New Year, Same Old Stuff

It’s almost been a week already since I last posted, I can’t believe how quickly time flies. I’m generally not a big fan of January, I love the holidays, and I’m never ready to see them go. It has helped a little when a couple years ago I decided not to take down the Christmas tree in January (I have always left it up until after my birthday January 10), but to re-decorate the tree for Valentine’s Day, which stretches out the festivities, and keeps me from getting the blahs in the long wintry months of January and February.

Thursday at work we had our staff meeting, and it came as a great surprise to me that I was presented with the Leader of the Quarter award for 4th quarter 2007. I got a nice plaque, and will get a little bonus money to go along with the award (anyway I think you still get a little bonus cash, you used, to but I haven’t received anything yet, I’m guessing they just do it with pay roll). It’s good to know that even though some days I feel like I am in a rut having done this job for 8 years now, that I’m still doing a good job. It really was a complete surprise I hadn’t even thought about it, esp. as I just got it in 2005 (when I got the award for MVCI in 2003, honestly I had been working my rear off for quite a few years, so I was kind of in “well it’s about damn time” mode). Thursday night I stopped at Parson’s bakery on the way home, I had ordered some big snowman sugar cookies for Jake to take with him to celebrate his birthday at pre-school on Friday. I still remember as a kid mom making snowman sugar cookies for me to take for my birthday treat at school, and mom hand decorated every single one of them (with one of those old fashioned medal frosting tubes with the push plunger). All the other moms brought cupcakes (if they brought anything at all), so everyone was very impressed with the cool sugar cookies, and I was “cool birthday treat girl” for a whole week. I was thinking about that when I remembered I needed birthday treats for pre-school (last year we did ice cream cone cupcakes), but I just ran out of time to make sugar cookies, and then remembered that Parson’s does some really cute and big snowmen (and Parson’s cookies are so good, they are my favorites), so we went that direction. Bun Basket in Fruit Heights does cute/good cookies as well (I'm a big fan of the sugar cookie), in fact on the days I’m off work, and I get to pick up Jake our tradition is to go there for a cookie on the way home (they put oatmeal in their sugar cookies, and it’s really good). Thanks mom for the great idea, and tradition for those pesky right after Christmas birthdays!!!

Rob was suppose to leave for Reno, Saturday, but Reno got a horrible storm, the worst they have had in 6 years, and when we called the airline they said he could probably get into Reno, but getting out would be a problem. So, um yeah, we kind of wanted him to come home, so he re-booked for this weekend, and hopefully the weather will be better. We woke up to some good snow on this end Saturday morning as well, just in time for Jake’s sledding adventure with the Mangel family. Kim had called on Wednesday to say they were going to drive up somewhere for some sleigh riding Saturday, and invited Jake along, and he was super excited. They went to Cheese Park/Cheese Hill (I’m not familiar with it, it’s somewhere in Bountiful), and Jake thought that was pretty funny name for a park but he had a great time. Rob and I spent our alone time at Home Depot picking out paint for the guest room, we went with a peachy pink color as peach is my favorite color, and I’ve always wanted to do that color in a room. With the old antique bedroom set in there, I’m going for a shabby chic look in there with quilts, but I also wanted to tie in a Diego Rivera (arguably one of my favorite artists, I have his prints all over my office at work as well) print I’ve had for years (I bought it at MOMA in San Francisco, and then had it framed about 12 years ago) that I love. The print has some great peachy pink flowers, as well as calla lilies (my favorite flower), so I can bring in a lot of light blues, yellows, light greens, etc. as well. It’s going to be the girly room (which I’m sure Josh will love when he comes to stay with us at the end of the month), but I want a girly room. After picking out paint we went to lunch at Mimi’s, and got back home right as Kim called for us to pick up Jake. We were suppose to go to Wendy’s for dinner, but she had to cancel, and we’ve re-booked that until next Sunday.

Sunday woke up bright an early for church as this year we are back on the early schedule, now that they do the over lapping wards, none of the schedules are really bad anymore, at our chapel the wards start at 9:00, 11:00, and 1:00, which is much better than the old way with 9:00, 12:00, and 3:00. Since Rob ended up being in town, I passed him the buck for our Sunday School class, and he got to teach this week. He did a great job, although he was really nervous, I know he’s going to do a great job, and it’s actually fun doing the team teaching, with both of us teaching and living together it give us some time to talk about things before class, which also makes it easier (it’s hard to do that when team teaching with just someone on the ward). Sunday I started getting the cold that Rob has had all week, so we spent most of the day just relaxing, and we did Tapas (which is just my fancy way of saying “a bunch of finger food/appetizer stuff I threw together) for dinner. I actually bought myself Rachel Ray’s “No Repeats” cookbook, I know quite a few people said they didn’t really like it, because it was a lot more “fancy” type cooking than they would normally do, but I read it (I love to read cookbooks) Sunday, and I can’t wait to get started. She does a lot of stuff with pork loin, and chicken breasts which is what my freezer is full of anyway, so it should be fun.

Back to work and the usual weekly grind on Monday, Rob is still painting, Jake had pre-school, then Freestone came over for awhile, and he started back to swimming lessons again. I guess my birthday is Thursday, I will be 39, which sounds really scary, I will actually be 40 next year, which is just mind boggling, I still feel about 25, although I probably look about 60. No big plans we will celebrate later in the month, although Rob said he would take Jake birthday shopping and let him pick out a present for me. So I’m pretty sure I’m getting my very own Transformer, or Fantastic 4 figure (because obviously who wouldn’t love one of those). Friday Mom and Dad are going to head to Mesquite for a work thing for dad, so Rob is going to go over Friday afternoon to help out Grandma Great, and we will stay there Friday night. Then Rob heads to Reno, and Jake and I will hang out at Grandma and Grandpa's for the day.

Hope everyone is having a happy and healthy New Year, we love you all.

First cheesy song lyric for 2008: “Oh they say, she died one winter, when there came an early frost, and the pony she named Wildfire, busted down his stall, in a blizzard he was lost. She ran calling Wildfire…” (of course she ran calling Wildfire, if she would have run through a blizzard calling "Little Pokey Pony" then well, that would be the only way that song would make less sense than it does, next week we will explore what the heck “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” is suppose mean).