December 24 - 30, 2007

Well, after a little dancing after everyone left on the 23rd we got ready for Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, we held our traditional Jerusalem Supper. This year it consisted of our (not so Jerusalem-ish) cheeses and crackers, pomegranates, pineapple, grapejuice (our homegrown), bread, and roasted turkey (fish was once again vetoed by that non fish liking person in our house). We also had prunes, dates and figs.

After our supper, we acted out the nativity. For some reason, my husband always ends up being the donkey - I'm afraid the donkey may go on strike next year! Our Mary and Joseph sort of traded places halfway through - but they made it despite the cranky innkeeper (me).


After the theatrics, the girls got to open one present - their new jammies for the year, and then we went upstairs and watched the Nativity story and put hair in curlers, and then dad read the Nativity story. We set out cookies and oatmeal for the reindeer and got tucked into beds.


Christmas morning came bright and early - the girls got up at 5:30 am. The girls saw 6 deer outside their window as they woke up! Although the kids had asked for skateboards and DC shoes, I don't think they were too disappointed. They got some pretty cool toys - with a big focus on the world - puzzles, globes, maps etc for some reason. The girls were pretty excited also about their sewing kits they received (they are getting into sewing), their ice skates, and some fun animal play tents that we set up downstairs. Our oldest thought that tinker toys were only for boys, but soon discovered what cool things she can make... her first creation was a spider. I think everyone's favorite gift though was their electric blanket - controllable nighttime heat is such a blessing!









Several of my husband's presents came late, but he received a pretty cool bronze statue of Joseph and Hyrum and some fun things from the girls. He got me a cello box - so I don't have to constantly get my cello in and out of the case - I can just leave it sort of out, but protected.



Our day was nice. We watched a video we got, and then my husband and the girls shoveled (it snowed for 24 hours on Christmas). He and our eldest then went sledding in the BLM land, and had a GREAT hill! The youngest and I stayed inside and kept warm.
We had a late had dinner, and crashed into bed. We left the next morning (11:00ish) and headed out to see family. There we visited all of my husband's brother's homes, and took a family picture. We spent some time with my family who had planned a baby blessing, baptism and family sealing around our being there - it was pretty packed. We headed back home in hopes of missing a storm. Although the roads were fairly icy, we made it home okay - albeit tired at 1:00 am, but safe. It snowed all day on the 30th and they closed down most of the roads, so I'm thrilled we didn't have to deal with it today!

We will spend time with friends for New Year's Eve, and make it an early evening. I think our eldest is excited to have a couple more days off - although they still haven't seemed to have the time they've wanted to just play with their toys. I'm sure it will come. It's crazy that the break is already over and we all go back to school this next week!
We loved seeing family and spending time with everyone! Hope the upcoming year will be full of joy and goodness.

December 16-23, 2007

So - it's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything, everything has just gone by in a blur. I finished with Seminary for a couple of weeks on the 14th and received news that my parents and sister (and family) were all coming into town starting on the 18th. So - I started to really clean out the house. The good news is that while they were here, my dad was able to get the ping pong table back into order and we now have foosball and ping pong tourneys in the basement (we cleaned it out too). We spent some time cleaning all of the old baby toys out of the playroom (made room for new sophisticated stuff). We were able to find some toys in great shape and donate them to a family who really needed the stuff, so it was good for the girls to experience this. Our youngest was so sweet - she wanted to give her favorite toys to this family - and was so excited to do it.
Well grandma and grandpa got here, and grandpa fixed almost everything that was fixable in the house. He fixed the stove (well - figured out what we needed and ordered the parts), the dryer, the sink, the handrail and the coat closet as well as the aforementioned ping pong table. Amazing that we needed so many little repairs here and there!

Grandma helped bake our Christmas breads and kept the food cooking. It snowed the whole time, so it was nice just to hang out inside. My sister and her husband came into town on Friday - it was great to see them. Just before they got here, our neighbors called to see if the girls wanted to go sledding. We sent the girls over to meet them (we could see them from the front window). Come to find out - their daughter has a small snowmobile. They tied up our sled and while he made jumps with his four wheeler, they pulled the girls through the snow. After a while the girls got to try their hand at driving as well! The girls had a blast!!

