Sometimes a Hammer Works Best: Christmas Goodies!

Like most everyone, I too am a Christmas lover! I love how everyone's thoughts turn more to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I love that God's love is spread around so abundantly. I love how everyone serves each other just a little bit more. I love how family and friends gather together. I love Christmas decorations. I semi-love Christmas music (some of it is too cheesy, but hymns and things like that are really beautiful). I love Christmas programs. I love white elephant gift exchanges. And finally, I love Christmas goodies.

Pathetically, when I think of Christmas, one of the first things I think of is the candy that is so prominent during the Christmas season. I love peanut brittle, anything chocolate, caramels, anything peppermint, and basically anything with sugar. And it is so fun to make Christmas candy!!! I took a food class this semester, and in it we made lots of yummy food. One of our last labs was candy making, and it was awesome! My kitchen made lollipops and caramelized candy nuts. Another kitchen made peppermint bark. I love peppermint bark, so I made it at home the next week. It is super easy and delicious! Well, it was mostly easy.... breaking the peppermint candies was not easy (I recommend using thin candy canes, not round peppermint candies. Candy canes would have been easier to smash). After unsuccessfully trying to break the candies with a rolling pin, we resorted to the hammer. For the next 15 minutes I swung away at the poor helpless, yet nearly indestructible, peppermint candies. My apologies to the upstairs neighbors, it was quite loud. But after some perseverance, they were ready to be mixed in the smooth and scrumptious melted white chocolate. It was like magic. Let the hot melted peppermint bark dry on wax paper for an hour, and poof, a delectable Christmas treat!

These are some cute lollipops I made in my food class. Blueberry and Watermelon!

Yes, sometimes a hammer does work best. We weren't messin' around!

Sooooo good!

Of course I enjoy all of the other food that makes a special (or perhaps just more prominent) appearance at Christmas time. One of these is pie. Pumpkin is my favorite, and although I'm not crazy for apple pie (it is slowly becoming an acquired taste) it sure is easy to make! My last food lab was to make an apple pie, so I did. And if I say so myself, it is a beautiful apple pie! And it was yummy too! Philip will vouch for this you non-believers!

My food lab apple pie with the pretty lattice top! This was before baking, that is why it is a little pasty white.

Now, until today, this was only the second apple pie I have ever made, or helped to make, in my entire life. Well today, that number went up by about 28. Philip and I are in Texas for Christmas break. And today we were at the Trythall's, his oldest sister's family, cleaning up the shed for the Texas Christmas hoedown (yes it will be epic) next week. While doing this we were invited to participate in a Dan and Amy Trythall tradition. Every year they make dozens (last year they made 50!) of apple pies for friends. Today was pie day, and since they asked, we joined in and helped! Philip used an apple slicer to prepare around 85 apples for the filling, while I helped make the pie crusts and made the topping for every single pie. Dan (brother in-law) prepared the other 85 apples, Kennedy (niece, 10 yrs old) mixed the filling ingredients with the apples and poured it into the crust, and Amy formed the pretty crusts. It was a monotonous adventure, but a fun one too! And boy, that pie was yummy! (It was also really yummy to just steal a few apple pieces that had been mixed in the filling before being cooked.... so good!)

Philip's workspace (should've seen the floor...)

Apple peel pasta :)

The sugar, flour, and kitchen aid mixer were my constant companions this afternoon/evening!

Yummy Apple Pies!!!

Another Month Gone By!

Wow! Once again, another month has gone by without a single post! Oops!

Here is a quick catch up:

Although Philip and I could not visit my parents and younger siblings for Thanksgiving, it was still fantastic! We ended up spending our Thanksgiving holiday with Philip's sister Charlottes family. They are AWESOME!

They are the closest relatives to us right now, so we see them semi-regularly, but we neverr get bored of them because they are so fun! Of course the Thanksgiving meal was delicious, Charlotte cooked most of it so how could it not be, but Hannah did make some very tasty sweet potatoes! My favorite memory from Thanksgiving dinner was that every time Jacob (who is 2 1/2) got food he would put his hands above his head and say with lots of excitement, "Yum yum yum!" It was soooo cute and funny!

We also went and visited with "Wedge" while there. It was my first time to see it and it was really neat. A little mini Grand Canyon right here in Utah!

So what else have Philip and I been up too.... well mostly the usual..... school.... homework.... preparing for finals.... work..... oh, and packing. The packing goes with =( but also =). Packing and moving our stuff is not so enjoyable. It is a long a tedious task sometimes..... and I am also sad because it means we are leaving our tiny little home that I so love ....

....but it also means that spending time with family is close! And Russia isn't too far away either!

