Adventures with Chris and Karen

We were happy that we were able to spend some time with William's brother and sister-in-law Karen while we were in Utah. The central theme surrounding both our visits ended up being Christmas lights- first at Temple Square and then down in Utah valley. Chris and Karen showed us these unbelievable light displays down in the Riverbottoms. This one street just had TONS of lights everywhere!

This one house just had lights nearly on every tree- and they even created one

I was quite impressed by the complex lighted nativity scene

But, this house was ruled them all because it had moving lights- you can't see it from the photo, but the driver is leading on the horses and it would flick in time to the rhythm.

But, there was this one house that had quite the interesting lighting scheme- to me, it seems something more appropriate for Halloween as it gives kind of an eerie, ephemeral feel to it

Then, it was off to dinner at BRICK OVEN. Mmm- one of our favorite places to eat in Provo. I introduced William to it last year and he was hooked. And Chris also "hooked" Karen by taking her there on their first date. I truly love their garlic cheese bread- yummy. And I do also enjoy their giant M&M cookie.

Next, it was off to play a little mini-golf at Trafalgar. There were several groups of people so we jumped around the course doing random holes so that we wouldn't have to wait. Here's Chris willing his shot to go in the hole . . .

William puttering around

And Karen just post-swing.

All in all, it was a fun game- with some miraculous holes-in-one and some 5 stroke limits but quite a competitive game. William just barely beat Chris and I came in 3rd while Karen took the game easy- she didn't want to overexert herself with the baby :-)

Then, came the small fiasco of the evening. William and I had read in the paper about this house that won the most decorated in Utah and it was in Pleasant Grove. William copied down the directions from Google maps (of course!) and we headed off. The only problem is that the area where the house is at is very complicated because it is near where 3 cities meet up and so all of the streets change names and numbering systems. We drove around trying to find this choreographed light house for over an hour- but we finally found it!!!! Unfortunately, they had already turned off the lights! Hey, it was only 11:30- you would think that if they had a famous house they would at least keep them on until 12- but maybe the neighbors complained. So, that was kind of a bust, but we did get to see the Timpanogous Temple at night and some other Christmas lights. And we have figured somewhat figured out the crazy street system- nah, not really. At least we were in good company.

It was so fun to spend time with Chris and Karen and most likely, the next time we see them, they will be 3 of them!

The BEST of Utah

Here are some of the BEST of things that Utah has to offer that we experienced over the Christmas holiday. Firstly, lets talk about FOOD. It never fails that some of the things you can always do in Utah are 1. eat and 2. go to a movie. Needless to say, we definitely utilized both of these. The day after arriving we went to ICEBERG- this classic drive in that has the BEST shakes. Here, Cynthia and I are enjoying one- I have the Grasshopper (mint oreo- the best) and Cynth got Eggnog for the holiday season. These are the "mini's. This is true HEAVEN for an ice cream lover like myself. I always hated that in Boston they had their "milk shakes" which were really just sugared and slightly flavored milk. Now THIS is a real shake! Another place that we hit is my favorite place to eat- CAFE RIO. Truly, there are few things better than their veggie salad with pinto beans and half cilantro half creamy tomatillo dressing. I just love the tortilla so much. I eat it first to make sure that I have room. We also hit CHICK-FIL-A- one of William's most favorite places to eat. He ate there once at the mall while my cousins and I were having girls day out and then the two of us went so that he could get his fill-of-a. We went to the location off of 106th south near South Towne Mall and it was just PACKED with little kids. I had forgotten just how many kids are in Utah, and I know it was more than normal considering there was no school but it is just a shocking comparison to the Bay Area. Gotta love the waffle fries. I also had a frosty from WENDY'S- I haven't been able to find one yet here in Cali (see, but I'm totally ok here cuz we have IN-N-OUT). We also hit RED ROBBIN- I SO LOVE their steak fries! And "cowboy" sauce- hehehe- its actually called "campfire" sauce so the waitress and my family had a good laugh about my mistake. Hey, at least I was in the same genre!

