Happy New Year!

Celebrating with appetizers (all kid choice) and board games.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Grins at 10K Feet

We're enjoying a sunny, warm day in the mountains. This is a shot from
Alta's Supreme area. Great day.

Taunya's Family XMAS Party

The annual family XMas party is in full swing - games and great food.

Signing Christmas cards

I finished up our Christmas cards this morning. The boys took some
time this afternoon to sign the cards.

I wish postage was free!

1st Day at Alta

Birthday movie

We took the boys and six friends to the movies to celebrate Andrew's
birthday. IMAX and 3d. They had a great time and the movie was great.

Jazz Game Tonight

The boys got lots of autographs tonight. Here they are with Hall of
Fame coach, Jerry Sloan. Jazz man Paul Milsap stopped by next.

Ticket to ride Europe

Andrew & Benjamin were excited for this gift. You all know what you'll
be playing when we see you next!

Double digits!

We started Andrew's birthday celebration this morning with opening one
present before school.

Trick or treat

Pumpkins carved!

Sunday hair

What packing looks like

I think I might be a craft hoarder...

Pearl Jam

Octoberfest at snowbird

Monkey bread for breakfast, yum

Minute maid

Benjamin has an insteresting view on minute maid oj.

"Minute maid is the worst! They rushed through it so it tastes gross!"

Paper Mill

I count my self pretty lucky this week to go on a rare work trip. I am in Niles, MI- it's a really small town. Annie and I got a chance to tour the French paper company in between working on a few items. It was really, really interesting to see how paper is made on a large scale. Here are a few photos appropriated from the French FB page. The French paper company is a family owned business dating back to 1871. I should have brought my camera...

Here are some excellent photos from the Chicago paper guild flickr page

Cake unsupervised!

This is what happens to a fully frosted cake when left unsupervised.
It seems all of the frosting was finger picked clean. Yum!

Multnomah Falls in Columbia River Gorge

Cruise

60th anniversary cruise

Brooks boys

Brooks reunion

We had a great weekend reuniting with the Brooks family. Here are a
few random phone photos from the weekend.

2 houses - under contract

It's been a quick two weeks. Holy cow quick! Our Kalinda home is officially under contract. YEAH! Fingers crossed that all the little things that must happen to make the sell complete happen. We also extended an offer, which has been accepted, on a new home just a couple of blocks away. YEAH! Will post pictures soon. As you can imagine we have lots of packing, cleaning and house details (along with work and regular life) that need to take place in the coming weeks. We will be busy but this is an exciting time and we are excited. I will likely be more absent on this blog over the next couple weeks but will try to update atleast via phone.

We leave for the Brooks anniversary/reunion in Oregon tonight and are looking forward to seeing everyone. We will be back in Utah on Monday.



Legal side note. I've update a few things on my blog to be in compliance with a new policy at work. If you see your link is suddenly missing, no worries, I still love you and will visit your site but I can no link directly to you.

1st day of school, 2nd & 4th

Poison & Def leppard w/ Jen

Great Afternoon/Great Views

Golfing today.

health update

As some of you may know I have been having a few random issues with my vision lately (hard time refocusing) as well as strange tingling in my arms that just comes and goes. I've seen an internist who has run the gamut of tests (all came back great) including a brain MRI which came up totally clean. She then referred me to a neurologist whom I saw yesterday. He is an interesting guy who spent the better half of my appointment talking about my middle name. Apparently he is a huge Ayn Rand fan, saw the books on broadway, etc. He was also puzzled after he ran a few basic in office tests and recommended a neck MRI to see if anything shows up there. I think perhaps I am just crazy. What I don't have (luckily): diabetes, thyroid problem, glaucoma, brain tumor or brain MS. Self diagnosis: serious case of annoyance.

Shameless plug

Want to buy a house? Yep, that's us, we are moving on up, a little in size (hopefully). We listed our house yesterday and boy is it a little bittersweet. I love this place and all the improvements we have made to it over the last 6-7 years. We are hoping to stay in the same neighborhood area or at least same elementary school range. It's listed here.

a jack bed

Benjamin said this morning that he has the third best bed in the world, a jack bed. Confused I asked him to explain and he said the first best bed is a king, the second is a queen and the third is a jack. He cracks me up.

Double rainbows in Sandy

BLACKBERRY - COCONUT MUFFINS

So many blackberries that everyday it seems we need to try something new. I altered this recipe I found here to add coconut.

BLACKBERRY - COCONUT MUFFINS
1/2 c. shredded coconut
2 cups all purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon milk
2/3 cup sugar
8 Tbsp warm melted butter (1 stick)
1 teaspoon vanilla
11 oz of fresh blackberries, cut in half

Directions
1. Position rack in center of oven. Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease a standard 12 muffin pan or line with paper muffin cups. (Actually, with the berries you'll have more batter than just for 12 muffins. This batch made 18 muffins.)

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, sour cream, milk, sugar, butter and vanilla.

4. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix together with a few light strokes, just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Do not overmix! Overmixing will cause the muffins to be dense, not fluffy. The batter should not be smooth.

5 Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle of 1 or 2 of the muffins comes out clean, 17-20 minutes (or longer). Let cool for 2 to 3 minutes before removing from the pan. If not serving hot, let cool on a rack.

Serve as soon as possible, preferably within a few hours of baking.

2009-08-08 @ The Gorge Amphitheatre | phish.com from the road

2009-08-08 @ The Gorge Amphitheatre | phish.com from the road

Shared via AddThis

So bummed we missed the shows... the set lists are amazing. Chris was able to give the tickets to friends who called last night and said they had an amazing time. New converts to the band. They couldn't believe how much fun it was. That made Chris feel much better about missing the shows. Pollock posters announced via twitter but I was unable to act. Useless. A poster for each night. Just as well, no more wall space to display anyway. Pictures from show will be posted to phish site shortly.

Morning berry

Went out this morning to pick a few berries. Stellar crop this year. They are so pretty and yummy. Last week I made a berry cobbler, today I'll try something new, coffee cake.

Blackberry Sour Cream Coffee Cake

1/3 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1 cup fresh Blackberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Oil a bundt pan, cake pan, or 10-inch springform pan; sprinkle pan lightly with sugar.

In a large mixing bowl, whip the butter at medium speed until creamy. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the sugar, mixing well. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well, and then add the sour cream and vanilla extract. Increase the speed to medium and mix well, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

In another large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt; mix thoroughly. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in several increments, mixing well after each addition. Gently stir in the pecans or walnuts and berries.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for approximately 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Makes 1 cake.

Pioneer Day

A meager amount of fireworks = $49.00, ouch

For some reason the boys thinks these little tanks are the best thing ever. We documented the battle.



We celebrated Utah's birthday with some driveway fireworks. The boys look forward to this every year.