This past Saturday we had some friends help us move our larger furniture to friends and storage and while in the process we got rear ended. This is quite bad timing. We got rear ended while accelerating, we hadn't even stopped recently, by someone who was incredibly distracted (obviously) and was driving faster than us. It really was ridiculous and would not have happened if the driver was paying the least bit attention. Our bumper is now destroyed and needs to be replaced, which neither of us have the time for. We have less than 15 days total that we will be in Utah and just about a month that we will still even be in the U.S.! We don't have time to get our car fixed! I am just hoping the other driver's insurance will cooperate so the car can get fixed without too much hassle. Luckily the car still drives fine though!

Oh, but such good news! It is December! The semester ends and its Christmas time! More thoughts of the Saviour are everywhere and it is wonderful! There is a reason for the season!

Halloween!

Halloween this year was quite fun! A couple parties and just having fun enjoying the season! Usually Philip and I dress up as lame things that take like no thought and work (like hippies and cowboys), but this year we really wanted to dress up. It started with Philip wanting to be able to wear his tux in a costume since he never gets to wear it. Well after thinking about it for a bit he came up with the idea of being Count Dracula, so we went with it! It was pretty cheap to make it happen too because the only things we had to buy were capes (which were 60% off) and some makeup which was only a couple dollars, we already had everything else we needed at home! The cape I found originally had devil horns, but some cutting and sewing fixed that! Here are some pictures of our fun! And of some friends and their cool costumes too!

Mummies!

Cool 70's hippies and football & player

Princess Peach and Mario!

Russian and the MTC

SO Philip has been trying to teach me Russian ever since we got married. I can't lie, I haven't always been very responsive to his attempts. I listen and respond when he teaches, I just haven't really made a huge effort to learn Russian. I actually would love to learn Russian, but the thought is quite intimidating because Russian is so different! Its alphabet is so confusing to learn too!

Well last night I became inspired to put some effort into learning Russian. Philip goes to the MTC to act as an investigator for Russian Training missionaries quite often, and last night I decided to go with him. We were with 2 sister missionaries who had been in the MTC for 7 weeks and were expected to answer any gospel question we could come up with completely in Russian. These sisters did a pretty good job, especially considering that Philip tried to challenge them to use more vocabulary. Well, as I sat there listening and only understanding extremely small snipets of their conversation, I began wishing that I understood more of what they were saying and wanting to contribute but not being able too. I realized that unless I really get serious about learning Russian this is how I will feel the entire time I am in Russia with Philip! I want to learn Russian!

Goin to Russia!

Right now Philip and I are really excited about the opportunity we will have this winter to teach English to children in Russia for 5 months. We will be going to Voronezh, Russia. This is a city of about 1 million people and is around 350 miles south of Moscow. We will be living with a host family who we look forward to getting in contact with. We are going through the International Language Program (ILP). If you would like more information you can check out ilp.org. This is a non-profit organization. Meaning that we are paying for this trip and going as volunteer's. We don't receive school credit for this time, but a break from everyday life here in Provo will be nice.


I am really excited to experience the everyday cultural aspects of Russia. This will be my first time out of the United States, and a very different and exciting one it will be I'm sure! Philip of course is uber excited to go back to Russia (even though this location is practically half way around the world from where he served his mission in Russia) and get to speak the language with locals and experience life in Russia not as a missionary.



Being able to speak Russian when you go isn't required (lucky for me) because all of the teaching is done through interaction with the kids while speaking in English. Luckily though, Philip speaks Russian, so while we are out and about he can communicate with the natives. I really hope to learn a lot of Russian while we are there. Then we can have a little Russian speaking family! =)
We will definitely try to do good at keeping the blog up to date about it all when we are there so that anyone who would like to read about it can!

A Few Things From the Past Year

A few things from the past year........

We have only lived in Provo since we got married, but we have had some fun while here. This last Halloween we dressed up with some friends and went to some haunted houses and Halloween parties.... it was fun! My eyes look kind of crazy in this picture... not sure why......

One of the neatest things we did this last winter was go see these large ice sculpture castles by Midway, UT. A guy here makes these large ice castles using sprinklers and hoses... he doesn't actually do much sculpting on them, but they still look really cool. And there are a couple you can walk inside, it was fun to see that!

We also hiked Mt. Timpanogas last summer. I didn't make it all the way to the top that time ( I had the previous year), so Philip had to climb the last hour by himself.... it was an adventure though!

This year really has been wonderful, I think we both have learned so much about ourselves, each other, and just about life in general.We have been married for 1 year and 18 days! Wahoo!

One of the best parts of being married is getting to know each others family. We both have been blessed to come from amazing families and to have wonderful grandparents, parents, siblings, nieces/nephews, cousins, and everyone else too!

We were so blessed to have almost all of our immediate family at our temple sealing and reception. All of the support we continually receive means everything to us.

We may not be the best at keeping in touch with everyone, but we think of our families often and are constantly wishing we could spend more time with each individual member of our families. Family means everything and Philip and I are so glad and blessed to have our own that will last for eternity. =D