It's CHRISTMAS!!!

It finally came! After all the shopping and snow and countdowns and everything else that comes with this time of year, Christmas day is here. Megan and I have had a very relaxing and enjoyable Christmas. We were able to sleep until 8:30 AM and take our time getting ready for the day's activities. We opened our presents (thanks to everyone that gave us gifts) and were very grateful for all that we received. Later in the morning, we drove down to Payson to spend time with Megan's family and open more presents. We made quite a haul this year!

Since we don't have kids, I made Megan wait at the top of the stairs so I could get her picture as she came down Christmas morning.

Megan stuffed my stocking with yummy treats: Skittles, Red Vines, Fruit Smiles, and Cheddar Jalepeno Cheetos!

I got Megan two storage containers for her gluten-free flours (see her earlier post to understand why this is a big deal)

Quite possibly my favorite gift this year. I love my wife!

Megan with all of her goods.

My 2010 Christmas Haul

Megan's parents bought us this bookcase as an early Christmas gift. We love it!

We express gratitude for all that we have received, especially the gift of our Savior, Jesus Christ. He truly is the light and life of the world. It is His birth, on that 1st Christmas night, that we celebrate. We love you all! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Preparations (and Sugar Cookies!!!)

Megan and I kicked off the final week before Christmas by decorating our stockings and making gluten free sugar cookies. We braved the snow storm to go to Spanish Fork to buy decorating supplies. Thanks to Shopko, we have 8 different glitter glue colors. As you can tell, our stockings are very personalized (and AMAZINGLY AWESOME!!!!) We also made some gluten free sugar cookies. I admit that I was a little scared at how they would turn out. Last year's attempt resulted in very thin and very crispy cookies. Fortunately, we used a better recipe that gave us nice, soft, delicious cookies. Thanks to Mom Hays for the great GF cookbook!

Megan hard at work decorating

Notice the basketball, the Y, and pi

Which one is better? You be the judge!

Frosting the yummy cookies

Megan wrapping up the final cookie

So Much Snow!

So, last Tuesday (21st), Brett and I woke up to a ton of snow. The day before, it had started snowing in the morning, and really never stopped until Tuesday in the late afternoon. It was my school district's last day of school before the break, so I left for work and got stuck on our road and Brett had to push me out. I trudged very slowly down to school on the horribly icy and poorly plowed roads only to find out that the district had declared it a snow day. So I made my way back home after taking a nice early morning tour of Mapleton and Spanish Fork :( . Brett had to plow the driveway 3 times. Luckily we have some old folks on our road who love their snowblowers, enough to plow the neighbors' sidewalks. When it was all said and done, we had almost two feet of snow. It was insane!

All the snow Brett shoveled that day!

The road just north of us. They didn't plow our neighborhood until about 3 pm.

My Gluten-Free Life

I really don't mind eating gluten-free. I've done it for so long that it would be really weird to actually eat wheat. I quite enjoy it actually. It forces me to be creative and try new recipes, most of which are delicious! I was noticing the other day that I have quite an array of different flours and starches that I bake with to make bread, cookies, and other tasty treats. Looking at them all made me laugh, especially since they are all in plastic bags rather than storage containers. Luckily, I've recently begun labeling them all so I can tell them all apart.

Christmas Tree!

I thought I would post a picture of our pretty tree. We decided to get a live one to put in our entry room. It's pretty tall, and we can't get it to stand up straight, but you can't tell :) Thanks to Mom Hays for the cute decorations!!! We have a fake tree in our downstairs room, with basketball ornaments on it....need I say more?

Lately

Okay so lately I've been a bad blogger. It kind of makes it hard when you don't have internet at your house :) Anyway, we're both just really busy with work, especially now that basketball season has started. Something that happened just a few weeks ago is that I became Primary President in my ward....just a tad unexpected. I was really overwhelmed at first, but then I realized, oh yeah, I have counselors. And they're great! So it will be an adventure, and I'm more excited now than I was before. Pretty much, I get to work with kids 6 days out of the week! Well that's all for now, my lunch break is just about over!

Saving Springville, one CERT member at a Time

For the past several weeks, Brett has been attending CERT classes Springville City has offered. CERT stands for Community Emergency Response Team. He learned all about how to help the community during different kinds of emergencies. He says that the big seller on whether or not he would take the class was the fact that when they finished, they got a hard hat. Who in their right mind would turn down a green hard hat???

What Can I Say?

So, last week I had almost a 14-hour day at work, thanks to lovely parent-teacher conferences. I didn't get home until about 9:40. I was exhausted and not in the best of moods. As I pulled into the garage, I noticed a piece of paper stuck to the door. Brett had written me a welcome home note, complete with pictures of pretty flowers! That's right, he got out the colored pencils and drew me a beautiful bouquet of flowers because he couldn't find any real ones at Wal Mart. It definitely made my evening! What can I say, I definitely won the husband lottery :)

UEA Break

There are few things that bring more joy to a teacher than a break. Since Labor Day, Megan and I have been looking forward to the next school break-UEA (or fall break). The closer we got, the more anxious we became. Oh how we wanted to leave grading, IEPs, meetings, and I-15 construction traffic behind for a few days!

We made arrangements to stay 2 nights at the Zermatt resort in Midway, UT. Megan's mom has access to a time share at the resort that was available during UEA. We showed up yesterday afternoon and settled in to our room. We went into Heber after dinner to buy a frozen tasty treat at a local place called Dairy Keen. They are famous for their thick shakes. Megan and I both agree that there are none better! Megan enjoyed a Snickers shake (don't be too jealous Dad) and I opted for the fresh Peach and Raspberry shake.

We made the trek into Park City today (Friday) to visit the Olympic Park. I was on my mission during the 2002 Winter Olympics and never took the opportunity while I was at BYU to check out the park. It is a pretty neat facility. There is a museum that chronicles the development of skiing in Utah and also has many exhibits from the 2002 games. We also saw the training area for aspiring aerial skiers and the bobsled/luge/skeleton track. Enjoy the few pictures we took below:

This is a replica of the 4 man bobsled that won gold in the 2010 Winter Games for the USA.

Yeah, that's us...with the Olympic torch...lighting the Olympic flame. Pretty cool.




If only...



If I had flowing hair (like the French Ice Dancer from the picture above), I would let it flow in the wind as I skied really fast down mountains.



This is the final curve on the bobsled track.

Successful Pocket Diet

I spent the majority of nights this summer dealing with numbness in my right leg. I would be fine throughout the day, but around 9 pm, I would begin to lose feeling. At first it was annoying, but I thought it would go away. When it didn't, I started to think about visiting a doctor or chiropractor. Thanks to forgetfulness (or laziness or cheapness) I never made an appointment. I figured I would just man up and deal with it. Then came a stroke of genius-moving my wallet to my front pocket. The numbness in my leg was on the same side as my wallet and I thought maybe sitting on my wallet was the cause of my problem. Lo and behold, it worked. I have not had any numbness since moving my wallet and I couldn't be happier. I cannot take full credit for this idea though. My inspiration came from an episode of Seinfeld. Who says TV is bad for you?!