Birthday Get-away

February is the month for celebrating birthdays! Me, Emily, Courtney (and Dave), Wendi and Natalie (and Aubree) are all Aquarius babies. We rented a cabin in Tollgate Canyon, near Park City and all cozied up that weekend for fun in the snow, playing games and eating yummy food!

Good friends Ben and Katy

Would you guess this gift came from Wendi? She could wrap a roll of toilet paper and make it cute!

Love all these lovely ladies! Jayleen, Natalie, Wendi, me and Hillary. Courtney and Jen didn't get there til the next day.

Making mom's famous bran muffins in the morning. I don't know how Hillary stayed on her diet all weekend long! We had home-made Cafe Rio and pizza and of course b-day cupcakes and treats.

It was Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick! Playing "Clue." Upstairs we had our choice of pool and foos-ball as well.

Birthday girls

A beautiful afternoon snow-shoeing in the mountains.

Getting ready for the Patagonia photo shoot.

Natalie, Jayleen, Jen, Courtney, Hillary

Steve, Ashley, Clint, me, Brandon and John.

I couldn't have asked for a better way to say goodbye to my twenties and hello to 30 with all my favorite friends! Thanks for the good times everyone.

Birthday Time

We are coming up on the big one. That's right folks, we're turning 30! Just saying it sounds old.
With Em and I both going out of town for our actual birthday we got together with the family last weekend for the best dinner and of course were spoiled with fun presents. Emily is going to Mexico with some girlfriends and I am off to India for 2 weeks with the Operation Smile team!
In the Indian spirit, grandma got me this cute shirt. And as only a grandma can tell me, she said my hair was too straight and wondered if I was pregnant because my bum was bigger. And no, I'm not pregnant.
I have loved sharing my birthday with my twin. We often have this yummy raspberry cream cake. I never believed my parents when we were younger though and they told us that someday we'd be best friends. Ya right! We fought all the time over clothes and other silly things. But today I can honestly say she is my best friend!

The Holidaze

Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the whole year! It was spent at the comfy, cozy Bench home with soup, salad, rolls and lots of yummy treats. Snuggies kept us warm :-) Favorite traditions: Reading the Nativity story and watching "Luke II."

What would Christmas be without family?

I sure love my dad!

These are the Christmas turtles I made for neighborhood gifts. It was so easy!

Landon reading us a Christmas story, as only he can!

Em giving us a lesson on some yoga poses.

All of this made possible by dad and mom.

Christmas morning- Wendi's traditional monkey bread that we all love.

Breakfast before presents. We obviously don't have any little kids in this home yet!

Who would have thought I could be so excited about industrial shelving for our basement!

Thanks to the gifts from Chris & Wendi, it was a very Snuggie Christmas!

And of course, the Secret Elf brought us all warm gloves on Christmas Eve.

The benefit of being married- two families to share the holidays with! Down at the Fox ranch- we're all relaxing and maybe dozing off a bit.

Our second Christmas together being married- maybe next year we'll have more than just our dogs to spoil?

New Year's Eve- we went for a snowy hike in Corner Canyon. It was so beautiful, but SO cold! The night for me was spent taking care of drunks and sick people. The worst night of the year to work in the ER!

Winter Wonderland

We are enjoying all this snow to hike around and play in. The mountain trails are literally in our own backyard and it's been nice to get above the inversion lately!

They couldn't be happier.

Friends from work made this snowy hike lots of fun!

Instantly popular with a few doggie treats.

What's better than burning off some calories while hiking with friends? A chocolate waffle treat back at home :-)

Cole turns 1... or 7?

It's hard to believe he was ever this little! Although he doesn't know or care, today is Cole's one year birthday.

We sure miss our little Zoey. We still wish she was here with us. It would be fun to see how she would be grown up.

They sure are cute as puppies, but I don't miss all that hard work!

It's hard to say no to that face.

He was born in the snow and loves it so much! This is Annie's first winter and she's loving it too.

Thankful

I am thankful for this beautiful world and...

all of His creations.

for family who comes together...

and helping hands to make a hard job a little bit easier.

for family bonds...

and feeling Al's spirit in Zion even though his house won't stand much longer.

I am thankful for this family that feeds us and loves us and welcomes all in this home.

for my wonderful, handsome husband who makes this journey in life an adventure.

for my sister and best friend. (She was a little too excited about snowboarding this year and blew her ACL on the first day out)

and for people that remind us how blessed we are to have such a wonderful and loving family.

Good News/ Bad News

The good news is I bought this pretty new Subaru to replace my Honda that was stolen...

The bad news is I was in a hurry leaving for work and backed into the side of my garage and crunched the side mirror. That was the not the first thing to go wrong today. Oh well, as I've come to realize a lot lately, it could always be worse.