Church and Carrots

Today I taught my primary kids for the last time :(

I've taught them for over a year, and I'm going to miss them. I am moving to senior primary, the 10 year olds. I'll miss the wiggle songs of junior primary, but its nice that these kids will be able to read.

In the spirit of putting my pictures from christmas, I thought it was appropriate to put the pictures from Luminarios and the nativity. Those are both about Christ.

For those of you who don't know about Luminarios, they are small candles that you use to light the path to your door Christmas Eve. Signifying that although there was no room in the inn, there is room in our house. Candles would blow out, so we fold paperbags (to keep the tops open) and put in some sand to hold them down and line our front walk/driveway, etc with the bags. When its dark we light the candles in each bag. Its cold, quiet, and I always feel fairly reverent. Its one of my favorite Christmas traditions. Lighting and Guiding the way for the Christ child. I love that we get to talk about this with the little ones while doing all the steps. - i had to borrow some pictures from Melanie since I didn't have any of the lighting ones.

I took this picture from another web site since we didn't get a good picture of what our house looks like with the luminarios lit.

On to the Christmas Pagent. We did this a few days after Christmas, and it was great!

pregnant mary

Grandma was the star (she is holding one of Melanie's crocheted ones).

Mary, Joseph, and some shepherds admiring the gifts the wisemen brought: gold, frankenSENSE (or old spice), and Myrr.






And in the spirit of carrots, here are the ones pulled up today. I really like the purple ones, they are so fun!

To go with the carrots, I made that sweet/spicy pork that mom has on her blog, along with Jamie's famous mac and cheese, and some asperagus that needed to be used. All together very Yummy!

This was the setup at my house with my favorite nativity set, and the poinsetta that Cathy gave me.

Car post

I drove home to NM for Christmas this past year. Part of the reason was I was looking at switching up my vehicle situation. The ride there reinforced my decision! The typical 9 hr drive took over 17 hours. The roads were bad and my car did not really like staying on the road, going when it was time to go, or stopping when it was time to stop. My little car is made of plastic and tin foil and wanted to be a sled. It was scary.



Visibility wasn't great at times.







I did a 360* at one point. A truck (wasn't the one in this picture) did that in front of me at another point.

















Jared caravaned with me and I felt bad about that because they could've gone faster and made it there sooner.

The ride back was beautiful! I love having cruise control (will reduce my tickets hopefully!)








(I wish the colors would turn out truer from my phone, this is coming down the hill from Los Alamos)








NM near abiqui Where the roads had finally cleared up on the way there.






Still in NM, the ampatheter place.

Love the Northern New Mexico Blue, Blue Sky.

Sunset in Utah GreenRiver/Price area (I think)










Back in Utah (next day) with shiny mountains and blue sky.

The drive to and from Vegas this last month went pretty smooth too. Again, cruise control is great! Bethanie talked to me and made the journey go by so quick. Thanks Bethanie!

I love my new car! Its safe, roomie, etc. Its probably too big for me but I will be able to transport a lot of hay and dirt for my garden. YAY

ps- remember how last week i worked in my garden. Ummm doesn't look like it will happen tomorrow.

I may focus on Food a bit

Do any of you watch biggest looser? I sure like it. Generally I sit here in my comfy chair eating chips or cookies and make comments like, "work harder," "quit yer belly aching," etc. Yesterday my roommates and I decided to be a little less hypocritical. We did a circut training during the commericial breaks. Boy those were the longest commericial breaks ever!

I don't take a lot of pictures, I always forget, but I noticed that I do tend to take my phone out when people are cooking, or of food.... see following pictures of Christmas times.

This last picture is of our wiener roast in the snow. I'm not a huge fan of hotdogs normally, but sure like burning wieners, and any chance to have a fire is great!

About a month ago we celebrated Kate's bday. It was fun, and since it involved food, I got pictures. Happy birthday Kate!

I think there were pictures of Fay cooking from my Cherry post yesterday too!

And what does this picture look like to you? Some people find pictures of Mary in their stuff, but I found a horse/leapord in my peanut butter container.

Carrots and Cherries

So i got some more carrots from the garden for Sunday's pot roast (which turned out pretty good if I say so myself) and its always suprising what I pull up. So here are some fun pictures. The big one turned out to not be so useable. The top wasn't covered up as good and had gotten frozen. Then it must have been injured and the core had gotten bad. But I still had plenty of carrots and they tasted good!



















This one looked like a 7, or an L if you turned it the other way.







Here is what I got off the big one, but I'm going to dehydrate it as its a little dried out anyways.









I had such fun at the cherry reunion! I didn't get a lot of pictures since I forgot to take any really until the last day :( Mostly it was hanging out, laughing at the silly kids, and catching up. I also tried to make squash soup like Mandy on Sunday, but I got carried away on the ginger and it wasn't as tasty. At least I have plenty more squash to practice with. Any of you in this area who would like some squish just let me know!























































Can you tell the before and after?












Kimball and I went down to "Lake" Harriet because where there is water, one must throw rocks. Kimball had warmed up to me a bit by this time and we were good hiking buddies. Please ignore my squeeky voice. Maybe even turn the sound off!



Here is Fay helping out cooking. Notice the flour on her face?












You know what they say about what happens in Vegas.....? Not exactly true (no sillyness whatsoever):




My new years resolutions are going pretty good, except when Kate brought home so left over soooda. I am enjoying having a cleaner house.


I ALSO GOT TO WORK OUT IN THE YARD ON SATURDAY! its been awhile cause I was a bit sore the next day....

Olympics

Monday night for FOE (friends out night) I saw Invictus. It was a good movie. I like those feel good sports movies! They make me want to go out and do something, to work hard, be better etc. Unfortunately that feeling doesn't usually last too long....

I've seen Blindside a couple of times with Cathy and recommend it for everyone. Forever Strong is good too (its about Rugby too). Did you guys enjoy watching the Olympics? I really like it. I went over to Cathy's a couple of times and I do have to say they are even more enjoyable t-voed! It seemed that they didn't do as many 'behind the scenes' stories but that left more time for actual events. What are your favorite winter olympic events? I like the ice skating, short track, snowboard cross, half pipe, etc. basically all of them.

Paralympics will be starting in a week or so. Not too many events in the winter, but still really cool. They have blind skiers with guides do all those alpine and cross country events. That just blows my mind! I really wish there was more emphasis on the paralympics. If you want back stories of people overcoming adversity, you really don't have to dig that deep for these athletes. But they probably won't even mention that they are going on, on the one network that has rights to broadcast. grrrrrr. I did catch some of the Beijing Paralympics on the second nbc channel (5.2 here) so I'm hoping they at least do that.

So here is to getting out and doing things. Here is to finding the olympic spirit inside each of us. May it last longer!