Christmas Tree

I love Christmas and I especially love Christmas trees! I really enjoy having a fresh cut tree and the crisp clean evergreen scent that inevitably permeates the house. However, because of an unfortunate event two years ago involving me forgetting to water a fresh cut tree and Lucifur knocking down the already dead and dying tree three weeks before Christmas... they have subsequently been banned from the house. There were pine needles everywhere and a constant need for vacuuming took all the joy out of the Christmas Tree splendor. This year Christian vowed to have no live trees in the house and brought home a mangled and pathetic fake tree that he scrounged from the depths of Scrooges basement. Only about a quarter of the lights on this pre-lit tree worked and to further the ghetto-ness... in it's past Christmas lives someone thought it would be brilliant to spray fake snow all over it's stupid fake plastic boughs. I sat in the kitchen cursing this wretched piece of crap while untangling the broken lights and watching as it's fake snow dandruff flaked it's nastiness all over my clean kitchen floor.

Eventually... everything seemed to take shape and it actually looked like a surprisingly good representation of a fake Christmas tree. I added my homemade pasta angel ornaments and hung every Puppy Love ornament my mother helped me collect from 1987 onward. At the end I topped it with a Santa hat and did a little jig with my mug of hot cocoa in hand.

Behold... my Christmas Miracle...

Yes even my pasta angels were singing Hallelujah!

St. George Climbing

While I love the snow and am very excited to begin my Snowboarding season, Christian and I don't really love cold all that much...

Therefore this past weekend we escaped to the milder temps of St. George to do some bouldering at a place called Moes and climb routes at the Chuckawalla wall. The weather was great and we even got to see some of Aunty Stephy while we were there:)

Bouldering Pics...

Route Pics...

We will return to climb again!!

Mastering the Art of French Pastries... and Tacos

This past fall season Christian and I stayed in Heber near the Zermott Lodge over the weekend. While there we feasted on a Julie favorite... the Sunday brunch buffet! Mixed within the three types of delicious eggs Benedict and across the way from the juicy bacon strips was a beautiful shiny tray of French pastries. Naturally I was drawn to the pretty shiny object and proceeded to taste the most delicious, light and airy, yet unmistakably crunchy croissant. Since that initial meeting with a true French Croissant I haven't been able to take my mind off of the delectable creatures and I've vowed to recreate them in my own ghetto American kitchen. I've had several attempts and I feel I'm getting closer... but the search must and will continue until its perfect. I've decided this is an ongoing learning experience and I will continue to perfect my croissant technique until I have mastered the art of French pastries!

Here is my finished croissant as well as a raspberry turnover that uses the same dough...

Once you master the French pastry dough the whole kitchen opens into an endless world of possibilities...

Here is the close up to make you hungry...

After a full morning in the kitchen Christian and I preceded to made fish tacos. This is a recreation of a dish we had after visiting Oscars' in Zion National Park in the summer.

We grilled Tilapia in some butter with S&P and then added some Havarti cheese over the warmed fish to let it melt a touch. Then we topped with some shredded cabbage and mango salsa. I want to try a variation adding avocado and jicama but we'll save that for next time.

Enjoying the fruits of the kitchen...

Bon Appetit!

Triassic

Yesterday we gathered a bunch of our friends together and went on a day trip down to Triassic. Triassic is a bouldering area about 40 minutes south of Price in Utah. The weather was amazing and it was fun to leave the freezing temps of Provo to the warm T-shirt weather of Triassic.

I had way too much fun climbing and realized at the end of the day that I hadn't yet taken any photos so these are all from the end of the day while the sun was setting.

Bret...

(Can you see the 2 moons in this picture? hee hee)

Me...

Christian...

Where's Bret?

After climbing we went into Price and stopped at Groggs the local Burger joint and sat by a nice warm fireplace and ate our favorite after climbing meal... BURGERS!

gobble gobble gobble

We traveled to Arizona for Thanksgiving to spend the holiday with family. The drive was a long 12 hours and very boring but hanging with the family was a blast!

Bret trying to keep the drive exciting...

The first day we went to the Pima Air and Space Museum. Both of Christian's Grandpappys were air force pilots spanning three wars. It was cool to get a brief history lesson from Christian and see the planes his Grandpas flew.

Christian pretending to be a pilot...

This is one of the Planes Christian's Grandpas flew...

Walking among the huge planes...

The second day was Thanksgiving and I'm sure we ate twice our weight in Turkey! I was too busy eating to take pictures but trust me it was amazing! Afterwards we decided to take a hike up Madeira Canyon to help the food settle and digest. It was such a lovely day and a great view. The boys followed Old Man Crapo to the top of the saddle for a 6 mile hike finishing just after dark.

After the hike we returned to the house for pie and more family fun. This Thanksgiving was extra fun because I got to meet my brother John's fiance' Becky for the first time. She was absolutely adorable and we all love her so much! They are getting married December 12th and Christian and I are very excited to travel out to California and see them.

Sorry I don't know how to make it not sideways...

The family fun couldn't last forever and sadly on Friday morning we had to leave. Before we left however, my sweet draddums made waffles with strawberries and whip cream for breakfast. To top it off we had toasted almond hot cocoa steamers just in case anybody felt as though their calorie intake was lacking that week.

The drive home we took a detour past National Monument, Mexican Hat, and Valley of the Gods. It was late when we got there so we didn't stop and get out, thus the picture quality is less than good because when you're traveling at 70 mph things are blurry. The sunset was fun to watch though and it was worth the extra hour we spent in the car to drive through it.

Mexican Hat...

Home at last!

Doing Crack Over The Weekend

Indian Creek is a world famous destination for crack climbers. Lucky for Christian and I it's only about 4 hours from home. We spent the first day doing some incredible hand crack climbs with near perfect perpendicular cracks that extend upwards for 100 feet or more. The idea is to jam your hands into the crack and then squeeze your thumb or palm outward until your hand is stuck inside the crack. Then you jam the toe of your climbing shoe into the crack and twist it until it feels like a crappy foothold and you step up. You repeat this over and over with much pain and screaming until you reach the top of the crack! It really is tons of good fun and the spectacular views of Indian Creek never leave you feeling wanting.

This is Christian on a climb called "Run Like Hell." It is named for the extremely challenging, yet unique horizontal crack that appears in the middle. Most people are pumped (really tired) before they even get to this hard section so they have to hurry fast through this section before they fall.

This is me flailing through the same climb...

This climb although rated harder was actually much easier for me because of my small hands and dinky digger fingers...

...and yes I did coordinate the pink harness and chalk bag with my pink hat!

Nothing beats an Indian Creek sunset after a full day of climbing...

The following day Christian and I headed into Arches National Park for more desert climbing. This time we tackled a couple of fun towers. The first is called "Owl Rock"...

Christian led this one... Nice stance sweetie!

I had the opportunity to lead my first desert tower named "Bullwinkle"...

Here is me leading...

And here I am proudly riding the Bull on the top! I don't really know why its called Bullwinkle...

After Climbing we hiked around and saw some of the Arches...

It was a wonderful weekend spent together:)

Shopping with Babies!

With my Mom being in town comes LOTS of shopping. Here are a few pictures from our many shopping trips in the past weeks. Shopping with babies can be extra fun when there are hats galore to try on.

The Eskimo look...

The Garden Gnome look...

The French baby look...

The Canadian baby look...

Sometimes we forget that they're boys...

They're just so pretty!

They get sleepy...

So we get a little pick-me-up...

(don't worry it's only hot cocoa)

When that doesn't work we stuff them in display cubicles...

and when that doesn't work Grandma puts them to sleep...