Christmas Traditions

Every year my family gets together with dad's side of the fam for a Christmas party. The party involves soup, hot rolls, chatting, and... hockey sticks.

That's right. Every year we reserve the cultural hall at my aunt and uncle's church the weekend before Christmas and we play indoor hockey. It's a blast. Sometimes we play basketball or volleyball as well, but this year we added dodge ball instead.

I always love getting together with our extended family, on both sides. I never realized how rare it is for extended families to get together frequently, so I feel really blessed that I was able to grow up being close to so many of my cousins.

Another tradition with our immediate family is bowling and pizza the week of Christmas. This year we went to Fat Cat's and did bowling and Costa Vida. Yum.

No Christmas Eve Hustle and Bustle for Me

I finished my Christmas shopping yesterday. I hope everything gets here in time (I bought half of my presents online).

Now I just have to wrap everything.

IKEA wrapping paper

Daaaarling Paper Flower Ornaments

If you don't feel like blowing a bundle of money on christmas tree ornaments, you could make a bunch of these super cute ornaments designed by Jessica at How About Orange. Cute, easy, and budget-friendly. Perfect.

Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusiton into clarity... It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

-Melodie Beattie

Today I am grateful for many things, but especially my wonderful family. I am truly blessed to have such good, loving, intelligent, [awesome, attractive ;)], supportive people in my life. Extended family, this absolutely includes you.

Fall Colors Exist, After All!

Last Saturday I woke up at 6:30 and couldn't get back to sleep, so I spent about an hour doing laundry, ate breakfast, and then went up the canyon to take some pictures.

By Vivian Park I found a couple of Heber Valley RR cars to take pictures of. I'm still learning about manual settings, and my hands were freezing after about 2 minutes, so I didn't stay around long to experiment or perfect anything. :) This is what I ended up with. Some I like, some I don't...

After that I went down into the Riverwoods business park area to see if I could find some better color. I did find some, but not as much as I would have liked. I have no idea what kind of tree this is just below, but I like the contrast of the little apple-y looking fruits against the leaves.

I took the one below out of focus on purpose to see what it would look like. I kind of dig it--it reminds me of some of Monet's paintings after he started losing his sight. (Not that I'm comparing myself to Monet - Ha, yeah right!)

I was surprised by how cold it was that morning--it took me a couple of hours to really get warmed back up (and my poor hands started to crack and bleed. Boo and hiss. that usually doesn't happen until closer to Thanksgiving.). I don't want winter to come yet. Yuck.

Oh, and Happy Halloween! Here is a partial picture of me last year in my Venetian mask.

Labor Day - Arches National Park

On Labor Day I went to Arches National Park with Mom, Dad, and our new friend Alexandra (who is visiting from Germany for some job training).

It was a good time, even if trying to take a picture of Delicate Arch without someone doing every imaginable GQ pose all over it is like asking for a Christmas Miracle...

All in all, it was a fun --and exhausting-- day in one of my favorite places on Earth.