Christmas 2009

Quent and I spent Christmas in Manuta, he had to work the weekend so we stayed put for the entire weekend. We had a great Christmas, sleeping in and opening presents just the two of us. Quent worked most of the morning and I spent the morning playing Atari Flashback. It was a great day.

We had my parents up for dinner Christmas night and they stayed through the weekend, it was good to have some family up during the Christmas weekend.

Checking out the Bird Refuge

Kerry and Joyce both received new cameras for Christmas so we decided to drive out to the Box Elder Bird Refuge while Quent was working today. Not a lot of birds to be found but we did get some great pictures of a skunk and once again the "owl" picture was blurry.

Willard Peak - The perfect day

Christmas Eve 2009

Quent and I celebrated Christmas with his family tonight. We had to change up our usual Christmas Eve as Quent has to work and be on call this weekend which requires us staying close to home. We had dinner at our house and opened presents and Quent went to Christmas Mass tonight in Brigham City. It was a great day spending time with his family and celebrating the season!

Christmas Eve - no makeup and everything!

Gingerbread Houses!!!

Tonight was the 3rd annual gingerbread house party.  We all converged on Joe & Joy's house for food, family and fun!  Quent and I gave the kids their Christmas presents as we won't be able to spend Christmas with them this year.  Instead of writing about the entire night we'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

Jim & Melissa in action

 Morgan picking out her candy

Alyssa & Steve creating the Snoopy House

Morgan adding candy to the top of her house

Rick & Ashley's final product!

Slim & Melissa's final product.

Snoopy's house

Our masterpiece!

Dinner...bring on the meat

Alyssa opening presents

Morgan's p.j.'s

Patrick and his new noisy dog!

T.J.'s new table

Playing with new toys

The kids and Aunt Cindy & Uncle Quent

Winter Wonderland

This is what we look at every morning, our backyard.

 

 

Tis the Season...

Last night was the hatchery Christmas party.  We had dinner at the home of Quent's former boss who retired in September. It was fun to hang out with the guys from the hatchery and their wives, we don't see each other very often.

We're gearing up for my family's annual gingerbread house contest which will be held on Sunday and hope to continue the festivities through the next week.

Crazy Saturday!

Quent and I went to Salt Lake on Saturday for the University of Utah basketball game.  The game was fun although the Utes lost in overtime. 

On the way to the greater Salt Lake area we stopped in Farmington to drop off an early Christmas present to Quent's mom.  Following the stop in Farmington we headed to the Garden Gate Candy store that Ashley's family owns.  Quent had never seen the candy store before and wanted to learn how to dip chocolates.  Ashley and Ricky took us on a tour of the candy store and showed us how to dip chocolates, well, Ashley's grandma showed us how to dip chocolates.  Rick, Ashley's uncle was cutting the carmels into perfect squares while cousin Josh was making his famous ice cream.  We hit lunch at Chili's before heading to the game.

After the game Quent and I drove out to Riverton to help Joy with her computer and to take some pictures of Morgan and TJ.  After a couple of hours of pizza, the Jazz and the kids, Quent and I returned home to Mantua to find seven inches of new snow on the ground!

Date Night

Quent and I decided to stay in tonight and make pizza and holiday treats. We had a great time listening to Christmas music until my iPod died, not sure what happened but I'll be researching that shortly.


We dipped Ritz crackers with peanut butter, Oreos and pretzels. I also made the chow mein noodle cookies, just like mom used to make. We're set with all the holiday candy and cookies...now to hide them and give them away so we don't eat them all.

Dinner

Before

After

Pretzels

Oreos and Pretzels

Ritz crakers with peanut butter

Oreos

Chow Mein Clusters

Hanging out with Fred

Fred is our pet deer, not really but close enough.  The neighbors asked Quent if we were feeding Fred and no we are not.  Fred has a bum leg and doesn't get around very well, he spends a lot of time in our back yard and in the field just north of our house.  On Wednesday he spent the entire day in the yard trying to stay warm in our sub-zero temperatures and wind gusts of 50 mph.  Luckily for Fred it's supposed to warm up to the 30's by the weekend.

Fred posing for the pictures

Fred's trying to stay warm in the wind.

The Holidays are Here!

Quent and I finished our holiday decorations last week and are happy to report that we haven't lost too many to the wind/snow storms we've had.  We have some large ornaments that blew around the yard and we had several candy cane lights snap in the wind but with a few zip ties and rebar we were able to fix the broken lights.

Our Christmas Village is set up on the fire place, we decided to only put up about half of it this year.  We have several more pieces but not a lot of room and we have yet to build a display case that will fit over the fireplace for the village, maybe next year.

We even put up our "Jesus set-up" as my four-year old neice calls it, the nativity is on the bookshelf next to the fireplace.

The tree has a coke theme this year accented with red and green ornaments and my silver stars. 

The front door

The front yard

The entry

The tree and village

Happy Birthday Quent!

As luck would have it, Quent decided to take the day off work.  I had planned on taking him cupcakes at work to surprise him for his birthday but he would put up Christmas lights instead.

T.J. and Morgan came up this morning to visit Uncle Quent for his birthday this morning and spent the morning helping him We all went to Wendys for lunch before T.J. Morgan and Joy headed back to Salt Lake.

