A Day Off for Skiing!

Yay! Teri and Kelly and I were able to get Wednesday off work to go skiing. We went to Park City Resort and enjoyed 4 inches of new snow. It was a bit icy underneath but we found that the Jupiter chair provided for the best skiing conditions. It was so wonderful! Enjoy the pics!

Richy Rich Snowbunny Skiin'

A week and a half ago, my sister Robyn and her husband were in town on an annual ski vacation and she called me... with the best news ever!! She had 6 free lift tickets to Park City and 6 to Deer Valley that they didn't use! So she gave them to me. What a sweet deal, huh?

So on Saturday last, Jen and Linda and I were able to enjoy a different caliber of skiing... at Deer Valley. In the morning it was terribly icy, but that was too be expected as we have had 2 weeks of 60+ degree weather--so we mostly stuck to the groomers. After one run we decided to go shopping for Jen a new hat. We checked out the ritsy snow gear that I had no idea even existed! Try a $730 parka on for size! Some designers just don't have taste--there were some nasty coats in those shops. Anyway, we took another run and then we had a little photo-shoot. We got one of the on-mountain photographers to take a picture of us--or so we thought. He ended up taking somewhere around 20 photos of us in four different poses! One standing together with my skis crossed in front, another with me sitting on the ground in front of Jen while she put her hands on my shoulders, a third in the "best friend" pose where we are both sitting on our sides with our shoulders touching and then lastly in our skis in a natural pose with our poles between our skis and our right legs pushed out a bit. Who skis naturally with their poles between their skis!?!? Anyway, it was all I could do to not bust out laughing!!! It was such a crack up. Could we afford the photos? Of course not. One digital copy would have been $100 or else we could have gotten the cheapest print package for $34 (two 5x7s).

So then we went for another run and then we picked up Linda (she just skied a half day with us) and "Strike 3 Boy" (his story will come in a bit). Then we went to lunch and enjoyed a $9 burger and I had some carrot cake as well. I had to try out one of the original pastries mentioned in a cookbook I got for my birthday from two of my sisters: The Chocolate Snowball, which has pastry recipes from Deer Valley. (Way cool cookbook by the way--it has green circles, blue squares, and black diamonds to indicate how difficult a recipe is to make.) By then the snow had softened so we practiced our moguls for a run or two. And then we spotted some beach chairs and decided to take a little break and sun ourselves. (I don't have any pictures of myself, Jen and Linda took some of me with their camera phones--these pictures here are the ones I took with my camera phone.) Then we took another mogul run and flirted with three very cute patrollers. Jen and I are thinking we need to go up again and try to find those patrollers. :o) Then another run and we went back to the main lodge to take a look at our photo-shoot. And then that was our day! Wasn't it lovely? It was kind of a fun and different sort of pace for our skiing. Usually we are extremely hard core, but this was fun.

So the story about "Strike 3 Boy": Well, it all begins with me sending out a mass email inviting anyone to come with me--I wanted to share the joy of skiing for free and particularly since I will not be able to use all of the tickets by April 15th when both resorts close for the season. Well, one guy, whom I had never met before, emailed me saying he wanted to go and he gave me his phone number. So I responded and told him Jen and I were leaving at 8:00 am sharp. He didn't show. So I gave him a quick call and said, "Well, it is 8 o'clock and we are leaving right now. I guess we will catch you next time." Pretty clear message right--that he is sore out of luck? Not quite. He calls me around 10:00 am wondering if we have left yet and if he can still come.... I hesitated but I decided to be nice and I told him we would have to come back to the car to get the ticket out so he could use it. STRIKE ONE. A few minutes later he calls me and asks if Deer Valley allows snowboarding but if not he could bring skis. STRIKE TWO. (I wrote in my mass email that Deer Valley is for skiers only!) Then we went to pick him up and that is when he informs us that he has never been skiing before. STRIKE THREE!! Whoa. Jen gave him a quick 5 minute intro lesson to skiing and then we turned him loose on the mountain to fend for himself. (Jen used to be an instructor at Deer Valley.) The one redeeming quality about "Strike 3 Boy" is he was extremely grateful and thanked me many times for sharing the lift ticket with him. I am sure that is not the only quality about him, but in the short time span of our interaction, that was all I gathered.