It was great to have grandma and grandpa here, as well as aunts and uncles and cousins - thanks to all for taking the time to come out!!
The next day, our friend called and invited my husband and brother in law to go snowmobiling. They went up into the high country - to treeline. It was an extremely cold day, but they had a great time digging out their snowmobiles and getting stuck. It was also great to see the beauty of the awesome place we live.




On Sunday I played Handel's For Unto Us a Son is Given in church (from the Messiah) - this signaled to my husband that Christmas could start and then everyone went back to their respective homes, while we started to prepare for Christmas.
We finished our shopping on Monday and all of our wrappings.
That finished up our very busy fun filled week! Onto Christmas.

December 15, 2007

I wanted to include these cute pics of the girls - after spending the day cleaning, we thought we'd better bathe the girls too - they just happened to look so darling in their bunny robe that I couldn't resist the pics.

Our busy Week December 10-16, 2007

Hi all - well, this week has been one of those doozies - and you look back and think - what could I blog about this week, but because of the blur have no idea. Monday and Tuesday saw snow, and the roads were so bad on Tuesday that we canceled seminary the next day (on Tuesday one of my students had an accident on the way to class due to icy roads.)
I know we made a bunch of caramels to give to people for Christmas - that's a start. On Wednesday, we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. I can't believe it has been that long!!!
We decided to go to our favorite Indian restaurant (which I'd been craving for weeks). When we got there, we saw that it was a new restaurant, and we were totally bummed. We then discussed riding the chair lift up to the top of the mountain for dinner, but realized that my coat wasn't in the back of the car (where I thought it was). We settled for going into the village and eating at my favorite (although costly) restaurant. It was pretty amazing. I ordered the Turbot (that's a fish) - it was in a coconut milk concoction...it also had watermelon radishes (they were amazing), and fresh palm hearts dipped in tempura. It sort of had a tropical taste but was great. My husband had the Kobe beef and ribs - his was pretty tasty too. For dessert we thought we'd try the prickly pear lime sorbet. It was not so tasty, so they brought us a pear parfait instead - with 'pistachio dust'. It was actually pretty amazing. Definitely a night to remember.
On Thursday I had a gig with my trio at the local library. They roped us off, and we played Christmas music while the kids stood in line waiting on the red carpet to see Santa. I'm attaching a few pics. They had story time for the kids, then crafts, refreshments, and Santa for the kids. Apparently, our music was very soothing and provided the 'ambiance' they wanted so it all turned out good.
Friday I worked on my quilt block, and then went to help out in the school with the Christmas party. We swapped some baby sitting on Friday and cleaned on Saturday.
I think that pretty much wraps it up.

Holiday Cheer

So - we did our Christmas cards yesterday. Some people weren't in love with the Christmas card photo we sent out, but we didn't really have many photos with the entire family to choose from - so we opted for the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean ball thingy. So - to offset the morbidity of our Christmas card, we thought we'd post a few photos of our holiday cheer.
The first is our youngest with the Christmas tree, and the second is our eldest with dad, making some more stars for our Christmas tree - he's become the expert.