Quent didn't want a birthday cake so I made him peanut butter cookies instead and tonight we went to Logan and saw the movie Blindside and then checked out the nwe Chinese Buffet in Logan.  The evening was capped off by a stop at Hobby Lobby (for me) and a stop at Walmart (for Quent). 

Happy Birthday Quent, I love you!

And the Weekend Continues...

Quent and I returned home on Friday afternoon after a whirlwind trip to SLC. While Quent took a nap (remember I'm the one that got up before 3:00 a.m.), I ran to Logan to pick up a couple of things in preparation for Morgan and T.J. to spend the night.

Joe and Joy were celebrating their 10 year anniversary so Quent and I took the kids for the night.  We told Morgan that Santa's reindeer are visiting our area getting ready for Christmas.  We showed her the deer in the fields close to our house and told her that they would be in the yard later that night to check and make sure she's still on Santa's good list. 

Saturday morning Uncle Quent took Morgan out in the yard and showed her the deer tracks in the dirt and the deer poop in the back yard.  She was so excited that Santa's reindeer were so close. Quent took the kids to feed the fish, they had so much fun feeding the fish, T.J. even put his hand down in the water with all the trout.

Morgan and I made red rice krispy treats for the football game later that day and got everything ready for my family to come up and watch the game.  That afternoon my family came up to watch the BYU/Utah football game in which Utah lost in overtime, a game we so wanted to win but in a rebuilding year it was good the Utes didn't get blown out by BYU. 

By 7:30 p.m. the house was empty and semi-clean. 

Wow what a busy weekend.  I was happy to have Sunday to relax and take a nap!

T.J. coloring

Helping Aunt Cindy make treats.

Black Friday - A Great Success

Quent and I stayed at Joe and Joy's Thursday night so that Joy and I could go black Friday shopping with Joy and Ashley.  We arrived at Joe and Joy's house just after 10:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving and Joy and I plotted out our plan.  Joe was convinced that because we needed to be home by 7:30 a.m. so that we could get Morgan ready for the WVC Christmas Parade that we would only be able to go to one store.  Boy was he wrong.

I woke up at 2:45 a.m. and Joy and I were on the road by 3:05 a.m.  We picked up Kami (Joy's soon to be sister-in-law, the one I may loose my favorite aunt status too) and headed to Walmart where we would meet Ashley.  We scouted out all of the items we wanted and the four of us were in place by 4:00 a.m.  In the mean-time we all made friends with others in the store that had agreed to pull items for us and vice-versa.  The store was officially to start black Friday at 5:00 a.m. however about 4:35 a.m. there was a frenzy in the store and we were on our way to getting everything we wanted.  We were in the checkout line and were out of Walmart at 5:00 a.m.

We were off to Target.  After a brief tour around Target, Joy picked up everything she needed (including a Microwave for Joe for his classroom) and by 6:00 a.m. we were out the door at Target.  We then decided to go to JoAnn's to pick up flannel for Joy. We picked out the flannel and then waited for it to be cut. At 7:30 we were at the front of the line to get it cut, we were back at Joe's house at 7:45 a.m.  (a few minutes late but we accomplished everything)

Joe and Joy took Morgan to the start of the Parade route and Quent and I soon followed.  We met my parents at the parade and had a great time at the West Valley City Christmas Parade.  Morgan's dance class was in the parade on a float.  The older kids that are in the same dance company marched in front of the truck/trailer that Morgan was riding on.  Morgan had so much fun she said she can't wait to be in a parade again.

Joy and T.J. prior to the Parade.

The boys hanging out before the parade.

Morgan on the float

Morgan posing for her picture after the parade.

Thanksgiving!!!

Quent and I had a busy Thanksgiving. We started the day off in Mantua and had a great breakfast cooked by yours truly. Following breakfast we packed up the car and headed south for a crazy couple of days.

First stop Farmington to drop off a frozen salad for Quent's family dinner. Next off to North Salt Lake to drop off some stuff at my sister Nicole's house. We left my sister's house with our niece Alyssa and headed to my parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It had been three years since I spent Thanksgiving with my family and Quent's first Thanksgiving with my family. We enjoyed a turkey dinner and all the trimmings, it was a great meal and we all had a great time spending time together.

We left my parents house around 4 p.m. and headed north to Quent's parents house where we not only got to share in their Thanksgiving leftovers but at the urging of Quent's uncle Eldon went outside at 6:07 p.m. and saw the space shuttle and space station as they orbited through the galaxy. We spent time visiting with Joyce, Bill and Kerry, it was great to see Joyce up and around following six weeks of hospital/rehab center after her knee replacement.
We left Bill and Joyce's house around 9 p.m. and headed to my brother Joe's house where Quent and I spent the night in preparation for Black Friday Shopping!

Giving Thanks!

Quent and I have been in Mantua for a full year and we've loved every minute of it.  We've been blessed to be close to both of our families and have enjoyed spending time with everyone on a regular basis.

We're thankful that we can spend today with both families and hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

The Eagles are Back!

While Quent was working today he noticed that the bald eagles were back at the hatchery.  So he ran home and grabbed the camera and ended up getting some great shots.