Happy V-Day & B-Day!

I am going to be out of town for Valentine's day so I surprised Fisher with an early Valentine's Day Adventure on Friday. We headed up Millcreek Canyon to enjoy the beautiful new snowfall. We brought snowshoes and hiked where no human being has been before - well maybe not, but it looked like it! I highly recommend it! It was so beautiful and we had a wonderful time being together!

In other news... My cute sister Kristi is turning 21 on the 12th and my cousins Elyse & Emily also have birthdays this week. We had a Girls night birthday party on Wednesday night - a yummy dinner and then Pizookie (I just figured out how they came up with that name - pizza + cookie - duh!). Fisher's sister shared this yummy treat with us last summer (Thanks Ba!)This delicious dessert is pretty complex. You whip up some chocolate chip cookie dough, spread it in a pan and bake till barely done, then while it is still hot you cover it in ice cream and dig in....oh so yummy! Emily loved it - as you can see from this picture!

We had lots of fun and its was sad when the night came to an end! Happy Birthday Girls!

Bedtime Battles

Many of you have heard about the battle to get Curly to stay in her bed. We have tried everything we can think of and everything that our friends have recommended to get her to stay in her bed at night... but nothing works, so we basically emptied the toys out of her room, child proofed her light switch, tied her drawers shut and hope that one day she will learn that staying in her bed makes everyone happier. Just so you don't think we are terrible parents, every night she gets one chance to stay in bed...but she fails every night and the door gets shut. We have also had to put the diapers and wipes on the high closet shelf because she kept trying to change her diaper... I won't go into detail. The other night we put her to bed and everything was quiet for a little while...then we heard her screaming for help. We ran in there to find her sitting on her dresser crying. Somehow she had climbed up the dresser that is in her closet and managed to stand on it and reach the diapers and wipes to pull them out. Then, she couldn't get back down and called for help. Silly girl! I guess she learned he lesson because she hasn't done it since.

We are so lucky to live in my grandparents basement apartment. Not only do they give us a place to live, but they also entertain us. Grandma is a card shark! Every Sunday we join them, my Uncle Dave and cousin Elyse in several rounds of cards - Threes, Hearts, Nine Innings, Kings Corner, Mormon Bridge, 7-Up, Grump, - and other games - Liar's Dice, Stack, Rummikub, Sequence, Risk, Racko, Chicken Toes. It is the ultimate old-fashioned "gaming" experience.

From Jane Eyre

I have really enjoyed reading some of the thoughts and quotes that several of my friends have blogged from books that they are reading. I also wanted to share some of the thoughts I have enjoyed reading recently. This is from Jane's discussion about forgiveness with her friend Helen Burns.
"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults of this world...with this creed, I can clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime, I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last...revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low; I live in calm, looking to the end."
This book is wonderful and the language is beautiful.

Baby It's Cold Outside!

We celebrated our five year anniversary in August... At that time we were busy - new baby, summer traveling, home improvement projects, so our anniversary fell through the cracks. We take turns planning the date each year and this year was Fisher's turn, so I have been giving him a hard time about it since. All this time he had been secretly planning an awesome anniversary date and this is how it went -

Fisher was at work and my sister was here hanging out with us. I found a little note from Fisher that basically said be ready to go at 1:00. Yay!! I love surprises so I showered, got dressed up, gave Kristi instructions (and tried to get more information out of her but she held firm), and waited anxiously. Finally Fisher arrived and we were off. First stop - a delicious lunch at Cafe Trio near Cottonwood Canyon. I had a fabulous club sandwich on panini - yum! Then we drove up the canyon. Based on the (bogus) clues Fisher had given me, I was pretty sure we were going to snowshoe up to Brighton Girls Camp (near Brighton ski resort) and when we pulled into the Brighton parking lot I knew that was the plan. Fisher got out to get the gear and when he opened the back I heard an "Uh Oh."

I replied, "What? You forgot the snow shoes?"

