Hodgepodge Of A Post

So this has been a long time coming. I am a real slacker and haven’t posted much of anything lately but I promise I am still alive and have been doing things too. Since I don’t want to bore with all the details I will keep it short and sweet.

December 31st –

We finally broke down and bought a new car for Kayla. Her old Buick is still running but it was time for a new car. She has wanted one for a long time and we finally got the guts to buy one. We bought it from The Sherm’s Store in Ogden. The manager is in my ward and gave us a really good deal. It’s a 2007 Toyota Highlander. I love it and I think Kayla loves it even more than I do.

After putting ourselves into debt we went and saw I Am Legend. I didn’t know that it was such a suspenseful movie but it was and I liked it. Kayla watched the majority of it with her faced covered by her coat. But ever since our first date (December 31st 2002) we have gone to a movie. It is kind of a fun tradition that we have.

We also went and celebrated the new year with the Cave’s. It wasn’t much of anything. We watched Spider Man 3, ate some food, watched the ball drop then went home. It was still fun to hang out with them though.

January 2nd --

So we decide to redo our kitchen cabinets. It was such a long process because we used oil paint that took 16 hours to dry. We added a bead board insert in the middle of all the doors then painted them a brown-orange color… It is a little too orange for me. I am not a fan but it is still growing on me. It really does look OK but I don’t want ever re-paint them again. After they were painted we drilled holes and added handles and that took FOR EVER. Take a look, here is a before and after picture.

January --

Our friends, the Cave’s, came over for dinner. We were going to build a snowman but by the time we made it outside the snow was too hard and would not roll into a ball. That’s OK we just played in the snow for about 10 minutes then went inside. Wyatt was so cute. He looked like the camouflaged stay-puff marshmallow man. We have this snow suit from my parents and this is the first time it has been used. It was hard for him to move but he liked to lick the snow and throw it too.



January 9th --
It snowed like no other. I was amazed how much snow I had in my drive way. It took me 2 hours to shovel it all. The neighbor let me use his snow blower but it only blew the first 8” off the top. I had to shovel the rest. We had about 13” total from the storm. The next day I could hardly move!! Just two days before this huge storm I took in my parents snow blower to get fixed so I could use it. He called and said it would work but I would have to shut off the gas after each use. My mom told him just to keep it until he could get it fixed all the way. My dad told me I could have it but it would be a family snow blower. I told him that was fine but I was going to store it at my house. It was just a few days too late. Now that it is fixed it won’t snow anymore.

Our Christmas Morning

Since things happened mostly on Christmas Eve we had a pretty quiet Christmas morning. Wyatt is still too young to be really excited about the whole thing but I think I managed to pick up the slack there. I asked Kayla if Santa had come at 6:30 am but she rolled over and said “no, he’ll be here in an hour. Go back to sleep.” So I did but right at 7:30 I got the dog out, woke up Wyatt and we gathered around the tree. Wyatt wasn’t fully awake so he was a little cranky. We gave him his 10 pack of Matchbox cars and that is all he needed. He could have cared less about anything else. We pretty much opened everything else for him because all he wanted to do was play with the cars. We gave him a jump-o-lene (an inflatable trampoline) and a pump. The pump didn’t work so I ended up blowing this 7-foot round tramp with my mouth. It took me about 25 minutes but I think Wyatt has enjoyed playing in it so far. Wyatt a lot more fun this year because he could make noises and somewhat understand what to do with the gifts and such. Next year it will be really fun because he will know all about Christmas and Santa.

