Christmas Eve started out with a cold run in the snow. We haven’t had a lot of snow this year so I will take what I can get. It was absolutely beautiful out.
Came home to breakfast. Doesn’t everyone wear a life vest to the breakfast table?
I made the traditional Norwegian Christmas Eve dinner. I used a red cabbage for the Surkål. Next time I will use the green cabbage. Purple was kind of weird to eat, but it tasted great.
I used kohlrabi for the kohlrabi instead of rutabaga. I now know why Mormor used rutabaga. Kohlrabi is crazy expensive. I purchased 6 bulbs for $6.00 and it only made a small bowl.
I have never seen kohlrabi before. This is exactly what I thought of them when I saw them!
Where did I find kohlrabi? Sprouts. A note for next year.
I peeled it the bulb and removed the fibrous outer layer.
I cut it up and boiled in salty water like potatoes.
Added butter and milk and mashed like mashed potatoes. That’s all 6 bulbs made. Not a lot.
I didn’t make mutton. I’m proud to be a vegetarian when it comes to mutton.
A game of laser tag.
Against Aaron 🙂
After dinner we decorated cookies. Mom made a sheet cookie. We cut squares and decorated.
Little pea did a great job! He had so much fun.
Paul needs to show me how to do a panoramic photo, but for now we get a video of the table.
This year I made krumkake bowls for the rice cream instead of using the usual dessert cups. This was a fun change.
I hid the almond in the cups, we all got the almond this year :). Added the cream and topped with red sauce.
For the almond winners. Or the non- winners 🙂 Mom spoils us with marzipan fruits no matter who the winner is.
An hour after sunset, we went outside to see the Christmas star. The planets were not as close as I thought they would be. There was quite a bit of space between them, but it was a fun treat to see the star on our Christmas Eve night.
And just like that, it’s December! I was going to do a day in my life back in June, but never made it a priority, so I have to get one done before December ends!
My alarm goes off at 6:40am. My nights are rough and my mornings are brutal. 6:40 can’t come quick enough, but yet it comes too quickly.
This little boy is already up and at ’em. Walking into his room this morning I found him decorating behind his tent with a roll of outdoor Christmas lights. He is a busy body, always on the move and won’t stop till this evening when he’s asleep in bed.
Paul feeds Eli and gets him dressed. I strap him into the car 🙂 Off to school!
The weather has been really warm. Only 23′ out this morning. Perfect running weather for me.
I have lots to do today, so only 3 miles.
I come home and do a weight workout. Today is a kettlebell workout day. This is one of my favorite workouts. She is really tough, and I get a really good workout!
After my weight workout, I stretch with this gal. She targets older people 🙂 but she stretches the full body in 20 minutes. I’m getting older so I guess I fit right in!
I mix up my banana smoothie for breakfast. Protein and fiber! Ha!
I deliver one to Paul at work 🙂 See the electric blanket and space heater? Just trying to stay warm today!
I take my smoothie and my laptop, and work in front of the fire.
After an hour or so of work, I do the most enjoyable part of my day. I clean and straighten up my house. Carpet lines and the smell of clorox makes me so happy! I have a little germ awareness so I love sanitizing my bathrooms and floors 🙂
Lunch! What do we eat for lunch? Anything that’s in the freezer out in the garage. I know, Paul is so lucky! 🙂 We have to rotate our frozen left overs sometime so why not now, right?
While we eat lunch, we always watch Meat Eater on Netflix. Not sure why a vegetarian likes this show, but it’s entertaining and get’s kind of exciting.
Me: Now! Now! Take the shot. He’s going to run, better take it now!
Paul: What side are you on?
I’m always team deer. I’m a traitor only for a minute. I feel sorry for him when he hunts so hard for days and then he finally sees something, I want him to get the deer.
