I’ve added several new recipes to my recipe box. Including
and
Pumpkin Filled Cream Puffs with Caramel-Maple Sauce
Enjoy!
I’ve added several new recipes to my recipe box. Including
and
Pumpkin Filled Cream Puffs with Caramel-Maple Sauce
Enjoy!
Posted in food | Tagged Pumpkin Cream Puff, Pumpkin Cream Puff with Caramel Maple Sauce, Pumpkin Creme Puff, Sweet Potato Rolls | Leave a Comment »

Jeff, July 2009
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We celebrated Jeff’s 48th birthday on Tuesday and Jessica’s 21st birthday on Thursday. We are not too horribly big on birthdays around this house. Everyone gets to choose the meal and cake they want and I will cook it. Jeff spent last week in California with his family for his birthday and he enjoyed that very much. Jessica spent this week settling into her new job.
Happy birthday to you both! I hope this upcoming year bodes well for each of you. You are beautiful people.

strawberry ice cream cake with chocolate covered blueberries and strawberries

Jessica at 2 years old. Also Alexis (2) and Chance (1).

Through the years - Jess (15) and DC

Jessica at 18

Birthday crew - Jeff and Jessica 2009

Berry birthday cake. Yum!
Posted in Journal Entry | Tagged birthdays, cakes, family | Leave a Comment »

Tibble Fork at daybreak

Tibble Fork at daybreak
I traipsed into the canyon in the morning hours to nab these pictures. There really is nothing that compares to the beauty of the Utah canyons during this time of year!










Deer Creek Reservoir before the storm
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged American Fork canyon, autumn, Deer Creek reservoir, Fall, harvest, September, Utah | 3 Comments »
Jeff, Chance, Justin, Quinn and I went back up to Strawberry for the last camping trip of the season last weekend. It was gorgeous. And very cold, it froze the night we were there. But I was glad we went, even though none of us got a lick of sleep and I think it gave me the rotten flu I’ve been dealing with all week. The boys are very cool to have on camping trips. They gather wood, make bows and arrows out of natural materials, and make sure the fire is kept nice and warm. Useful is what I say. Chance is an expert bowmaker and an expert marshmallow roaster. Quinn got a video of Justin catching his 7 pound trout, hopefully I can get it to upload on the blog when Quinn comes this weekend.
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I received this letter in the mail today and have highlighted the salient points. First Equity Card Corporation reported the status of our credit card to Experian because we were 9 days late on $10. Please keep this cute little letter in mind as you are sifting through your credit card invitations.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged crooked credit card companies, Experian, First Equity, First Equity Credit Card, First Equity Credit Card Corporation, negative credit reporting | Leave a Comment »

What a feast!
Jeff and I went camping with friends at Strawberry Reservoir and had so much fun. We spent hours chumming for crawfish and caught about 50 to eat. And as if chumming wasn’t enough fun, we then cooked and ate them! Good times. It is such wonderful fun to go play with just adult friends. We all have busy lives with jobs and children. Adult friends have a carefree feel to them.


morning storm

Catching the crawfish with bare hands

Hidee and Jessica on the hunt

crawfish galore

Dawna, Jessica, Chris and Hidee, stargazing

Amazingly vivid starry sky!
Jeff had some time off this week so we went hiking up Big Cottowood canyon to dog lake. It was overcast the entire time and we thought for sure we’d get rained on, but we didn’t. It was the first time I’d been here, and I was underwhelmed by the actual lake. Still, it was pretty and we saw a total of three people on the entire trek, and I really loved that.

One of the many rock formations in this canyon, it is part of the wasatch fault

Rainclouds keeping us company

Dog Lake

Leaves turning, almost Fall!

Striking peak view
Thursday night, the sky turned peachish pink. I am told it was from a fire just north of Lehi. Whatever it was, it was an eery feeling! The air was quite warm, and it felt like a premonition.

view from my window
Last night, we decided to see if there were crawfish in the Tibble Fork reservoir. So the boys and I (Chance, Justin, Quinn and JK) headed up just in time to experience a downpour. The lightning in the canyon was at intervals of 20 seconds to 3 minutes and this lasted for about 25 minutes. I didn’t even realize lightning could hit in a canyon. I guess I know better now! We had to wait in the car until the lightning subsided. We chummed, we got nothing. Can you transplant crawfish from lake to lake? This inquiring mind wants to know. The boys brought fishing poles. It got dark and cold really fast, but not before the boys circled the reservoir with JK who had the time of his life, prancing around in the 3 inches deep water on the outskirts of the reservoir. He loves being in the great outdoors, that is for sure.