Christmas Eve

This year most of our celebrating was on Christmas Eve. We had a party with the Anderson’s from 11 – 2:30 and then a party with the Farr’s from 5 – 9. We did the traditional dinner then we opened presents at both parties.
For Kayla’s side we went to the church where Jeff had a badminton, foosball, ping pong and basketball all available. It was actually quite nice because all of the grandkids could run free, throw the balls and make as much noise as they wanted without driving everybody nuts. At noon we at ham, rolls and several different salads, then it was time for the gifts. Things were great. We had purchased our own gift and then we gave it to Marc and Katherine to wrap and give back to us as our present. This why you get what you want and don’t have to burden somebody with the most frequently asked question “what should we get them?” Oh yeah we bought ourselves a food processor.
For my family we went to my mom and dad’s house and ate prime rib and sparkling potatoes. It is the same traditional meal that we every year. It was great. My grandparents joined us. After dinner we read out of the scriptures about the birth of Christ then the annual family newsletter. It was a tearful event just as in the years past. My mom does a great job of putting everybody’s yearly accomplishments and the presents received on the back of the news letter. Opening the presents was great. Mostly we just focused on Hadly and Wyatt because it is a new thing for them. Wyatt did manage to whack Hadly with a wooden puzzle right in the forehead. I think their favorite gifts were the child sized camping chairs that they could store their bottles in. It was another fun Christmas Eve party for both sides of our family.

Skiing with Justin and Brady

My friend Justin came down from Idaho for Christmas so we decided to go skiing, (I snowboard) to Snowbasin. It turned out to be an extremely awesome day. It was a little windy at the top of the lift but it was definitely a great day for skiing. I am a little slower than them but it was still fun. About 10 years ago we would have been going as fast as possible, hitting all the jumps, and not leaving a second before the resort closed. But this time we stayed on the same run about 85% of the time, took our time, screwed around a little and left about an hour early. But I still felt I got my monies worth. It was kind of like old times: Justin kept picking on Brady the entire day. The only thing that could have made it even more like high school days if Cody and Courtney would have came. Those are my other friends that couldn’t make it. Before this I hadn’t been snowboarding for two years. It came back fairly quickly but I did take a pretty hard crash about an hour before lunch. It was great to get a chance to hang out with friends that I don’t see that often and do something that I love.

Making Chocolate

So Kayla and I decided to make homemade chocolates to give away for Christmas this year. I went to Grandma Sherrod’s house and got her recipe. She gave me the one for fudge, almond joy and peanut butter cups. As she gave me the recipe she proceeded to tell me that it was for a double batch and it would make a lot of candy. Well even though I heard her I should have made just half of it because it made SOOOO much.
First off we decided to make the fudge. EASY as pie! But then we decided to make the peanut butter cups. First you have to make the peanut butter filling. This is where things went horribly arye. I had copied down the wrong kind of sugar. I wrote just sugar but it should have been powdered sugar. I called my grandma on Sunday morning to ask what I could do. She said to mix a little water with it to try and dissolve some of the sugar grit but as I did the peanut butter mixture lost its fluffiness. I ended up throwing all this mixture away and started over. I’ll just call this the practice run because it was edible but I just didn’t want people think that they were eating sand when finished. Overall, after all the mistakes, the peanut butter cups were my favorite, then the almond joys and fudge. It was cool to actually lean how to make candy but I don’t know if I will have the time or drive to do it again.

Sub for Santa

Every year my parents pick a family to help out or we go and find an Angel tree and donate to it. This year was no exception. We got together as a family and went shopping for a family who was in need. Of course like any other year the store was crowded but this year it was PARTICULLARY crowded. We all went in and found the things we wanted to buy for the person we were given and my dad stood in line about 4 different times just waiting for us to come and jump in with him. Afterward it was pretty good when we all went to eat at Crown Burger.
Once our bellies were full we went back to my parent’s house and started wrapping the presents. There were about a million. I was great to see them all especially when we left them all on the porch at the family’s house. It is better to give then receive.

