park lane house

Because Alex is on the High School basketball team, he is not allowed to do winter sports. I may have mentioned it earlier in the previous blogs, can't remember, but anyway, that meant, no skiing on Christmas Day like we always do. Rod had just purchased new skis for himself a few days before Christmas when the huge 12" snowstorm hit Utah (more on the mountains, of course). Craig beckoned Rod to go skiing with him on Christmas Day.

"So I decided not to have gravlax and boiled potatoes as an appetizer this year", was my statement to Rod early in the week before Christmas. I didn't get "why not" or "can we, please?" Instead I got a fist pump indicating that those two items were the most hated Christmas foods that I had offered over the course of 24 years. Who knew? I love them, but to de-stress myself of all unnecessary foods that were not appreciated at my house, I decided to drop some of them. This year, there were no potato, carrot or rutabaga casseroles. No beet salad (Rosolli), no herring. Could I even call this a Christmas Dinner, seriously? I would just call it dinner. No unusual tastes, just ham and potatoes. Oh well. Christmas came even though there was no herring on the table.


Craig and Whtiney enjoying their cheese and crackers before dinner.


Christmas dinner, if you could call it that.


Christmas story, read by Rod.

that it was a fun party last night. No photo witnesses.

Last night we had our traditional Christmas party at our friends' Robbie and Edy's house. There were 21 people (10 couples + 1 without her husband) for sit down dinner. No kids! We have had this Christmas party for over 10 years and it gets funnier every year. Most of the time we have the same couples attend, but every once in a while we get new blood into the mix. Like this year. Lee and Mary were new. I kept looking at Lee and wondering where have I seen him before. Then I overheard a conversation that he has a huge billboard at the point of the mountain of himself. Yes, one of those "Doctor" billboards advertising his handy heart doctoring skills. Welcome to the mix. Hope you had fun. Don't bring real gifts next year, and don't pick the biggest gift bag. Rookie mistake. Hope you liked your gaudy crystal bowl. Sucker!

Every year the white elephant gifts get more and more questionable. Some of the winners have been so far: soiled underwear, $5 pizza, toilet seat, humongous dog bone, Jana's old Christmas shoes from the 80s (this gift appears every year), Jana and Quinn's 80s "wedding picture" silk-screened on a white shirt, huge bra and the list goes on and on. For next year we decided to change it a bit and we would vote for the funniest gift with a prize. I wish I kept the guppies that Rod brought from Japan. I think that would have been a definite winner this year. Rod ended up with a black santa ornament and a couple of gift certificates to various restaurants (too nice). I received a nice Justin Bieber 2011 calendar and a bag of candy. Who should I re-gift??

The night was so much fun with lots of laughter with old friends that we don't get to see too often. Until next year...we will be in search of a funniest gift ever. We are going to take the prize home, for sure.

Our holiday fun started last night when we went to dinner at Iggy's first and then to a movie. During the Christmas break we go to movies a lot because that's when the best movies come out. So, we went to see "The Tourist" with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. I think this movie will go into a file called:"the worst movies ever made" and will reside there with "the American". The scenery was gorgeous and I want to hop in the next plane headed to Venice, like today.

When we got home, we noticed that we got TP:d again. This time they also left us a plate of cookies (I think). My only complaint about the TP:ing was that whoever did it, should have strung a string of lights with it to make it more festive.


"Toilet paper and tissues were hung with care"

About 4am on Tuesday morning, Rod and I both woke up and looked outside and saw the amazing amount of snow on the ground. Rod decided to go and shovel for a minute so he could pull his car off the street and into the drive way just in case the snow plow comes by in the morning.

When we woke up at 7:30 to wake Alex up for his "Tuomas" name day so we can take him to Village Inn for his breakfast, it looked like Rod never shoveled a few hours before. I measured 11 inches of snow that fell overnight. That's 28cm for you metric folk.


11 inches of snow.


Our trees are so heavy with snow.

We lost to Jordan in double overtime 71-75.

Alex remained benched the whole game

Alex steals the ball and SCORES!

