That one time, when it snowed...

It's hard to believe it's almost December and 50 degrees outside.  Oh, we need some snow!  Luckily Deer Valley doesn't open for another week, which gives them time to make snow.  Several weeks ago, when we got that one huge storm, we decided to head up to the cabin for some sledding.  Anna wanted to try out her boots and snow bibs.  Her hat and mittens still fit from last year, as well as a her 12-month coat.  We had a blast and went down the run 3 times!  Never mind it took about 2 hours to prep the track, stomp it down, and have it firm up a little, before the sledding could begin.  We had fun anyway, until Anna decided she didn't like wearing mittens.  She loves grabbing snow with her bare hands!  What are we going to do with her?!

It's time to stop pretending we're 24

It was Bevan's birthday on Saturday!  We had our good friends, Debbie and Christian, over the night before for dinner and cake.  We like hanging out with them, partially because it makes us feel younger.  The few friends that we do have here in Midway are all about 8-10 years younger than us, which is really nice.  We just have to keep up on buzzing away Bevan's grey hairs.

Saturday started out rainy and dark (which melted all the snow), not good for a birthday, so we decided to go down to Salt Lake, where it was sunny and warm.  The only thing Bevan wanted in the whole world was a Crown Burger.  Sounds great!  I felt like a gyro myself.  We decided to spend the day downtown and walk around the new City Creek Center.  For anyone who hasn't been there, the atmosphere is amazing, the whole indoor/ outdoor mall thing.  The stores are a little pricey, but we weren't planning on buying anything.  For kicks, I had Bevan try on a pair of $360 jeans!  No joke!  He claims they were really comfy.  Anna had a ball climbing on the water features and dappling her hand in the water.  That's about as brave as she gets.  She does have endless energy, so I always let her take the stairs.  It was a fun day.  Sometimes, all you need is a good destination birthday.

Tribute to a vacant lot

We have this lot behind our house.  When we bought our house, I was thinking how nice it would be to buy this lot and have a HUGE backyard.  Ya know, trampoline, massive garden, hardy fruit trees, endless lush green grass (compliments of our un-metered irrigation water), and plenty of play things and structures for Anna.  Sigh.  I love dreaming.  In reality, the owner wanted WAY too much for that lot.  Instead he rents it out to our neighbors to the north of us to park their big trucks/ trailers/ campers/ random stuff on.  They can.  It's zoned commercial.  This summer I dedicated myself to controlling the noxious weeds and thistles.  Me and my 2-gallon tank of round-up were always on patrol.  I got a pretty good handle on it.  I'm still planning on overseeding with some softer, natural grasses. 

We just found out yesterday that the lot has been sold!  Gasp!  We saw our neighbors out there with battery chargers hooked up to the broken-down trucks, moving them onto their own property.  This is quite a surprise.  What will become of the lot now?  Who knows.  Will they build a house?  Perhaps.  Will they start to dig this year?  Probably not.  Permitting takes months.  Those big trucks kind of bugged me... but what about a backyard neighbor?  Will they put up a fence?  Maybe.  I never really appreciate something, until it's gone. 

Lets try some curls!

I tried putting product into Anna's hair the other day.  It looked good!... for about an hour.  She has hair like mine.  It looks awesome, until it dries out, then it just flattens out or goes every which way.  It made for a cute photo shoot with our new camera.

In other news, we got our family ski passes last week.  Anna really doesn't need one, but it's fun to have.  We'll still be packing her around, unless we get her on skis in March, but there's no hurry.  They took a new picture, but failed to double check her height.  Ah, the ticket checkers are going to bust her for sure!
  

D.C. Land!

We took a trip to Maryland for Bevan's "off-season".  It was fantastic!  I was a little nervous about the flight, since we were chinsy and didn't buy Anna her own seat, counting on their being an extra seat we could strap her car seat on to.  We were successful 3 legs out of 4!  She was a VERY good traveller! 

The first couple days were a little... relaxed, since we couldn't go anywhere, because of superstorm Sandy.  We were so lucky that it didn't hit us straight on, although I feel so bad for those folks it did affect directly.  It just rained and rained and rained.  Luckily the schools were out and many businesses were closed so we saw lots of Seth and the boys.  The weather cleared up for Halloween.  We tagged along to their trunk-or-treat and Anna was completely adorable in her spider costume (thanks auntie Trisha!).  Anna freaked out over all the candy, but she couldn't eat it as fast as her cousins (she doesn't eat anything fast).  She would spit out a dum-dum after 5 minutes and start on another one. 

Sharon and Seth were gracious hosts and watched Anna for the next several days while we explored our nation's capitol.  We got the FULL Washington D.C. experience!  We rode bikes around the monuments, which is the only way to go when they're so spread out.  We saw most of the museums, although I would've liked to spend a full day in each.  Bevan had to literally DRAG me out of the national botanical gardens.  We  toured the capitol building, ate from a hot dog cart, visited grandma and grandpa's graves in Arlington, saw the changing of the gaurd, ate a cupcake from "DC Cupcakes", got a parking ticket from a segway cop, and got stuck for an hour on the metro.  We had a blast!  Thanks Sharon and Seth for your amazing hospitality!  I've never been to the east coast until now and I can't wait to go back.