SNOW FEST 2007

Lance and I went up to Rexburg to visit family and enjoy Rexburg's annual SnowFest!If this picture is hard to read, it says "There's no place like home, except Art and Fran's house." What a true statement. Fran and Art were great hosts this past weekened. I think I'm still full from all the food they prepared for us. And we weren't hurting for Catan games. John made us play any moment that was free. Fran all made us feel sorry for her and then turned around and won three games. Lance had two victories, all hail Lord of Catan (sorry that was an addition made by the Lord of Catan himself). The rest of us left the table with crushed hopes and dreams of being the new Catan Champ.


The SnowFest was a lot of fun, there was snow bowling (which may be my new favorite sport), sledding, hot chocolate, yummy great harvest bread, ice sculpting, sleigh rides, treasure hunt, and a polar swim.

Some how Lance convinced me to do the Polar Swim with him and his sister, Brooke. It was 19 degrees out and the water we jumped in had ice chunks floating around in it. All three of us jumped in and froze instantly. It was pretty crazy the pool of water had frozen over before the event so they had people out there with shovels breaking up the ice. There were a lot of Dads with their kids doing the polar swim, I guess for a lot of families it's a family tradition to do the polar swim every year. The best part of the whole event was the sweet hats we got. We are now officially members of the Polar Bear Club.

Another favorite moment at Fran and Art's home was finding some old pictures of Chris. We had no idea Chris was so in to iceskating, I'm sorry ice dancing. I know how frustrating it is for you Chris if we mix the two up. Apparently Chris was quite the ice dancer, we are hoping you'll come visit us sometime and show us a few of your moves.

The Last Supper

Taylor's only request before he went into the MTC was to eat at the Pie ∏. I wasn't complaining with that request because I love their cheesy bread sticks. They are amazing and the pizza is really good too.

For those of you that have never gone to the Pie up by the University of Utah it is a must see in the Salt Lake area. I recommend you try it out some time. They now have a few more locations in Utah, but my favorite place is still their original spot (the basement they turned into their pizza place).


Dad and Dillon took on a little more than they could handle, we were eating left overs for days.

Christmas Day with the Redds

Christmas morning was filled with excited, even for Socrates! Socrates got his own stocking filled with goodies for him. We aren't sure how he liked his new sweater. Santa got him this sweater for the plane ride home. On the way to Utah Taylor had bought him the only dog shirt he could find, which was hideous and barely fit Socrates. So I think the sweater was a big upgrade from his previous wardrobe. Another exciting toy discovered under the tree was for Dillon. Taylor, Trevor, Lance, and I got him an air soft gun. It later proved to not be the best idea we had. I'm pretty sure we now all know what it feels like to be hit with by one of those guns.

Lance's favorite gift would have to be his new dremel with lots of accessories included. Becca and him had a fun time playing around with all the different tools. He has been talking about increasing his tool collection so this was perfect for him. After Christmas he used all his Christmas money from his parents and from grandparents to add to his tool collection.

One of my favorite gifts was this blue fuzzy robe. I'm pretty sure I wore that everyday of the break and any time we left the cabin Lance had to pry it away from me so I wouldn't embarrass the family in public.

After all the present opening and a wonderful breakfast, we got ready for a half day of snowboarding. Grandpa and grandma went back to Salt Lake and the rest of us headed to the Canyons ski resort. It was a fun morning!

Christmas Eve

I know that Christmas Eve seems like forever ago, but we had such a great Christmas it is fun to look back and remember how fun it was. That day we went to church with Lance's family. It was a great program that his Aunt Leslee put together as the choir director. Aunt Leslee and her two daughters sang a song that Leslee wrote and composed. It was beautiful and a good reminder of the true meaning of Christmas. After the services we had dinner at Grandma Burnett's house. Lance is the official meat carver at her house and he likes to wear this apron that makes him think he is the Boss. After the meal we read the Christmas story in the Bible and talked about Christmas traditions of the Tolmans and the in-laws. So I got to share of the Redd family traditions. We then opened presents. The Tolmans have a tradition of giving 1$ store gifts. My favorite dollar gift given by Lance's mom (sorry Rick I did like the foam pig for my toes too) was a corn ornament. It's very appropriate for their family since Papa Tolman works with National Corn Growers Association, you could say he is the King of Corn. I wanted to join in on the tradition so I found this perfect tie at Honks for King himself. It was this tacky Santa tie that lights up and plays music. Unfortunately I think we might be seeing this tie every Christmas holiday from now on. My great idea may have back fired on us.

