New Year's Eve Sledding Party

On New Year's Eve I hosted a sledding party for the Chudleigh extended family.  We are fortunate to have a great sledding hill in our backyard.  I love it because I can watch the kids sled out of my kitchen windows.  I do enjoy sledding myself from time to time, but not as often as kids do.  I didn't get out to sled on New Year's Eve because I was busy in the kitchen making white bean turkey chili, chili, cornbread, pumpkin pie cake and pineapple upside-down cake. I didn't have to provide the entire meal.  My Mom made minestrone soup, my Aunt Sheryl made a potato soup, Brittney brought a veggie platter and homemade hand held pies in four different flavors.  My Uncle Steve and Aunt Lisa came up from Lindon with my four cousins.  Alyssa (19) and Diana (16) thought they were too old to sled, but Clayton (13) and Ethan (6) had a great time outside with Justin, my kids, Hannah, James, Nathan and my sister Jessica.  Thanks go to Jess for the all the photos.  Everyone had a great time visiting, eating and sledding.

Nate, Barrett and James ready to go, 

with Blythe in the background.

Nate, Barrett and James heading downhill fast.

Notice how none of them have their eyes open.

Blythe and Barrett on the tube.

Blythe on a saucer.

Barrett, James and Hannah full of smiles.

Barrett's favorite way to sled, on Justin's back.

Blythe trying to "snowboard."

Brynne copying her big sister.

An attempt at a sled train.

Blythe, James, Brynne and Barrett with Justin watching.

Christmas 2008

We traditionally have our big family dinner on Christmas Eve at my parent's house and this year was no exception.  We had my entire immediate family present and my Grandma Rich too.  We had a fabulous dinner of pot roast with potatoes and carrots, mashed potatoes, peas, orange glazed sweet potatoes, Justin made dinner rolls, my Mom made orange rolls, and I made a new salad with romaine lettuce, baby spinach, pears, fennel bulb and dried cranberries.  We had a couple of different desserts including lemon bars and my favorite Sticky Toffee pudding.  

Five of the seven grandkids posed in front 

of Grandma's Christmas tree.

We had three tables set for dinner.  The three boy

cousins sat together.  We always have Christmas

crackers and wear the colored tissue paper crowns

while we eat dinner.

After dinner we tried something new (for us) and had the kids dress up and act out the Nativity.  Brynne was a shepherd, Blythe was Mary, Barrett was supposed to be a wise man, but refused to wear a costume.  Nathan was Joseph, Hannah was an angel, and James was the cutest sheep you've ever seen.  Jessica stripped 13 month old Tyler down to his diaper to be baby Jesus, but he was even less cooperative than Barrett.  My Dad told a very condensed version of the Christmas story and then we sang Christmas carols while my Dad played the piano.  The kids really got into Jingle Bells.  Then since we weren't going to be together the next day we exchanged gifts.  Barrett almost fell asleep while we were singing, but revived enough to open his presents.  He conked out for good shortly afterwards and missed dessert.  

Brynne sitting on her Great-Grandma Rich's lap.

Walt at the piano.

Waiting to open presents.

Our Christmas tree.

The kids stockings and presents from Santa.

Christmas Day the kids woke up at the respectable hour of 7:00 a.m.  Unfortunately, Justin had woken up earlier than that to throw up.  He was able to join us to watch the kids open their stockings and then we moved right on to all the presents under the tree.  I remember as a child when we would spend Christmas with my grandparents in Pennsylvania that we could open our stockings as soon as we got up, but we had to wait to open the presents until everyone had woken up, eaten breakfast and gotten dressed.  I remember waiting anxiously for my aunt and uncle and two small cousins to finally appear.  There was no tortuous waiting for my kids this year.  As soon as all the presents where opened Justin went back to bed where he stayed most of the day.  We had planned to go to Salt Lake to see Justin's extended family.  Both the Petty's and the Barrett's were having brunch at 11:00 a.m.  I'm still not sure how we were going to pull that off.  For the first time ever we just stayed home all day.  At first the kids were thrilled to be able to play with their new toys right away.  Especially Barrett who had gotten some new trains for his Brio set.  But by 4:00 p.m. the novelty had worn off and Brynne had declared it, "The worst Christmas EVER!" because she was so bored.  By then the snowstorm that we had been expecting all day finally materialized and I decided it wasn't worth the effort to go up to my parent's house for dinner.  I would have had to snowblow the driveway twice.  Luckily, we had brought some of the leftover pot roast home with us since my Mom didn't have room in her refrigerator so we had plenty to eat.  I never did get another piece of Sticky Toffee pudding though.  Justin's Dad ordered a Thomas the Tank Engine playhouse for Barrett.  He was so thrilled that he had to sleep in it that night.  My parents had given him a Cars sleeping bag, pillow and flashlight set, so he put those inside his Thomas and actually slept in there for about three hours before waking up and crawling into bed with me and Justin.  

Barrett in his Thomas playhouse.

All ready for bed, notice he is holding his new engine.

Justin's Birthday

Justin's birthday is one week before Christmas on December 18th. I always feel a little bit sorry for him having his birthday so close to Christmas.  He also has a twin brother and he says that growing up he was frequently given  birthday/Christmas gifts to share with his brother.  How sad is that?!  I must say that Justin's Mom did her best to make their birthday special and individual including sometimes making two cakes.  I know one year Justin requested a birthday cake of Santa going down the chimney and Kathy delivered.  His tastes have matured and it has become a tradition for me to make Justin a chocolate cake with peppermint filling and chocolate ganache frosting.  

