A (Half) Day on the Slopes

Yesterday my dad and I decided to head up the canyon so I could have a chance to snowboard once this year before I head back to Phoenix. I didn't go at all last year and only went once the year before, so we decided that we'd only do a half day.

We started the morning with breakfast at Silver Fork Lodge...eating pancakes and sipping hot chocolate next to the fireplace was so nice! I'd never been there before, but if you're ever in Big Cottonwood Canyon and in need of some food and good atmosphere, you should check it out (here's a link to their website).

After breakfast, we headed up to Brighton. We got there right as the lifts started running and the parking lot was EMPTY--we got front row parking. I haven't been to Brighton in years, but it's the resort where I learned to ski and snowboard, so it was fun riding down trails I used to know. Plus, fresh snow had fallen on Tuesday and Wednesday and it was pretty cold up in the canyon so the conditions were much better (and a lot less slushy) than normal spring-skiing.

My dad started me down a nice, simple green which I appreciated. And surprisingly, I remebered how to snowboard (apparently it is just like riding a bike, which my dad had been saying all morning). By the end of the morning, I had worked my way back up to blacks, which made me happy. Sadly, my legs were SCREAMING by noon (which was when our passes expired). I can't believe I used to do this two times a week for almost every week of ski season. I couldn't even make it through one day!! Obviously my life sitting behind a computer doesn't keep me in as good shape as my life of dancing and snowboarding did back in high school and college...growing up is so depressing sometimes! Anyway, here are some pictures from the day:

It was sunny and beautiful!! Some clouds rolled in, but they cleared out within 15 minutes. I'm glad I put on sunscreen because I still had a little sunburn at the end of the day.

This is my dad on the lift. Sadly, we didn't take a picture together...

This is me on the lift. I'm wearing a wonderful mis-matched combination of my various ski outfits throughout the years. My matching coat and hat were left in Phoenix...

This is a view down the lift. If you look closely, you'll notice that most chairs are empty or only have 1-2 people on them. This is how the entire day was for us. We only had to wait in line for a lift once, and that was for our last run of the day. For all the others, we unclipped and walked right on for the next availabe chair. It was awesome!

This is my dad holding my cute snowboard. It's the only board I've ever ridden (aside from the ones I initially learned on) and if you know me, you know I have a hard time with change. My dad informed me that I have most definitely outgrown this board. I have a really hard time picking up or maintaining speed and apparently that's due to my board, but I don't know if I can part with it!! For now, if I'm only going once or twice a year I think it'll be just fine :)

Anyway, yesterday was a wonderful day...thanks Dad for the fun!!

House Guests!!

I'm currently on vacation, and I'm hoping to post quite a few things to the blog but I'm planning to space them out a bit... Here's the first:


Last weekend, we had our first out-of-state (non-family) visitor!! My BYU roommate Joleen came down to catch a Cubs spring training game and then stayed with us for the rest of the weekend. She commented on the red rock she saw during the drive down, so we decided to spend Saturday in Sedona. We drove around, took some walks to look at the red rock, ate some yummy mexican food, and did a little shopping at Tlaquepaque. The rest of the weekend was spent catching up on life and watching lots of basketball games... Thanks, Joleen, for a fun weekend!!



Also, we had the pleasure of dog-sitting Sarge, Shane's brother's puggle. He's a very good dog and we had lots of fun having him at our house. Although he does associate our house with cats (our neighbor likes to feed stray cats), so he has a hard time relaxing when he stays with us.


In other news, the Cub Scouts were kind enough to share their Pinewood Derby track with the rest of the ward, so Shane and Tom decided to make cars to race...

They raced each other in the first heat, and it was close! I recorded the race (sorry for the quality, this was on my regular camera...)

In the end, Shane got 3rd Place with his 'Golden Brick.' The only car he lost to ended up winning the whole thing, so he felt good about his car-making skills.

Friends.

Last week Shane presented me with quite the scenario:

I had been kidnapped by terrorists (we had just finished watching the week's installment of 24) who said they were going to round up all of my friends and kill them (yes, he's a little extreme), but that I could select my best best friend and they would save that one person. And, if I didn't pick one person they would kill Shane as well...

Why would my husband present me with such a scenario? It all started as we were driving home from his parents' house. We were talking about something and he said, "Who is your best friend?" I immediately responded with an explanation of why each of my friends is so special and important to me and how I need each for different reasons. If you know me, you know I'm fairly skilled at avoiding situations where I must express a definite opinion on any subject (even as simple as picking a place to eat). Shane, knowing this, decided to create the above scenario. Sadly, I never actually made a decision (even with him reminding me that they were going to kill him), but the whole conversation made me think...I have been blessed with wonderful friends in my life.

I honestly don't think I could've selected one friend to be my best friend if I tried. Each of my friends is special in their own way. I have friends that know me better than I know myself, who know my preferences, how I will react in certain situations, and what I'm thinking. I have friends that when, in high school, I decided that my boyfriends were more important than them were willing to mope with me when those relationships ended. I have friends who fight with me like sisters. I have friends that I have never fought or argued with (ever). I have friends I've known almost my entire life and friends I've known for less than a year. I have friends I call when I need to be cheered up and ones I call when I just need to cry. I have friends who will eat junk food with me over Skype when I'm sad and friends who send me hand-made letters sealed with wax to let me know I'm special. I have friends who call regularly to catch up and friends who I can talk to after a year of absence and feel like we've never been apart. I have friends that were only a part of my everyday life for a few months, but I still consider friends because of the influence they had on me.

