Christmas Present... Christmas Past

My ward Christmas party. I was 'Charlie Brown' in the play. Or Amber Brown.
We built a ginger bread fort.

This is the last Sunday of the semester, and the first time all of the roommates went to church together.

The rest are all from last year. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Some of these were taken early in the am at Utah Lake with Heather
This was a little berry tree just outside my kitchen window

The Family ( - Pep and Arch) and Temple Square, Unfortunately Dad is taking this picture as usual and is therefore not in it :( Relaxing after a rough trip to temple square (see previous blog post)

The magnificent Salt Lake temple

Rock Canyon Park

Provo Temple Nativity

My mom has owned this nativity for as long as I can remember. It is my favorite! I always loved playing with it (especially the little sheep) when i was little and... i still do. I was so excited that she brought it out to Provo when my family came.

360s on i 15

At about this time last year, Danny and I decided to go see the Christmas lights at Temple Square. It had been nice and snowy so as to add to the Christmasy atmosphere. What a perfect time to go. So, we jumped in the jeep and hit the road. As we were driving on I-15, we noticed a few slick conditions but nothing the jeep couldn't handle. Up a head, there were lots of cars stopped and spun out and wrecked all along the highway. We gently cruised by, thankful we were not the poor schmucks that had slipped on the ice.

"Shoot." Danny mumbled quietly. (This is the edited version obviously)

"Whats wrong?" I didn't feel the tires spin on the ice.

"Shoot.

Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. SHOOT. SHOOOT. SHOOOOOT!" (Still edited so as to keep a G rating)

These 'shoots' happened in sequential order:

'Shoot.' indicates tires spinning on ice

'SHOOT.' indicates losing control and starting to drift uncontrollably into another lane of traffic.

'SHOOOOT.' indicates the jeep beginning to spin around facing the wrong direction of traffic.

'SHOOOOT!' indicates the part where we were FACING traffic head on, 2 lanes away from our original lane of traffic.

Thats right.

As the car turned I saw nothing but 2 big bright headlights from a semi truck (though Danny claims otherwise) right in my face. We were probably 15-20 feet in front of it. The jeep continued to turn so that we faced traffic head on for a moment, and then it continued rotating all the way facing the forward direction again... all the while keeping a nice steady pace of about 30 mph.

Some how we didn't get hit by a million cars. Danny quickly scooted into the far right lane where we proceeded onward to Temple Square at approximately 25 mph. On I-15.

I started dying laughing.

Danny's face was completely white as he gave me a death look. What on earth could possibly be funny right now?

That made me laugh even harder.

Better laugh than cry!

We arrived safely to Temple Square. I jumped out of the car as carefree as ever and started walking towards the Temple. Danny stopped me. "I need a hug." Oh... right. That was a tad traumatic. And being the driver was probably the scariest thing ever.

Its Gettin Hot in Her'

This spring Danny and I went on what we thought would be a little hike. We at least had some peanuts and water in the car (which was quite an upgrade from previous adventures we have embarked on). After about 4 ish hours of hiking around in the rain and mud and rocks and mountains, we decided we were famished and headed back into town. We stopped at the store and bought lots of yummy things so that we could make some delicious orange chicken. Some of our items included ice cream and a pineapple (for dessert obviously), Orange sauce and a few spices for the chicken, including 2 very small orange peppers (thinking that we didn’t need a whole big pepper since there were only 2 of us eating the meal. So to be economical, we bought the small ones. It seems logical right?
We finally got home and started making our delectable chicken. As I was cutting up the peppers, my eyes and throat started burning. I thought maybe that was kind of normal, since I am really sensitive to onions. When I chop them up I cry like a baby and just like totally whig out all over the place so I thought I was just weeniery about peppers as well.
I started sautéing the peppers. My eyes and throat burned like never before. But to my surprise, Danny was freakin out now as well as they were cooking. Why wasn’t this a red flag to us?
We cooked up the chicken and added the sauce. We also had some rice and vegetables as well. It looked beautiful. We were quite an hungered seeing as how we hiked all day and hadn’t eaten.
We sat down to eat. I took a huge bight of chicken. So did Dan.
It really felt like smoke was burning out of my ears. My throat was FREAKING out; my eyes and nose were watering. I drank about a gallon of milk and water and consumed all the rice I could stand. When my eyes quit leaking all over the place I saw that Danny was whigging out as well (thus confirming that it was not an allergic reaction nor was I a total wiener).
That was the hottest dad gum pepper on the face of the earth. We found out later it is called a “Wild Desert Tepin” aka THE WORLDS HOTTEST PEPPER. Literally. Why do they even sale that at Albertson’s? Freak.
Luckily the night ended well—we had cut the pineapple in half and hallowed it out and put ice cream in. Now that was downright delicious and a perfect way to cool off our scorching blistering mouths.

Lately

Halloween! A couple of ninjas and a couple of 80s burnouts :)

The Scooby Doo clan

an overdue old roommie reunion at cafe rio

Dress up dinner date