Where does this go?

Strangely, we had internet access available to us at our house for a couple of days. Sadly though, it no longer exists, so I'm back to just having the internet at work. It's been interesting trying to figure out what to put where, especially in the kitchen. I don't know if it will pass Laura's approval since she said my other kitchen in Santa Clara was put together wrong. Good thing she's coming to visit so if I've made any mistakes she can correct them before I get too used to stuff where I've already put it.
Fun news- I have a lift being installed for my Kitchen Aid. I will be able to keep it in a cupboard when it's not being used, and then just pull it up to counter level by raising this platform when I need it without hefting it out of the cupboard.
All of Bud's family is coming over tomorrow for dinner. Yikes. I don't think I'm ready for that yet.
I took more pictures of the house, but forgot the cable so I can't get them out of the camera yet. Dumb.

And the winner is...

Holly and Samuel are the winners of the "getting Mom to cry" contest. They made a book for me of my kids and grandkids that is absolutely fabulous. It's a Shutterfly product. Holly spent so much time working on it and getting pictures from the other kids for it. The thing about getting it though is that now they're going to have to make a new one every year! Thank you SO MUCH! I love it, love it, love it!

House Pictures for Laura

We have been moving since last Thursday. We drove to Santa Clara, loaded up a 26 ft. U-Haul and with Brandon and B. Mark's help, loaded that thing to the hilt. Long story-boring is that we're moved in enough to live here now, but not moved in enough to have my kitchen in full working order. Where's the mixing bowl? Do I have a spatula? No. What? there's no baking soda or oil in the house? Goodness.

This is looking into the kitchen before we moved anything in. The wall with the windows on the right is about 22 ft (give or take) tall.


Here is the outside of our little home.

A big snowstorm fell last night giving all those asking for a White Christmas what they wished for.


If you look behind the cute picture of Karen, you can just sort of see the entertainment center that fills nearly one entire wall. I'll take more pictures later when the house is a little more settled and put in order. That will only take me a couple of days since I refuse to go to work this week!

Keys Please!

Today is the day! Hooray! We get the keys to our house at 7:00 PM and I am SO excited!

One potato, two potato

I had a gift certificate to Applebees so Bud and I went there for dinner last night. I ordered the chicken fajitas, he ordered steak and baked potato. When his potato came, it wasn't a fluffy baked potato. It looked like it had been cooked in the microwave. Our server asked if everything was all right. Big mistake. Bud told him that his potato wasn't baked. We were assured that it was. After several minutes of back-and-forth, the server got the manager involved. The manager showed up at our table with another potato. It wasn't a baked potato either. Bud told the manager to get a menu. He pointed to the picture of the potato and asked if it looked the same as what was sitting on our table. The manager said no. Aha! We finally found out that not only is the potato not baked (it is cooked in a steamer), but Applebees doesn't even have an oven in the kitchen! Can you imagine that? Our server went into the kitchen (he was new and hadn't really checked out the kitchen before) and asked them where the oven was. He said the cook pointed to the microwave and was told that was the oven (there seemed to be a language barrier between the cook and the server). So all their food is preprocessed and brought into the restaurant, and then heated up some way or another.

I love their Triple Chocolate Meltdown (as Samuel would say, "Mmmm, Chocolate") but I guess it comes to the restaurant already baked and then they toss it in the microwave. It won't hurt my childrens' feelings if I were to quit going to Applebees because they think I go there ALL the time. That narrows our restaurant choices now to two...Chinese Buffet and Sizzler. Please tell me where YOU go in SLC for a fabulous (and cheap) dinner so I can add it to my list of options. Sigh.

Ice Ice Baby

Here are two more experimental photos from this morning's shoot but weren't posted with the other picture due to the fact that it doesn't follow the guidelines of the "tag."

