iCE SKATiNG

In MinnesoOoOoda, babies learn how to skate before they can walk, so naturally I grew up taking ice skating lessons and thinking Tara Lapinski was the most amazing person in the world. I loved it until I turned about thirteen and decided it wasn't cool anymore, but I am over that phase now, and I love it again. Rich and I gotta go skating with his fam and it was so much fun! However, UT ice skating sucks. It sucks because there are millions of people on the ice. It also sucks because they only have one indoor ice rink in UT. Minnesota people would be apalled and shocked. FACT: In MN, every town with a population of 100 has at AT LEAST two out door ice rinks. When a town is about 5,000, that requires two indoor ice rinks AND at least ten or fifty out door ice rinks. UT has 1 indoor ice rink. Sucky. It also sucks because people don't know how to skate here. Bad skaters + crowded rink=DANGER.

Despite the danger, it was still way fun. Rich continues to amaze me with his roller and ice skating skills. He catches on pretty well and was almost cruisin' as sweetly as me. :-) I love ice skating regardless of the rink, BUT I am definitely excited to go skating at MN's high-class, professional skaters only, wonderful, non-crowded and MAGiCAL iCE RiNKS. Sucks for UT.



Rich is skilled and scary.

Ta-da!

Kelly was a pretty amazing skater too! He could do backward crossovers! Daniel (Rich's little brother) is definitely following in their steps. He rocked!

Ya for us! While we were taking this picture, a guy ran right into my skate. No joke! UT skaters...


Straight up divas.

The Warnicks

Looks A Lot Like Christmas!

I love Christmas the most!!! Rich and I decorated our apartment, and I loved everything about it. It was our first time decorating for Christmas, so it was super magical. I think it turned out really cute. We wanted to get a fresh tree, but didn't have the money or the room, so Kelly (Rich's dad) gave us a cute little fake tree he had in his basement. Rich and I each got an ornament every Christmas that usually represented something about us that year. I want to do that with my kids too. I love my ornaments, and I love Christmas. Merry Christmas!!!

Fourth Thursday of November

I love thanksgiving. I loved thanksgivings in MN. My family would always get together with the Woodwards (our super close friends-pretty much family). They or we would usually drive down or up on Wednesday night. On Wednesday, we would start playing and preparing. We would usually make a ton of pies because we always had a lot of people who would stay with us till Sunday and because we LOVE pie! I loved it. Scott and Amy would usually dominate in the kitchen while the rest of us would wander in occasionally to help, talk and/or eat. Then we would always play board games-usually Risk, and the girls were usually plotted against and taken out in the first rolls, but it is ok--it was fun watching Jimmy, Craig, Tom, Steven, Mike, Brent and our dad's all get ridiculously competitive. Then thanksgiving day was great--of course. If it was warm we usually played football and played more games and ate way too much food. Anyway--that is memory lane. It was great, and I love those memories.

This year was great too! My amazing brother, Mike, drove down here and celebrated with us! He stayed with Rich and I from mon-sun. It was a blast!!! We miss him. : ) The night before Thanksgiving, we decided we needed to keep up the pie tradition, so we made seven pies! It was crazy, I know, but it was fun making them. Besides my apple pie, I'd never made any other pie so it was a very educational experience for all of us. Word of advice: if when making french silk pie, your sugar is still grainy after mixing it with chocolate and stuff, don't keep mixing it for thirty minutes. It will remain grainy. Wastes LOTS of time.

On Thanksgiving morning, I went running. Of course. Then we all went to Rich's place in Mapleton. We played football! Rich was amazing. I'm not lying. He has a great throw/spiral thing. I love watching him play. Then we ate yummy food. Then we watched a little football and all fell asleep. Then we ate pies! Kathy had made two herself, so we had nine! Way too many. We ate maybe one. Later that night we stopped at the Krebs (my cousin's) and played some games with them. It was a spectacular day. I love the holidays!

Us and Maple mountain

Rich and his amazing form and technique and skills...

Ken Nance-Rach's boyfriend

My brother Mickey!

Rich showing me the heisman

Me attempting the heisman

dang tryptophan!

Rach and Ken all cozy

My mother-in law

The chefs of the pies!

Pumpkins, Fat Pants and Rock Climbing

Need I say more?

Home Sweet Home

I love our furniture.
I love our couches
I love the table and chairs that Rich got for $35
I love our bed
I love the people that helped us get our bed
I love our balconies
I love having underground parking for the first time in winter
I love our dishwasher
I love our TV
I love our artwork--thanks Brittany, Marc and Rach
I love the blankets we have
I love the park next door
I love our HUGE bathroom
I love our HUGE closet
I love that I have a washer and dryer
I love the newly painted walls
I love our view

I hate how our washing machine sounds like it is going to spin out of our apartment
I hate how our neighbors bang on our walls when we wash our clothes
I hate that they probably think that we are having domestic disputes because of our noisy washer
I hate how the car bottoms out when leaving our underground parking
I hate how the guy above us wears bowling balls for shoes
I hate how the bowling ball guy does jumping jacks at 4am.