Paul says we should go on a tranquilizer hunt. Where you hit the deer with a tranquilizer and after the deer wakes up he gets up and walks away. No harm done. Kind of like catch and release 🙂
After lunch treat. Little marzipan cakes. I can’t get enough of these. Layers of cake and cream, wrapped in marzipan. And if that isn’t enough, they are dipped in chocolate. I wouldn’t have to work out so hard if I stopped eating these.
I move to the island and finish the rest of my to do list.
Today I head over to my parents house to finish up a project we are working on. We have to get this done by next week to mail them to Ferelyn and her family.
Nice piece of wood isn’t it?
Sanding our project. It’s a lot of work being an Elf!
Time to pick up little pea from school.
Snack and homework time.
After homework, we either head to the park or go for a bike ride. Today we had an important errand to run. We went to the post office to mail Eli’s letter to the North Pole. He is an inquisitive little boy with lots of fabulous questions! How will his letter get there? How long does it take to travel there? Does the post office need a sleigh to get to his house? I love it!!
Time for bed. Hallelujah! I need a little down time. The three of us jump in Eli’s bed. He reads a book to us and I read one to him.
After Eli is asleep, I do a little reading/study. I’m so far behind and every night I get further behind. I have been on Moroni for the last several days because I keep getting distracted. I just found out Mary and Joseph got married! And they had other children! Wait, what?! I never knew. So, I have been reading and researching this instead of my nightly reading.
Paul and I watch something for a few minutes and then off to bed. We are in bed by 10:15pm. 10:30pm if we are crazy 🙂
Every Monday we go out to lunch and after lunch we find a dessert place. Cookies are part of our rotation of dessert. Aaron says he know which is the best cookie and I thought they all tasted the same until today…
The four of us decided to drive the valley, pick up a chocolate chip cookie from each location and have a taste test.
Then, Bryan said he wanted to have a sugar cookie taste.
Mom and I said we would get a specialty cookie from each store. How many cookies did we end up wtih? A lot! 🙂
We started at 1:00pm. First stop: Twisted Sugar.
This is the specialty cookie.
The chocolate chip cookie looked like unbaked cookie dough. Tasted like it as well. The sugar cookie was good, but the icing was a little bland.
Bryan’s favorite chocolate chip cookie was twisted sugar and mom said it was in her top two and couldn’t decide between the two.
Who liked the sugar cookie? This was moms 2nd favorite.
They had a large selection of specialty cookies and was hard to choose just one. We will definitely be back to pick up another specialty cookie.
Second stop: Goodly Cookies.
They didn’t have any sugar cookies or specialty cookies to choose from.
No one liked the goodly cookie. Maybe we need to heat this one up?
Third stop: Suss.
Who liked the chocolate chip cookie? No one! This was mom and Aaron’s last choice and this one was at the bottom of the list for me as well.
Who liked the sugar cookie? No one! This was all of our least liked cookie. It also looks terrible.
Fourth stop: Cookie Crave.
We had to have the skookie here. There are a couple places to get a skookie in the valley and hands down the Cookie Crave wins on this one. Two milk chocolate cookies and ice cream. Can’t go wrong with this.
With all of us loving the warm skooie we are all surprised this one came in as our least favorite. I think we need to heat this one as well.
The sugar cookie: This was moms third choice and Aaron’s second choice.
We picked up the chocolate chip cookie and sugar cookie. No specialty cookie here.
Fifth stop: Chip
Picked up a chocolate chip cooke.
Who liked the chocolate chip: I was the only one. This was one of my favorites.
The left picture above is the sugar cookie display. Looks good, right? The one on the right is the cookie they gave us. Totally not the same. Chip lost me on that one for the sugar cookie section.
Who liked the sugar cookie: This was Aarons third choice.
I can’t get these pictures to line up. 🙂 They look great on edit, but preview just won’t work. Whatever, moving on….
Sixth stop: Sodalicious. See, it’s getting darker out 🙂 We have been at this for a while.
