Christmas Break 2009

I love it when my Washington relatives come into town. My daughter feels like she has a comrade-in-arms in my niece Janene, who grew up with all brothers, just like Bronwyn is. I love talking about just anything with my sister-in-law Carolyn, who also inspires me to try new things. My two older boys like playing and trading Magic cards with their cousins. My newest experiment comes courtesy of my nephew, Jasen, who is Carolyn and Blaine's oldest child. He loves cooking and is quite the gourmand. He came across a method for making artisan bread that is so simple that my seven-year-old could do it. It's called "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day." And it literally takes about five minutes to mix up the ingredients. Wait several hours. Spend 30 seconds forming each loaf. Let sit 20 minutes. Slash. Cook. Here you are:

I thoroughly impressed my husband. Thank you Jasen!! Now I'm going to save up for one of those really awesome baking stones!

I wanted to try something new to celebrate New Year's Eve this year. Salt Lake changed their party schedule a bit and decided to spread things out over three evenings instead of just one big bash New Year's Eve. We couldn't make it up for the first two nights, although we made a valiant effort for the second night. Mother Nature had other ideas, though, so we spent the evening watching Shanghai Noon with the kids at my parents' house. They were told to cover their eyes in any (in)appropriate places.

New Year's Eve morning we visited with my sister Heather. I woke up very early and saw what the clocks were saying and thought it was time to get everyone up, even though it was still very dark outside. As I started getting going, though, I became suspicious about what time it really was. I called Time and Temperature on the telephone and quickly realized that all of the clocks in the house hadn't been changed back to standard time in November. Ooops. I sent everyone back to bed for an hour before venturing over to Heather's, where she fed us an amazing breakfast. I love breakfast. I could eat it all the time. We both got to talk with our parents:

Hi Mom and Dad!!! And we also talked with both of our sisters. Maybe this Sister Trip to England will actually happen (fingers, toes, eyes crossed for luck).

What could this crew be up to? And who are they?


Oh, yeah. Enjoying watching Taylor Lautner in whatever tv clips they could find him in. My niece is a huge Twifan.

Boys entertain themselves in rather violent ways when they are bored and waiting for a train.
It's okay. Evan lived to enjoy the evening, fortunately.

Bronwyn displays her grandparent antlers at the TRAX station. Owen thinks all of this picture-taking is just hilarious.

Evan and Liam try their hands at creating enough electricity to power up different kinds of lightbulbs. It was good for them to see what how much energy it takes to power an incandescent bulb and how little for an LED. That led to an interesting discussion about what kind of bulbs we should have in our house.

AIR!! THERE IS NO AIR!!! At least the younger three kids were willing to play along with the Buzz-Lightyear-getting-his-helmet-opened-up scenario. After all, this is Mars we're on! Owen decided his spacesuit was invisible.


The lights outside of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. We had walked the kids from the Planetarium to the JSMB, and from here we headed over to the Assembly Hall to listen to some Broadway music being performed. The music was very fun. By the time we sat down in the Assembly Hall, though, the kids were definitely tired out. We decided to go home after that, and waited for a while to take our train back south. We realized we'd made a good choice in timing because at the train stop there was a trio of loud, obnoxious young women not dressed well for the weather. The party people were starting to come out. Time to get off the roads! We stopped at Denny's for dinner on the way home. We were all so hungry by this time that no one had any trouble finishing their food.

The kids stayed up late to welcome the new year, but I went to bed. Why start out the New Year tired??