Beauty and the Beast ~ We love Gaston!

Well, my intentions of trying to blog regularly fell to the wayside in January!

Ben was in the musical at his school. They performed "Beauty and the Beast" and he played the part of Gaston. He did an awesome job :) It was alot of fun to watch him try something so different than what he normally does ( sports ). It was amazing to watch such talent come out of a group of junior highers. They did an incredible job!!

DJ and I spent alot of hours in January helping get ready for the musical. We mostly helped with  the stage sets. It was quite an adventure and we worked with some wonderful people! 


My friend Monica's son, Tyler, played Lefou ( Gastons sidekick ). He and Ben were great together! They've gone to school and played soccer together since 3rd grade. Monica and I have done alot of PTA projects together over the years plus huddled at countless soccer games in the snow, rain, wind, etc. We work well together and she's fun to spend time with :) Her and her husband, Tanner, also helped with the stage sets and Monica and I did ticket sales.


I look forward to Ben doing more theatre ( hopefully! ). 

Ben's second mom ~ Monica

Monica putting Ben's stage makeup on

Tyler & Ben a.k.a. Lefou & Gaston

Gaston displaying his muscles :)

Gaston singing to one of the silly girls

Lefou & Gaston

Gaston, the Beast & Lumiere

After the last nights performance Gaston apologized to Belle for being so arrogant and rude! It was very sweet as this was Ben's idea :) 

Gaston with Grandpa and Grandma Vetter ~ It was so wonderful that they could come out for this musical!

Me, Ben, Tyler, and Monica

Monica & I at our ticket table

Me and Meredith, the musicals producer. She's the retired music teacher at our junior high. Her and I spent many hours together on this musical and I really enjoyed working with her :)

When I sat down to do this blog post after the musical I was sick to my stomach when neither the computer or my camera would read my card. I took the card over to our local photography store and they were able to recover all the pictures ( except our family picture with Ben ) ~ thanks to a wonderful employee who went the extra mile!


When I went to pick up the cd of pictures they'd recovered the employee ( who had a really cool British accent! ) put the cd in so I could see the pictures. There were 190 pictures but there were 2 pictures not on there that I wouldn't be able to get from anyone. Ben with his grandparents and the one of him giving Belle the flower. I told the employee about those two pictures and she told me to come upstairs with her and she'd try a couple things. She was able to recover those 2 pictures plus more bringing the total of recovered pictures to 26o! 


She became my hero at that moment :)


Which reminds me ~ I need to contact the store and let her boss know how awesome she is!

Escaping the Yellow Cloud

Northern Utah has some of the worst air quality to be had. It's a known fact. We get terrible inversions during the winter and they are packed full of pollution.

Not a cheery note to start a blog post with! When the opportunity arises to escape this nasty yellow cloud I'm all for it :)

Snowshoeing on the other side of the mountain is the perfect escape!! The air is clear and clean. You can look off into the distance and see.....well, you can actually see the landscape! Not a hovering mass of dirty air.

Enough about Utah's dirty cloud ( I really do love living here :).

Today Laura, Erin and I went snowshoeing for about 3 hrs. or so. It was another beautiful day. We headed out on a trail today instead of staying on the road like we did last week. It's absolutely awesome to be out in the stillness of nature.

I took our dog Koda with us today and he had so much fun. He went non stop running ahead of us and bounding through the deep snow off the trail. He was intrigued by clumps of snow falling out of the trees. He would stop along the trail and perk his ears up trying to figure out what was going on.

Today it was in the mid to upper 20's....a bit warmer than last weeks lower teens.




View from the parking lot

 





Our fearless leader today

Looking back on the trail

Trailside Beauty





Scrub Oak



Beautiful - "Cottonballs" Tucked In The Trees

Me - I Love Being Outdoors! :)



A Touch Of Autumn In A Winter Scene



I'm sure hoping tonights storm is enough to clear the air on our side of the mountains!! :)

A New Adventure!.........Snowshoeing :)

I love adventures! ( thanks to my mom and dad :)

Recently I became aware of how inexpensive cross country skiing is. The thought of being out in the woods ( our magnificent Wasatch Mountains no less! ) imprinted itself on the adventerous section of my brain and I started doing research.

We love to get outdoors in the non winter months. We hike, ride our ATVs, camp and so on. But we've never explored those same great outdoors in the winter months except for occasional sledding and one snowmobile trip in the 11 years we've lived in Utah.

I decided this winter exploring was something I needed to do. The old saying "There's safety in numbers came to mind". Plus gathering up some girlfriends just makes the adventure more fun :)

Two names popped to mind instantly....Laura & Erin. We've known each other since our oldest kids were in early elementary grades. So, a few years. Then I also thought of a lady at church who was looking to make new friends. Her name is Debra. I knew she'd fit right in as she's a good ole Oregon girl like Erin and I! Laura's an Iowa girl and we forgive her for that :)

We decided to snowshoe instead of cross country ski since you can pretty much take off anywhere with snowshoes and skis are a bit more limiting. For under $10.00 you can rent snowshoes & poles for the day.

We plan on going out once a week through March or April. Yesterday was our first day out and it was Wonderful!

We headed to Snowbasin and God blessed us with an absolutely perfect day :) The air was crystal clear, sky so blue and that magical winter stillness and sparkle!

It was 11* when we left the car and 14* when we got back to the car. All the research I had read said you'll never be cold snowshoeing no matter the temperature.....that's no lie! We layered appropriately and we were stripping layers off within the first 10 minutes!

Here are pictures :) I'm using Laura's pictures. I think my camara was colder and the pictures didn't come out quite as good. Thanks Laura!





Debra is helping me with her snowshoes that I borrowed



View from the parking lot

Friends joined together with the spirit of adventuring!

Jan, Deb & Laura ( Erin couldn't make it yesterday )

Heading Out

Stillness

So Pretty

We came across this guy who was snow biking.....cool bike!

This is a manmade waterfall at the beginning of Ogden Canyon

I plan on blogging with pictures every week about our snowshoe adventures. I'm hoping DJ and I can get out regularly too on his days off. He would love it!

Living at the foot of the Wasatch Mountain Range is truly a gift and I'm so excited to explore it in the winter :)

"I lift up my eyes to the hills- where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."

~Psalm 121: 1 & 2

Together......what a blessing :)

Christmas was extra special at our house this year. It was the first time since 2006 that we were all together on Christmas day in our house! Truly a gift :)

I hope your Christmas was blessed and that Christ made His presence known in a special way.

There are lots of pictures in this post but wanted to share a bit of our week with you...........

Here are little peeks of Christmas decorating at our house:

A sweet picture of DJ & Dani before Christmas Eve service:

Sunday afternoon we went sledding up in the Snowbasin area about 20 minutes from the house. There was no sun at all but it was good sledding! It was fun to just spend some time together :)

I hope you're making some wonderful memories during whatever Christmas break you have!

God has been so faithful to us this year...especially in the moments when it's hard to keep persevering and remain content knowing He alone has everything under control.

Blessings to you and yours in 2011!

In Him We See Light

Last week I headed over to Beus Pond with the girls to take Danielle's school picture. We got there at a magical time........the sun was starting to go down and there was a golden hushed atmosphere.

My heart was in awe and I wanted to share with you :)

"For with you is the fountain of life;

in your light we see light."

~Psalm 36:9

MERRY CHRISTMAS FRIENDS :)