The birthday boy by the light of 37 candles.

A better look at the birthday boy.

A view of the inside of the cake.

It was quite good if I do say so myself.

Edible Christmas Crafts

I'm not sure if I've mentioned before that Barrett attends a co-operative preschool.  This means that I co-op once a month in his classroom, as well as having a year long position to fill.  This year I am the party coordinator for Barrett's class.  I am in charge of planning and executing a Halloween party, a Christmas party, a Valentine's Day party and a Last Day of School party.  I specifically chose this job because of Barrett's food allergies.  I decided it would be better for my mental health if I were the one in charge of buying the food for the parties.  I am supposed to plan four activities for the kids to rotate through during the party.  One station is usually decorating a cookie.  I decided to mix things up a little for the Christmas party and  I had the kids make Christmas Trees out of upside down sugar cones and oodles of green frosting and candy.  Finding candy that is safe for Barrett to eat is always challenging, and finding candy that could also double as Christmas tree ornaments was even more of a challenge.  However, I was able to find a large box of Nerds in red, white and green, Gimbal's jelly beans and Hershey's chocolate chips.  I had enough stuff leftover for my kids to make some trees at home too.

Blythe working on frosting her "tree" with Ruby 

attempting to get in on the action.

Barrett frosting his second tree.

We have made some progress with his clothing.

He will wear clothes to school, the store, etc, as long

as I promise him that he can put his pajamas back 

on as soon as he gets home.  

Blythe's finished tree.  She doesn't like

jellybeans so she found some Skittles left

over from Halloween and used those instead.

All the white nerds are supposed to be snow.

Brynne with her completed Christmas Tree.

New Hats

Winter is officially here and the kids are outfitted in new winter gear.  My neighbor Jen, who is one of the most fashionable people I know,  recently hosted a hat party.  Her friend crochets the most adorable hats you've ever seen.  Blythe has a thing for hats, so I took her and Brynne with me to Jen's party.  I ended up ordering a hat for each of us.  We were able to choose the colors and type of yarn we wanted and I had them made up to match the girls' winter coats.  

Blythe sporting her new hat.  She picked out a

striped one with a visor and a cute button.

Brynne looks fetching in her new winter hat.

She fell in love with this fuzzy yarn and  chose a hat

with ear flaps, tassels and a crocheted flower.

Barrett is still on his Lightning McQueen kick.  We've traded 

in his baseball cap with the "headset" for this fleece hat.  

Needless to say he loves it and his new matching coat too.

I didn't get a photo of my hat which is made of out of a black and cream colored yarn and has a black crocheted flower on it.  It's very cute and sort of retro.  If you want to see more hats you can visit Ashly's blog at hatsbyash.blogspot.com.

Nine Mile Canyon

I've gotten terribly behind on this blog and have been trying to get this post finished for a couple of days now, but here it is.  We spent Thanksgiving weekend in Moab and we took a side trip on our way down on Wednesday.  Nine Mile Canyon, east of Wellington, UT is known for it's pictographs (pictures drawn on rock with pigment), petroglyphs (images carved or pecked into rock) and ruins left by the Fremont Indians who inhabited the area from roughly 300 A.D. to 1300 A.D.  I was under the impression that this would be a short jaunt of 9 miles each way off of the route we usually take to Moab.  I was wrong. 

Justin decided the best way to get there would be to drive to Duchesne and then drive down a dirt road for 37 miles before reaching Nine Mile Canyon.  So we were once again off-roading in our van.  I think our van has probably been driven off road more than most SUVs.   (And Justin wonders why our struts wore out "prematurely.")  Nine Mile Canyon is a misnomer, as the canyon is actually 40 miles long.  When the area was originally surveyed in 1869, the topographer did a 9 mile triangulation drawing, which he named Nine Mile Creek.  So our "short" detour turned into 3 hours, but we did see some cool stuff which I documented.  You can just check out my photos and save yourself the trip, unless they excite you enough to inspire a trip of your own. We skipped out on the hike to see the remains of a Fremont village, because it was cold and we were quickly losing sunlight, so Justin is insisting that we'll be back before too long.  Well enough with the history lesson here are the pictures.

Brynne standing by a panel of petroglyphs.

More petroglyphs of deer or mountain goats.

Another petroglyph.  It looks to me like it's a warrior.

Right in the middle of nowhere is this power plant.  Justin actually thinks it's a natural gas collection facility.We saw a lot of natural gas well heads on our way through Gate canyon, as well as a lot of large tanker trucks.  We were the only non-truck we saw on that dirt road.  It was a very windy canyon with a lot of blind corners, as well as being narrow and as we were approaching about the second or third blind corner I asked Justin whether he thought he ought to sound the horn in case there was truck coming and just as I said it one of the huge tankers rounded the corner right in front of us.  So Justin slowed down and moved over and honked before every other blind corner.  He never would have honked though if that truck hadn't come just then.  I give full credit to my woman's intuition.  

The cliffs are very impressive.  The Fremont

indians apparently built dwellings on some of the

larger ledges.  If you have good eyes you can spot 

stacks of rock where some of their homes or

watch towers used to be. 

"The Great Hunt."

Indian pictographs.

Blythe is studying Utah history this year and recently learned 

about the Fremont Indians.  She is pointing to a pictograph 

that she says means "evening."

Barrett looking very proud of himself for climbing up 

on a large rock.  He is wearing his Cars hat with the fake

headset that he has been wearing non-stop since October.

Some more petroglyphs.  Sadly these have been defaced. 

Barrett employing his usual mode of transportation.