Happy Together

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

When it gets too cold in Salt Lake and you can't stand it any longer...

I am so grateful for St George. This Winter has been extra cold and dreary. By mid-January we were ready for some relief, so we packed everyone in the car for a little drive to better weather.

We spent part of our time hiking to the top of a cinder cone (a.k.a. mini-volcano) in Snow Canyon.

The pics below were also in Snow Canyon, but it was drizzling a bit. This trail is closed March through October, so winter is really the only time to hike it. It was beautiful.*sigh*

Other highlights from the trip: we got to our hotel and were given a free upgrade to a two-bedroom suite. Now I am forever spoiled. I never want to stay anywhere with less than two bedrooms. It had three TV's, so we never had to watch what the kids watched and we had plenty of space. Spoiled spoiled spoiled. :-)
We also spent our evenings in the huge spa at our hotel. That was heavenly, too. It was wonderful little escape from the dreary cold. And as soon as we got home we began planning another trip to St George in a few weeks!

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Snowy Weather Good Times

It is so tempting to stay inside on a snowy day and watch a show (or five) and wait for the weather to be more inviting. It took tons of discipline to get off our lazy behinds and go out into the weather, but once the four wheeler came out, we were all glad we did.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

When you come to my house, you eat.

We are so lucky to have these friends, Kulani and Cindy, who host amazing dinner parties. The title to this post is on the wall in their dining room, and they live by it. They are amazing cooks and I would rather eat their food than attend most any restaurant. In fact, the best meal I've ever had was prepared by Kulani and Cindy. We are on their Summer/Winter dinner party guest list, so we meet up with the same group of couples every 6 months or so for a 8+ course meal. This is the menu from the January party. They are suuuper generous. They only let us bring drinks and will only let us pay with our friendship.

AMAZING.

K & C make me wish I could host such amazing parties and wish everyone could have friends like them.

Friday, January 11, 2013

the door stopper conundrum

With Greyson crawling around putting everything he can find into his mouth, I've been worried he would pull the rubber tips off the door stoppers and put them in his mouth. A friend of mine even gave me a tip to super-glue them onto the metal to keep him from pulling them off.

Then, I found him like this, and now I'm not sure what to think...

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Snowboarding Buddy

Attalie is such a fun snowboarding buddy now. We went on a beautiful night. It was both our first times out this year, so we started on the bunny slope. After some practice, we moved over to the Majestic lift and after some convincing, we went to Crest. Attalie had never taken the Crest lift to the top of the mountain, but she did _awesome_!

Friday, January 4, 2013

Christmas...at least some of it

The problem with putting off posting, is I can't remember things that I want to write about. I depend on pictures to jog my memory when the time comes.

Here are two pictures from Christmas this year. The first is of the new piece of furniture we acquired right before Christmas. I don't feel worthy of such a beautiful piano, but my teacher says you play to the level of your instrument, so the idea is to become worthy of it.

Because we knew the piano would be arriving, in the week or so before Christmas we decided to sell all our living room furniture, paint the room a new color and buy new furniture. It was all very crazy and fun and would only be possible because I am married to a man who works very efficiently. He had us going to the furniture stores and picking out paint colors. Never a dull moment with Greg. He really pushed to have the piano before Christmas, and it has been such a treat. He says it was my Christmas present, but it really is a gift for the entire family. I am very grateful to him for making it happen.

Greg is to thank for this next picture, as well. He spent every night in late November and early December finishing this book. This was a huge project, but it is my very favorite gift this year. All the pics and posts were by me, but all the arranging was by Greg and it is so valuable to our family. It gives so much more meaning to the pictures and words I put on here. I'm not a good journal-keeper and try as I might, I have never been able to scrapbook. Now I have record of our family. So priceless.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Turning 10!!!