"Yup, forgot the snow shoes... but that's okay, I have skis!"

I was so excited! I use to ski all the time with my pal Ash and my family, but now I am lucky if I go once a year. Sneaky, sweet Fisher had rented telemark skis (even better) form campus rec and bought two night skiing passes for Brighton. It was a very fun evening (inspite of the scarey look on my face in the picture)!




We have had lots of snow this winter, probably the most I've ever seen of my five winters in Salt Lake. Apparently we can't get enough snow play here, so last weekend we headed up to my Grandpa's cabin near Swan Valley for more snow play. Here are some photos of that excursion and other activities.

Fisher's family came to the cabin with us. We had lots of fun sledding, snowmobiling, playing games and the Wii, eating...

The snow was so deep that Curly could hardly walk, but she loved it. She managed to dig that swing out and go for a ride (I think she had a little help from her aunt).

I had to put this picture in of Fisher and Lou. He seems to think our kids need abs of steel, so he does this little trick with them to develop their back and stomach muscles. I call it "The Mermaid" because they look like a mermaid on the front of a ship. Good thing he is going into physical therapy so he has someone other than babies to make exercise.

Curly picked out those sunglasses for herself and Lou. She thinks she is one cool cat and wears them all the time.

Happ - Happiest Season of All!

Does anyone else get a little sad when the holidays end... they haven't even ended yet, but just the thought of returning to "normal life" makes me a little blue. That means Fisher will go back to school and we won't get to see family almost everyday (which is a good thing if you like your family) and no more games every night (which is a good thing too). It has been a great Christmas! A little hectic at times, but so much fun to see Curly get excited about giving and receiving gifts (obviously she liked the receiving part more). We were lucky to have my sister spend Christmas with us. She spent the summer at BYU-Jerusalem and I guess that inspired the rest of my family (except my brother and his wife) to go to Israel for a 15 day tour during Christmas... so poor Kristi had to hang out with us and Fisher's family. We loved it!

Some Favorite Christmas traditions with Fisher's family -

- The sibling gift exchange and opening of "The White Stocking." The stocking is the special secret container for our goals for the year. We write them on index cards, fold them in half and put our name on the front, then put them in a stocking made of white lace. Mom Lake puts them away and then at the end of the year we get to review our goals and make new ones. I actually achieved 3 of my 4 goals this year! Don't be too impressed, one of the goals was to actually plan 4 meals each week and then prepare them.

-The "Puddles Print" - This tradition started when Fisher and his siblings were little and had to wait for their parents to get up before opening their stockings on Christmas morning. I am not sure of the exact history, but they created a "Puddles Print" newspaper for their parents one year - with each child contributing stories, cartoons, etc... Every year after that they would do some project to kill time until their parents woke up. The Puddles Print has continued with all the original siblings and inlaws contributing and Fisher's sister in law compiling the paper. She always does a fabulous job and it so fun to read and see what a creative family we have.

- The German Christmas Eve party. My mother-in-law and her only brother are fully German. Every Christmas Eve we get together for a traditional German dinner - Rouladin, Roetkoe, and potato dumplings with gravy. I like all the food, except for the potato dumplings - they take hours to make and taste like tasteless, dry tapioca pudding squished into a big heavy ball. But, don't put too much stock in my critique. The Lake family loves them (or at least their German pride requires that they say that). This year we also did a nativity with the children. Curly was supposed to be a "lepard" (shepard), but decided to be grumpy instead. Louwas a sweet little angel.

- Christmas Gift Riddles - Dad Lake labels all the Christmas gifts with picture and word riddles. You can't just hand out the gifts because you don't know who they are for.

- Saturday bowling - The Saturday after Christmas the whole family goes bowling at 7:30 a.m. The original reason for going so early is that the games were super cheap that early in the morning, I guess the tradition stuck. After bowling, the whole family eats brunch together. There was one hitch this year, the traditional bowling alley was set for demolition...so we had to wait to go later and pay three times the price at a fancy bowling alley. It was still well worth it.