To Finally Be Caught Up!

Ringing in the new year. I don't know most of the people in this picture, but at least you can see me down in the right corner. I don't know exactly why I was making this face.

On to the sledding extravaganza!
Jacob and I.
Some of my favorite people. Starting in back: Heidi, Luke(I don't really know him, but he is roommates with some of my favorite people), TJ (I really like that kid). In the Middle: Me and Robert. In the front: Karina, and Jacob.

One adventure in tubing. Robert lasted till the bottom of the hill...almost.

I believe the quote repeated over and over as they went down the hill, "We're gonna die!".

This was not as thrilling as we had hoped, but at least we tried.

Yeah. I'm cool when I carry a tube.

We celebrated King's Day belatedly with a Latin night. Heidi, Karina, and I made this piñata. Karina and Heidi are the creative genius behind the exterior appearance. I was sleeping:(.

Just a funny picture.

Heidi taking her turn with it while is was still hanging. It didn't stay up long, so...

We resorted to the baseball approach. It was pretty much the best piñata ever! Heidi and I filled it with what ever we could find around the house. Dental flossers, old nail polish, flat marbles, life savers, alcohol swabs, random tubes of chap-stick and lip gloss, tootsie rolls...

I have serious questions about Costco's chicken! Can you even imagine the chicken this breast came off of?! That can't be natural. Please note the size of the banana next to it...and that is not a small banana!
Heidi and I signed up for our first "bountiful basket". It is a food co-op that you buy into and get your produce at wholesale price. We paid $15.00 and got all this! We were most excited about the strawberries b/c right now you have to pay a small fortune for them at the store...ok, maybe only $5-$6, but still.

Snowshoeing...
The guy taking this picture told us to act like we knew each other...apparently Robert doesn't know me as well as I thought.

A hole!!
Robert explored the hole too:).

We hiked to Donut Falls. I had never been up inside the cave where the donut name comes from. So Fantastic!!!

I love holes!

Post Script

This picture is evidence that I am perfectly capable of wasting time.

Oh the holidays are joyous

Technically this one should have been amid the November pictures, but it was taken a holiday weekend, so it fits in here. Hayden and Jennifer came to visit for the Thanksgiving weekend.

Pretty self explanatory here...the Christmas tree of choice.

Karina passed the light decorating portion of the tree. I actually let her take over for the bottom part.
Garrett and I headed outside to hang the lights on the outside of the house.

The Amish bread experience. I was given an Amish friendship bread starter this year. I decided that people would much prefer a finished loaf of bread, rather then a starter. So I did the math and figured out how much I had to increase the measurements to cook up all the starter. It turned out to be such a funny adventure.

When I measured out the wet and dry ingredients and they filled both of my largest bowels, it was time to get creative. I finally came up with the idea to mix everything in a large bin I was given for my birthday.
That turned out to be a good arm work out.

Then there was dividing the dough into just about every cooking pan I had.

I ended up with about 8 pans in the oven which I had to be careful to rotate frequently. In the end, most turned out all right. The ugly ones still tasted good. Note, this is not a project to undertake at a late hour. The last picture was taken at 11:40pm and they still had to bake after that.

We had an ugly sweater party to attend this year and so we headed to the local thrift store and picked up supplies. This is me, Karina, and Patrice trying our handiwork. Its amazing what ugliness can be created with a little hot glue.

The whole crowd. I was fortunate enough to take first prize for the ugliest sweater.

We decided to leave a note with some treats on the mailbox for the mail man.

Here they are hanging for him to enjoy. He left us a thank you post card the next day. I am sure we are now his favorite house on his delivery route.

We celebrated Christmas Adam with the roomies and a couple other cool cats. For those who are unfamiliar with Christmas Adam, it is the night before Christmas Eve. Thanks to our friend Ashley J. for introducing us to holiday.

I was able to spend Christmas Eve and part of Christmas day with Jennifer. Apparently one picture was all we could muster.

I drove down to Cedar City on Christmas day to spend the rest of the Holiday weekend with Cambree. We spent some time exploring boutiques on main street. These glasses were just so perfect!

November: A quiet month

So apparently the only photo worthy moment in November was my roommate Karina's birthday. We took her out to Layla Mediterranean Grill and Mezze. The owners are from Lebanon and Egypt. We tasted some delightful new thing and some not so delightful new things. I would highly recommend everything we had there, except for the lamb shank. The atmosphere was very enjoyable and the staff was very personable.

As always...left to right: Erica, Heidi, Karina

We tried to be thoughtful in our gifts. The squeegee was for her car that the defrost didn't work on...the car died the week before we gave the gift. The headlamp was for our late night jogging adventures. The clock was a fulfillment of a home design dream, thank you DI for having the perfect clock for the right price.

We finished out the night by bringing home a chocolate lava cake from Chili's.

Happy Birthday Karina!!!

October: California and Halloween

These cute little flowers were on the bank of Lake Tahoe.

We stopped in at a little coffee shop/ice cream parlor/bike shop/ski shop/office center. It was quite charming and the ice cream was delightful. I had a hard time leaving, but we had only blocked out so much time at Lake Tahoe.

This lake is Donner lake. We went up over Donner pass on our way to California.

Visiting a Jelly Bean factory was on my list of things to do before I die. Taking a tour of the Jelly Belly factory will remain a highlight for many years to come.

Left to right. Dave, myself, Cambree, Jenni, Garrett.

Yeah for the Golden Gate Bridge.

We purchased several 2 pound bags of "Belly flops" from the Jelly Belly factory. We polished off this bag in record time!

We visited the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz that plays tricks with your mind through optical illusion. It was quite entertaining to watch people try to walk through this little structure.

These huge hydrangeas were lining Lombard street in San Francisco.

Then there was Yosemite on the return trip. This rotted log was too much to resist.

You are all aware of my obsession with holes and nooks and crannies.

Yosemite's half dome.

Cambree's and my attempt to recreate Vitruvian Man, by Leonardo Da Vinci.

We were driving late at night on a remote highway when the hood of the car flew open. That was definitely thrilling.

These next couple of pictures were taken on one of my favorite hikes in SLC.

This first one is my cute roommate Karina.

There is SOME beautiful foliage up the canyons.

Roommate picture.

This is the reward to be enjoyed at the end of the hike.

We had a roommate date to "Color Me Mine". We created some art work to help complete our front room decor.

Pumpkin Hunting!!! One of my favorite things about Halloween, taking the wagon out to the field and picking your pumpkin.

Left to right: Jake, Michael, Chris, April, April's cousin(in the front), Heidi, myself, Mandi, and Karina.

Aren't they lovely!

Karina, Heidi, Me!

Jake, Me, Heidi

I copied this idea from the internet. I made it with spice cake to which I added a package of butterscotch pudding. It turned out deliciously moist!

We had a pumpkin carving extravaganza. I was not feeling super well that night, so Erik was kind enough to carve my pumpkin for me.

Left to right: Erik, Me, Jamie, Heidi, Karina, Garrett, Jake, Michael(front)

Chillin' on the couch while everyone slaved away.

We had the Halloween party of the century. There ended up being 50+ people in our house through the night. I took pictures with some of my favorite;).

Me and Robert

Cambree was awesome and joined us for the weekend.

Cambree, Me, Jenni

Roommates: Me, Heidi, Karina.

This is Jamie in possibly the best Halloween costume of all time.

I have a fantastic cupcake book which contains all sorts of creative cupcake ideas. Cambree and I found these rats harder to make then anticipated.

So we moved on to our own creations.

I am getting closer to caught up, so hopefully my blogging will get to be a little more interesting and not just a multitude of random pictures.