I have a double-digits tween.
The day before her birthday, we had a few of her closest friends over for a FUN party.
Having a 4 hour birthday party with 9 and 10 year olds is a good idea. (we found out the hard way that a 2 hour birthday party is way too long for 4 and 5 yr olds). The time flew by with these cute girls. They had white chili, per Attalie's request; decorated mugs using permanent markers and baking them in the oven; had cupcakes; watched Home Alone (classic, and thank you ABC family for taking out the swear words); and the highlight of the night was probably the blind makeovers. The person doing the makeover was blindfolded. The girls would have done this all night if they had more time. It was such a fun party.

On the day of her birthday, Greg took all the kids to the zoo while I finished my Christmas treat-making. In all that baking, I forgot to bake Attalie's birthday cake! Poor girl. Greg ran to the store really quick and got a cake and we survived. Greg's parents came for dinner and cake and presents. It was a good day for a wonderful little girl.
Attalie continues to be such a delight. She really wants to be good and set a good example to her younger siblings. She helps me out when I need her and she is very smart. She is also a very good friend. Everyone she knows loves her.
And she is TEN!!

Monday, December 17, 2012

Piano Recital 2012

For our piano recital this year, I combined with my teacher, Judy Wright, who has a handful of students here in Salt Lake. Her students (including me) and my students would all be performing their songs. We held it at the recital hall next to Day Murray Music.

It is so funny to me that I'm a piano teacher sometimes. I never saw myself doing this, but Greg encouraged me to teach Attalie, so over time other people asked if I could teach them/their kids, too. Now I have 8 students. I was so proud of each one of them! Eva has begun taking lessons most recently, and she practiced her recital piece like her life depended on it. Attalie's performance (biased though I am) was the most impressive one of the night. She is my most advanced student, and she polished her Christmas piece like she would be performing it professionally. Judy has more advanced students than Attalie, but no one was quite as polished as she was.

The night began with some drama. I arrived at the recital hall 20 mins early. I asked Judy how the programs had turned out. She gaped at me and said, "Don't you have them?"

Oh no.

Then she asked if I had gotten her email. Well, this was the day that we had our living room painted and I was preparing for Christmas and this recital, so I hadn't looked at my email once all day. She said she had emailed me the program to print out. Oops!

I ran out the door and drove home and printed out the program (including the artwork Kelly had made for the front of the program) and was back with a minute to spare.

It was Christmas miracle. Seriously. I said a prayer as I pulled into the driveway, and that prayer was answered.

The recital went really well. It was a little long, but I think everyone was happy with it.

I was happy with how it went and e x t r e m e l y happy it was over. :)

This is the artwork Kelly threw together for the cover of our program. Isn't she talented?!

Because I was hosting the recital and performing, I only took one picture at the recital and it was of Attalie. I played duets with Eva, so I didn't get a picture of her, but we do have video footage and maybe at some point I will steal a photo from the video of her performing. She was so cute.

Anyway, here is the one picture I got:

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Baby Baths

Grey is so much fun. Now that he's crawling (oh, did I mention he's crawling?) he cant' sit still in the bath and he moves constantly. It is probably his second favorite thing to do (with eating as his first fave). Because bathtime is always such a blast, I snapped some pics of him being his cute little self in the tub.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Temple Square at Christmas...

...is a crazy place. Sometimes, we try to make nice memories for our kids and I wonder if it is all worth the hassle.

My parents probably felt the same way, but they provided so many nice times for us. Like, there was one time we went to Opryland Hotel during the Christmas season and we lost Jill. She was only one year old and she got lost is the crowd. I'm sure at that moment, my parents were really wondering if it was all worth it. We came away from that night at Opryland Hotel with more memories than we bargained for. Come to think of it, my parents probably decided after that night that it wasn't worth it. I think that was my last trip to Opryland during the holidays.

Oh, and we found Jill.

Someone had turned her in to the lost and found.

Whew.

This night turned out nice. We took the kids to City Creek and had dinner and walked around Temple Square to see the lights. It wasn't too cold, but it was pretty crowded. Not as crowded as Opryland Hotel was that night long ago, BUT since we didn't lose any kids in the crowds and we got to see the beautiful lights, it was a success.