Family Pictures

On top of all the Christmas stuff going on, we made some time to brave the cold and go out to take some pictures, now you HAVE to understand that I'm EXTREMELY far away from calling myself a photographer. I'm TERRIBLE at it and even when I like photography, photography DOES NOT like me back. I'll try to learn more next year but I honestly have no hopes for it. I still had to give it a shot this year since I'm cheap and didn't want to pay an expert to do it (maybe next year when I have lost some weight ;) ). Anyway, we went out and we had some fun taking pictures that will be good enough for our Christmas cards. I'll share them here but please DO NOT JUDGE, because that would not make you a nice person :P

Bahaha Darren looks SO uncomfortable!

Poor Darren, his hands were freezing :(

See? I told you I STINK, but my family is BEAUTIFUL and that's what matters in my book :D

Elf on the Shelf and Christmas stuff

Wow! I can't believe my last post was in September!! I'm hoping to catch up before the year is over, but for right now I'll just go right into the Christmas stuff.
Lately I've been busy trying to figure out how to decorate sugar cookies using royal icing and I've spent a little too much time at universityofcookie.com and other wonderful websites. I've experimented with some cookies and I've been pleased with the results so far.

                               

Darren kept asking over and over if he they were ready to eat. Patience child! 

Work in progress

Yes, you have to deal with a messy kitchen

I'll be making more of these cookies and other yummy treats for friends during this Holiday season, maybe I'll post some pictures of that :)

I have also had a little too much fun with the credit card going around Christmas shopping, especially during "Black Friday", I usually go by myself and I don't mind it because I can stay as late as I want and go around as many times as I feel like it. No pressure from anybody ;)

At school, Darren's teacher introduced the kids (at least to Darren) to the popular "Elf of the Shelf". I had seen it before but never knew what it was about and I LOVE IT! At first Darren had a lot of concerns about adopting an naughty elf that would destroy the house and of course go into his "holy, untouchable bathroom". After a few days of having experienced "Santa's little helper" and "Ginger" at school Darren was really excited about adopting an elf and we did!
We voted on names and we picked "Nicholas Mistletoe" we call him "Nick" for short and now that he got his magic he's been up to some fun things. Here's some pictures :)

Before "Nick" got his "magic".

On his first night at home, Darren placed him near Santa :)

 Looks like Nick was busy making snowflakes with the sheep.

Darren figured Nick might be hungry so he shared a fruit roll up with him, Nick decided to have a baking party with my Lalaloopsy, he even found my cookie cutters and the Capri Suns! Darren couldn't stand the mess for long so he cleaned it up after school.

AHOY MATEY!! This morning 12-07, we found him playing pirates with "Honey", looks like he made himself a pirate costume and brought some "pirate booty" from the North Pole.

On the downside, Darren has been waking up around 6- 6:30 AM everyday to go find Nick! I don't know we can do this until Christmas! :(


This post was made by the chronically tired

Antelope Island

Saturday morning we woke up to a insane thunderstorm. Darren came to our room around 5 am with his giraffes totally afraid of the thunder. We spent a few minutes looking at the weather app and talking about storms but then it was time to get up and get ready for the Antelope Island Stampede race that Daniel and I were supposed to run at 8 am. I could only think about my still-new and pricey running shoes getting all muddy on the trail but luckily by the time we got there the trail had drained pretty nicely. Darren stayed with Maren and David and went to Max's football game (thanks guys!). I have been sick for a week now so I wasn't feeling 100% well but I still enjoyed running the now familiar White Rock trail. I placed 10th overall (female) and 3rd on my age group. I was 25 sec slower than last year so I felt slightly disappointed.

What I'm really proud about is Daniel's courage to run with me when he had basically no time to train (we only did the 5k) and he didn't do bad at all, I think all that morning basketball paid off and the few times he was able to make it to the gym the past month. He completed the race in 35 minutes placing 4th on his age group. So hooray for Daniel!

This is what the island looked like at 7:30am.

Yes, there's a bison on the right side of the picture..and it makes me so scared to think about finding one on the trail. YIKES!

Next week: The Classic Race in Layton. I'll be running the 10k :)

Geo-Treasure Hunt

A couple of weeks ago Daniel and I made some time to go on a date. We didn't have a whole lot of time and we didn't want to spend a lot of money. We really didn't want to go to yet another movie so Daniel came up with the brilliant idea to go "Geocaching". I had never heard about it but after he sent me a link and I watched some videos I loved the idea of spending some time looking for "treasures" with him.  The purpose is to hide and seek containers called "caches" or "geocaches". I guess the most common one is the small waterproof container that has a logbook where you are supposed to write the date and your name when you find it. Some other larger containers may have inexpensive toys or trinkets for trading.


This could be something fun to do with the kids. They even have some items called "travel bugs" that you are supposed to take to another cache for another person to find and help take it to its ultimate destination. There are also "puzzle caches" that require information or solving a puzzle to find the cache.

Caches are located in cities, parks, trails and even people's front yards. This is a great way get out of the house and spend time with the family. Bring the dog along if you have one!


The first one we picked was close to our home but we failed at finding it :P It didn't help that we had no idea what we were looking for and the size of the cache. After driving around for a while and people looking at us suspiciously we headed south to explore another place. These "caches" are located EVERYWHERE and all you need is your cellphone with GPS, a pen and tennis shoes because you'll be doing some walking.

So, on our next attempt, we explored a trail and followed the clues. After much searching BINGO! Daniel found the cache right on the gas pipeline sign and boy did we feel like we had found a real treasure!! WOO HOO!

We walked about 500 yards north and we found another one! Holy cow! was this fun?!

So anyway, after walking and driving for a while we ended up our fun evening with some yummy Mexican food. I think these are the little moments in life I treasure the most :)


** Yesterday we decided to take Darren to find his first cache. He loved it! I can't wait to go and do it again! :)