These are pictures with some of my favorite people!  These are our friends that we do the most couple dating with and it is pretty much the best. thing. ever!  We love hanging out with our friends and consider ourselves really lucky to live so close to many of them.

These were taken after a night of bowling.  As you can tell Mike and Candice came in first place… although the rest of us were not far behind.  I love these pictures because they really show everyone’s personality!  I took three pictures trying to get a good one… instead I got three GREAT ones!

Take One

Adam, Tiffany, Candice, A Very Intense Mike, and Jas

Take Two – Failed

Adam, Tiffany, A Very Enthusiastic Candice, Mike, and Jas

Take Three – Still Failed

Adam, A Super Cute Tiffany, Still Enthusiastic Candice, A Scary Mike, and Jas

One of my favorite family traditions growing up around the holidays was watching (and smelling) my mom make cinnamon rolls.  Now these aren’t just any cinnamon rolls (like the fluffy frosted kind you might think of) these are more like pie-crust cinnimon rolls.  The thing that makes these better then all the rest is that they are homemade with lots of butter and sugar!  And not just ANY kind of sugar… it has to be the “right” kind mixed with the “right” amount of butter and cooked for the “right” amount of time so they are just caramelized enough.   I say “right” because there is no recipe that you can follow that makes these come out right every single time.  You get it right by being experienced!  I swear my mom is the only one that can truly get these right, but the rest of us will die trying!  (i’m pretty sure that my family are the only people that will appreciate this post).

As long as I can remember these cinnimon rolls have always been apart of our holidays, and they date back to my great-great grandmother, however in recent years (as my mom has gotten older) this tradition has been harder and harder to continue.  Since Mishell and I needed sister time, and she didn’t get any cinnimon rolls this year, we thought it would be fun to try and makeup a batch together (especially since I have been really wanting to learn how to make this recipe, but I needed an experienced person to help me if I had a fighting chance).

Here we are off to a great start… so we think!

Keep rolling… We are so close!

They looked SO right… but they tasted SO wrong!

About half way through rolling out the dough Mishell knew that something had gone seriously wrong!  She knew when the dough was sticking to the counter (since that is not suppose to happen) that we used the wrong kind of butter.  This is a huge mistake and one that you cannot recover from.  I really wasn’t kidding when I said you have to use the RIGHT kind of everything.  The wrong butter ended up being a deal breaker in the end.  Although we were sure that we used the wrong butter, we still had to call mom to verify.  Yep, we got it all wrong.  Not only did we use the wrong butter but the wrong sugar too!  Oh well, we had lots of fun trying and we’ll get it right next year (especially since we are going to bring my mom next time to watch us do it)!  These are so much work to roll out and make that you really don’t want to mess them up.

After all that baking Mishell needed a glass of milk – so it was off to the store for us!  (we had to go to the store since Jason and I never keep milk in the house… this drives my siblings crazy when they come over)!  Just as we pulled out of the garage we saw this little snowlady!  She was so cute so we had to take a picture.  It totally made our day!  The kids in our neighborhood are so cute!  I had a great day with Mishell and I’m so lucky to have her as my sister.  She is fun to be around, she is a good listener, and she is pretty darn cute herself!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Wow, I can’t believe that it’s already 2012!  This last year was such a blast and we had so many highlights throughout the year.  Looking forward to the new year, I want to set some goals that I will easily be able to mark some progress by.   I heard from someone that instead of making a list of 20+ goals (that they would never reach anyway) they make just one for each category in their life they want to improve.  I thought that was a great idea!  After thinking about it, I’ve come up with my own catagories and goals I wanted to accomplish this year.   I figure if I post about them then I am more likey to keep ALL of them.  Here it goes:

Mentally:  Go back to school and finish my degree.  I am only 6 credits away from getting my associates degree in generals or 12 credits away from getting my associates with an Emphasis in Business.  I know now that I should have never stopped 10 years ago, it would have been so much easier to just finish out my last 2 semesters but I got caught up in working and life and thought I needed a break… 10 years later I think my break is over and that it’s time to go back and wrap things up!  This is my year!

Spiritually: Read the Book of Mormon.  Believe it or not I have never read this book all the way through, cover-to-cover, in a normal amount of time in my entire life.  I’m kind of embarrassed about this, but  that’s not the reason for my goal.  This year I have had a serious desire to know the scriptures more, to have a greater testimony, and to be able to recall the stories and meaning of the stories much faster then I do.  So this goal isn’t just about reading… it’s about learning, knowing, and gaining a testimony of the knowledge that can be had through just a little more effort on my part.  I think I am most excited about this goal!

Physically:  Run a Half Marathon.  It seems like everyone I know is a runner!  Ok, so maybe that’s not true, but it seems like I know a lot of people that have ran a half marathon and its time to add MY name to the list.  My friend Liz has ran 20+ half marathons and has convinced me to join her in training this winter.  I am a little nervous to train through the winter months but I think I can do it!  It also helps to know that for all of my runs (long and short) that I will have a friend to help push me past my own barriers and be there to celebrate with me with I do!  I have made this goal official by signing up for the Hurricane Half Marathon on April 28th.

Financially:  Buy a new house (for a steal of a deal).  This has recently been on our radar a lot more since Jason’s work is moving to the point of the mountain at the end of January.  With all of the road construction he is not looking forward to his commute.  Not only that, but since he is a computer engineering genius, it only makes scenes to move to the point of the mountain since it is turning into the software hub.  We really like the North-East Lehi area and are on the hunt for a home in the Traverse Mountain communities.  We like this area because it doesn’t feel like the “Lehi” (yeehaw!) that is old and ugly (that’s how I picture Lehi in my mind) yet it is still close to the freeway, and not far from many of our family and friends.  I think Jason is most excited about this goal!  :)

Emotionally:  Grow our little family.  Yes this means getting pregnant!  I’ve wanted to be a mom for as long as I can remember…. we have been trying for a while and hope that this fun adventure is right around the corner.

I’m very optimistic that I’ll be able to achieve each of these goals by the end of the year and this will help keep me accountable!