i can bake an apple pie

That's right, I'm not the best baker, nor do I ever bake pies from scratch, but yes, I made this beauty. Emily was going to make a homemade apple pie for her family Thanksgiving dinner, and dessert was my assignment too. So Emily showed me her mad skills and shared her family recipe with me.

I felt proud walking in the door to my in-laws with a homemade apple pie in my hands (homemade in its entirety - including the crust), instead of the store bought pies I was planning on. But store bought pies aren't as tasty nor as fun. Thanksgiving is about cooking with your family and friends and making a meal filled with love. I was nervous to try the pie - I mean, it can't be too hard to mess this up, especially with Em's help...but I could find a way. And I'm always nervous for people to eat my food, but it was a hit. Everyone loved it and were so impressed with my skills. Thanks Em for the help and for making me look like a baker. Now my family wants me to bake them an apple pie, once a year is plenty.

Secret Swing

According to my memory, the first day of snow in the valley this winter was on October 27, 2009. Before winter would really hit, Eric and I needed to hit up Little Cottonwood Canyon and go for a hike...because there would be a little surprise waiting for us at the top.

Eric's brother Greg and his buddies hauled up wood and supplies up the canyon to build a farkin' huge swing that looks over the Salt Lake valley. They built it not too long ago and we've been dying to go, we wanted to go with Greg and Shasta before they moved to Alaska for a year but never did. So we thought our buddies Eric and Whitney would dig this hike.

Since it hadn't snowed too much in the valley, we did NOT expect there to be that much snow in the mountains and didn't quite dress the part to go trekkin' in the snow - with Whit and Eric in their shorts and Chaco's. But we were all pretty good sports and hiked along. Neither of us knew what this "swing" looked like, how big it was, or the exact location because it was off the beaten path.

The hike sure was beautiful, all the gorgeous tree's and white untouched snow...and finally we turned the bend and saw this huge opening of the valley (beautiful minus the smog). We knew once we hit this opening, the secret swing wasn't too far.

We saw the next sign, and another, then there it was. In the clearing off a hidden path lied a huge swing in the sun! It was a lot bigger than we expected, big enough for all four of us and our feet barely hung off the edge too. We were impressed...I have no idea how Greg hauled up all this wood. I want this in my house.

We could sleep here in the summer...and with that view of the valley, I could sit here all day if it wasn't cold. We chilled for a while, busted out our snacks and munched. Then we headed back down because we were losing sunlight. See you in the spring secret swing! 

where to start?

I've been dreading to blog again because my last post was Halloween, its now January and I'm so far behind in the blogging world I don't know where to begin... do I go back or start from here on out? But...the reason I like to blog is so I can look back at it. Therefore, I want to put things in chronological order so I can remember all the things we did that year and not have too many gaps (I have the worst memory and if it weren't for pictures or blogging, I wouldn't remember all the cool things we do together). Over new years, Eric and I reminisced about the year 2009, it was such a good year and we did so much, many things I didn't even blog about. So my goal is to blog more frequently this year...so I can record our many adventures together and be able to look back at it and remember the good times.

ANOTHER REASON I'm glad I started a blog is because about a month ago our somewhat new laptop (less than a year old) CRASHED AND EVERYTHING ON OUR HARD DRIVE WAS LOST!!! Including the most important thing to me: our thousands of pictures! I was devastated! Since Eric works at Best Buy, we had our savviest Geek Squad friends work on our laptop and they could do NOTHING to recover the data, the only option was to pay the few hundred bucks to have some company recover the data, we talked about it but never came to a conclusion. I don't know if my pictures are worth that much, well they are to me but that's a lot to fork out.

Oh, but Eric works at Best Buy you say? So we must have EVERYTHING backed up right? WRONG! We have an external hard drive but the last time we backed up our computer was last February, I know, we should know better and whats the point of having one if you don't back up your crap. So everything before last Feb was saved, that's a whole year of pictures, homework assignments, papers...all gone. But luckily I blog, and no matter what happens to my computer, as long as the pictures are on the internet they will remain there forever.

Yay! So, we learned our lesson, we are going to backup our computer much more often, but I am also going to continue uploading my many pictures to Facebook and Blogger so I can have them just in case something terrible happens again. So, as always I'm going back...

halloween festivities

Pumpkin patches, haunted houses, halloween parties, and candy, oh my! For me, it isn't halloween until you do all these halloween traditions...we started off the season by going to cornbellys pumpkin patch with our buddies Chris and Sepideh.