Next, onto the MOVIES! We truly saw SO many in the 10 days we were there: National Treasure 2 (entertaining but SO UNBELIEVABLE- I mean, the whole Mt. Rushmore thing as a conspiracy cover-up just made me laugh. But, it was entertaining and interesting, though not fully factually accurate. Hopefully, it will make people actually research history- but I think many will just think that everything is true from the movie. I expect to see a huge increase in attendance to Mt. Rushmore during 2008 from the film. I think they should create a special "tour" to highlight some of the things from the film- it would be a good way to make money). Next, it was Rush Hour 3 at the dollar movies (I just LOVE the dollars! I so so miss them. And since we had 4 people, we got in for 50 cents each! It reminded me back of the BYU days when we would hit the Movies 8 on 50 cent night. It was just packed on those nights, much more than others, but it was only a dollar normally. I think that just as college kids we were looking for any kind of break we could get. Golden Compass- (this was a good movie- not one I would see again, but ok. I don't understand all of the talk about the "atheism"- maybe its in the books but I didn't see it in the movie. I did enjoy the "Coke bears" as my mom put it). And P.S. I Love You- NOT the movie to see for anyone sensitive or romantic, let alone someone who is still somewhat newlywed. It was a bawler- but it made me feel better that both my sisters cried as well cuz normally I am the only one crying in movies. That is one that I will never see again- just like "The Letter" (a Korean film I saw at the International Cinema) or "A Walk to Remember". They are just way too sad. I can't write much more cuz it is bringing on sad feelings.

So, what else is there to do in Utah besides that? I know that at times it may feel like eating and going to the movies are the only things happening, but there is so much more to be had if you do a little searching.

WINTER SPORTS: Truly, Utah does have the "best snow on earth" and my favorite place to ski is at ALTA. I would say that I'm an intermediate skiier- I love to do the blue runs but I HATE to feel out of control so I usually take things at a somewhat slower pace. Last year, I took William skiing and he did incredibly well for not having skiied in over 10 years. His one request was that we go again this year. Alta has this AWESOME program called "Ski Free After 3". That's right- you can ski their beginner lift and trails for FREE from 3 pm until the lift closes at 4:30. Their ski shop even offers discounted rates for the time period making it only $9 for an afternoon of skiing. This is PERFECT for beginners because when you are just learning, you get tired pretty fast so that generally is all that you feel like doing for the day anyways. William did awesome- the line to get skiis took a bit of time so I just made him immediately go on the run and not do the horrible bunny bunny hill. And he did great! His second run was even better. The nice thing about Alta's beginner trails is that you can make them slightly more difficult if you like and they are just really fun and beautiful. It was an awesome afternoon of skiing. HOWEVER, going down the canyon back home was not. It was a horrible traffic jam. It literally took us an hour and a half to make a normally 20 minute ride due to everyone emptying the canyon. But, I have to say, I glad it was after skiing cuz that kept me in a somewhat decent mood.

We also went ICE SKATING. There are some things in life that I wish I could do better, but ice skating just isn't one of them. I've been usually once or twice a year but it generally hurts my calves and feet and so I can't go for long periods. I haven't fallen down in a long time though and it is fun- but only for a limited time. William wanted to go again as well and fortunately, he has some of the same issues and so we probably were only skating for less an an hour. Just enough to have fun and get our fill before our feet were totally killing us.

PIONEER THEATER COMPANY: This is one of the hidden treasures of Salt Lake. This is the theater company up at the University of Utah and my family has had season tickets there for probably over 15 years. The acting is always superb, except sometimes the plays themselves (writing, theme, etc) aren't all that great. The most recent play was "The Foreigner" and my dad, mom, and Sarah saw it and my dad in particular said that it was the best and funniest play that he had seen since Hayfever. Mind you, Hayfever was probably over 10 years ago, so this meant it was a great play. So, he kindly bought me, William and Cynthia tickets to see it. And it was hilarious! And the actors truly had such great comedic timing. If you ever get a chance to see a performance of this play- see it because it is just hilarious.

