Week 5: wheat

50 pounds wheat

White Christmas in Utah

Every Christmas, I have a tough time taking pictures especially of Christmas day itself. I prefer outdoor pictures myself. Cecilie and I spent Christmas in Utah this year. I drove out a week early to go to my old roommate's wedding and to get some skiing in (yup, the last successful cross state adventure for my truck). Losing the truck shadows my happy memories of Christmas but we did have a great time in Utah with my family. We went caroling to a lot of family friends with the whole crew (including Nicole, Fred, Alison, Curtis, and Jamie). We enjoyed our traditional Christmas Eve party with my mom's family. We made yummy fudge, and I made a decilious Christmas breakfast. We watched a great cheesy movie that my Grandma suggested (Christmas Card, check it out) with my family and even took some family pictures! We visited Grandma Lee and Grandpa Boulter and played games with the whole crew. On Monday morning, I dragged Cecilie out of a warm house to go snowshoeing up Millcreek Canyon and I have photos to prove it!

There was a lot of snow the week before Christmas, which made for some beautiful views.

Although we bundled up for the cold, we quickly warmed up.

Curtis, Jamie, and Alison were ready to make it to the top ASAP.

I mostly had to include this because it is a classic picture of my dad and Uncle Doug. Doug works hard to avoid having his picture taken so you have to be very sneaky about it (and you usually end up with great candid shots).

Christmas in the City

I got off work early one day so Scott and I hurried up to San Francisco to take in the festivities without all the people. It was actually really fun and there weren't that many people around. We spent a lot of time around Union Square and saw the cool displays they had.

In front of a very festive Macy's store.

A 2-story gingerbread house in the Fairmont.

Scott trying to eat the gingerbread house. (They actually had to fix the house every evening because of people like Scott...)

An enormous sugar castle in the Westin-St Francis.

The huge Christmas tree in Neiman Marcus.

It's so fun to be together at Christmas. Next post: a white Christmas in Utah with the Lee's.

Catching Up On Christmas

In the wake of the accident Scott and I have had a hard time catching up on life, and blogging. It's a lot of work to buy a car in one state, register it in another, total it the next month in another state, and then fix all the paper work. We've been boggling the minds of our insurance company and there have been many phone calls to get everything correct. On top of that Scott has had a rough time at school lately. There have been quite a few deadlines creping up on his group and then other issues have surfaced. Maybe February will be an easier month... Either way, I'm going to try to catch up on Christmas in the next 2 posts.

Consequences of Sunny California

So last week I posted about how wonderful it is to be in sunny California and take a walk at Windy Hills in the middle of January. Well, here is the end of that story. At that point we still didn't know that Scott had run through some poison oak. A few days later he developed a small rash on his leg that kept getting bigger and bigger and nastier and nastier. Well, this is the rash on a better day. After seeing the doctor a few days ago he's now mending but it was really uncomfortable for a while. Poor guy.

Week 4: tomato soup

8 cans tomato soup

Week 3: sugar

20 pounds of sugar

We love Sunny California

We went on a hike today and this is what we saw. The weather was perfect: sunny but not too hot. It's great to live in a place where we have perfect weather in the middle of January. California is great.

Pixar & Chinese

This weekend Scott and I had a great time. On Saturday afternoon we took my parents to a Pixar display in Oakland. It was celebrating 25 years of Pixar and displayed a bunch of sketches that were done for each of their movies. It was really cool but I expected to have an in depth understanding of Pixar after but instead I just wanted to go home and watch the movies. Afterwards we went to some great Chinese food in Chinatown. Yum!

Week 2: cream of chicken soup

5 cans cream of chicken soup

Week 1: salt

6 pounds salt

Weekly Food Storage

At church each week we get a $7 food storage suggestion. I'm not sure who the originator is but I asked the food storage lady to send me the list so I wouldn't have to worry about missing anything. The idea is to gather food slowly. This plan is 52 weeks long and at the end you have accumulated enough to sustain 2 people for one year. Your storage includes:

500 pounds of wheat

180 pounds of sugar

40 pounds of powdered milk

12 pounds of salt

10 pounds of honey

5 pounds of peanut butter

45 cans of tomato soup

15 cans of cream of mushroom soup

15 cans of cream of chicken soup

24 cans of tuna

21 boxes of macaroni and cheese

500 aspirin

1000 multi-vitamins

6 pounds of yeast

6 pounds of shortening

12 pounds of macaroni

Some weeks may cost less than $7 but save that money for the weeks when you spend more. I'm going to do my best to post what to buy each week. I'm planning to do it on Monday's so you can add it to your weekly list. If you decide to do this then you're responsible for coming up with recipes that we can cook with this food combination!