Who liked the chocolate chip: No one. This was my least favorite. Paul said it tasted like soap. Which is funny. Because I have had many of these cookies and they are not bad. But when you put it next to a REALLY good cookie, this one is terrible.
We picked up a chocolate chip cookie and a sugar cookie. They didn’t have specialty cookies here either.
Seventh stop: Crumbl cookies.
Picked up a chocolate chip cookie and a sugar cookie
Who liked either ? No one. Didn’t make the list.
Eight and last stop.
I asked my IT guy for some help with lining up these pictures, he said I’m on my own. So, I will just have to live with misalignment. 🙂
We picked up a chocolate chip cookie and a sugar cookie.
Who liked the chocoatel chip: moms second, arron and my first.
Who liked the sugar: This one was pretty good. Hard to compare. It is a good cookie. Mom and Aaron’s number one. I have to say I liked this one from all the others as well.
Brought all the cookies home and set them out. The chocolate chip cookies. For the category of looks, Batch totally won on this. It is tall, lots of chocolate chips and it looks like it just came out of the oven.
The sugar cookies. Lots of variation.
We cut them up.
And had a taste of each.
Dad stopped after two of them. He said they all taste the same. Interesting. When we get a cookie every other week or so from each of these places, they all taste really good. And when I tasted them all at once there is a cookie that I thought was pretty good, but next to the winner, it was the worst cookie I have eaten.
Conclusion?
Chocolate chip cookie: Twisted sugar and batch was our top choices.
Sugar cookie: Batch was our top choice
Suss was our least with chocolate chip and sugar. We are definitely taking this one our of our dessert rotation.
6:05 pm. A lot of driving, but a lot of fun.
What’s next? I’m thinking we need to do our top 3 and see who wins. Pizza? That would be filling. Brownies? Oh, yeah, that would be good!
Our 6 year old alarm went off at 6:30am this morning. Thanksgiving or not, he is always on time!
Eli brought us breakfast in bed. What was on the menu? Pie crust cookies filled with cranberries and white chocolate chips. Can’t go wrong with this selection!
Mom is burnt out with cooking Thanksgiving dinner. She has been cooking dinner for how many years? No wonder she’s burnt out! Will I be burnt out when I’m a mormor?
I told her she could have a care free day and I would make dinner-everything except the turkey 🙂 She said she appreciated it, but she had her heart set on takeout and wanted to go to Carvers. Paul and I haven’t been to Carvers since our Discover Card days, so it was It was a fun treat. Food was delicious!
Can’t have Thanksgiving dinner without olive fingers!!
After dinner we watched Netflix, The Christmas Chronicles 2.
For dessert we had pumpkin pie. Paul makes the best pie crust. Cold hands= great flakey crust!!
Ferelyn and I were texting pictures back and forth with each other, showing each others evening. She fried her turkey this year. She said it was so good, she ate so much she sent a picture of her turkey belly. So, I showed her my non-turkey belly! 🙂
That evening we finished decorating the tree.
Eli started to hang the shiny spectacular ornaments 🙂 I sure love this kid. He is so cute!
Eli was pretty excited for this day to come! We went to the pumpkin patch a few days ago and picked up a pumpkin. That pumpkin has been sitting on the front porch just waiting to be carved by a little 6 year old!
And today it finally happened! Eli drew out his plans of what he was going to carve on a piece of paper. He then drew it on the pumpkin, and off he went carving! So pleased with his planning skills. Haha!
Pretty good!
Off to parents houses. What did he want to be this year? Cat boy. The same as last year. I’m not too sad about it. I’m not one to spend money or time on a costume that will be worn for 2 hours.
Next stop, my parents house. Eli was really excited. He has been hearing about what dad and Aaron have been working on for the last couple of weeks.
To keep the social distancing theme this year going, they made a candy cannon. Powered by air, it shoots the treats to the kids.
The cannon was a success! The goal was for the cannon to shoot 6 feet. It went 6 feet and then some.
