My Brush With Fame!

We had a Relief Society party the other night and Brooke Walker from KSL Studio 5 was the guest speaker. She was so great and even didn't mind having her picture taken with some of us. I generally don't get to mingle with many celebrities, so it was really fun to see her in person. The party was a obviously a hat party and I had so much fun seeing all the cute hats, especially the Aretha inauguration look-alike, hand-crafted by my friend Celeste. She is one talented girl! I have made some great friends in this ward and I'll really miss them when we move. They are great examples to me and we have so much fun together!

Friday Fun!

For a fun Friday activity, my dad took the kids to the model train show at the Union Station in Ogden. They really liked the model trains and had a good time looking around. Then they stumbled upon an exhibit that held them mesmerized for quite some time. It was a miniature Radiator Springs city from the movie "Cars." It was very impressive! They had cars there that I had never seen before and all the cute little shops from the movie. What a great Friday activity! Thanks Grandpa!

Nothing to blog about

For lack of nothing else to blog about, I will give a brief update on the happenings around our house. We had Parent Teacher Conferences last night and they were amazing. I try not to brag too much about my kids, but these reports definitely deserve a mention in this post. I am so proud of my kids! Hannah is doing wonderful in her academics and her teacher could not stop telling us how wonderful Hannah is to have in class. She's sweet, helpful, and has really taken a new Chinese student under her wings. His name is Li Heung and he speaks virtually no English. Hannah's teacher said she helps him with his words and is so kind to him. Porter is sailing through first grade and could probably be skipped to second grade if he were a little more mature. He's at the top of his class in all areas and is doing great. His teacher did mention a couple areas of improvement for him, which are keeping his desk area cleaner and maybe not talking to much. I can handle those kinds of improvements.

In other news, I finished a 10k race last Saturday and am absolutely addicted to this running thing. I don't know why I haven't done it before. It is such a rush to finish a race and to look back on how far you really ran. Allen's busy at work, Tate's cute as ever, and we're still looking for a home! That pretty much sums it up for us!

My first race

Well, I finally did it! I ran my first 5k race. I've been running for a few months now and have absolutely loved it. I didn't really think I was ready for a race yet, but my cousin Amy talked me into running this race with her last Saturday. She's an amazing runner and I felt encouraged going with her. This race was the first in a winter racing circuit and was held in the hills above Weber State. When I say hills, I really mean hills. Had I known about all the hills beforehand, I may have chickened out. It really was pretty brutal. We finished the race in 37:00, which I'm very proud of, considering it was my first race and all the hills. We even had enough left in us to sprint to the finish line. I thought I might throw up at that moment, but I managed to hold it in.

This picture was taken after the race, hence the red faces. It was freezing that morning! My dad came to the race and took more pictures of us finishing, but I haven't received those pictures yet. I'll post more when I get them.

There's a 10k in two weeks and then a half-marathon in May, which is what I'm ultimately working for this year. Thanks again, Amy! I had a blast!

You win some, you lose some...

I don't really consider myself an expert cook, but I would venture enough to say that I'm decent. I can hold my own in the kitchen and I provide my family with a good variety of meals that are usually quite good. Well, this wasn't the case last Monday.

I was making one of our favorite family meals, broccoli alfredo sauce over pasta. I've made this dish a hundred times, it's one of my go-to meals. I put in my first two ingredients that I know by heart, and then began to look for the recipe. I couldn't find it anywhere, so I guessed on the butter. I didn't think it was a big deal, but looking back, I should have taken it as omen for what was to come.

As I worked on the sauce, I put the garlic bread in the oven to cook. A little bit later, I began to smell something burning. I checked the sauce and the noodles and they were fine, so I forgot about the smell. The kids then began to tell me that something was burning. Again, I checked the noodles and sauce and everything was fine. It never occurred to me that it could be the bread burning. By the time I remembered the bread in the oven, it was way too late. That stuff was burned to a crisp. The whole house smelled terrible. I decided to shake it off and make an extra-large salad to make up for the lack of bread. I grabbed the lettuce from the crisper only to find that it was frozen solid. Unbelievable! I've never had anything freeze in the crisper. And just for your information, lettuce doesn't defrost well in the microwave. It kind of turns a strange brown color. My sauce at this point didn't look quite right either, but I kept adding butter until it looked edible.

Luckily, the sauce turned out quite nice and we ate it, even without bread or salad. We were starving after, but thank goodness for extra FHE treats on Monday nights.

Junk food binge

Relatively speaking, we are not huge Super Bowl people. We knew who was playing in the game, but that was about it. Neither Allen nor I really cared who won the game, and we didn't have huge plans to party with anybody. However, we did like the thought of pigging out and having some really great junk food to munch on. We generally don't keep a lot of junk food in the house and we never just give the kids a free ticket to eat what they want, so we thought this idea of a junk food extravaganza might be kind of fun and different. We began during the halftime show which the kids really liked. We spread a blanket out on the floor in front of the TV and proceeded to eat our little hearts out. We had nachos with chili cheese dip, cookies, popcorn, and soda pop (which we never have!) This was all after a hearty Sunday dinner of steak and potatoes. Allen was so full that his stomach hurt, and I'm not sure why my stomach didn't hurt. I sure ate enough for it to hurt. The kids thought it was great fun and want to know when we're doing it again. I don't think our insides can handle it again anytime soon. Thank goodness the Super Bowl only rolls around once a year.

Hannah gets her ears pierced

Hannah before she gets her ears pierced.
Hannah after she got her ears pierced. This picture doesn't show them very well.

I'll admit that I love to wear earrings. I wear them everywhere. I really like the big ones. I think if I don't wear them, I kind of look like a boy. For this reason, I didn't seem to care much when Hannah told me she wanted her ears pierced. I always thought I'd make her wait until she was 16 or some other outrageous age before she could do it. I think that a lot of girls in her school class have their ears pierced, therefore, she needed hers to be pierced. Surprisingly, Allen was okay with it as well. We told her everything she needed to know about the process. We told her that it would hurt, that she'd have to clean them everyday, and that she'd have to wear the same pair for six weeks. We even showed her videos on YouTube of kids having their ears pierced. She was okay with it all and still wanted to do it. So last night was the big night. She took her teddy bear with her to hold and as it turns out, she didn't even need it. She hardly even flinched. They even did her ears separately, rather than together. But, the biggest surprise of the night came when she chose blue earrings rather than pink. Who would have thought? Good job Hannah! You are one tough girl!