December 7, 2007

I've been getting lax in my blogging - that's all there is to it. Our computer died a while ago, and I'm still really trying to figure out some of the little idiosyncrasies of the new one. We still continue to keep as busy as possible. It was a relief to start to get back into the swing of things after Thanksgiving. Solely due to the fact that I COULD stay up late (because I didn't have seminary the next am) I did - almost every night of the break. It was both delicious and exhausting. It just doesn't seem natural to go to bed at 9:00 pm because you are exhausted. Last night we swapped some babysitting. Unfortunately, our kids went to bed at 8:45 (super late for them since they are ready by 7:15 usually). These kids were still going until 10:00 when we made beds on the couches for them. I had fallen asleep at 8:15 while my husband was reading the kids stories. Yes - my pathetic going to bed at 8:15 on a Friday night life! I think we are going out tonight though, and I can stay up a little later.
Last week we had the ward talent show. I found 3 other ladies who are as crazy as I, and we resurrected the Grandma "Winking at me" song. I think it was a hit - people were pretty surprised, and the girls at least loved it! My daughter played Jesu, Joy of Man's desiring on her violin, and my husband juggled while the audience sang (directed by the girls) Jingle Bells, and Happy Birthday to the Bishop.
I've been working on getting our Christmas card put together this week, and I think we've got most of the shopping done. We are hoping to get everything sent out today or Monday. Then we'll begin making treats and sitting back enjoying the season. I think my sister and her family are coming out just before Christmas (and my parents to see them). We will celebrate Christmas Eve with a Jerusalem supper, and then Christmas day here. After that, we'll travel back home and spend a couple of days with the family.
I celebrated Hanukkah with my seminary class this week and learned to make latkes. That was pretty interesting, but fun, and my family loved the latkes.
Oh, I also learned how to put music links onto web pages and how to set up a counter on my blog pages... thanks for the help!
I had a rehearsal this week, and we have a gig for the Library party next week. We haven't ever done a Christmas music gig, so this will be interesting. We are the music and entertainment while the kids wait in line to see Santa. We'll see how it goes, and I'll possibly post some pictures from that. I'm working on a blog for the trio which we can use for marketing - I'll post the address of it once I really get it up and running.
We are going on a date today! The first one in ages! Details to follow!

November is here and almost Gone!

November has been a very busy month - we traveled to the City where my husband had a surgery on his eyes - that was an adventure last week - but at least we had great weather and ended up in an awesome hotel. Let's see - the month has just totally blown by and here we already are at the end of it. We decided to stay here for Thanksgiving - we've just been running around too much lately, and the thought of a a 7-8 hour drive back and forth and then running to everyone's houses for dinner just exhausted us in the thinking about it stage. My husband's work has been very busy, and he's had several nights that he's had to work which has thrown all of us off. So - we stayed home and cooked our dinner and had it that night. It wasn't too fancy - we did the traditional. We did Emeril's brined turkey recipe that we like - but our bird was huge and took a LONG time to cook. We did pumpkin, lemon meringue, banana cream and a pecan pie. The pecan was great but turned out like a caramel soup with set pecans on top. I have yet to find a good recipe which works here - maybe it is the altitude? (It's nice to have a scapegoat):) We did yamples (yams and apples - one of our favorites), cheesy beans (another favorite), potatoes and gravy, and rolls. We forwent the stuffing and the salad as I would be the only one to eat the salad, and it was already way too much food. We also put together a spinach appetizer dip which we munched on before hand. We topped the dinner off with grape juice grown in our own backyard. We hadn't tried it - so it was kind of fun. It was okay - not as amazing as we'd hoped, but it was from our yard (and they told us you couldn't grow grapes here - altitude again) - we mixed it with sprite - which used to be my favorite part of Thanksgiving with Grandma and Grandpa J. After dinner we played some games and later came back for the pies. Our eldest said it was the best day ever, cause we let her have a piece of all four pies. Albeit they were teensy, she couldn't finish them all - but she thought it was pretty cool as did our youngest. On Friday, we just hung around, played games, did laundry, had a family foosball tourney, and did a little ping pong as well. The girls found a box and decorated it and have played about 150 different games with it. The rest of the day (no wonder it was a blur) was spent Christmas shopping. (I got a large majority of our shopping done a couple of weeks ago when my husband was home during the day after working during the night.) The girls loved to shop for each other, and then trade parents and shop for the other parent as well - it was a LONG shopping trip, but most of it is now done!
Today, we did a major house clean - I finally paid some attention to my plants - they've been severely neglected for the past 1 1/2 years. I finally repotted some of them and trimmed them and finally threw out some really dead ones. It is nice to get things back into order. We moved some furniture so that we can get out the Christmas stuff tomorrow and start setting it up. That was originally today's goal, but we got it prepped and after Church we'll go at it. Instead of the Christmas stuff, we went and saw the Bee movie. I don't believe we'll be purchasing it - but it was okay and the girls enjoyed it.
Hopefully that sums up our lives for the past couple of weeks. I've been off from Seminary for this week, and been able to catch up with staying up late and messing around at night and sleep in. Very Nice!

Happy Halloween!

We went to a Halloween party last weekend and wanted to show off some of our pictures of our little "Cheetahs". Thanks to Grandma who helped find the costumes.
We will be spending a busy day hitting the streets at 3:30 for the businesses which are open to trick or treaters up valley. The joke is the zombies for parents the next day I think!