Prepared with ammunition -treats, they didn’t get a lot of kids this year. About 15 kids for the night. Pretty drastic considering they usually get around 120 trick or treaters.
Without kids to shoot candy to, we had fun with the gun. We kept powering up the poundage to see how far we could shoot the treats.
We had a fun time with the cannon and we decided to head home.
That evening we had a few kids come to the door. I didn’t get pictures or video, but Eli was really cute. I told him to give each kid a huge handful of treats, because I didn’t want any left overs. He did what I had asked, except for one kid. He took almost the whole bag and dumped it into this kids bucket.
After he left, I asked him why he didn’t follow my instructions of just a handful. He then taught me a lesson. He said, “that kid didn’t have as much candy in his bucket as all the other kids had. I wanted him to have as many as everyone else, so I gave him more.”
Thank you, little Pea for teaching me to think of others. You noticed what that child needed and you made him feel better by giving him more treats. Thank you for always putting others first and doing acts of kindness to everyone. Love you little, Pea.
For many years Paul has wanted to hike the 10 mile hike from Crystal Lake to Middle Fork. We thought now would be a good time to do it, because it just cooled off and in the next few weeks winter will be here. We made arrangements for Paul’s parents to watch Eli for the day and meet us at the bottom of Middle Fork that evening to pick us up.
First stop. Donuts. There is a gas station in Kamas that bakes their own donuts. These come out hot and fresh. The best donuts I have had in a while. HUGE as well. The cream cheese pastry was good, but the cinnamon roll with cream cheese icing was my favorite. Yes, I ate them both. I have to have energy to hike 10 miles, right? 🙂
32′ this morning. Not too cold. Perfect temperature for a full day of hiking. I hiked with a long sleeve waffle shirt, flannel, and light jacket. I had a half face neck thing and thin winter knit gloves I used for a little while in the morning, but other that that I stayed warm. I was quite happy. I wore more than I needed, because I would rather be too hot and remove layers, than to be cold all day.
Started out at Crystal Lake. We followed the trail to long lake loop. Which I have to mention is NOT a loop. I have that documented last year when we carried our 50lb 5 year old back out 2 miles.
Starting out. For the first mile, we passed a couple overnight tents, two fisherman, and 2 hunters coming down with their horse. After that, we were alone for the rest of the hike.
We followed the trail almost to Long lake and then turned to the right and followed a trail, but it wasn’t as well marked as the main trail.
Looking out at Long lake.
We stopped for a quick break at a pond with no name 🙂
We tried liquid I.V. I’m planning on using this for my next marathon so I thought now was a great time to try it out. This mix is supposed to hydrate 3x the hydration as water. I think it worked, but the flavor wasn’t my favorite. I had to force myself to drink it. When I want water, I just want the taste of water. I want to try this again, but I will put it in lemon lime gatorade to see if that will hide the taste.
Further along the trail was marked with cairns. We had to look for these to stay on the trail.
Found a great river down there.
Lots of river beds and streams.
Came to a rocky terrain.
Mud bogs. Perfect location for deer hunting. Paul was scouting our several locations for next year’s hunt. We were so far in, good luck getting the deer back out 🙂
We stopped for lunch. Paul pumped water.
Paul set up the solo stove and started boiling the water.
Paul wasn’t too happy with me wanting to bring the stove and pasta. With hiking 10 miles and being a little chilly, I really wanted something warm and filling, not just a cold sandwich and snacks. We tried pasta primavera. It smelled wonderful as it was hydrating.
We may have added too much water and it was pasta primavera soup 🙂 It was still good. We were both so hungry, we ate this and our sandwiches.
A little rest.
After lunch, the trail we were following became faint to not a trail at all. Every once in a while we would find the trail and other times, it looked like this. Can you spot the trail? Neither could we. See the green marker? that was an indicator that was part of the trail so we went in that direction.
Further down we stopped seeing cairns and the green makers, but started to see blue flags. So we started following those 🙂
Soon we lost the trail and all markers. We started bushwhacking through the forest. We climbed over logs and boulders. We did this for two miles.