UTAH MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS: This is another little gem that has had some great traveling exhibits. It's at the University of Utah as well and admission is usually $5 but they had a special event the day we went so we got in for free. They had a great exhibit entitled "Andy Warhol's Dream America" with a large number of his paintings. I like much of Andy Warhol's work, but I thought that they did a terrible job of showcasing his work. He has these paintings he has done in slightly different styles to make a series. They are most powerful when they are all organized in a big grouping side by side (usually in a big rectangle or square). But, the way they organized this collection, many of the series was just strewn out all over the wall, making the impact less powerful and more difficult to make comparisons. They have some of his famous Campbell Soup Can series and I tried for 15 minutes to convince William of their value and importance for influencing art and he just didn't get it. Well, he understood it but still thought it was pretty lame. My favorites from this series were the shoes one. Each canvas had some diamond dust on them- creating a great sparkling effect. My favorite one was of the different black colored shoes- the coloring and textured contrast was really interesting. I learned something at this exhibit about Andy Warhol that I never knew before. Warhol was scheduled to speak at the University of Utah and he came and was just even more bizzare and stand-offish than normal and really didn't even answer any of the audience questions. Well, one of the students had attended a different Warhol lecture and knew that it wasn't the REAL Andy Warhol- it was a stand in! It turns out that Warhol had done this same thing at 6 other university talks that he had given! I have to say that's pretty low- to me, its kind of in the same category as a singer lip-syncing to a cd at a concert. But, hey I guess at least the concert attenders got to see what the artist looked like- they students didn't even get that much of an opportunity.

PHEW! I hope now you can see some of all the wonderful activities that Utah has to offer. It was a fun but busy trip for us and there are still a few more adventures to come . . .

Not Quite As Anticipated

The thought behind the idea was great, but in actuality, it turned into a small failure. In my parents neighborhood back in Utah, the homeowners association had this idea to give each family 6 luminaries to light on Christmas Eve and place them all across their property so that when all lit, it would provide some kind of unity for the neighborhood. My sister was very set on enacting this idea. So, she was the one who took the supplies they had given us and set them up. Well, she tried too. The supplies they had given us were: 6 white paper lunch bags, 6 little candle tea lights, and some kitty litter to act as somewhat of an anchor. Seems easy enough- the only problem was that there was left over wind from a storm and they had not given us enough kitty litter to truly anchor the bags so they kept blowing over and the candles blowing out. This was our best attempt to try to keep them up and lit. As you can see from the top photo, only one of the bags on that side of the house managed to stay upright. At least the other two stayed lit . . . at least for the photo. The other side was even better. One of the bags actually caught on fire and incinerated. Yet, the candle kept burning! I just thought that this was hilarious. The bottom photo is a shot of our eternal flame. At least our family attempted to do the lanterns- over half of the homes in our neighborhood didn't even try- they figured that it wasn't worth the struggle. I think that it would have been so much better if they would have just had little fences with strands of lights running along the streets, kind of like they did in the neighborhood next to us. I give our neighborhood an A for their thought . . . just need a little work on the actual execution.

A Grand Celebration for a Grand Woman

The Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City has been a special place for years for my family. Every year, we celebrate the birthday of my beloved Grandmother- Carol Margaret Latimer Child- who is even more "Grand" than this beautiful hotel. My Grandmother has raised 6 children and now has numerous sons and daughter-in-laws, grandchildren, and even great- grandchildren. I would have to say that my Grandma is a STELLAR cook. I love her homemade rolls more than ANYTHING in the world. Food truly was her way of showing us how much she cared for us, and instilling traditions. My grandmother is big on traditions. For every major holiday, including general conference, we would go to her house where we would have a special menu of foods for each event. When my cousins, the Greenwoods, came into town, we always had lasagna. For Thanksgiving, we would have turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, pecan yams, peas, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and she would always give us a gingerbread man to take home with us- which usually didn't even make it on the ride home. For Christmas, we always had ham- and she would specially get out French's mustard for my dad because she knows how much he loves it. My grandma has always had a soft spot for my dad- when he would sometimes have to come late due to seeing patients at the hospital, she would make sure that we wouldn't eat all of the chip dip so that he could have some. In fact, she actually reserved some in a separate container for him and then filled it when he came. This photo is of my beautiful grandmother with my father. I gave her this photo in a picture frame for her birthday celebration and she kept saying just how much my dad is "such a sour puss". She must have repeated this 10 times throughout the lunch, and she even showed the picture to our waiter and commented to him that her son-in-law is a "treasure- but a sour puss". There's pure love in that comment because she definitely mentioned him more than anyone else at lunch.

