Snow

It's been a snowy week.  Okay, a snowy-snowy week.  It has snowed and snowed, which required shoveling and shoveling.  On Tuesday we got about a foot of the white stuff.  I shoveled 3 times that day.  I even had a helper! 

Then on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, we had bitter cold weather... like 1 F at 6:30 in the morning and never getting above 15 F during the day.  Today we woke up to a new storm and got another 6"+ of snow.  Good thing shoveling snow is considered aerobic exercise.  This could be a long winter.

Messiah Sing-in at Abravanel Hall

Last Sunday Jonathan and I went to the big Messiah Sing-in in Salt Lake. 

It was so fun to sing the Messiah with a few thousand of my closest friends accompanied by the Utah Symphony.  It was impressive to listen to Jonathan sight-sing the tenor part of the Messiah.  He can hit some high notes!  The only disappointment was that my favoritest chorus wasn't part of the program.  I guess I'll save it for the car!  The best part was that we got to have/do an encore... the Hallelujah Chorus twice in a night is divine.

'Jing's Annual Photo

Here's the 2013 picture of 'Jing in the Christmas Tree. 

This poor tree needs to be retired.  It's branches are so droopy... I wonder who could possibly have bent them... I'd replace it if the cat promised to stay out of it!

Dollar Tree Oddities

On Friday I was in the local Dollar Tree buying some stuff to send up to Jonathan to help him endure the last bit of this semester.  Miles wasn't with me which meant he wasn't asking for something every 4.379 seconds so I had time to actually look at what is available for purchase at Dollar Tree.  You know, they sell some pretty unique items, including some that before Friday, I never knew existed.  Below are the Top 3 Strange Things for Sale at the Lindon Dollar Tree.

Number 3- Canned Strawberries.  Really?  There's a demand for canned strawberries?  I thought frozen ones were nasty enough.

Number 2- Canned Banana Cream Pie and Key Lime Pie Fillings.  That's just nasty.  And they're made by Musselman's?  I thought they were legit.

Number 1- The Home Drug Testing Kit for Marijuana!  Wow!  And for only a dollar you can have peace of mind that your teenager really is just stupid and not high!

 

Santa Visit 2013

We just got back from taking Miles for his annual visit with Santa.  He's been really excited to go tell Santa that he wants a candy cane, a Magic 8 Ball, and a Frontier airplane.  I was fairly certain that when it was his turn, Miles would freak out and refuse to talk to Santa.  I was wrong.  Miles got really excited when we walked into the room and he saw Santa.  Then when it was his turn, Miles hurried over Santa and climbed up onto his lap and told Santa exactly what he'd been rehearsing at home.  He was excited to get a candy cane and a treat bag, but was a bit confused as to why he didn't get a Magic 8 Ball right then.  Hopefully he'll still want one when Christmas comes.

Other Things that Make Me Happy

Scenes like this make my evening. 

All 3 boys playing together (sort of).  Makes me so happy.  With big ages gaps, you never know what you're going to get, and I thought this was nearly perfect.

I like scenes like this too! 

Mmmmmm, pie.  This year we had 13 different desserts- the traditional pumpkin pie, as well as the following pies: apple, peach, dark chocolate mousse, lemon cream cheese, chocolate cranberry nut, banana cream, coconut cream, Oreo, raspberry, pecan, and a pumpkin cheesecake, and Oreo turkeys.  Oh yum.  Too bad we ate dinner first!

Oh, these people also make me happy. 

It was a nice Friday Thanksgiving.  Glad I got to share it with 65% of my family (missed you East Coasters!), and sorry for the "hey look, we're eating" pictures.

One Thing that Make Me Happy

I rediscovered a frivolous "happy" thing on Saturday.  Yesterday I got the boys to haul in the 3 big Christmas Trees.  It's pretty much their most favorite thing to do so it only took a week of nagging for this to happen.  So the tree boxes were hauled in and they disappeared to the MOA for the art exhibit.  Fine.  It was scheduled.  I decided to embrace the artificial trees and set them up myself.  I started with the slim 9' in the living room.  Bam!  No problem, just a big sigh when I looked at the branches all mashed together and all I could see was all the "fluffing" that I needed to do. I HATE fluffing the fake trees.  Well, I decided to ignore the fluffing part and put together the small tree- the 7.5' fake tree for the family room.  Now this tree I hate dealing with.  It's heavy and pokey.  Well, I hauled out the stand and stuck the base part of the tree in it followed by the middle section of the tree.  Then I realized something was wrong.  It looked too short. That's when I remembered that I elevate this tree atop four No.10 cans and a piece of particleboard.  I went and got the cans and tried carrying them all at once and dropped them- banged up my thigh, knee, and foot.  Bummer.  This time I decided to carry them upstairs two at a time.  Then I had to disassemble the tree.  I pulled out the middle tree section (which is heavy), then pulled the base (which is heavier) out of the stand, then moved the stand and put up the platform.  Then I reassembled the heavy tree and stood back and saw how absolutely smooshed the tree was.  I was not going to fluff that tree right then and there.  It looked truly awful.  So, I had 2 smooshed fake trees up and it was time to attack the monster tree- the full-sized 9' beast that goes in the dining room.  The only thing I could think about was how much fluffing that tree was going to take and how much I did not was to do that.  So I hauled the 4 sections of the tree out and began assembling it (and messed that up as I attached section 3 to the base (looked really silly).  I put the base into the stand and stood back in amazement as the branches fell into place.  The tree looked good.  I attached the next section, and while it was the wrong piece, the branches looked nice again.  Then I remembered- this tree is a "memory" tree and it knows how to fluff itself!  I was so excited to remember this because that meant that I didn't have to fluff this tree.  I happily put the tree together correctly, admired it for a split second, then started fluffing the other two trees.