October 17, 2007

Well - I got a new camera, and I figured out how to send my pictures to get them printed, but I'm still trying to figure out how to upload them into this blog. I think I just need a little bit of time and patience and will get all of the kinks worked out. I didn't post last week because we were away. Some friends from came for conference. We all stayed at my parents, and went to the morning session on both Sat and Sun. My husband got a chance to also get into the Sat pm session which was pretty cool for both him and our friend. Thanks to all who helped us with tickets. Conference was great!! What an amazing blessing we have. One funny story - as we were getting ready, our friend asked me if I wasn't wearing heels to the conference. I said no - I don't really wear them. After parking, while crossing the street, her high heel broke right off her shoe. We didn't know what to do, and we were already there, so we told her she'd just be sitting the entire time not to worry. After conference, they men went to get the car, and pick us up. Our friend and I stood in the rain (it had been snowing) and the freezing wind for 30 minutes waiting for them. Finally, someone asked us if we needed to use their phone. We called the guys, and they were stuck in the parking garage. We told them to stay there, we'd come to them. By the time we got there, and had gone up all of the steps to every flight because we couldn't find them, someone else offered their cell phone and we ended up having to go back out to the street to try and find each other. All in all, it was a comedy of errors.

We spent one day at a nearby Island. There we waited for a herd of buffalo to cross the road in front of us, and got some great closeups. We toured a ranch with some really old artifacts. The sad part was that some of our antiquated tools still haven't even made it to our friends' home country. It was hard to show the girls a washboard and explain it to them since our friends still use one!

One of the girls woke up sick on day, so dad dropped the Choc's off in SLC. The girls and I later went and picked them up and we spent some time in the Visitor's Center. That night for FHE we carved pumpkins and made some fun Jack-o-lanterns. The next day we went to the mall for several excruciating hours. Our youngest was playing in the racks and got lost. For 10 very intense minutes we searched for her until a worker found her on the other side of the store wandering around. It was an ugly experience that I'll never forget. Later that day, we did Trappers Loop, and then spent some time at the Ogden temple. We later went to Walmart and did some last minute midnight shopping.

On Wednesday, we packed everyone's bags and went to the Bountiful Temple, then to the This is the Place monument, and then to Temple Square. We ate in the Lion House, and then spent time seeing the Beehive house, and the tabernacle. Finally we spent time touring the conference center. We rushed the Choc's to the airport, and the girls and I went back to temple square. Later on we went back to the airport and picked my husband up. He'd flown out of SLC to a work conference. Thursday we made it to the Jordan River temple, and then back home. We did have an hour and a half wait through the canyon due to construction, but it was all very good.

Thus - it was a pretty busy week. We came back, spent some time cleaning up on Saturday, and are now getting ready to head back out to Utah for a surprise party this weekend (yes I'm a lucky one - I love 7-9 hour drives!).


I'm sure I'll have more pictures and details once I get back from that trip!

October 3, 2007

Well, I will be finishing up some canning this morning, and we are getting ready to head out for conference. We have some wonderful friends from G who we will be meeting there, and are excited to be their tour guides! Stay tuned for lots of cool conference pics!! This week I had a prayer answered. It's a short post this week, but we've got lots going on, and lots of preparation for our trip!

Frost is in the air

Yesterday we got the FREEZE warning, and I'm told that it snowed in the mountains yesterday as well... yuck. Anyways, we harvested much of our garden for Family Home Evening. We did have a mammoth carrot - a la grandpa (I took one of his to kindergarten for show and tell it was so cool). The girls also had their own personal garden in which they planted carrots, and some squashes. The girls won the house award of the best flower garden - theirs was truly amazing and totally beautiful! Our corn (which was just for fun and experimental) came up and we got a few small ears which we are excited to eat. We are still canning tomatoes - we have one box almost ready to go, and two more which are still ripening up! Here are some fun pictures of the garden - the really tall tree like things would be the tomatoes!