Lesson learned: only email those whose skiing/riding abilities I am familiar with. Besides that, they are usually the only ones that come anyway. Just about every time I have gone skiing this season I have mass emailed and only those I knew already were the attenders.

A Fulfilling Saturday

Ah, the scent of the great outdoors, campfire and cobbler in the Dutch Oven. I couldn't ask for anything better on a Saturday night. My good friend Ashlee and I had plans to hang out last night--go to dinner watch the movie The Holiday, but then I got a call from Nate. He invited me and whoever else to join them for a night of Dutch Oven cobbler and a campfire. It was absolutely last minute, but I loved it! Originally, Ashlee and I were going to meet them out at Utah Lake, but ended up riding with them and boy am I glad. The dirt road they said would be good was good, but the beach we were going to be on was covered in water. So we drove down a little side road that my car would have surely bottomed-out on. I seriously think I would have gotten stuck on one of the hills in the road. It was so fun to be up there playing in the great outdoors, enjoying a little fire, and riding on a dirt bike!! Yeah, Nate brought his dirt bike and I boldly asked if he was offering rides and he said Yes! So off we went (after I figured out how to put the helmet on--adventure by itself). We drove down a little road in between some grass that had grown to be like 8 feet tall. And there was so much mud on the road. At one point we had to inch by a huge mud puddle so we wouldn't slip into it. It was super fun.

The other attendees (besides me, Ashlee, Nate & Jon, Sam and Jake) were interesting and entertaining. They were super young and silly. Some girls showed up in t-shirts, sandals and capris! Talk about naivety. We (those listed previously) got a good laugh from all of them.

My other fun for the Saturday consisted of a Stake Enrichment activity to celebrate the birth of the Relief Society, having my tires rotated, changing the air filter in my car, and going shopping. Oh man. I actually found some capris that look cute on me and so I bought them. I swear 9 in 10 capris look awful on me so when I find a pair that look good on me, I buy them and a second pair too!! :o) And then I bought some beautiful shoes. I tried to find a picture of them on the internet, but I was unsuccessful. They are a peep toe pump with sexy skinny heels and they are black patent leather! So beautiful.

So yeah. That was my Saturday. Sorry for the lame internet pictures. Next time I will bring my camera to our big night of Dutch Oven dinner and dessert. Jake and I (and maybe Juls) will all bring our Dutch Ovens and do a big meal one night. Hopefully soon. And my camera will be present for that night. :o)

Evidence of a Delinquent Writer

You might wonder if my lack of entry in the past month is evident of how well I write in my actual journal. Well, you are right. Except writing in my journal is worse. I haven't written in my journal since December 10, 2006 and I even have my pretty journal! Oh well.

Well this weekend was an exciting one. My nephew, Nick, returned from his mission to San Diego and therefore spoke in church on Sunday. Most of my family from Boise came down to Logan for it and of course I came up. He did a really good job in his talk and did us family proud! We ate like royalty. My sister, Teri, in Logan, really does take care of her guests even if we are just family. We had pulled pork tacos, cowboy salsa and like 8 different kinds of cookies! It was all delectable.

This past Monday was also my dad's 68th birthday!! He is getting so old. I can't believe it. But his is a life well-lived and he looks good for his age doesn't he? All but one daughter, Joni, is here in this pic with Dad. Happy Birthday Dad!

Hmmm. What else? I have been skiing a couple of times in the past few weeks. And all have been awesome. A week and a half ago, some friends and I went to Snowbird and they had just received 16 inches the day before and the weather the day we went was sunny and clear skies! So beautiful. It was kind of wild. We went everywhere looking for fresh powder and even boot-packed it across some rocks with our skis on our shoulders to get there. It was kind of scary. Ski boots are not easy to hike in and especially across some rocks. But it was worth it. Have I said in an earlier blog entry how much I love my new skis? I love them!!! They are so awesome. I can plow through crud and everything. I am even better in the powder by virtue of those skis. Yes!

Upcoming vacations:
Many of you know me and you know me well. I plan my summer vacations well in advance. As of right now:
1. LA to visit my good, London-buddy friend, Jesse, at the end of April
2. Boise in May to celebrate my sister's, Jill, 40th birthday party at my other sister's, Robyn, cabin
3. Backpacking 10 miles into Havasu Falls in Arizona with a bunch of friends at the beginning of June
4. Las Vegas at the end of June (yuck, hot! I am too white for that kind of heat) for a business conference
5. The annual Strong Family vacation to somewhere but it always include a massive amount of hiking and heckling of me and my wannabe outdoor equipment :o)
6. A 9-day Church History Tour in the middle of October. Won't that be the most beautiful time to be back East?