About an hour of hard hiking, we heard rushing water and we came upon this!
Beautiful cliffs and a hidden river.
I wanted to track the miles and see how many miles we hiked, but my watch gave out. So I know we hiked 6.46 miles. I think for prime day there will be a new watch in my amazon cart 🙂
This river was the highlight of the hike. So spectacular we forgot about all the scrapes on our legs…ok my legs. I was pushing myself through the thick foliage and I had several sticker bushes come through my pants, sticks scaping my legs, it was pretty hard hiking. I really wanted to find the trail!
We were lost!
As we were walking, we were discussing if we should be noisy to notify a bear or be quiet to see a deer or a moose? We were noisy and the only animals we saw were pine hens.
Even though we didn’t see wildlife, we saw evidence of wildlife. We saw this raking tree. Elk and deer rub their antlers on trees to scrape the velvet off their antlers.
And what animal ate this? A moose! That was fun to see.
As we were meandering around the forest, every once in a while we would come across trees with two markings. Another trail marking. We followed these when we saw them.
FINALLY, we came out to the meadow! We were so excited to see this place. We only had another mile to the bottom.
And we had a trail! A glorious trail!
Does this look familiar? This is where we set up camp a few months ago when we went back packing.
Paul took 10 miles of video and pictures. I didn’t know how to include them, but to put them in one video.
The last 5 seconds is my favorite! 🙂
This was one of the best hikes we have been on. Will I hike it again? Absolutely.
At the last moment we decided to go camping. Where did we go? I don’t know. All that I know is it was a beautiful drive.
We were late with the leaves by a week.
But it was still a nice drive up.
We ran into these ladies. They are on their way down for the winter.
This is camp for the weekend. Coming up the canyon wasn’t my favorite. It was steep and narrow and I will never pull the trailer up it again. I found out that I’m familiar with this canyon and have been up here many times, but the other side of it. We will be going home that way.
The following morning we went out for a hike.
We picked a mountain and went up it. To the top!
Eli loved it. He is pointing to the next mountain top he wants to hike to tomorrow.
We found many acorns with “hats” during our weekend.
We spent the afternoons reading books.
The evenings we played games.
As we were packing up I heard, and then felt 🙂 a large crash. The trailer fell! One leg fell, then the other leg! The motor gave out and we didn’t have anyway to get the trailer onto the truck.
We got in the truck to head home to get jacks. That would mean we would be driving all day. We would have to leave the trailer and come back the next morning. Paul had an idea to contact his father through the ham radio to save some time.
I’m so glad there are nice people out there willing to help. Paul’s parents arrived at dusk. Paul and his dad had just a few hours to jack up the trailer and hook it to the truck before they lost daylight.
Eli didn’t waste any time with playing in the dirt. 🙂
I didn’t take pictures of the trailer balancing on blocks of wood on top of jacks, but Paul and his father got it up.
We jumped in the truck and started heading out in the dark. We were heading down and deer hunters were coming up. A long line of trailers!
The canyon road was so narrow, we are still unsure how we passed without being hit or the other trailers going off the road! We are blessed to get home safely.
The official party. Eli helped with the decorations. And yes, that is a Christmas wreath on the back door. It missed the Christmas tote in January when we put everything away. Yes, I didn’t have any motivation to put it downstairs the ENTIRE year. We only have 2 more months and it will fit in with the other Christmas decorations. 🙂
We didn’t go crazy on the balloons this year. Only one arch instead of two.
Where do you put those crazy pea in the pod balloons?
Eli did a fantastic job on decorating.
Every hour he kept asking when his party will be starting. So instead of asking every 10 minutes, he said he was going to wait in the entry way for his guests to arrive.
Crazy.
We ate dinner.
What was on the menu? Eli’s favorite dinner: Butternut squash soup. Pear, feta, and pecan salad with a tasty pear sauce. Homemade crusty bread with honey from our bees!