Ha ha, Eric and Chris found the biggest pumpkins they could carry, they each took one of these honkers home.
What's Halloween without a fun scary train ride? We went up the Heber Creeper for a haunted train ride with Amy, Tim, Emily, and Dylan. We rode on the open air cart to add to the scary effect, it actually wasn't too cold. I liked the train ride because it was definitely a different take on the haunted house (and a few bucks cheaper too, now a days haunted houses rape you for your money). The coolest part was when the train stopped and all the scary people hopped on with you.





Now it's dress up time. We went to our ward halloween party and this was my favorite costume of the night: sushi rolls, how creative!
We dressed up as Juno and Paulie Bleeker. To complete the outfit, my good friend Jalaine works at Motherhood Maternity and hooked me up with a pregnant pillow they leave in the fitting rooms. It looked so real and a couple people said they didn't know I was expecting, yeah, I'm not! But I will tell you that belly was so comfy, it was the perfect heater. Now I know why pregnant moms are always putting their hands on their belly, because it is the perfect arm rest! I found myself doing that all night.


On halloween night we went to a rad halloween party, it was 80's themed but we felt our outfits were appropriate...Eric looked the part anyway!
I look huge in this picture!
That kid in the ballerina outfit definitely had some confidence and called him ballerina boy all night.

This was only part of the group, we didn't get a group photo before people started leaving...and we all know i'm a nazi about taking pictures so we had to get a group photo.

We had an awesome time and played 80's scene it, I thought i'd rock at that game because I love 80's movies, but it was so hard and entertaining to see some of the 80's music videos, they were pretty ridiculous! Then we played mafia, the perfect game to play with a big group of people.
We already know what we are going to be next year!

ruins

Tulum ruins

Ceviche and best shrimp tacos ever!

playa del carmen

Every year we’ve been married, Eric and I have taken a vacation somewhere new. In august we went to playa del Carmen, which is just south of Cancun. Being that my mom’s family is from Mazatlan, the pacific side of mexico, I’ve never been to the Caribbean side and have been dying to go. In our travels we haven't kept a journal, but we made it a goal this year to start a travel journal and write in it during our vacation rather than after. So I stole snipets from our journal and plugged them in here for even better memories.

We landed at the cancun airport for our 10 day stay and the second we got off the plane we were hit with the smell – to me – of mexico. Its really the smell of the tropics because it smells the same in the Philippines. We both love that smell and it brings back so many memories for both of us. Smells are the greatest form of memory after all.

When we rolled up to our hotel in our hot sexy Nissan tsuru rental (like an old school sentra) we were amazed at the size and beauty of it, the Mayan Palace. The name says it all. After settling into our room, the first thing we did was have dinner by the pool. I ordered mole enchiladas and eric got some delicious beef tacos…then off to the pool that was 24 HOURS! Never in my life have we come across a pool that’s 24 hours. We swam until the wee hours of the night, it was perfect. There were about 10 swimming pools at this place, they all connected together so it seemed like one big one…and the lights in the pool even changed color, so it really set the ambiance. By the way, this wall is huge and is the first thing you se off the highway.

This is the beach at our hotel, its kinda rocky so we went and toured other beaches along the coast line, from north in cancun to south in tulum.

Here's the view from the little cabana in the middle of the ocean.

Despite being in mexico, everything was really expensive because we were in tourist town. We didn’t bank on spending a lot on food. So we kept it chill and hung out more on the beach than anything else. The water was the perfect temperature, you know the kind that’s cool enough to cool you off and be refreshing, but warm enough you can jump right in without shock to your system! The second day of our trip some gnarly clouds blew in and it started raining. We packed up and headed towards the “Kool” restaurant/lounge and made it undercover just as it started to pour. There were a bunch of us crowded underneath the palapa roof of the bathrooms. It was so windy the birds were flying in place, fighting against the wind. A few hippies, locals, and drunk tourists made the most of the situation by dancing in the rain (the club DJ was still spinning, so why not?). We figured we'd join but had more fun watching.

We mostly stayed south of cancun but had to venture up there to see what the “hotel zone” had to offer. We snuck thru a hotel to get to the beach and it was gorgeous. The water was clearer, the waves were bigger, the beach was less crowded and it was hotter than in playa del Carmen. Less crowds make for more encounters with vendors and activity guides.
playa del carmen:


We hung out under this palapa and played cards for most of one day...it was the perfect day.
Cancun:

Instead of renting boogie boards for a pretty peso, we decided to buy one. we hauled it every where we went and the waves weren't bad either.

tulum:

After a day at the beach we’d go back to our hotel and hit the pool after the sun went down. One night a few towel boys in lava lava’s started getting everyone out of the pool to head down to the beach for a beach party. The beach party was pretty cool, they had a DJ and the lava lava kids taught us (and by us I mean Eric and other gringos..ha ha) a few salsa moves and we danced the night away…more to come...