Easter

For Easter I planned a fairly elaborate dinner inspired by food class at the library.  I made chicken piccata, roast asparagus, and mashed potatoes.

I also made deviled eggs with watercress and horseradish . . .

and green salad with feta, cranberries, and a homemade poppy seed vinaigrette.  Not pictured is the strawberry shortcake.

For some reason I didn't take any pictures with the eggs and the basket. Oops. I did get a little bit of video of the egg hunt though. That giant chocolate bunny is from our friendly neighbor. Delicious!

Cabin in Driggs

The last weekend in January Clint's parents invited everyone to a cabin in Driggs.  Unfortunately, we were the only family who could attend, but we still had fun.

We saw some snow sculptures being made,

and Max had his first attempt at ice skating.  I can't really say it was a success.  He also didn't enjoy sledding at all.  At the beginning of the winter he seemed amused by snow, but I think he decided he doesn't like it. Of course, it could just be his age.  He didn't do very well at our snow shoeing attempt on this trip either, which surprised me because he did so great on New Years Day.  I think he wasn't in his pack right at first, then just got riled up and cold.

Here are a few shots of the cabin and the view.  I guess an endodontist owns it and lets local dentists use it for a weekend as a way of schmoozing and saying hey dentists, send your patients to me for their root canals. It was a pretty nice place!

National Board Capitol Day

I found out last November that I National Board Certified.  Huzzah!  This February we had a day when those to certified this year were honored at the Capitol.

Here I am being honored in the House.  To my left is my representative, Lynn Hemingway.  He was very friendly and took pictures of us, which I wish I had a copy of.  (Clint was up in the balcony and hence didn't get great photos.)  On his left is another teacher (who lives in my neighborhood) getting her certification. It was good to get to know her!  We talked about getting a librarian endorsement which I am interested in doing.

In the Senate we didn't get to stand by and meet our specific senators, but the senator who covers the area of Cyprus High School came out and talked to me  (because they read off our names and what school we work for).

Here is a picture of just the Granite District teachers who certified or re-certified (plus the two administrators). 

After being honored we had lunch at Em's, a nearby restaurant.  Yum!  It was fun to be treated like a big wig--teachers don't exactly get business lunches.

Max's birthday

We had a little birthday party for Max at our house with a few friends (Ron/Allison, Bennika, and Yayoi and fam.  Meg's fam couldn't make it.)  Max had fun and sang happy birthday to himself for weeks afterwards which I found highly amusing.  It's funny to compare how many more pictures we took on his first birthday than this one.  It will be interesting to see if we take as many pictures on the first birthday of baby number two.

New Years

New Years Eve was pretty mellow.  I tried to get people to rally for a game night, but couldn't pull it off.  So our family went to Applebees, and Clint and I watched Bernie after Max went to bed.  Clint couldn't even stay awake until the ball dropped!

On New Years Day we went snowshoeing with friends.  It was a big production to get up there so we didn't actually go very far before it was nap time.  Even though it was a very cold day, it was beautiful and Max handled it like a champ. 

Later we had a breakfast for dinner with friends and visited my sister.  All in all, a fun day!

Thanksgiving and Christmas

Well, I was bad and didn't get Thanksgiving pictures this year.  We celebrated the weekend before with Clint's family and on actual Thanksgiving with Megan and her family.

Homemade spaghetti noodles!

Reading The Cajun Night Before Christmas during the Christmas Eve party

Three pregnant sisters-in-law

Halloween

This year Max and I dressed up as bumblebees.  I pretty much had the baby bumblebee song stuck in my head the whole night.  Max was actually old enough to enjoy trick or treating this year which was fun.  He did get scared by the neighbors scary talking Grim Reaper though.  All it all, it was a success!  And it was fun to have my parents around this year. I forced my mom to dress up as a hippy in one of her old dresses from high school.

Scarecrow Festival, American Fork Canyon, and Cornbellies

This fall we did lots of fun activities with Megan's family.  We went to the Scarecrow Festival at Thanksgiving Point, 

Of course, this was one of my favorites. :)

And we cooked tin foil dinners in American Fork Canyon.

We also went to Cornbellies--a giant Halloween activity.  Highlights included sliding down a giant slide in burlap sacks, being pulled by a tractor in little cow cars,

and of course, the giant pit of corn.  This was a LOT of corn.  It was deep!

St George Part Two

One of the activities we did was fish with the kids.  Though it ended up as something of a debacle, I'm still glad we did it.  We had just attempted to go to the Jacob Hamblin home, but the hours were wrong online, and it was closed.  So we headed to the nearby fishing pond (which apparently wasn't the greatest fishing pond of the area).  We attempted to do a little fishing and hit the nearby park, but inclement weather set in, and we had to go back to the condo.  Oh well.  I'm pretty sure Max was pretty entertained by the experience.  We also saw a cool heron.

I sail!  Ahem, I mean I fish!

On our last day, Clint, Max, and I went to check out the Green Valley Gap which was right near our condo.  I really wanted to go rock climbing but it was a little difficult to do when 1) Derek just ran a marathon and 2) we had all the kids with us.  So, I had to be content with just a quick peek at it.  I wish I could have just hiked around in it for a while, but we didn't have the time.

There was an open gathering area of sorts that someone had brought a couch too--I'm not sure if it was lowered down from the top or how they got it there.

Can you find me in this picture?  I wanted to keep going . . .

Our last hoorah before heading out was stopping at the Dinosaur Discover Sit and Johnson Farm.  This is an actual dinosaur dig that has been turned into a museum.

The kids enjoyed doing some dinosaur crafts, 

and especially digging for bones in the sandbox outside.