Tibblefork in the rain


Mouth of the reservoir

JK, Chance, Quinn and Justin

Sunset after the rain

Skies after the rain

I loved this pic. Chance has a full body halo and JK is possessed!

Skies after the rain - Chance took from the car on the drive home
Posted in Journal Entry, Pictures, nature | Tagged crawfish boil, dog lake, strawberry reservoir, Tibble Fork reservoir, Utah | Leave a Comment »
I’m glad the kids are back in school. I have discovered that not working full time makes me lose sense of both space and time. It is surreal. I forget what day of the week it is, and the hours on the clock lose all relativity to me. My goal this upcoming month is to structure my days a bit better so I can regain my sense of time. I am loving being back home, and spend all of my days reading and baking. So while I am highly unstructured, my stress level is nonexistent!

3,800 light years away in the constellation Scorpius
I changed my desktop background this week in honor of the repair of the Hubble telescope and the amazing space pictures that are being taken! Nothing like a little sky gazing to get a pretty good feel of our ultimate insignificance.
Speaking of sky, I woke up this morning to balloons quite close to the house. I took this pic from my bedroom window at 8:15 am.

View from my window, Cedar Hills, Utah.
We spent last weekend at Lagoon. It was great fun. I have not been there for 20 years. They have a ride, the Rattlesnake Rapids. I could spend all day on it. Here are a few pics from that outing.
Jeff and I went to the Sundance Food/Wine Festival last weekend as well. Saw some friends while we were there, and tasted some amazing food. The ambiance was awesome, it was an overcast day and it is quite the sight to behold up there in the mountains with an eclectic group of people. It was an expensive event, $65 a ticket, but very enjoyable nonetheless. There were food vendors from the nearby 4 and 5 star restaurants. And lots of wine. There were some Salt Lake City restaurants like Biaggis represented, but most were from the Park City/Midway area. There were people from the Owlz bar that brought some owls. They were awesome. There was also live folk music, and you really can’t beat that. Sorry about the quality of the pics, they were taken by my cell phone.
Posted in Journal Entry, Uncategorized | Tagged Butterfly nebula, hot air balloons, Lagoon, Sundance Food and Wine Festival, Utah | 2 Comments »

Kayla and Justin
Diamond Fork Hot Springs (also known as fifth water) is a fun place to visit. It is up in Spanish Fork canyon. In order to get there you take the Highway 6 exit from I-15. It is exit 261 coming from the North or exit 260 coming from the south. Head east for about 10 miles and turn left up Diamond Fork for 10 miles to the Three Forks sign. There is a parking lot at the trailhead. The canyon to Three Forks is a gorgeous little canyon with a good size creek rambling through it.
There are some real positives to this trail. It is about 2.5 miles to get to the springs. The trail hugs the creek the entire way which is lovely because you can hear the rushing water and it is pretty wet. The trail is covered with a canopy of trees for about half the way, so you don’t have to deal with the beating sun when you are hiking. It is a moderate climb, just enough to get your aerobic exercise in on the way up, and put some pressure on your joints and feet on the way down.
There are also some downsides to the trail. At about the two mile mark, you get the sulfur smell. The canyon the creek runs through is very narrow, so the smell carries. It is very strong in some places. The other downside is the risk you take running into skinny dippers in the pools. Or rather, plump dippers because as always seems to be the case when I encounter them. I don’t mind so much that people want to get nekkid, I just mind when their body is so offensive as to scare the rest of us off.
Having said that, here’s some pics!
Posted in Journal Entry, Pictures, nature | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday on August 15th, Jeff and I celebrated our 22nd year of marriage. I can’t even hardly believe it. We celebrated it in the manner that only old people know. We walked to Bridal Veil Falls. Anyone who has been on the trail knows it is half a mile…which is not a lot. Went to Squaw Peak and saw a few hang gliders who had jumped off the peak. Squaw Peak was notorious in our college days for being the perfect make-out spot. Did we make out? Ridiculous. Came back. Decided we didn’t want to eat because neither of us were hungry, nor did we want to spend the money since I was laid off from my job last week. We went to Smiths and brought Dreyers ice cream since it was on sale $1.99 for a half gallon. Came back, ate ice cream and watched Failure to Launch.
We are the last of the romantics.
But take heart! Today we are going to the hot springs with the kids. Makes the heart go pitter patter, doesn’t it? I’m putting up pictures of Squaw Peak and Bridal Veil Falls. When we get home I’ll post pics of the hike.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged anniversary, Bridal Veil Falls, hang gliding, Squaw Peak, Utah | 4 Comments »