Graduation Photo Shoot

Cousins Christmas Party

The Second Annual Cousins Christmas Party was a huge success! Almost all the local family was able to make it and the ones that weren't stopped by later in the evening so I still got to see pretty much everyone! Aunt Rach dominated everyone by knowing her Christmas carols and Jocelyn's prompt for pictionary telephone had us laughing at the end! ("ho, ho, ho" turned into 3 girls outside in the cold. We aren't completely sure that Will (who read the results) or Jocelyn understood why that was so funny but its probably better that they didn't anyway) Derek amazed us with his ornament decorating skills and Team Couch (Aunt Rach, Will, Hannah, Whit and Mike) edged out the other teams to win at charades/pictionary. Add that to lots of yummy food and I'd say the evening was a success! the goal next year to go get a few of the straggler cousins who are in school this year to be able to make it and keep the tradition growing!

2010 Christmas Letter

It’s been quite a year of fun adventures!

February- I traveled half way around the world (literally) to go swim with the dolphins in Oman! It was nice to trade out the snowy weather of Utah for a week at the beach. Who would have guessed the Middle East would be such a great Vacation destination!

March and April I spent a good 3 weeks in Minnesota at training for my new job at Broadview University, which I am still at, and loving! (Though after those three weeks, I have no plans to move to Minnesota anytime soon)

May included a road trip to Washington and Seattle, and yes, more snow.

July included the Hot Air Balloon Races as part of the Freedom Festival as well as a Road trip to Colorado for some R&R with my cousins.

August- The Llama Festival is something I’ve intended to go to for a few years and 2010 was the year I finally made it! I plan on a repeat appearance for 2011.

September brought a trip to the Alpine slides with some of my favorite people!

In November we competed in the Turkey Trot Triathlon! Whit ran, Brian biked and I swam. Mike did one all by himself! Go Team Shorts!

2010 was a great year with lots of fun adventures and I’m sure 2011 will bring lots of fun new adventure!

I hope your year was just as fun! Merry Christmas! Love, Sheryl

I went to Oman!

Dolphin Watching

Kayaking in the Sea of Oman

The Grand Mosque

View at night

The Palace (or at least one of them)

AMAZING water

At the Grand Mosque

Serendipity and Black Friday

Having now had swine flu and seasonal flu in the last month I've had lots of time to catch up on my movie watching. When I came home sick the other day and the weather man was predicting snow I decided to have a Christmas movie marathon. I started with some of the more traditional like Miracle on 34th Street and The Santa Clause and a few others and then started on to the less traditional. I seem to watch Serendipity around this time of year and can't really decide if its a Christmas movie or a regular movie. The menu is a giant snowflake, it is mostly based in December and seems to involve many trips to the retail shops for Christmas shopping and lots of snow... but then it does not center around some type of holiday disaster, it could be set in any time of year and if I worked in a movie shop I would recommend it to viewers year round. Just wondering.

I've decided that I want to go Black Friday shopping this year. I've worked it once but I've never actually participated in the shopping mayhem. I've been looking up advertisements online. My problem with Christmas shopping is that most the people I shop for I don't have advanced plans as to exactly what I want to buy them. Pretty much every year my strategy is to start by buying the one or two things I know for sure I am buying and while I'm getting those ones I browse and get a few ideas for other people and if something really jumps out at me then I do a little investigating and I pretty much continue this cycle until I've finished my holiday shopping. I don't usually end up with too many impulse purchases so I've never really felt the need to change the cycle but this doesn't seems to be a good strategy for Black Friday shopping. There are very good sales so the ability to get as much shopping done as possible would be a good thing that just brings me back to how do I decide what to buy for everyone?

On a side note- I used to have this pair of shoes that I really liked. I think everyone goes through a few favorite pair of shoes. Its been about two years since I last saw those shoes, I seemed to have lost them when I moved to Utah from Seattle and I checked a few places to replace them but never had luck so I moved onto better shoes and never really looked back. I went to the store the other day for some Halloween supplies and there were my shoes. I tried them on again for old times sake and they fit great. I kinda think I need to buy them again. (also you could claim serendipity in randomly finding them again...)

Julie & Julia... & Sheryl?

I enjoy to cook. I do fairly well at it, cooking, baking, I really enjoy being creative with food and like to experiment with new recipes and combinations of foods and really like adding various spices to my creations.

I got interested in cake decorating after watching the TV show Ace of Cakes on the Food Network (http://www.charmcitycakes.com/) and discovered that that was a fun way to combine my art degree with my love of food, I would do more of it except that having that much cake around is not a good idea, I prefer not to eat my weight in cake. I have made an Easter Bunny cake (it actually looked like an rabbit) I like using fondant and can make pretty good white chocolate and marshmallow fondants and like to use chocolate clay to do the detail work. They usually turn out really well.

When it comes to cooking I can usually get decent results with most things and really like to start with something basic and elaborate on it. There is however one basic food item that eludes me. Rice. I cannot for the life of me make rice. It either ends up burnt or crunchy and I have no idea how to fix this. Rice in a box is fine but to actually make white rice, yeah, that is quite a gamble. Even today, I came home measured 3/4 cup of rice, 2 cups of water and covered it on med to boil for 20 minutes later. Fifteen minutes later I started to smell something, sure enough it was burnt. I have no idea how I managed to do this. somehow I only burnt half the pan! (to answer the obvious question- yes it was over the heat evenly) on one half of the pan it was black on the bottom and the top layer of rice was very brown around the edge and the other half of the pan looked very wet still. How is this possible? As we speak I'm working on my second attempt. so far so god but I'm only 10 minutes in. The problem with my inability to make rice is that it is a staple in quite a few food items so I really need to overcome this.

Perhaps I should be watching this more closely, they say a watched pot never boils, does that mean it also never burns?

Any tricks to making rice?

Our Favorite Family Pics

We also got our family pictures back, I think they turned out great, here are our favorites!