After our day with the Tolmans we drove us to the cabin to spend the night with my family. It was such a beautiful night with thousands of stars lighting up the sky. When we got to the cabin, Becca and Dad had put out candles to light the path so we wouldn't trip getting to the door. It was really beautiful. We then got to eat a second dinner, which was fabulous! We read the Christmas story again. We read the same passages four times that day, but it never got old. I love hearing that story. And I just love Christmas time when we stop thinking about ourselves and what we have to do and focus on family and making each other happy. One of the Redd Christmas traditions (which mom and dad thought about retiring----thank you Becca and Dillon for not letting that happen!) is to open one present on Christmas Eve. Mom lets us think that we can choose our own present, but its always the one she gives us and it is always p.j.'s! We had Grandma Redd and Ponkey spend the night with us so they got their own pair too. Grandpa was pretty eager to get his on and just put them over his regular clothes. It was a great night. Trevor, Dillon, Becca, Lance, and I all slept in the family room waiting for the morning! It was fun and it reminded me of when all of us kids were younger and slept in the same room before Christmas morning. Luckily we don't wake up at 5 in the morning anymore, but we were still anxious to get up early.

And the winner is..............

Garth! Our studies show that Uncle Richard would most likely be mistaken for Garth Brooks rather than Goldberg. We are sorry Lance, but the survey says.....Garth. Thanks to all that participated in our survey, it was very amusing for us. This picture, taken in D.C. a while back, proves that Richard is a cowboy at heart and not a wrestler. Richard came to visit our family when we first moved there and he got asked a couple times on that trip if he was Garth. It's kind of fun to have such a famous Uncle.

A Brunch and Sledding with the Preeces

The Saturday before Christmas we had a brunch with Lance's cousins. They made us a wonderful meal of pancakes, sausage, eggs, and fruit. The meal gave us the energy we needed sledding down the hills in their backyard.

The sledding got a little extreme. We even had a few injuries.


For Lance the best part of the day was beating on his little cousin, Benny. Benny makes Lance feel more like a man, a tough man, because he can twist Benny around by his underwear. I feel sorry for the guy, but Benny is pretty tough so in a few years Benny just might be holding Lance by his underwear.

Temple Square with the Tolmans

The Friday before Christmas we met up with Lance's family at the Lion House for an early dinner. It was very tasty, especially the banana cream pie. I'm glad that Grandma B. insisted that we all got dessert, because it was the best part of the meal. After dinner we went to see the Joseph Smith movie at the Joseph Memorial Building. As everyone has said before me, the movie was incredible. Watching the movie just increased my love for the prophet Joseph Smith and my gratitude for what the early Saints went through so that we could have so many of the blessings we enjoy today. When the movie was over we walked around temple square to look at the navities and lights. For me the highlight of the night is when we walked into the visitors center and I ran into two of my good friends that are serving on Temple Square. One of the sisters is from Thailand. I met her when I was asked to translate at the MTC for her. I was also able to translate for her when she went through the temple for the first time. That was such a special day for both of us. It was especially scary for me because for some reason they didn't have part of the script translated and I had to do my best to translate. I also saw my friend Christie, which was equally exciting. I just love going to Temple Square, I always have such a great experience there.

Lance and His Carvings

So one day Lance asked me to run some errands with him and some how we ended up spending an hour at a carving specialty store. We walked out with tips on carving and sharpening knives and a new knife for Lance. This is Lance's new hobby, wood carving. Below is a picture of his first carvings. The Santa he made for me for our Christmas tree, the giraffe was for his boss (she has a large collection of giraffes), and the soon to be reindeer was for his bother and sister-in-law for Christmas. The reindeer turned out really cute with its antlers. We screwed in little hooks and tied ribbon on his carvings to turn them into ornaments. He also did corn for his parents and a Santa for my mom. Both looked great. The weekend before we had Heather's shower, it was Saturday night, Lance was carving and I was quilting. We laughed at how old we've gotten. It was really funny to think that a year or two ago we would have been out at a party or something and here we were quilting and carving.

Provo's First Storm

O.k. Some time has passed since we last updated our blog, so I'm sorry everyone but we are going to back up a month. These pictures are from Provo's first snow fall. We got dumped on, and the sad part was the mountains got nothing! Something weird is going on this year. It was a pretty good storm, nothing like what Denver got, but our car got slammed from every direction. This is after Lance cleared the car off for me, but before there was even inches of snow caked on the side windows. Some people would have been depressed to see all this snow, but those that know me well know that I was so excited to see the snow. There is just something about snow that is so peaceful and beautiful, plus there are so many fun sports that require SNOW!!!!!