Busy weekend

I was tagged (my first ever tag, by the way) by April to take a picture of ornaments in the snow. The hardest part was eliminating my reflection of bending over the ornaments to get the shot. If I did it again (but I can't because I'm supposed to be working, HA!) I would move the camera back farther and zoom in. I put the camera on some blocks (zoom in, you can see it says "joy"backwards) and used the timer so I could get out of the shot). I only had ornaments from the office, so it's a little boring, but not bad. Unfortunately, by the time I put the ones back on the tree from the neighboring office, I dropped and broke one. Oops.

On my way to Orem on Saturday I went to Ikea because April showed this lovely green cast iron cookware on her blog. Had to get me one. Once I got to the store I had to decide between this one and a bigger one for $10 more. I thought I'd use the smaller one more often because there's only two of us in the house most days. After I left the store, I was wishing I'd bought BOTH of them! After Ikea I went to pick up Karen and we went to Deseret Book Store at University Mall to have Sheri Dew sign her new book for us. After standing in line for only an hour, we got the job done.


Friday night Bud and I went to Kohl's and bought these fabulous dishes. It's service for 12, so you're all invited over! It's Winterberry, by Pfaltzgraff.

This (left) is the online picture of the same pattern.

On Saturday night, we met Amy and her friend, Elissa, and Elissa's aunt (sorry, don't remember her name) at the Utah Symphony. We all really enjoyed the first half of it. During intermission we were talking about how if you had good ettiquette, when you pass someone who is sitting and you're trying to get by them, you should face them rather than have your backside to them. Elissa unfortunately double-dog dared Amy to do a cheek-squeeze to the next person that passed by with their backside to us. The next person to pass was a guy but he faced forward as he passed us, as did the next gentleman. Then a woman was next...at first she started to pass with her back to us, and midway through turned around to face us, and then turned again (what? she's a ballerina?) to put her back to us and at the same time says "there!" and Amy did it! She whacked the woman on the fanny! It was like the woman knew what we were up to and gave Amy the opportunity on a silver platter. Unbelievable. The three of us cracked up for ten minutes. The woman just kept on going like nothing had happened. Amy brought up the story of when Jeremy kept saying "say REAR!" back in the summer of '89. The moral of the story is that if ever you're passing someone that is seated in the row, pass with your front to them to you don't get whacked. Amy just might be sitting in that row.

Winter Wonderland

We drive across a bridge everyday to or from our "cabin" in Wasatch Resort, technically located in Sandy, just up a little way up Little Cottonwood Canyon. This was the scene looking downstream and then upstream from the bridge this morning.
Freezing cold, but gorgeous! I'll miss this little stream when we move to our new house. If you listen carefully, you can hear it singing ever-so-softly, "Give."

I'm officially old

Last week we went to La Caille for dinner. It wasn't very good. A few days later we had dinner at the ward Christmas party. Baked potatoes with chili. Bud and I enjoyed that more than La Caille. Last night we went to dinner at Sizzler. Now if you're one of my kids, you will call it "The Sizzler" because that's what all old people tend to call it and they're making fun of the old people. I had such a tasty dinner at Sizzler that I think it makes me officially old because I could eat there a couple times a week and be happy about it. First, happy because I don't have to go home after work and figure out what to make for dinner. Second, happy because I love raisins on my salad and I can get raisins at Sizzler, AND boiled egg, AND avocado! I only like one item on their regular menu though. Chicken strips. It's a lunch item so you have to ask for it at dinner because it's not listed. Definitely officially old.

Dinner Dilemma or Just Desserts

While looking at the blogsite that Holly, Karen and April all contribute to, I somehow linked up with another foodsite. I guess someone on the one site is affiliated with someone on the other site. I thought it was interesting that there were some of the same recipes on both sites, like Brownkies (that one looks really good).