Eli is into kittens and really wants one of his own. This will be the only cat that comes into this house. Sorry, little Pea. He picked out his piñata and it was a kitty!
Cleaning up the piñata.
Time for presents. He loved everything!
I don’t have anything to say about this… 🙂
Paul and I have been waiting for weeks to give him his remote control cars. He got two for his birthday, because we get to play with him! I don’t know who was more excited to the cars. Paul or Eli. Paul was REALLY excited to play with the one that twists and bends.
He also got this for his birthday. He loves to climb. This was a perfect gift!!
Ferelyn and her family zoomed for the birthday song. Look at their cake they cut. Too cute!
Eli was really excited to have them be a part of his party.
He said Gage cracks him up.
Happy birthday!
After cake, everyone played with the remote control cars. Aaron and Bryan had a lot of fun. 🙂
In this house we have birthday months. We celebrate ALL month long. This is just a few days of his birthday month.
We started out everyday playing video games.
One day after school, we stopped off at Handels for some ice cream.
Eli’s favorite. Strawberry ice cream. This was a special day so he chose a cone with chocolate and of course sprinkles.
Paul and I split a hot apple dumpling with ice cream and whipped cream.
On his official birthday we picked up a birthday cookie. This is the first cookie I have done and didn’t know what to expect. When I called a few days ago to order it, I told them it’s for a 6 year old boy and to do what they want on it.
They did a FABULOUS job! I couldn’t have designed one better. When Eli saw it, I got a, “you’re the best mom ever!” That’s a win for me!
That afternoon we went to Airborne. An indoor jumping place.
Trampolines everywhere. Just what a 6 year old would love. Okay, we loved it too!
Lots of stuff to do here. Obstacles in the sky!
The other side of the building had these blocks to jump into. It was scary at first to run and have the faith that these foam blocks would catch your fall and not get hurt.
Eli had to go on the swing. He did a fabulous swing and dismount!
Look at that face. He was having so much fun.
This made me laugh. Paul lined up with all the other kids 🙂
Since Eli and Paul went, I had to jump as well. It was scary! It took a while for me to jump. It was only 5 feet off the ground, but it was SO scary!
After jumping we were ready for dinner. Eli chose to go to Chubby’s. A regular fast food place with mac and cheese. Not kraft! Good mac and cheese. Eli’s favorite. We had to get peach crisp with ice cream for dessert!
Eli had a great birthday “day”, but is really excited for this weekend for birthday party with family.
Hiking to the springs is a fun hike and we look forward to it every year. The canyon is so low in elevation it cooks during the summer, so wait for fall to take advantage of the cooler weather. Having the fall leaves is a bonus.
Due to the craziness in the world, I had to work quite a bit the last few months, so this year we are later than usual and missed a lot of the colorful leaves. No customers = no money to pay for employees = me working 🙂
Followed these ladies up the road 🙂
When we arrived at the trail head, we were greeted with this. Closed. Very disappointed. With such a stressful month we were really looking forward to fun day.
We decided to find a place to hike because we drove a couple hours to get here. We turned around and went to the camping area and decided to walk along the river.
This is the closest we were able to get to a spring. You can see, and smell!, the cloudy sulfur running through in the river.
Eli wasn’t too disappointed. He enjoyed playing with sticks, rocks, and throwing all of them into the river.
Okay, Paul and Eli had fun throwing rocks, sticks and anything else they could find into the river. 🙂
End of fall.
Asking a 5 year old to sit and smile nicely. I was trying to tickle him to get a natural smile out of him and this is what we got.
Even though we couldn’t get higher to the springs, it was a nice being in the mountains.
A little further up we found a patch of red leaves.
On the way home we stopped at the red rocks.
Eli found sand to play in. He still loves a good sand box.
Even though we couldn’t hike to the springs, we were together as a family. And that’s all that matters.