It's 17 for 23, so we will definitely stay here. Overall, I LOVE our apartment, and I don't think it could be more perfect.

Here is a picture of our foyer:



Haha! This is actually a picture of the foyer in the Chiemsee castle in Germany. We weren't supposed to take pictures, but we did. It was a pretty fun game with the tour guide. Here are the real pics of our apartment, starting with our great view.

As Easy as Apple 3.14159...

Rich and I were given a TON of apples, so after eating 3 apples a day for the past week and still having four hundred left--I decided I wanted to make apple pie. We invited Rach, Ken and his parents to have it with us before we made it. They showed up and found us standing on our brown sugar/cinnamon covered floor and staring at a ball of dough that had been rolled out about seven times on our counter. We found out that making a pie crust from scratch requires shortening and skill--both of which we didn't have. The pie making process was really messy and it took us forever, but the pie actually tasted yummy. For real. My mom would be impressed.
Here is a picture of us and our first pie we EVER made.

HoNeY mOOn HiGHLiGHtS

Our honeymoon was the most fabulous trip ever. I was ridiculously sad the day we had to leave. Rich kept the honeymoon location a secret until we got to the airport. At the airport I found out we were flying to Atlanta, then I found out we were flying to Puerto Rico. We played guessing games a lot. When we got to Puerto Rico I found out we were going to make St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands our honeymoon home! It was so AMAZING and pretty. Pictures and words don’t give our island justice. I was so giddy. Our hotel was awesome too. Rich is so wonderful. :) We stayed at the Marriot Frenchman’s Reef condo. It was brand new and super gorgeous. Our condo was right next to the ocean, and we were on like the 12^th floor, so the view was spectacular. Our balcony overlooked the sunset over the ocean. Everything was amazing. SOO every day was pretty much the same wonderful thing—exploring the island, snorkeling, doing whatever we wanted, swimming, eating, being together, Rich being funny, heaven on earth, etc. Haha :) I won’t write out every day’s detail because that would be ridiculous, but here are twenty five highlights:

1. Going to Tavern on the Waterfront for Rich’s 25th birthday dinner. He loves seafood and is awesome at the saxophone, so I found a restaurant that had a live jazz band and seafood. How thoughtful am I? Rich wanted to try mussels, oysters, snails, clams, squid, and other stuff I don’t even know what it was, so we got a sampler plate thing. I liked the squid and mussels—I think.. We both like lobster and shrimp the bestest though. Thanks to all of you who gave us Red Lobster gift cards! Awesome present!
2. Renting a scooter for the week—we named it Serendipity.
3. Our scooter helmets.
4. Going to St. Johns and snorkeling at trunk bay—rated one of the top ten beaches in the world.
5. Buying a calypso CD titled You Pan You Own and blaring it in our room.
6. Walking on the beach at midnight
7. Going to El Market and buying expensive but cheap food—like beans that were $3, and macaroni that was $2, and popcorn that was 2/$3 and milk that was $6 per gallon. Food was ridiculously expensive.
8. Getting stuck at a middle school for three hours while all the water in the world seemed to come pouring down on our island.
9. Watching Jaws
10. Hearing all of the islanders constantly screaming at each other—but in a friendly way.
11. My silver bracelet that had the gem of Caribbean in it that Rich got me. :)
12. Going to Woody’s and eating at a table that Kenny Chesney and Mick Jagger frequently eat at.
13. Rich not getting burned!
14. Working out at the club’s gym
15. The humidity! Oh my heck…
16. Exploring the island on our scooter and always telling Rich to slow down
17. Shopping at the market place and bartering
18. Having islanders stopping us and informing us about local laws that weren’t really laws..haha
19. Watching the sunset at Mermaid’s chair
20. Watching people try and back their vehicle onto a cargo boat that took us to St. Johns. Some people should not be allowed to drive…
21. Going to our vacation club’s karaoke night and watching lots of people try to sing, and watching one guy try and get Rich to sing. I’m still bummed he didn’t get up and sing to me... :p
22. Finding an iguana chillin’ under my beach chair.
23. Snorkeling for like three hours straight. I love snorkeling!
24. Flying in on a tiny little plane that didn’t have any AC
25. Cuddling :)

Vacations are sooo awesome. I think there should be a law where everyone MUST go on at least a two week vacation every year. I also think that there should be a law that honeymoons must be a month long. :) K Bye!