The news is out

Yesterday in Sacrament Meeting the main speaker was Taylor Hartman. He started his talk by looking straight at me and told the whole ward that he was sad that Bud and Patti Knowlton were moving. He likened his feelings to being in the spirit world and saying goodbye to someone who was leaving there for a great adventure and said he would miss us. I thought it was very nice. I believe I will miss him more than anyone else in the ward. He's a really good person who shows genuine interest in what is happening in your life. I had told him we were moving when we went to dinner at La Caille earlier this week, but didn't know he was speaking this Sunday, and definitely didn't know he was going to announce it from the pulpit. So if anyone didn't yet know that we were moving, they do now (which included some of the bishopric, mainly the counselor in charge of scheduling the speakers! Guess we'll slip out without having to speak!)
The rest of the meeting was also good. I was wiping tears off my face nearly the whole meeting. The theme of the meeting was Christmas traditions. One speaker said her favorite tradition was playing Christmas music. I can relate because it's something that I start looking forward to in August or September. We have one music station in SLC that starts playing Christmas music on Nov. 1. Most people say that's too early for them, but I'm always so anxious for it! We have one more week for sure in our current ward and then the following week we'll be moving our furniture up from Santa Clara, so I don't know where we'll be exactly, but I really don't want to miss church on that Sunday, so we'll have to figure out somewhere to be that week. Then I guess we'll start going to our new ward for the last Sunday of December. I sure hope we like the new ward, because we'll really miss the old ward.

Waiting for Santa

Caleb is first in line to see Santa, if Santa ever gets back from dinner. Actually, we were waiting for dinner ourselves (The Cheesecake Factory just opened it's first restaurant in SLC and the people are going there in droves). It took us two hours to get in from the time we placed our name on the list. They're too busy to accept reservations. But, it is Karen's favorite restaurant and since we're coercing Brandon into helping us move in a few days, we decided to throw down as many bribes as possible!

If Santa had actually been there for Caleb to see, this is what you may have seen. This is a picture of the first time Caleb saw Santa. I think he was fascinated with the beard.

I love this picture so much that I've enlarged it to a 12x18 and hung it in the office so everyone can see how awesome it is. When I picked it up from the store, the 'boy' behind the counter didn't give me the response I was looking for. He said it was a 'nice' picture. So, I showed it to the lady that was waiting for her turn to be helped. She thought it was a fabulous picture and oohed and ahhed over it for several minutes. Now that's what I'm talking about.

Here's a picture of Sara's first visit with Santa...

She says,
"Help! Daddy! Save me from this man!"
Look at Caleb. He's still thinking this guy is so cool.






As for Santa, he's probably thinking "I'm not getting paid enough for this."

Disappointment

The night before last we went to dinner at La Caille. I've heard so much about the restaurant and was highly anticipating the event. We were having our neighborhood Christmas party there this year, so I was finally going to get to see the place. When we got there, we had to wait almost 20 minutes to get the car parked because the valet was so busy with all the cars ahead of us (hundreds of people were in attendance). My first disappointment was that we weren't really eating IN the restaurant. We were shuffled off to a large building that felt like a greenhouse, or a huge garage with plants in it. I found out we were going to be eating "buffet-style." Bud thought the meatballs tasted like they were from a can. I guess I can't really say that I've eaten at La Caille yet because this certainly doesn't count as having experienced the real deal. I wanted to post a picture of the beautiful lights they have out by the road, but I haven't taken the picture yet!

Making the switch

I've had another blog going for a couple of years now (with very few entries), only recently making it publicly known. I decided to switch to blogspot.com because the other site was too difficult to use. So, from now on, I'll post stuff here with a link to the other, in case people want to read the few posts that exist on the other site. Not much news there anyway. Maybe I should go get the book blogging for dummies so I can learn how to blog cool like Holly and Karen and April.

Here is a picture from our family blog. Danny photoshopped Laura and Anges into it because they didn't get to come to St. George with the rest of us. Just don't look at the size difference between Samuel and Laura! This was a great-looking Santa, but he wasn't in a very jolly mood. Whoever heard of an unjolly Santa?