Exercise Room

A while back we inherited (from a friend of my sister-in-law) a fake Bowflex-like exercise machine.  It has been sitting in our basement for a few months collecting dust.  We also inherited a (giant) pile of carpet squares when our friends moved.  Pat finally decided to do something with them, and put together an exercise room in one of the unfinished rooms in our basement.  He laid down the carpet, put together the machine, and set up the old TV to use with the Wii.  We really only ever use the Wii for exercise programs like Fit, DDR, and Active.  It turned out pretty good I think!  Now if we just remember to actually use it...

Warning!  Please ignore the messy basement in the background.  Thank you.

Swap Apron Finished

This is the first apron I have made all on my own!  It may not be quite as professional looking without Mom's help, but it's still dang cute!  I will be sad to see it go... but I should get something cute in return!

I don't know if you can really make it out in the photo, but I pinned a cute sparkley button up by the waistband and there is a shimmery light pink ribbon stripe at the top of the bottom pink stripe.  I love the way it all came together!

Monkey Cake

A coworker's daughter is having a birthday party this weekend.  She really loves monkeys, so they decided on a monkey themed party.  I was asked to make the cake.  Here it is:

I think it turned out really cute!  I used color flow icing to create the decorations.  I found the monkey picture online, and free-handed the letters.

New Apron

My mom helped me make this apron. It was difficult to work with the shiny slippery fabrics but it turned out so dang cute!

Winter Trail Run

Saturday we hooked up with the folks at Teraflex for a trail run they had planned.  We met at their shop in Murray, and caravaned down to Spanish Fork where we met up with the rest of the group (almost 20 rigs in all).  We headed up the canyon until we reached our destination, Lake Fork Canyon.  It's actually a pretty easy trail (more of a dirt road, really) but it was entertaining because of the snow.  Plus, it was really pretty.  I haven't spent much time in the mountains when there was snow on the ground.

On our way down the mountain we slid to the side of the trail and into a bit of deep snow.  As we were attempting to get back on the trail, we heard a buzzing noise and suddenly had no power steering.  We managed to kill the power steering pump.  We were done pretty early in the day, so we went to the local dealer hoping we could get the Jeep fixed before we drove it home.  We could only find one Jeep dealer in the area, so we drove over there.  They took the Jeep in back for about an hour before telling us that they didn't have the part in stock!  It was a complete waste of time.

Famous Mom

My mom was on TV the other day on KSL's Studio Five.  Head over to The Middle Sister and check it out!

Redundancy

What in the world did they need that for?  Use the Jeep!  (It has a heater!)

Just a Little Leakage

Poor Jeep needs a little help!

January Family Night

As I mentioned a while ago, this month was my turn to pick the family activity. Sledding was an awesome idea, except that we have our get-togethers after work when it is a) dark and b) cold, so I vetoed it. We had seen each other several times in the last week for Christmas and Mom's birthday, so I just decided to have everyone over, feed them dinner, and either watch a movie or play games.

I made some Pumpkin Turkey Chili so that everyone could try something new. (It's really yummy to use up leftovers in - but spice it up a little with the reviewers' suggestions.)

Then we decided on games instead of a movie. We played a game of Five Crowns, then I convinced everyone to play Rock Band.  All in all, lots of fun!

Book List 2009

Pretty much everybody that knows me knows that I like to read. A lot.  At the beginning of 2009 I finally started keeping track of everything that I read.  The full list is below.  This year, I think I will have to post these at least quarterly, if not monthly.  It's a really long list...



Totals:
112 Books (average of 1 book every 3.25 days)
43,074 Pages (average of 118 pages per day)

We'll see if I beat that in 2010!