Best of 2009

2009 was a great year. I was thinking I didn't really do much and then I looked through my pictures and was shocked. I had an AWESOME year!! I had the opportunity to see my family multiple times, plenty of outdoor adventures, and then no major injuries or mishaps. Again as I reflect on the year I recognize the Lord's hand in my life and I am so grateful for my blessings.

January: sent Anthony on his mission

February: Biked in the St George century

April: Spring break in San Diego

April: My cousin Joel got married

End of April: Bought a new car

May: Visited Zion's and Grand Canyon National Park for Memorial Day

June: Arches National Park

June and July: Caleb came to stay and we did yellowstone, timp caves, and various hikes in Provo.

July: My Dad turned 60, family vacation in Tahoe

July: Girls weekend with friends from high school in Vegas

July: Hiking the Tetons

August: Bryce Canyon with Sam and Amanda

August: My Mom came to town for my graduation from grad school.

September: Hiking Ben Lommand for Labor Day

October: Sam gets maried

October: I run my first and maybe last half-marathon

October: I become an aunt

November: Learning to make chocolates with cousins and aunts

December: visited family and friends in Utah and California

Visited Oroville 5 times
Visited 6 National Parks
Played endless hours of basketball
Biked 2000 miles when I combine my odometers for both bikes
Hiked a ton, including the annual timp hike
Put 13,000 miles on my new car
Visited with friends a lot
Missed Church 7x, do better next year

Yep, 2009 was good. Can't wait to see what 2010 brings.

Hopefully My Next Big Adventure

I am always in search of an Adventure. In fact I subscribe to Adventure Magazine. The magazine comes monthly and informs me of numerous adventures in the United States. The cool thing is that they also regularly feature adventures in Utah, some of which I have tried.

Well this year in one of their issues they listed the top 10 adventures in America. They all sound so fun and in 2010 I am hoping to complete one of the 10. It is adventure #7 Iowa: Biking RAGBRAI. It is a 500 mile ride across Iowa that is supposedly AWESOME. The bummer is that you get in by lottery so I am signed up and the dues are paid but there is no guarantee. Pray that I get in:)

Let The Winter Sports Begin

It warmed up 20 degrees overnight so I am again allowed to leave my house!! My first snowshoeing of the season. The snow was great and I got a good work-out. If it stays this warm I might even venture out of the house again today.

FrEeZiNg CoLd & PoIsOn OaK

It has been so cold all I want to do is lay on the couch under the blankets. It feels like January. It was -4 on my way to work the other morning. I get home from work and there is no way I am leaving the house again, unless there is a sport to play of course. But seriously it has been so cold.

I am content just hanging out in my house and enjoying the Christmas Season, decorations, crazy movies on TV, hot chocolate. Looking at my nativity that I love and pondering the real reason we celebrate this holiday season.

Oh yea and over Thanksgiving I got Poison Oak all down the back of my calves. It is ugly. I feel like it should be gone by now but apparently it can take up to 8 weeks to heal completely. I try so hard not to itch but I will admit I allow myself one major scratch session a day, usually in the evenings. I get it all out of my system and then I am good to go.

Tradition

My Grandparents Francis and Annis Webb had a tradition of making chocolates at Christmas time. My great grandma Webb taught them how and they carried on the tradition. My Grandma would always make tons of them and then give them as Christmas gifts. Even though we lived in California she would send us a few boxes of chocolates each year at Christmas. A treasured gift that we always looked forward to. With 50+ grandchildren it is not logical to provide gifts but those chocolates sure made is feel loved and thought about. My favorite was always the peanut butter cups. YUM!


Well this year my Aunts Nancy and Loralie taught a few Webb cousins the art of chocolate making. We did not come close to mastering the art of chocolate making but it was tons of fun and though they didn't look great they sure did taste amazing.

My Aunt Nancy made the filling before hand so we spent today dipping everything. We dipped orange, lemon, mint, penuche, caramel, and rasberry filling.

Like I said they didn't look as good as my grandma's used to, but she had way more practice:)

Nancy taught us how to dip and then let us have at it. I am not sure why we say dipped because there really was no dipping.

Katie and Sharee trying trying their hand at the newly learned skill.

Me and Amanda. Amanda, Sam's wife, joined us as well. We were so glad.

While we were work'n' the chocolate we also took turns holding the cute babies. This is Sharee's daughter Maddie.

I did't get Murial's daughter but that is ok because she wearing a Utah outfit. I was bitter but since BYU won I am totally over it.

We also made Peacan Rolls.

We laughed a ton. Mostly at how awful they looked. It was so fun. We all wondered what Grandma would say of the mess we were making.

Loralie also taught us some tricks. Like how to keep the chocolate from dripping on the wax paper. I was not very good at that trick.

Murial came from Pocatello to make chocloates with us. Notice how hard we are concentrating when working.

Heather was quickly put in charge of labeling the each chocolate piece with a letter on top so they could be identified. She got this job because her chocolate letters were the most legible.

Three sisters hard at work.

Sharee rolling out some filling before we started to dip.

Liz came from Washington to learn the family trade.

Giving chocolate high fives. We deserved those on our second try at dipping because they looked much better.

And of corse we did tons of tasting.

Thanks for the memorable day ladies. I had a blast.

So Much Thanks!

November is so great because it is always a time to reflect on all the blessings in our lives. I am so grateful for so many things. Family, Friends, Employment, Health, Gospel, House, Car, Books, Sports, Done with grad school, Coaching . . . . and many more things. I really am so blessed. It is overwhelming at times to think about how much the Lord has blessed my life.

This Thanksgiving I was able to travel home and spend time with my family. Always fun. We went to Charlie's (of course), Sam's reception, visited with extended family, and played games. This year the favorite games were hearts and the dice game (wipe-out). My basketball team also won their first game while I was in California by two points. I must say I actually missed my team. I really have a fun group this year.

My Mom and Aunt Nancy made an awesome Thanksgiving dinner. Sam and Amanda made some sweet pies and all in all it was a great day. To bad I didn't take a single picture.

But don't worry I took like 200 picture's of my niece Olivia. Love her. So adorable.

My Life Revolves Around

BASKETBALL.

I am not complaining I am just saying. I have been at school before 7 and have not left until after 6:30 everyday for the past two weeks. If you never appreciated your coaches before now, appreciate them, it is so time consuming. And then I come back to play two nights a week. That is not a complaint, just a statement. I love playing basketball. The one thing I hate about being the head coach is that I can't play with the team as much as I would like. I have to supervise, BORING!

I am excited for this season. I think the team will be fun. We are very short but we have some girls that can shoot and drive. It will be good. Sometimes I wish I did not have my own gym everyday for practice because then I would be forced to end practice at a certain time. Oh well. I hope the time pays off.

It has been really nice not being in grad school as well. I am less stressed. No early morning practices. No late nights doing homework. So if my life seems boring it is because I never see the sun and I am at school 12 hours a day.

And I think I get worse coach of the year award because I am missing our first game to go to Sam and Amanda's California wedding reception. What do you do?

Thanksgiving: Practice Round

Dan wanted to bbq a turkey so we had Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday just as a practice round.

We had all of the fix'ns'. Amanda made rolls, Katie made stuffing, Loralie made peas, I made loaded red mashed potatoes. MMMM so good.

My personal favorite was Nancy's homemade fruit cocktail. I seriously am in love with this stuff. So yummy. It was a tradition in my Mom's family to have homemade fruit cocktail at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Some people (Sam) preferred to taste all their food at the same time and so they loaded everything we had onto a roll and ate it that way.

After the delicious food we watched this:

I just love this movie it is so cute.