Zoo

We spent the day at the zoo earlier this week. I got to chaperone 4 kids throughout the zoo. It was a fairly exhausting day, but it was pretty fun. We got there before the school bus did, so my child and I hung out - here's a picture of her eating her morning snack of Cheeto', and then a picture of our little group. I think everyone's highlight was the carousel - I'm not sure how we could work it into the curriculum, but I know the kids would probably rather do that than the zoo!

More pictures - Finally!!

Well - here we have several new pictures I thought we should post.
First of all we have the first day of school - which is actually a couple of weeks old, but nonetheless.

Time for that weekly blog

So - for those of you who are interested in my life on a daily basis (yes, I know EVERYONE is) you may want to check out my other blog (and if I've already promoted it - apparently I'm pretty proud of it or excited or something). It's my Seminary blog page, where I share what we've done in class each day so that the parents and students, and any nosy person that might want to know what we actually do at 6:00 am at church can follow with our daily chronicles. Actually -... well, at this point I went to bed so I don't know what I was going to say.
I started a pre-school this week with 2 other moms - that is sucking a little life, and yesterday I spent the day at the zoo with a bunch of kids- that was pretty fun, but exhausting. We picked all of our tomatoes this past weekend, and have about 90 lbs of them. I'll be canning them both today and tomorrow, and hopefully be finished for the season. We picked all of our grapes (which experts predicted could not possibly survive the winters and climate) on Monday. We got 11 quarts of grape juice - we can't wait to try them!

Canning Party

This weekend we picked up 88 pounds of peaches. Yesterday morning I was feeling a little overwhelmed as I looked at them and thought about the full next week I'd need to get them taken care of. A friend called, and I mentioned what I was doing, and she volunteered to come over and can. Another friend called and had never canned but wanted to come learn, as did another. We ended up with 5 kids running around playing, while four of us canned. Within 3 and a half hours we ended up with 45 quarts of peaches for the winter. I spent time in the garden yesterday morning picking tomatoes and my husband and I canned 14 quarts of tomatoes last night. We still have tons of tomatoes in the garden - and hope to get at least 45-50 quarts this year. The exciting part is that we started these plants indoors from seeds back in March - so it's been really fun to see them develop into the taller than me trees that we've got now. The 35 quarts that we got last year went quickly and we had to ration them!! We are also praying that it stays warm enough that all of the raspberries will ripen for jam, and we are looking at harvesting the grapes within the week. On Monday we picked apples from a friend's, and I will be doing lots and lots of applesauce today. It's been so awesome to produce our own food, and store it up for the winter. There's nothing more reassuring than looking at a full food storage, and knowing how hard you've worked, planting, growing and canning... what a reward!!
On another note, the girls are busy with school and gymnastics. Seminary is finally starting to settle into a routine. Our power went out for a second yesterday and the messed up the alarm clock. When I reset it, for some reason it rang at 12:01 am. Just as I was getting into the shower I looked at my watch and realized that it was NOT 4:30 am. I got back into bed - relieved, because it felt like I'd only slept for an hour and a half... funny thing!
My husband applied for an internal job promotion yesterday - he was told that there should be an offer by the end of the week - this has definitely taken an emotional toll since we first learned about the possibility the first week of August, but we are hoping that it all comes to fruition.
We will be traveling 3 hours away for our stake conference this weekend.
That's pretty much our life in a nutshell this week!

School has finally started

Well, school has started and life seems to be settling back into it's normal hum drum (which is always so welcome at the end of the summer). My schedule has changed - I was going to say drastically, but I just realized, it isn't that different! I used to get up at 4:45 every morning to go walking. Now I get up at 4:30 to get ready for Seminary. I leave right about 5:30, and get there between 15 - 8 minutes before 6:00 a.m. I then come home, get my daughter off to school and begin my day. I'm still trying to figure out where to fit in the rest of my schooling. I've got a final I'll take this Friday, and then one class left. I've just GOT to get it done. I'm starting up a pre-school with a couple of other moms, and have to get it up and running. I've started walking at 8:00 pm. The only problem is that by the time I get home, I'm ready to start my day! I was grateful last night when I got home, showered, collapsed in bed and was instantly asleep, and slept great. It's just tough to actually get my buns into bed by 9:30. Well... its 10 in the morning and I'm yawning - that should tell you something! Yes - precisely, I live for school holidays!