Monthly Archives: December 2009

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Winter Weekend

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The Santa suit pub crawl took us all over Park City Friday night.  We might have been to every bar here now! It had only barely started snowing so we figured we were all right. We made some friends and decided to meet them out the next day, but it was starting to snow quite a bit. We made it out to dinner at Shabu, which was a ton of fun. I got talked into trying to ski Sunday, since the storm was really picking up.

MK and I had to go and get my skis, which were being tuned in the Valley. We thought the roads out of our neighborhood weren’t that bad. So we went for the skis. It really started coming down when we hit the Valley. We had left the house at 9am, and it took about an hour to get down and two hours to get back up. Our car held up great, but there were other people out there that must be crazy. I can’t fathom getting in a little car without snow tires or AWD, you really probably needed a 4×4 to be out there. People were skidding out and making us nervous, we took our time.

We finally made it to Deer Valley to meet my friend KS and ski. She was super patient, as of course, I had no ski legs from last year. She was also super patient since she was the awesomest skier I’ve ever seen. She happens to be the SIL of a world famous skier. It was amazing to spend the day out with her. We met MK for an Apres Ski drink, and ended up meeting KS’s hubby AS too. He made it up in time for us to all meet up at the brand new St. Regis resort, after a ride up the 25 MILLION DOLLAR FUNICULAR.

What is that you ask? Wikipedia can tell you here. And then there’s the ton of pictures I took all weekend, there’s one photo of it there.

View the pictures.

It is the ride from the base to the resort. Not sure if it was worth the price tag, but it was a thrilling 2 minutes up or so. We had a snack and decided to hit No Name Saloon for some burgers. That put us home at about 7pm and we had left the house at 9am. We’d shoveled about a foot of snow to get out, and there was over a foot waiting for us when we got home. I already told you about that here.

It was totally worth it for a day out like that, and MK and I skied Monday too.

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The First Big Dump

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You can say things like that when you live in Utah and it means something good.

As you can kind of make out (trust me, ton more phone pics to come, might have to create an album, I was so excited I took about 90 photos) in this picture we shoveled a foot of snow, and there’s a new foot of snow. This was before the THIRD foot of snow that was waiting for us when we got back from Sunday Funday. Because when it’s like this – you go ski.

I’ll tell you more tomorrow about the weekend, the drive, the adventures, and the snow. We went and skied at Deer Valley, which looked like this everywhere:

And I know it was a little too dark but if you can imagine at all we hiked up the stairs and in the door while it looked like this around 7pm, and we spent about an hour and a half playing in the snow, shoveling and snowblowing, digging out our trash can and mail box.

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If Every Day Were Today

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Blessings come too easy around here.

fives.jpg#127

Five Reasons For Best Friday Ever:

  1. Big head from sense of accomplishment.
  2. Finally, a ski worthy snow storm in the forecast.
  3. We’re in Santa suits.
  4. We’re going out.
  5. Did I mention the Santa suits?
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A Charitable Christmas

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Or, a post not about me for once 😉

Okay, well at least a little less about me.

MK and I were set to run over to Whole Foods and buy one of those bags that feeds a family for Thanksgiving. Then the house work started and like so often happens, Thanksgiving came and went and we didn’t do anything nice for anyone.

This not-working thing made me want to volunteer somewhere. But as often happens, I got caught up in our own things and reading too much internet garbage and couldn’t even make a decision where to try and help. For three years. The last time I gave anyone any money, or support, in fact, was after the Tsunami. You can’t even remember when that was, it was so long ago. But I found a Christian medical organization that just for that tragedy gave 100% of the money you donated over for medical supplies and relief. That’s a good number. Some charities, you might be surprised to learn, donate a meager percentage of what you give to the actual cause you’re giving to. Those fun runs and 5Ks? Someone I know learned that not even 10% of her registration went to the cause. Why run for that?