Sadly, I wonder if I'm as good a friend to them as they are to me. I hope I've been able to fill even a portion fo the role they have filled in my life. I sometimes get lost my own life and forget that there are people that I care about that may need me. Plus, I'm not the best at doing cutesy, kind things (just ask my mom about the chicken soup incident). I try and make a conscious effort, but I think I've been failing lately. So to all my friends--old, new, close, far--I love you, appreciate you, and hope you will accept this post at my first attempt to thank you for all you've done for me.

New look

I'm on a blogging spree today!! There are two new posts below too. I promise this is the last one. I decided to change the look of our blog (and it may continue to change over the next few days so don't be alarmed). I realized that my posts looked so incredibly long in the old format that I wanted a new layout that used more of the space. I'm not a fan of this one, except for the space it offers... We'll see how long it lasts.

Spontaneity

If you know me, then you know that the title of this post doesn't seem to fit. I am not a spontaneous person. I like to plan, to know what to expect, to know how things are going to work (which is why I drive Shane CRAZY with questions when he proposes we do something new).

But this Saturday, after Shane woke up from his mini-nap (at 5:30 pm) to recover from the family-filled day, we watched two episodes of The O.C. (see post below for additional details). Around 8:00 pm, we found ourselves sitting on the couch, staring at each other, wondering what we were going to do for the remainder of the evening. You see, we're both homebodies. In college, when our friends would go out to parties, we were content to stay in playing games, talking, or doing anything but going to the party. I know that I influenced Shane quite a bit (he was quite a party dancer before he met me) and I've started wondering if I'm boring him to death...(I remind him often that he knew what he was getting into when he married me :).

Wow, my thoughts have wandered. Anyway, as I pondered on the fact that we sometimes waste the time we have doing absolutely nothing and then we realize it's been a month or two since we got out and did something fun / different / new, I decided to try and be fun for once. I told Shane I wanted to get out of the house and do something FUN.

Well, our "spontaneous" adventure ended up being miniature golf and skee-ball at a place down the street. Sadly, I was worried that the place would be closed (at 8:30 on a Saturday night)--I need to get out more!! As simple as it sounds, it ended up being such a fun night out and just what we needed. Plus, on our way, we came up with more ideas of fun (and free) stuff we can do other times we find ourselves sitting at home on the weekends. But we could definitely use more ideas... What do you like to do when you need a night out?

Catching Up

I've been a little hesitant to write this post, but I've decided that I don't care what people think...you can judge me if you want :)

For Valentine's Day (even though we agreed that we were doing a "card only" year with dinner out), Shane gave me a gift. I don't know if he knew how exciting this gift would be, but he has since realized it.

You see, he gave me Season 1 of the O.C. Before you finish rolling your eyes, let me try and explain. I started watching the O.C. part way through Season 2, when Shane and I started dating. I figured I should embrace some of his interests to spend more time with him (hence my following of The O.C. and Smallville--two high quality shows...). My dad, Jared, and Jessie also started watching soon thereafter, so it became a family affair. My dad would Tivo it and we'd all watch it together if Shane and I were in town.

I grew very attached to the Cohen family, and sadly, I felt like I was losing friends when the show ended (even though the last season sometimes felt like they were running out of story lines). Well, maybe it wasn't so dramatic, but there was definitely a (very temporary) void in my life.

Anyway, after finding me cleaning the house with old episodes playing on the SOAP network and reminding me that I didn't know the real Ryan Atwood because I hadn't seen the first season, he got the brilliant idea to buy me the DVDs for Valentine's day. So our Valentine's consisted of dinner out at the Kozy Cactus (a new little restaurant down the street) and then 4 episodes of The O.C. and I enjoyed every minute of it... Since Valentine's we fill our uneventful weekend evenings with an episode or two...or sometimes three depending on the current storyline.

So say what you want about the time we wasted on meaningless, drama-filled TV, but it's been fun for us. And I feel like I have my friends back, even if we're almost out of episodes.

*** The spacing on this post is driving me CRAZY. Sorry, I don't want to spend the time fixing it.

Family...and work

Today, we got to spend the day with the family. Our oldest nephew, Mason, was baptized. It's crazy that he's that old!! It was nice to see all the men in the family surrounding him while he was confirmed. It makes me happy to know that even though I'm not near my parents and brother, I have this wonderful family to be a part of. It also made me realize that I don't think I'd ever be able to live somewhere where we didn't have family nearby. I guess that means we're stuck with Phoenix and Salt Lake as our only options for now, which is fine with me!

So I've gotten some complaints regarding the long delays between my blog updates. Sadly, we don't always have funny or interesting things to share with the blogging world... If you really don't believe me, please visit this link. My coworkers and I read this last week, and honestly, this describes my working culture perfectly. If you don't have time to read the list in its entirety (I don't blame you, it's probably only funny to me), the ones nearest and dearest to my heart are:

• 24. Softcopies: seriously, I beg my clients for things in electronic format
• 20. The Pending List: you live and die by the open items list
• 21. Ethernet Cables: I have 5 in my trunk (in a box full of supplies...)
• 18. Instant Messaging: My wonderful coworker Ashley gets me through the day
• 4. Excel Formulas: I never knew I'd actually be using VLOOKUP when I learned it in ISYS 201
  

While this post may seem ridiculously lame to you, this is my life. This is what happens when I blog about nothing. Enjoy!