My grandmother was actually one of the main people who encouraged me to have my wedding reception at the Grand America and so it was truly an honor for my to have her be present at our wedding dinner. Old age has taken a toll on her in that it is hard for her to do so many of the things she loved to do- even cooking is hard- but she always saves her strength and energy to make it to our special events- particularly if they are at the Grand America. Her Dec. 27th birthday lunch this year was no exception. She had been sick earlier in the week but was all ready for her grand birthday. We had over two full tables of her family there to honor her- thanks for the great genes Grandma! (My grandma is down at the far left end- in the happy yellow blouse)

What a joy and inspiration my grandmother is to me. She truly exemplifies continually sacrificing for her family and I hope that I can be able to do the same to keep continuing her legacy of family traditions. This truly is such a priceless photo for me- a reminder of truly how much it meant to me to have such a Grand woman as my Grandmother.

Melding Christmas Traditions

Christmas 2007 was our first Christmas together as a married couple and so we melded some of our favorite Christmas traditions from each side of the family.

CHERYL:
Every year we visit the lights at Temple Square. This year was no exception and we went with William's brother and sister-in-law, Chris and Karen. It truly is such a beautiful to walk around and see the temple and all of the lights celebrating our Savior's birth. These were my two favorite photos of the ones we took.

You can see the rest of the photos from our evening in the slide show below.

WILLIAM:

William and his brothers have a tradition of spending more time on the wrapping of the gift than the gift itself. In a previous year, Chris gave William this giant block of duct tape that took William 2 hours to unwrap to find a gift card. Needless to say, William was going to give a unique gift back to Chris. I must say that I DID NOT ENDORSE this gift giving method but I was overruled as it is William's brother. Chris and Karen are expecting a baby boy in May so William thought that it would be great to "inaugurate" them into parenthood early with his gift. William took a "gift card" and placed it in a ziplock bag and then placed it inside of a clean baby diaper. I was ok with the gift up to this point but that wasn't good enough for William. He thought it needed to be messy and so he placed a container of CHOCOLATE PUDDING into the diaper! You should have seen William's face at the grocery store when he made this "revelation" about how to construct this "perfect" gift- truly, so excited.

Here is William in the construction process of the gift- he could not stop smiling and talking about how "awesome" his gift was.

The "masterful" gift in all its glory

And the final, unsuspectful looking product.

And let me tell you that we watched Chris open up the gift in person and he had this look of pure disgust as he peeked in the diaper, immediately closed it and said "Ewww- Bill!" Here is Chris opening the gift once he regained his composure.

The whole night, Chris kept telling William what a "great" job he did of coming up with such a clever way to wrap the gift. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then William should be very pleased since Chris used this same idea (not the same gift) on Karen's brother and sister-in-law who are also expecting. I'm just slightly concerned about what the retaliation will be next year from Chris . . . . .

CHERYL:

My family has a longstanding tradition of every Christmas Eve of going to a movie and then out to dinner. We learned many years ago that very few places are open on Christmas Eve- except Village Inn. So, this year the tradition continued with William. My mom, Sarah, William, and I all went and saw "Rush Hour 3" at the dollar movies (which is hilarious- Chris Tucker just cracks me up- I just wish I could see more outtakes of their stunt training sessions) and then went to Village Inn.

WILLIAM:

Every Christmas Eve, William's family drives around and looks at neighborhood Christmas lights. Since William's parents were in Russia for the holidays, we greatly missed them, but kept the tradition alive. William, Sarah and I all drove around the surrounding neighborhoods checking out the Christmas lights. Here are a few of our favorite photos.

Check out the projection screen!