I am pretty impressed with this website I just found:

Charity Navigator

and hope that this year for Christmas, even though it’s going to be my cheapest Christmas, I can find someone doing some good and pitch in. While we might be making do with less, charities got hurt this year in a big way, and even the littlest help will make the biggest difference!

The drop in giving last year was the biggest in the 54 years that Giving USA has tracked the data — leaving no doubt that the recession is having a negative impact on contributions. -quote from site

I found this place that I’m pretty excited about – thinking about some things on the wishlist!

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Guess

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So here is another attempt at home improvement – the living room needs some brightening. No clue what would possess someone to paint it such a dark maroon color, that has got to go! Guess which color (if any) we picked to paint the upstairs living room?

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Young House Love

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Have you seen this blog? Have you read and reread this entire blog? I can’t do anything to our house because I’m too busy reading about theirs! And their wedding, and their baby…

Snippy introduced us all here in the comments, but in case you weren’t checking them out, I wanted to share with you the magic of this blog. You see, our house is old. I think I’ve mentioned that. But it has good bones. Drafty bones, but good bones. It was the first house I looked at and saw tons of potential. And we looked at so many houses. Ask Snippy. In Austin, things were different at the time and our price range, well, we virtually didn’t have one. Remember – banks were giving you all the money you wanted. Thankfully, we didn’t go that route. We put our stuff in storage and moved around for three amazing years. But we still looked at houses. New and old, big and small, ocean front and ski town. All that looking told me was that I wanted a house the made people happy to be in. Not uncomfortable, not anxious.

It took me until now to learn that almost has nothing to do with the house, and everything to do with what you do to the house. And that it doesn’t have to cost much at all. With each new shade of paint of decorative pillow, I’m making the house me (okay, us). And it can be fun. I apologize for complaining and relating a trip to Lowe’s to a root canal. This house is a blessing and not only can we take care of it, we can help it put it’s best foot forward. The plans will be fun. The ‘as is’ is temporary, and neither a budget nor a nail gun can stand in our way. We can do it!

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Regarding My Last Post

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I wrote it hadn’t snowed since the night we moved in…

and look what we got overnight and in to today! It was 2 when I woke up. I think it’s about 6 right now. Degrees.

All you really have to do to make it snow is send me out to shovel. It started coming down right after I got in. Planning on taking my new skis from the ski swap to get tuned as soon as the roads look more doable. Every time I hear a car go by I peek out the window nervous about pending disaster. I don’t think it’s time for me to start driving in this just yet!

 And yes, the flag can stay. We decided not to burn it after all.

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Half and Half

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For house projects two and three, we decided to paint the utility room and buy me some bookshelves.

What is a Utah utility room you wonder? Well, Mormons believe something like there will be an Apocalypse but they fail (this is my understanding only haha) and have to keep food for a year for each family member in their house. Some people have unfinished cold storage rooms in their house. Ours got finished and the previous owner used it is a warm workshop alternative to the garage. It’s as big as a 5th bedroom, but no windows. Someday we hope to have our laundry in it, so we wanted to paint it pretty.

MK went to the store, bought paint in 10 seconds, and got some brushes. We put newspaper down after cleaning the floor and pulling up the trim. The walls were white with patch marks showing that needed to be covered. MK basically picked a slightly darker shade of white. When we were done with coat one, we realized the texture on the walls made it really hard to get all the wall covered. So back to the store for coat number two can of paint, and paper to put down not of the news variety since the print made our feet and the floor black. Learn as you go.

Not sure why, but we’ve been made fun of for this second coat. I mean, it had to be done. Now our walls look nice and we could put all our storage crap in the room. Even thought we haven’t replaced the trim yet. Or the faceplates. Whatever. Next.

I am a nerd. Nerds have tons of books. I have no shelves. Solution: Ikea. We got two giant and super easy to assemble cases. That room needs to be painted but oh well, at least the books aren’t on the floor. Nerds hate the poor treatment of sacred books.