Our Little Dipper

Not too long ago we went to Wendy's for dinner and Wyatt got the 99 cent chicken nuggets with BBQ sauce for dipping. We went to my mom's house where we put him in the high chair and let him eat and taught him how to dip. Let's just say he is a natural born dipper. Now if we can't get him to eat something we just put a blob of dipping sauce in front and show him what its for then we have a good eater. The video is from yesterday when we got him to eat some chicken. He, like most other kids, is a double dipper too. Or he'll just eat the sauce plain. We think it is hilarious but judge for yourself. Oh yeah, I love when Roxy is around because she will pick up all the left over food. She'll also take advantage of Wyatt if we aren't watching closely but she certainly is close by when Wyatt is eating.

The joys of ownership

I know that you probably know what I am going to write about from the title but here goes anyway...So ever since we moved into our house we have had this weird humming sound that comes from the showers when the hot water is on. We just recently we noticed that our water pressure was way low and our washer would not work on the hot water cycle. It would just get an error and stop working. So we looked in the owners manual to see what the error meant: "Low hot water pressure or leak" I was grateful it wasn't a leak. So my mom asked a plumber in her ward what the symptoms were if you have great cold water pressure and nothing for hot. He said we needed to shut off the water, take off the pipe and drill out the build up. So i did just that. My first impression was how did the water even get through all that junk in the first place. There was not even a small hole. Nothing and it was solid too. So needless to say i got it all fixed and drilled out. I actually felt quite accomplished because i saved myself some money by fixing it on my own. The washer works great now and there is no longer a humming sound in the shower. Now i have so much pressure i am going to have to clean the drain because it doesn't drain fast enough now. Oh the joys of home ownership!

THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving turned out to be rather fun. We at with my family at 11:30 and then hosted Kayla’s family at our house at 3. It was actually quite nice to have it at our place because we were all able to sit around the same table. Kayla did an excellent job of putting all the place settings together and the table was packed with food. Katherine and Marc were the first to sit down at the table and first thing she did was knock over her drink. Oh well, no big deal we hurried to clean it up before it got on to the chairs and the floor. Then about half way through our meal, CRASH—BREAK—SCREECH and I thought the little kid table had been overturned by rowdy children but I was only half correct. On the half wall right beneath the little kids table was a clock that Kayla salvaged from her mom. It had fallen off of her wall about 4 years ago and Kayla fixed it. Well anyway, Jeffrey hit the wall with his head and needless to say, down came the clock. It was shattered, Kayla wanted to fix it but I plead with her just to throw it away which she did crying “it’s all in splinters” but it was time.
The other cool thing about thanksgiving was that we were able to have a webcam conversation with Trevor who is in Korea. We had a few technical difficulties to start with but after that it worked smoothly and we were all able to see Trevor and he us. It was really cool. Trevor said he really enjoyed it and thought that Grandma Taylor was scared of the new fangled technology because she sat down, said hello Trevor then said well I guess I will let you go so others can talk. That was all she wanted to do with that.
It was great to spend thanksgiving with my family as well. We at Lances then everybody played the Nintendo Wii. It was fun to see the “older” people play like my aunt Jodie and my dad. The Olympics were fun but it was most entertaining to watch the boxing. I played a few rounds of boxing and it definitely kicked my butt. My shoulders were sore the next day.

Pumkin cake

So any time Kayla or I make a cake for a work function or party, about this time of year, we always bake a cake that looks like a pumpkin. Well today for my class I make one of these cakes and it turned out to be a hit with everybody in my class. We made a process flow chart on how I made this cake. It was actually quite funny so we had a person take a picture of it so we could put it on our PowerPoint presentation. This cake is generally hit with everyone because it is so festive. All you do is bake two bundt cakes, trim off the tops to make them flat and then frost them. We usually spray it with Orange spray food coloring because our orange frosting generally turns out peach colored. Then we just use an ice cream cone for the stem. It is probably a tradition to make at least two of these per year. We are pretty much pros now. Just a tip if you want to try it: 1. use Duncan Hines spice cake mix, 2. substitute milk for water and this will make the cake much denser and easier to work with...if you don't then it will just fall apart and will not look like a pumpkin.