And this was the most elaborately decorated house we saw that night

At the conclusion of our driving tour, William thought that the best Christmas lights were the ones in my neighborhood, New Haven and Shennandoah, the adjoining neighborhood, but we were happy to find some of the gems from the other neighborhoods.

CHERYL:

Our family stocking stand- and look- there's even one for William!

Christmas for the Stults household has gotten to have a later start time as we have gotten older.

My dad is a physician and so he has to go into the hospital for sometime every Christmas to take care of some of his patients. When we were little, we would wake up really early and do presents before he went to work. As we got older, we made the ruling that we valued our sleep time more and so we don't open presents until he gets home from work, sometimes at 1 pm or another time in the afternoon. This is a fairly foreign concept to William because even as adults, his family still got up pretty early. Since it was later the the day, William and I opted to appear in regular clothes and not our pajamas- but my sisters maintained the pajama tradition.

Sarah with her gifts and I love the wrapping job on the "unique" gift.

Cynthia with her gifts.

William's gifts-

One of them being this good looking tie (nice choice Mom and Dad!)

Me with my gifts- and one of them I'm wearing . . . . new glasses!

WILLIAM:

One of William's family's traditions is to make Christmas goodies. And so William himself made some for us! Butterscotch crunchies and white chocolate brownie bars- mmm soo good! And my mom and sisters were truly impressed by William's cooking skills as he made them all by himself.

CHERYL:

My family does fondue every year around Christmas time, and this year we had it on Christmas day. It is so much fun to dip foods into the cheese and tomato sauce fondues.

And since my dad is a doctor, his patients are always being so generous and giving us fruit baskets. This was one of the most unique fruit creations I've seen!

So, our individual family traditions have now been "melded" together to be OUR traditions of CHERYL AND WILLIAM

But I would have to say that my favorite new tradition of all is just being with William.

My Guilty Pleasure

So, one of my guilty little pleasures is watching PROJECT RUNWAY. I'm officially addicted. How did I get this way considering we don't have cable? It all started on my long jet blue flights from Boston to California when they always seemed to have Project Runway marathons on Bravo. I used to be embarrassed that I watch this show, but now I just embrace it whole heartedly. I think it is such a great "reality tv show" because it is fascinating to see the kind of creativity that people come up with. For example, this weeks episode (which they FINALLY are putting on the Bravo website so I don't have to watch it thru you tube) the contestants had 5 minutes to grab whatever they wanted from the Hershey Store in Times Square and then only that day to "make it work". Some of the results were so clever.


This dress on the left is made completely out of the brown wrappers surrounding the Reeses Peanut Butter Cups! Who knew that could be made fashionable.

The one on the right was the winner. The skirt is made out of the outer foil wrapper of York Peppermint Patties all sewn together! Just look at how meticulous and well put together it is! Additionally, the top is vinyl from Twizzler's pillows. Really creative.

I also thought that Jillian, the designer, was so ambitious to work

with actual food. Yup- the skirt and bodice are made of Twizzlers. To me, the bodice doesn't fit, but I'm just so impressed that she was able to pull it off and not have everything fall off as her model walked down the runway.

I actually thought that this one was really clever and actually somewhat wearable in real life. But what was most impressive was who made it. This designer previously designed costumes and so his past results have all been totally over the top and out of control. It was amazing to see that he can do something fashionable and normal when he puts his mind to it.

So, there you have it. My secret is out. This is particularly what happens when Cheryl is sick and needs fun entertainment. Well, and I have to admit, I watch this even when I'm not sick too, but at least it has a good cover for this post :-)

Starting the New Year

I'm sure that my few loyal readers are wondering when I'm going to post about Christmas, BFF's wedding, and our other Utah adventures, but it will still probably be a bit longer since returning to CA and the New Year brought me a new nasty cold. It's basically put me out of commission since New Year's Day, and has caused me to sleep and cough most of the time. And the saddest part is that despite my best efforts, William looks like he's getting it too. Major Bummer. Thus, all of the New Year's resolutions to exercise and be active haven't yet happened- not even one day. But hey, I guess that things can only get better in 2008 after such a rocky start . . . . .