them somewhere you'll see them often. Happy goal-setting!

The Nativity

We Sorensens go all-out for the Christmas Eve nativity.

Can you tell?

Hope you had a fantastic Christmas!

I've already put away all of our Christmas decorations - can you believe it? Does that make me a Scrooge? Don't get me wrong, I love our Christmas tree (and its box, and all of the other decorations) but they were all taking up too much space over here and making me feel a little bit claustrophobic. But I can breathe now! Woo hoo! Bring on the new year.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Sorry it's been a little quiet on the blog front lately. Finals week almost did me in, I had a huge teacher-test to take (I passed!), and I've been under the weather this past week. I'm so excited to finally be finished and feeling better so I can enjoy the holidays with family and friends. So, without further ado, here are a few snapshots of our holiday decor this year. I promise it's been up since December 1st :)

We hope you're all having a fantastic Christmas Eve! Now that we're home from our festivities, Daniel and I are cuddled up on the sofa watching The Polar Express together. It's super relaxing. We've got our Merry Mistletoe candle lit, and our Christmas tree is on in the corner. We're so excited to open up that pile of presents under the tree tomorrow morning! If there's a Christmas song that can sum up our relaxing Christmas Eve, it would be O Holy Night as performed by Mercy Me. It's one of my favorite Christmas songs this year (and last year, and the year before). Merry Christmas Everyone!
 

Christmas posts from last year here, here and here.

grateful.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We are so thankful for you.

photo from last year.

Today, we're headed to my grandparents' house for Thanksgiving dinner. I'm bringing the rolls! I've been baking all morning, and the apartment smells absolutely heavenly. Cross your fingers that they turn out okay!

Today, I'm grateful for so many things:

Our families, because they support us in everything we do
Our jobs
The Prophet, and that he is in our ward
The Church, because it brings so much good into our lives
Our Heavenly Father, because he loves us
The Scriptures, because they guide our lives
Temples
Being able to work with children
Our apartment
The Internet
iPods
Picture messaging
Smart phones
Daniel, because he loves me and he is my very best friend
Eternal marriage
Education
Freedom
Miracles
Answers to prayers
Talents
My students
Kind people
Warm clothes in the winter
Yummy food
Our health
Sickness, because it makes you appreciate being healthy that much more
Our cars
Our camera, because it documents our life together
Our sweet friends who are always there for us

We hope you have a very happy Thanksgiving filled with lots of turkey, pie, family, and relaxing!

P.S. We had pumpkin pie for breakfast this morning - it's a Jacobsen family tradition! The Sorensens have a tradition of deep frying a turkey every year. Soooo yummy! What are your Thanksgiving Day traditions?

P.P.S Last year's thankful list and our very first Thanksgiving together :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,

The Sunbeams

Halloween

D and I had a fabulous Halloween this year. As you can see, we went to our parties dressed as SWAT and CSI! Yay for homemade costumes! In case you haven't gotten your costume fix yet, here are some of our fabulous friends from the ward party we went to:

From top to bottom: An army man, Captain Hook and Tinkerbell, an 80's girl and a mullet man, Puff the Magic Dragon and Batman, and some ninja children, belonging to Puff and Batman. Regrettably not pictured are a pair of awesome Waldos and a fantastic Lady Gaga. We had such a fun time! The ward party was also very nicely documented on Sydney's cute blog, in case you'd like to see more pictures!

We also carved some sweet pumpkins, of course.

Can you guess who's is who's?

How was your Halloween? What did you dress up as?

our trip to the pumpkin patch.

I'm not sure what it is about Halloween, but it's one of my very favorite holidays. Maybe it's the weather, the decorations, the colors, the candy, the parties, the dressing up, the scary movies, the haunted houses, or the pumpkins. Or maybe it's the fact that my birthday is 4 days before Halloween. Either way, this is one of my favorite times of the year!

One of our favorite Halloween traditions is visiting the pumpkin patch at Rosewood Gardens every year. It's such a fun place! Every year it's filled to the brim with Halloween decorations, hay bales, gourds, and pumpkins of all shapes and sizes. There's even a cat that wanders up and down the paths!

We had a fantastic time picking out our pumpkins together at the pumpkin patch. We found some great ones and we're excited to carve them with friends tonight!

What are your favorite Halloween traditions? Do you carve pumpkins? Where do you get them?