Call us slackers or lazy but we finally got Christmas up at our house. I realize we are a couple of weeks behind with our Christmas decorating, but it is up as of Saturday. Hurray! Now the baking madness can start.


Our front door


Christmas tree.

As many of you know, when we travel, we always buy a Christmas tree ornament from that particular place that we visit. We got some fun ones this year from New York, London, Finland and St. Thomas. Thanks to Greg and Kristine, they brought us an ornament from Butchard Gardens in Victoria, BC. It is fun to remember our trips when we hang our ornaments on the tree.

Mountain View finally won a game on Friday night against Maple Mountain. The final score was 48-35. Alex played at each period and did really well.

My mom has been shipping me rye bread for the last, oh 24 years, from Finland because I can't get it here. If you, Americans, think that pumpernickel or local "rye bread" is rye bread, you are sadly mistaken. You must have the real thing. Thanks to my mom and other relatives and friends who come to visit, they always bring me a loaf or two or three or...

Then I started noticing that my Floridian friend Paivi advertised on Facebook that she was putting her bread order in. What bread? What? So I asked her what bread was she talking about. So she told me, and today I received a package of 5 bags of rye bread. I can't wait to taste it and eat it and savor it and smell it (well, my whole office smells like rye). I should go buy butter so I could eat it now.

Paivi also told me about another bakery in New York that also bakes rye bread. A Finn, of course, who owns the "Nordic Breads" company. I will place my next order with him and then I can compare.

But it looks like right now that I will no longer need any of my mom's or friend's or relatives' services. No more lugging bread to me from Finland. The bread era is over at the Larsen household.

Yes, it is me, the office rebel. Taking scissors to this package could be a mistake. I might regret this for the rest of my life. The package might have balloons in it or maybe a blowfish. Who knows. It could explode when I poke it with my scissors.

Mountain View played against Pleasant Grove yesterday and came out with another loss. MV was down by 2 points at the half but lost to PG by 19 at the end. Alex played the last 5 minutes and got a 3 pointer in. Alex played really well.

Mountain View lost to American Fork 52-63. It was a slaughter.

Dried Salty Guppies from Japan.

If you know me, I grew up sucking on fish eyes and eating fish brains. I couldn't eat blood pancakes fast enough to satisfy my appetite, although liver casserole was never my favorite (my sister ate and still eats raw liver and loves it). Since living in the U.S. I haven't had any of my old favorites as my entrees, which makes me quite sad. Of course there is always pickled herring that I can purchase from IKEA, but how much can one eat and not get sick of them. I need variety, people, variety!

Everything changed yesterday when Rod came home from his trip to the Philippines and Japan.

He brought me, among other things, a bag of dried salty guppies. Guppies, as you can see from the picture, are tiny silver fish that have been dried and salted.

Today is going to be a great and yummy snack day for me. I think my co-workers are going to barf if they walk into my office.

Thanks Rod, you are the greatest!

Mountain View High School had a home opener last week on Thursday with Sophomores leading the way. Alex's team beat Salem Hills 48-35. Alex got to play about 5 minutes during the 3rd period and he played really well. Junior Varsity won also but Varsity team took a last minute loss.

GO BRUINS!


Alex is # 3

We all decided in August that we would go and spend Thanksgiving in Las Cruces to celebrate mom and dad's 60th wedding anniversary because we all couldn't be there for the actual occasion in August.

Wednesday morning our family and Whitney's family (Craig, Whitney, Elle, Austin and Alissa) caravan drove to Las Cruces. There was a huge blizzard the night before in Utah but when we woke up at 4am, there was no snow at our house. The blizzard missed us but dumped on in Salt Lake City and Logan.

It took 12 hours with all the breaks to arrive in Las Cruces.


Our Larsen style juice boxes. Green/red sludge in the bottles, with a straw taped to the bottle. Rod wanted to add the special touch with a bread tie (yes, I love bread ties and can't live without them and so Rod likes to joke about it, any chance he gets). We were off to a good and healthy start, with a big laugh.


Gas and potty break in Moab. The box on top of the car houses Rod and Alex's golf clubs.


White-out hit us between Monticello, UT and Cortez, CO. For 60 miles we couldn't see hardly anything.