The Almost-Super Bowl

I come from a family of die-hard San Francisco 49ers fans.  And it was great to be a 49er fan when I was growing up because they were AWESOME.  The last few years have been a bit more of a challenge.  It has been harder to find games on TV and when they were on, it was sometimes hard to watch.  But this season was fun again!  They were playing great and as the playoffs progressed we will filled with anticipation that there might even be a Superbowl in the future.  But just in case there wasn't, we decided to have a full-blown party for the NFC championship game instead.  Since the 49ers were playing in that. 

My sister Chrystie arranged for us all to come up to her house and enjoy the game.  Matt and I were assigned to bring a dessert.  We decided to go all out and made this cake.

It was our first time playing with fondant and it was pretty fun.  We had some extra cake that we cut off the large cake to try and make it sit flat and we made little football cake balls out of them. I had one and it was a crazy sugar rush.  Chrystie's kids loved them and I am pretty sure they contributed to some of the extra energy that was moving around the room as the adults tried to watch the football game.

The game didn't end the way we all had hoped, but the party was fun.

Let the Kidnapping Begin

We decided this year that we were going to spend some one-on-one time with our nieces and nephews that live nearby.  We started with the oldest in-state nephew Carson.  We told him we were going to kidnap him and take he to do whatever he wanted.  He chose to go to a trampoline park near his house.  So we picked him up and headed out.

The trampoline park was kind of busy the day we were there since it was a cold and wet kind of Saturday.  But we found ourselves a little corner to play in and jumped around for a while.  Then we discovered the foam pits and the party really started.  Carson really liked jumping off the highest spot into the foam.  Matt tried his hand at foam jumping and almost drowned.  I wish I had a better picture of that.  After his experience I decided to stick with the old-fashioned trampolines.

Once our time was up we picked up our shoes and headed to McDonald's for some lunch because we were in a hurry to get Carson to his cousin's birthday party.  We had a real good time with Carson and hope to do another kidnapping with him soon.

Happy Birthday Grandma

 The Family put together a party for my Grandma Haun's birthday this year.  We were all able to get together and spend some time celebrating the life of a wonderful lady.  We had some great food and were able to take some family pictures (I don't have any of those, I will have to hunt them down).  After the party started to break down the kids had a great time playing with the left over balloons.

Hiking in the snow

A few years ago for Christmas Matt got me a pair of snowshoes.  We picked some up for him not long after that, but then we never went snowshoeing.  Somehow weekends in the winter were always too busy or there wasn't enough snow.  Whatever the reason, we just never went.

I was determined that we were going to go out and have some winter fun this year.  So we found a perfect weekend where there was snow and we had some spare time.  We hopped in the car and drove up to Snow Basin to get our snowshoe on.

It was a crowded day so we were parked at a parking lot a bit farther from the resort.  We decided to just set off from the parking lot and head across some fields.  It was actually a lot of fun!  The ground was a bit crunchy, with a frozen layer on top and the soft stuff under.  We crunched along and had a great time.  We found lots of other people walking around and were able to chat with them a little.  What a beautiful day!

Happy Birthday to Me

Every year I have another birthday.  Birthdays are measures and markers, opportunities to think about the year gone by and the year to come.  The best birthdays are those that are spent with the ones we love.  I was lucky enough to spend my birthday with Matt.  Since my birthday fell on a Thursday there wasn't much we could do between the time I get home from work and bed time.  Matt took me out to dinner for steak and he bought me some super cute flowers and a running jacket as well as some soft and warm hoodie sweatshirts.  What a great guy.  Being 29 (again) isn't so bad.

 Then, on the weekend we had a party at my parent's house.  Matt was wonderful and made me a cake from scratch.  He also made it look like the cake from the video game Portal.  That sure made me smile.

Happy 2012

We were lucky enough to be invited to spend New Year's Eve with Matt's family this year.  We all met up at Amy's house and had a good time playing games.  Matt's mom came up as well as his sister and her family.  We all played some games together and then the kids went down to watch a movie while the rest of us talked and played some more.

Finally the time came and we all rang in the New Year with some sparkling cider and cheers all around.