Hot Pockets...

Jim Gaffigan is one of our favorite comedians. I was able to get tickets for the show for Quent's birthday and he was in town this past weekend.  We decided to stay in town after the show and had a fantastic weekend just the two of us.  It's hard to believe we made a trip to Salt Lake and didn't end up seeing any family. 

We went to dinner before the show and enjoyed the show at Kingsbury Hall.  We stayed at the University Park Marriott and enjoyed my gold status for one more night.

I have posted a video of Jim Gaffigan and his famous hot pocket skit. 

Hangin with Aunt Cindy & Uncle Quent

Morgan and TJ came up to visit over Christmas break.  We spent two fun-filled days before Joe and Joy came up for New Years Eve.  The kids did art projects, played with the dolls, the fisher price people that Uncle Quent played with over 30 years ago.  We always enjoy having the kids up to play but always have a great time sending them home.

Uncle Quent took the kids over to work one day and the kids had a great time feeding the fish and each took turns on the fish scale. 

TJ had a long hard day at work!

Christmas Part 3

Today we celebrated Christmas with my family.  We decided to celebrate on Monday because it made better sense with everyone's schedules. We had our traditional brunch and the kids got even more presents.  It was crazy but a good time.  After having such a great relaxing day yesterday we had a crazy busy day today.

Quent and I stopped at several stores on the way home looking for a good buy on Christmas clearance.  We didn't find much which was ok.  We hope everyone had a great holiday season!

Christmas

Quent and I enjoyed a quiet Christmas at home.  We slept in, ate a great breakfast, opened presents and spent the rest of the day just relaxing.  I cooked a turkey and all the sides for dinner and I will admit it was really fun to just spend the day without having to be anywhere.  We enjoy spending time with out families but it was really fun just relaxing without all the holiday stress. 

Christmas Eve

We celebrated Christmas Eve with Quent's mom and sister.  While they all went to Mass I stayed home and cooked prime rib. We all had a great time opening presents and enjoyed each others company, it was a great night even if I did have a potato explode in the oven.

Dickens Festival

We had the opportunity to go to the Dickens Festival this past weekend.  Morgan and Alyssa were dancing at the festival and I've always had a great time looking around the festival at all the random items being sold. 

We were able to finish up our Christmas shopping at the festival and enjoy the season.  We hit up Red Iguana after the festival for dinner.  Oh how I love some good mexican food. 

Jon Schmidt Concert

Quent and I were able to attend the Jon Schmidt Christmas Concert with my parents and my brothers.  We hit up Ruth's Diner for dinner prior to the concert and enjoyed a night of Christmas music.

Jon Schmidt and Steven Shape Nelson were really fun to watch.  If you have some time I suggest you look up their piano guys channel on YouTube, they are very entertaining.

It was fun to do something cultural, we haven't done something like that for a long long time.  Below is a video from YouTube of the Piano Guys ... they performed this at the concert.  AMAZING!

A trip to the Blue Bird

I have wanted to go to the Blue Bird since moving to Mantua.  The Blue Bird is a throw-back restaurant in Logan complete with soda fountains and homemade candy.  Friday night we had my faculty Christmas party and it happened to be at the Blue Bird. 

We had a great time (and the food was great) at the party, it's always fun to see the coworkers away from school.  We had a fun white-elephant exchange which at one point I had an amazing Gene Simmons doll.  Unfortunately for me, I didn't get to keep it for very long.

It was a pretty quiet weekend for us, next weekend is action packed with more holiday fun.  It's a good thing the holiday's only come once a year!

Quent's Birthday Part 3...

It's been a busy weekend.  Ashley, Rick, Joe, Joy, TJ and Morgan drove up for dinner Friday night, we had a great dinner at Maddox and had dessert at our house.  Rick and Ash slept over and Rick helped Quent with a few projects around the house/hatchery.

Saturday afternoon was the big gingerbread house party (see previous post). Today, Joyce and Kerry drove up for dinner and to celebrate Quent's birthday.  We had a great weekend but boy was it busy, we are looking forward to a fairly quiet week.

Annual Gingerbread House Party

My family celebrated my mom's birthday, Quent's birthday and Melissa's birthday at the annual gingerbread house party.  Everyone got into action this year building their gingerbread houses.  We had a great time with the family and are already planning what we're going to do next year.

Giving Thanks...

Where did November go?  I must get better at keeping up the blog!  Quent had to work on Thanksgiving so we had a quiet lunch with turkey and all the fixings.  I left Quent at home and headed down my parents house to celebrate the day with my family.

We didn't do any black Friday shopping this year and spent a quiet weekend at home.  It was a much needed five-day break!

Fun in the Snow!

We had a early snow storm this week and had just enough snow to cover the ground, ice up the driveway and of course play with the kids in the snow.  Joe and Joy had to run some errands in Logan so they dropped off the kids on their way through so that they didn't have too spend anymore time in the car than they needed too.

Uncle Quent got out the sleds and pulled the kids in the yard.  There wasn't enough snow or ice on our sledding hill so the kids had to settle for playing in the snow with Uncle Quent.

South Dakota Recap

Here is a link to each day of our road trip.  Enjoy!

Mileage:  2175 miles

(click on the day to see the daily recap)

Day 1 -- Casper, WY

Day 2 -- Spearfish, SD

Day 3 -- Blackhills, SD

Day 4 -- White Lake, SD

Day 5 -- White Lake, SD

Day 6 -- Mitchell, SD

Day 7 -- Mantua, UT

Road Trip Day 7 ... Mantua, UT

We left Don and Leanne's house about 8 a.m. (MT) and were headed to Casper.  We decided once we got to Casper that we would just keep going.  965 miles and 15 hours later we arrived home.  We did a little unpacking and called it a day!

Road Trip Day 6... Mitchell, SD

Sunday was a fairly quiet day after breakfast at the White Lake Cafe, Quent went hunting with the group and Tiff and I spent the morning chatting away.

One of the things I wanted to do while I was out in White Lake was to kill a turkey.  I have never shot anything in my life and I actually didn't shoot a turkey, one of the cousins did and Quent and Gunner (Tiff's son) went out into the shelter belt to find it.  I posed for a few pictures with the bird and we brought home the turkey breast.  (And the tail feathers).

We spent some time taking pictures around the town.  I could spend 30 days there photographing the small town, it's a small, fun farming town.

That afternoon we headed to Mitchell, SD to see the "World's only Corn Palace".  The building was smaller than I thought it would be but the corn decorations were cool.  They were in the process of redoing part of the corn decoration, it's neat to see how they do it.

After leaving the Corn Palace we headed over to Loomis, SD to spend the night at Don and Leanne's house.  They had their entire family there (minus Troy who lives in New York and a few grand kids and inlaws).  It was fun to see them again, it's been over four years since they came out to Utah for the wedding.  It was great to finally meet Michelle as well.

The night was spent with a big family dinner, and watching Sunday night football, the perfect ending to a great trip.

Mileage:  42 miles

 Around White Lake, SD

The Turkey!!!

The Corn Palace, Mitchell, SD

Don and Leanne