Snowshoeing in North Fork Park

Today Jack and I went snowshoeing in North Fork Park in Liberty. We had an absolutely fantastic time! This first pic is a beautiful shot of Snowbasin Ski Resort on our way up to the park. It was an absolutely beautiful day!

It was such an absolute blast for both Jack and I. He absolutely loves the snow and had so much fun running around playing with other dogs. I had an absolute blast just hiking through the snow and enjoying the fantastic scenery!

We saw three moose, Jack was barking at them like crazy!! I was just glad that they weren't hungry!
Jack was absolutely exhausted after a long day of snowshoeing! He came home and crashed. We both had so much fun. What a great day.

Christmas Fun

The holidays were full of lots of fun activities this year. This is going to be a whirlwind timeline of my holiday's.
On Christmas eve, I went skiing with Ben and Spencer and several of their other friends. We went to Snowbasin ski resort. It was an absolutely beautiful day with a lot of fresh powder. I could not have asked for a better ski day. It was absolutely perfect. At lunch we all went to John Paul Lodge and ate cheeseburgers and absolutely delicious hot chocolate. This is a pic of me in my Arab ski gear (that is what the guys were calling it anyway) It was really cold out that day! I had to stay warm somehow!
And this pic to the left, just shows how absolutely beautiful the Christmas Eve day up here was.
After skiing, I took Jack his Christmas present. He was incredibly happy to get his little gift. I have gotten him the same gift for the last several years......the three foot long rawhide bone does not look too big for him.
On Christmas Eve night, my family has a tradition to have a candlelight dinner. We always eat honey baked ham and those fantastic funeral potatos. Afterwards we had fun family time. These are some of the pics of our after dinner fun.Caden, Chase and Carter playing football on the Wii. Having a complete blast! Cute McKenzie waiting to open presents. Tom and Allison having an after dinner jam session. Allison had written a beautiful song and was playing the piano and singing the words when Tom came in with the guitar and improvised. It was fantastic. Tom and Caden having a jam session. It has been really fun to have Tom back from Maui for the holidays.

It has been really great to spend time with family for the holiday.

I Believe!!

I spent Christmas Eve at my parents house in Eden with my sister and her husband and kids. As we were preparing for Santa to come, we threw some "reindeer food" out on the front porch in case his reindeer got hungry during their long night! We also left Santa some milk and cookies.
This morning when I woke up, I wanted to see how much it had snowed over night since it was an absolute blizzard up here.
When I opened the door, this is what I found....
the unmistakable evidence that Santa is real, and that his reindeer were at our house last night and obviously enjoyed our little snack for them.
In all honesty, what are the odds that we are going to put out some "reindeer food" and have an animal leave footprints on this one important night? This is a Christmas miracle! Santa and his reindeer ARE real! I Believe!!

25.71

This is what I just paid for an entire tank of gas for my SUV!! Yep, you read that right....$25.71. This is a moment for the record books!!

I'm just not feelin it!

This is kind of an unusual post for me to do, because anyone who knows me well, knows that I am in love with the Christmas season and all that comes with it. I normally love the Christmas tunes (which now start the day after Halloween), the decorations, the festive spirit, the snow, etc. But for some reason, this year I am not feeling it. Can you say Bah Humbug?!? Can we just skip Christmas this year? You know that movie "Christmas with the Kranks" they decide to skip Christmas and go on a cruise. That seems like a really good deal right now. This lack of Christmas mood could be for several reasons. Number one, the fact that Christmas tunes start the day after Halloween....by the time Christmas actually comes around, I am so sick of hearing them that I would rather listen to anything else! Secondly, it finally snowed here in Utah! That is a huge deal for me. It was incredibly cold, and yellow outside (weeds). It is hard to feel like Christmas when there is no snow on the ground. Now that it has snowed and snowed and snowed, I finally am feeling like Christmas could be right around the corner. I might be able to pull this one off. It is like the hail mary pass in the end of the game, maybe the Christmas spirit can finally arrive!!

Dog Sitting

My friends Tyler and Aleisha asked me if Jack and I would come over and watch their two dogs for a couple days while they were in St. George. They have a great dane named Elroy and a Lab mix named Chance. The three dogs got a long so fantastically!

My favorite thing about it, was that Jack ate a little piece of humble pie. Jack has always been the biggest dog of all of his friends. He weighs 100 lbs and is pure muscle. He is a big dog! Well, this week, Jack met an even bigger dog! Elroy is at least a full head taller than Jack and weighs around 120 lbs. It was so fun to see Jack put in his place a little bit.
Jack absolutely loves to wrestle and he was able to have a lot of fun playing with the other dogs. I loved that every time I got home from work, Jack jumped on me to greet me, and Elroy immediately came over and growled at Jack and nudged him away from me. Way to go Elroy! He was so cute trying to protect me.

I had a really good time with the three dogs, and found that I really liked having several dogs around. I hope to be able to get Jack a brother one of these years.