my favorite things

Here are some of my favorite things from the last week or so:

Tuesday, November 23: Even though a plane slide off the runway at Sea-Tac International Airport Monday night after a bunch of Seattle-stupefying snow, our plane from Seattle to Salt Lake City still took off on time. Yahoo!

Also, you might find this interesting (I do), but our plane flew over the storm, and it followed us down to Utah. The storm we survived in Seattle on Monday hit Salt Lake on Tuesday night, with wind and inches and inches of snow. We were stuck on a mountain. It was pretty fascinating.

The best part of being in a big house with all my family members was probably that all the toys my nephew brought Wesley thought were the coolest things ever, and all the toys we brought my nephew thought were the coolest things ever. Everyone was appeased at all times. Wesley even now is asking for "Kyler's Monster Truck," which sadly went home with Kyler. (I didn't teach Wesley the term "Monster Truck," so I was pretty floored the first time he said it.)

Thursday, November 25: Check out these bad boys which I made for our Thanksgiving feast. Thanks to Megan for the inspiration last year. I've been waiting all year to make them.




Since little Kyler has some serious allergies, his mom and I invented a hypoallergenic turkey for him. I was really proud of myself.



They were well loved by all.



Friday, November 26: I've been training for my 5k Santa Run for a few months now. I finished the run and met my goal of continuously running and not having too terrible of a time (35 minutes 49 seconds if you have to know, a 11.13-minute mile, 11th in women in my age group and 64th overall!). This is a pretty big feat considering I ran at 5,000 feet elevation and trained at -0- feet elevation. My most awesome friend Marianne ran with me, and some family members, too. My favorite parts though were the costumes:




Saturday, November 27: Wesley and I got to watch the machines making magic at the Krispy Kreme in Orem, Utah. That afternoon we went to this awesome train museum in Ogden, Utah. It was in a trio of museums; my dad liked the gun museum (did you know a major gun inventor named Browning was Mormon?) and Shane liked the classic car museum. Wesley's favorite, of course, were the trains. (Yes, they had BIG TRAINS to walk around, and TOY TRAINS to play with and MODEL TRAINS to check out. It was fun.)







Sunday, November 28: This was a day of family. My new niece Ruby was blessed. It was sweet. Afterwards there was a huge family dinner with um, way too much food. I think I flipped out a little bit when I saw all the food and knew there was no way we could eat it. Maybe I'll have some pictures later.

Monday, November 29: My dad and I got into the hot tub at 10 at night, in like 20-degree weather. Steam from the hot tub crystallized in our hair. Seriously. It was fascinating, but really hot and fun to talk and look at stars.

I love my family! We had lots of fun playing with Grandma (and the Dump Truck book she bought Wesley) and oogling over baby Ruby and watching football on huge bean bags and wondering if our house would slide off the mountain in the blizzard and eating way too much food and playing games and laughing until we cried.

What a great trip. I miss everyone already. You know this may be the last time I go to Utah ever? Crazy. I also reserve the right to post about the trip more if I remember other cool things.