Snow Shoeing

Well, Jodie and I decided to go snow shoeing on President's day. We went with some of our friends, Denise and Diana, to go snow shoeing at Aspen Grove. It was a lot of fun and the first time Jodie or I had gone before. So, here are some of the pictures.

Here are the girls putting on their snow shoes


Here we are starting on the trail.

It was pretty cool to be able to walk out into fresh powder on sink down only a few inches compared to my waist as it normally would be. The only bad part was if you fell down or something and tried to push yourself back up, many times your hand would just sink further into the snow.

Here is Denise watching Diana and I climb a little hill

Here we are at the top. The last few feet were pretty tough because the snow kept slipping down/compressing underneath your weight.

By far the easiest way to get down was to slide down on the back of the snow shoes. So, here I am coming down the hill.

Here is a ledge that Jodie reached the top of.

Diana quickly followed her up to the top of the ledge.

Here is a picture of the view we had from up on the mountain trail, very pretty.

Again, the quickest (and funnest) way to get down a hill was to try and slide down it, so we began looking for opportunities to sled down the hills. Here's Diana and Jodie going down the hill.

We found a really good hill and so we stayed and sled down that one for a few minutes. Here's Jodie taking the lead.

Here's Jodie and Diana sliding down the hill.

Here's Denise at the top of the hill; it took some encouragement to get her to come slide down.

To get her to go down, Jodie had to go with her, kind of like a two-man sled. You can just barely see Jodie's hoody just behind Denise.

Here they start to go down the hill- Denise has a look of terror on her face.

But once she got to the bottom of the hill, she really enjoyed it. The proof is in her grin.

After some fun, we started to head back towards the Lodge.

Here's another view of the scenery, very peaceful.

Denise and Diana posing on the bridge back to the lodge.

At the lodge, we had some doughnuts and hot chocolate to warm up. All in all, it was a very fun experience and I'm glad we got to do it before leaving Provo.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We had a fun day...and hope everyone else did as well! It started off with breakfast...

I made Mark heart-shaped pancakes...

This is what it looked like with all the goods...heart-shaped pancakes, strawberries, and bananas, topped with berry sauce, coconut syrup and whip cream. It was yummy.

Then we were off to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. It was really interesting...a much better experience than our adventure to the aquarium.

This is Mark with some fossiled fish. Look at the size of those suckers...

In the middle of a battle...a dinosaur one one side and a pack of alligators on the other. Run!

Brontosaurus....Oh my hugeness!

This Utah Raptor is sneaking up behind Mark, just about to claw him.

This was cool. They had an open area for kinds to create what they thought dinosaur days might have looked like. It was full of sand and lots of trees, plant, and dinosaur toys for kids to create their little worlds. There was also a constant stream of water running through to make it more fun. We wished we had James with us.


A close encounter with the Brontosaurus. "Hello, what's your name?"

Check out those skulls...

Look at the teeth and mouth on that sucker! I wouldn't want to get caught in his path.

My first 3D movie. It was on the ocean...very cool...almost as cool as our awesome glasses.

Mark's encounter with the T-Rex.

"Hello, little dinosaur."

"Maybe if I hold very still, he won't see me...."


Mr. Triceratops


I felt just like one of the kids when I saw this. I got super excited and yelled to Mark, "Look, Mark, it's a giant honu!" I had to get a picture!

Mark found an even bigger fish...

Mark thought this was fun/funny....he calls this the "Jodie-sized elephant."

"AHHHHH!!!!!"

"If I can't see him...he can't see me!"

Mark's favorite! The happy alligator...


Well, hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day!

PMS in the Brems house

Well, before we get to my funny PMS story...let me show how awesome Mark is. I came home from work one night and this was what I found on our bathroom mirror. He's so good to me...I'm very lucky....


...(cute side picture of Mark....)


...ok, and then I have my girl moments...

Well, I'd say I'm not usually a very emotional person. Things usually hit me and I just ignore them or get over them pretty quick...that's why when I do occasionally get emotional I can't handle it very well...I don't know how to deal with it. I usually just get mad at myself and my stubbornness comes out...so here's a funny story...

A couple weeks ago Mark told me about a pizza they had eaten at lunch that day at work. Ok, no big deal...except for it sounded so good. That's when the craving began. Usually if I get a craving I either satisfy it or it stays until I do. I waited a couple weeks and then it hit hard. I just wanted that stupid pizza. It actually kind of made me mad because it shouldn't be such a big deal...but it was. Anyways, long story short. Mark thought it would be fun for our date night to make a pizza together. It was a very good idea...just one problem, I had already been craving a specific pizza- Papa John's wheat crust canadian bacon pizza. Well, we got the stuff to make it and got a recipe online for the sauce. For whatever reason, the sauce ended up being SUPER sour and tasted like rotten tomatoes. I took one bite and got nauseous. Since it was our date night I didn't want to leave the table so I just pushed my plate aside. But the smell of the sauce was making me really sick to my stomach. I got up and made a bowl of cereal- usually very safe- but that made me even more sick. So I had to get up and go to the couch and lie down. I ended up crying because I felt so bad. It was definitely a dumb girl moment! Poor Mark! He felt bad and didn't really know what to do. So our night was kind of ruined after that...the mood anyways. I felt horrible...and to top it off, my craving was worse than before.

On Saturday I decided to make a homemade pizza from scratch and use a different sauce recipe- to try to make up for the night before. Mark was set on just ordering the pizza from Papa Johns and being done...like I mentioned before, I can be stubborn sometimes...not too often, of course. :) The next pizza turned out much better, minus that I burned half of it. But it took care of the craving a bit so that made life a little better for us.


Oh, isn't it fun being a girl sometimes. We are convinced that we are both in trouble when I get pregnant....I can't even imagine how bad cravings are going to be then. Sorry, Mark....and Good Luck! :)

Haircut

Well, Shaun came over last Saturday and Jodie wanted to cut his hair for him because it was getting a little long. So, with a few pointers, Jodie gave her first hair cut. Here's a picture of them getting started. On a side note, we got an awesome clipper set for Christmas from Jodie's parents and this was the first time we got to use them- thank you Mom and Dad.

She was a little excited to get started and have some fun, so she put some clips in Shaun's hair, but they weren't in for long though.

Taking some of the first cuts.

Another picture, you can see that Jodie is having fun by her smile (not so sure about Shaun though).

She was a little nervous at first though because she had only one previous experience with hair stuff. Her other brother Chad wanted to bleach the tips of his hair, but ended up not liking it; so they buzzed his hair. However, the bleach had seeped down to different levels and resulted in a leopard print hair cut; not exactly styling for a 13 year old boy. However, it turned out very nice and she did an excellent job and Shaun was a great sport too.