I was making bread. After I got the yeast going, and measured the flour, I realized my mixed was broken. At the same time I dumped half of the flour down myself and onto the flour. Peter quite enjoyed playing with it. I let him while I tried to figure out what to do with my mixer. It was a little lot frustrating. Eventually I did figure out that on small piece was gummed up, and hopefully I can get it cleaned out or order a new piece. The mixer is still broken, however. I also learned today that you can actually make bread by hand. Wow. It wasn’t that hard and actually a wonderful way to work away the stress I had built up over the broken mixer.

Peter has been grumpy, not only because his mommy ignored him while she tried to make bread. He has the rest of his teeth coming in. All at once. Poor kid. We made it through the day. The kitchen even got clean even with lunch spilled all over, and flour everywhere. We went sledding with Daddy. (Which scared little Pete, but Joe and I liked it.) And we played at the library. Most wonderful of all my bread was delicious. I was so worried that after a morning of trying to get it made it would fail. But it didn’t. I would say it is the best bread I have ever made. I’m not in any hurry to get my mixer fixed. I wouldn’t mind just kneading again. 🙂

*Oh, and congrats to sister who had baby Annalee today!

Ignore the noise: I took it through my window. Too cold to go outside.

Welcome to the new year! I’ve got lots of good goals. ( I like goals too.) They do not include losing weight (since I would rather gain some), or getting out of debt (since we will need more to get through school). But they do include getting up earlier (although I usually get up well before 7, so this might seem a bit strange to some people), reading 25 new books, heading a community garden, and getting new gardening clients. My favorite one is to take a picture of the sunrise every morning. I made that because too often I get caught up in life and forget to realize how wonderful/beautiful it is. And I think it will be fun.

We spent New Year’s Eve at my parents house eating pitas and playing games. Reverse charades is the funniest game ever. I have not laughed that hard and that long in ages. My brother in law reading cheese instead of chess was the best. I stayed up until midnight (which is very late for me), and went to bed right after. I was actually brushing my teeth when the new year came rolling in. So I guess it can be the year of dental hygiene.

And Peter is adorable. He now likes to sweep and mop floors. If you count moving a rag back and forth on the floor as mopping.

I’ve recently started taking pictures of the sunrise every morning. On Christmas Eve, I took a sequence of pictures of the sun rising over a period of a couple hours.

It was quite lovely. As I was watching I read these scriptures:

Matthew 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

3 Nephi 18:24 Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up—that which ye have seen me do. Behold ye see that I have prayed unto the Father, and ye all have witnessed.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Yesterday was a big day. We went to go buy shoes for Peter because he currently has one pair and they were wet. So at the store, he got his feet measured and we were looking at size eight shoes and I suddenly realized I had about four pairs of hand me down size eight shoes. Glad the trip to the store resulted in more shoes for absolutely nothing.

We went to the library and than the  Springville Art Museum and saw their current display of religious art. It was a great display. Then it was a trip up to Salt Lake, to see the lights at temple square. And more museums. Too many museums for one day. But…it was all pretty awesome as well. Peter enjoyed the lights and did pretty well at the museums. His favorite part were the bunks at the church history museum he could climb into. He would have probably stayed there for a good hour.

Today was much lazier. We went to the store. That’s about it. But it is Christmas Eve tomorrow! Tonight, after Peter took his nap from 6-7 (that boy’s nap schedule is all sorts of weird) we were sitting on the couch. I was eating crackers and dipping them in a batch of hummus. So Peter handed me the package of crackers. I gave two to him, one for each hand, and then he dipped them in the container with the hummus (even though he didn’t get any dip) and than ate the cracker. He is adorable.

Here is one Christmas tradition I remember enjoying every year:

Countdown chains. Just take kiss-ish candy, hot glue onto ribbon, put bow on top. Hanging them has often been a challenge: this year I used strong magnets on my refrigerator. Which meant no nail holes in the wall, and no duct tape to prevent them pulling through the nail holes. And they are very short right now, because Christmas is coming up quick!

We had tons of snow today. Appropriate with the first day of winter tomorrow. It was pretty wet snow. Peter and I went outside exploring in it. He liked the sled a lot, but I’m disappointed in the lack of hills around my current house: I had to pull the sled around. There was also this time where he turned around to go down a hill, and continued to crawl backwards when he realized he could slide on the snow. He went for a good ten feet before stopping. Kids are funny. I hope the snow lasts, it is pretty warm. It would be nice to have snow around when Joe’s on break (he’s taking finals this week) so we can go somewhere with small hills and sled.

And I’ve already had my Christmas Eve party with my family. My sister took off to Florida so we had it early. My family got a toddler basketball hoop and poinsettia (I love having a poinsettia and almost didn’t get one). Peter already knows how to dunk it. It helps that everyone would cheer quite loudly when he did it. It was so much fun to spend time with all my family. That’s one of the best things about Christmas.

I did not send out formal Christmas card, but always enjoy reading recaps of peoples’ lives over the year. So here is what happened to my little family this year:

Joe graduated a year ago, worked at Icon for a month, got laid off,  then found a job at APX Alarm doing tech support. So we moved from Logan to a new apartment in Springville in March. He started physical therapy school in May, which he very much enjoys. It is fun working towards a career. He has done very well, and maintained a good balance between work, school, and his family.

Peter is growing, and growing. He is large for his age and also adorable. His favorite things right now are reading stories, eating fig newtons, bouncing, and most of all going exploring outside. This year he has learned to sit, crawl, gained almost 16 teeth, walk, and started learning to talk. And he turned a year old.

Liz started out the year teaching the free gardening class for the extension office again. Most of her time has been spent taking care of Peter. She also spends lots of time cooking, cleaning,  sewing, and even had a small patio garden out back. Liz is also attempting to start her own horticulture business. Only a few clients so far, but high hopes for next season.

Fun things our family did this year included:

• Hiking, trails include: Stewart Falls, Wadsworth Canyon, Diamond Fork Hot Springs, Day’s Canyon, the Y, and several other unnamed trails. We discovered a wonderful new canyon, Hobble Creek, after leaving Logan Canyon behind.
• Played disk golf on courses in Utah County. One time included ending up up to my chest in mud.
• We went on vacation to the Grand Tetons, and camped there a couple nights. We also had an overnight family reunion in July up in Heber. And Peter got to go to Disneyland for his first birthday with his mommy and grandparents.
• Moved, and started to make lots of new friends. We all love where we live.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I am happy to be able to post today. This blog/site has undergone some big changes. Okay, so there’s nothing different you can see, but I recently changed web hosts. I thought I had it, but my computer lied to me and then I spent a couple hours finding and fixing what was wrong. Quite exciting. I actually loving solving computer problems, provided I have nothing else to do, and it doesn’t take me forever.

It is winter and snowy. Actually today we had rain on top of snow, so everything is slush. Not horrible for Christmas–maybe some of the snow/slush will stick around until then. I also was given a poinsettia for a Christmas present that is now brightening up my house. It got a little tattered in the several car rides it took to get it here, but I just need it to last for a week. I’m actually more worried about the over-watering (a perpetual problem of retail store plants) for long term survival.

The question is, do I want to keep it after Christmas? Many people have it as a year-round houseplant. But poinsettias need long day length to form the lovely red leaves (they are not flowers, so you know). That means around 12 hrs or so of uninterrupted darkness. A single bulb on can ruin the flowering process. I used to know a bunch of sciency details about this all. I don’t want to look it all up, the results are all that is important anyway.

I might keep it, if its doing well and not giving me too many problems. But I’m planning on throwing it out. After all, a trip to nursery in the winter is something to look forward too.