That is it for now. Hopefully, somewhere in there I will be able to go up to Idaho and hike into Bear Lake with my dad. Bear Lake was our favorite fishing spot when we still had the cabin in Warren, Idaho. You can get some really yummy trout from there. Mmm.

Right now, I am reading Snowflower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Very fascinating. For some reason, Chinese culture really fascinates me maybe because it is so different. Lisa even goes into detail describing the footbinding process. So awful! I will let you know how it goes--if I like it when I have read it all the way through.

Getting Techno-Savvy, I am!

So I opened an account on Youtube tonight and uploaded my first video: the one of Chandler opening up the mistaken gift of kitchen towels on Christmas Eve. I am really quite excited because I also figured out how to add the video to my blog! So, after Youtube has finished whatever it is they have to do when you upload a video then you will be able to watch the video here on my blog! Aren't you so excited? I am.

When I loaded it onto Youtube, they gave me the html code to add it to my website or blog. I thought I was going to have to email the url link to everyone to view it from Youtube's website, but when I saw that I was super excited. I love the copy and paste feature on computers, because I copied and pasted the html code from Youtube and then pasted it into the edit html portion of my post!

So your homework assignment is to check out the post called "Christmas Wishes" from December 2006 and watch the video! Enjoy!!

I am Famous...Again!

I am famous again! Again? Yes. Last summer, I was quoted in a little snippet article in the BYU Magazine. The little article was talking about the weekly job list email that I helped put together for BYU Employment Services. Well, I am famous again. This time with respect to any Career, Job, and Internship Fairs that BYU Employment Services may take part in.

One day, while enjoying my lunch in the peace of my own office, one of the interns from Employment Services (my old office) came and begged me to be a model for the back drop and fliers they were putting together for the Career Fairs. I resisted as long as I could because I was not in my best appearance. I had forgotten to wear earrings, I was only wearing my "work" amount of make-up (almost make-up, blush and mascara) and I was not wearing one of my wonderful business suits. And it was my lunch hour! Well, the intern promised me that it would only take 10 minutes. I told him if it took longer than 10 minutes then he would owe me a Blue Bunny Cookies 'n Cream ice cream sandwich. It took longer and I got my ice cream sandwich.

The photographer was a trip. I could hear him talking to and taking pictures of Nancy (from the Student Employment Office) and he was telling her to give him the "powerful woman pose." I could have gagged right there in the hall. The one and only time he gave me that phrase I busted up laughing. Ha!

Anyway, enjoy the attached Career Fair flier. (If you click on it, it will show you a larger image of it.)

A Snow Shoeing Weekend!

Hey all! So my birthday snow shoeing was just as fun as I expected it would be. So much fun that we did it again on Saturday!

Thursday night was pretty chilly, but not too chilly for our awesome down coats! I became hot hiking up to the meadow and then stayed plenty warm hiking downhill back to the car. The company was me, Lindsey, Jen, and Dan. We brought the ever fun Potter with us. Potter is Lindsey's adorable Great Dane dog. He played with us and even barked at me when I would tackle his momma (Lindsey) in the snow. Ha!





Here I am blowing out my candles on my birthday cookie! We had hot chocolate and cookies after the snow shoeing extravaganza the night of my birthday.

Saturday was a beautiful day. Camille, Lindsey and I hiked the same trail but went much further--all the way to Big Springs. That was probably a couple miles. We got up there, ate our lunch for 5 minutes and then headed back down as it was still quite chilly and it is especially chilly to sit there in your sweaty clothes, not moving, and have the cool weather cool you off via evaporation of your sweat. Think of getting out of the shower on a cold morning. Brrr. So we headed down. When we got to the road, which was snow covered and closed to vehicles, we sat on the little light-weight sleds we brought along and sled the whole way down! It took us 10 minutes to sled the distance it took us 2 and a half hours to hike up. So fun! Absolute riot! Potter ran along and would bark at us as we sledded down. Funny dog. At one point he pulled Lindsey off the sled and started pulling her away from the sled by her Camelback. We think maybe he was scared, thought she was scared and in trouble, so he saved her. So cute. Enjoy the pics!