Ski Trip

Jeremy and I love skiing. We are also pretty cheap when it comes to getting tickets, so instead of buying full-price tickets to the Canyons we instead opt for the Warren Miller passes. You pay admission for the movie to see some extreme skiers and awesome stunts, then get a lift ticket for free. Pretty good deal. This year my mom picked some up for us and recruited the neighbor kids to be our proxies at the movie. Anyway we had to use the passes before December 19th. There hadn't been much snow, but we HAD to go. There were only three lifts open, but you know what? It's better than nothing and we had a great time-like always!

Can you tell it was blizzarding and cold?

Warming up in the lodge during lunch. Festive group eh?

Snow bunny

Maybe it will be a white Christmas this year after all. Today it has snowed, and snowed, and snowed. On our last trip to Utah, Cambrie played in the snow a little, but it melted away by the afternoon. Today was different and there's plenty of the white fluffy stuff to go around. She loves playing with Ryan, but she couldn't figure out why he was laying down in the snow.She also played on the slide with grandma. You can't ask for a softer landing than in powder.

Lights on Temple Square

It's been years since I've seen the lights at Temple Square. My mom's Young Women went for mutual this week so Cambrie, Camille, and I decided to tag along. It was beautiful yet cold. I just love the lights. I wanted to get some really cute seasonal pictures of Cambrie next to the lights, but she was sooo exhausted that I couldn't even put her down without her crying. She looked so cute all bundled up in her new winter gear that I couldn't help but smile anyway.

Philadelphia Christmas

We will be going to Utah for the holidays but it gets kind of crazy when we haul our presents to back and forth across the country; so this year we decided to have Christmas on December 14th. Merry Christmas!

It has been so much fun buying presents for Cambrie this year. She is old enough to really get excited about the toys she is receiving and I love seeing her smile. The first toy to greet Cambrie this morning was a new doll stroller. She loves "lollers" and I've been making her wait until Christmas until I got her one. The baby has already received a lot of rides around the house. Other toys she got from mommy and daddy are blocks, a new baby, baby bottles, Disney's 101 Dalmatians, magnetic fridge animal toys, a Christmas book, and a new dress. Of course why would she want to play with her new toys when she can play with the leftover wrapping paper rolls instead? Jeremy and I were really bad about taking pictures this year. We got all of Christmas morning on video, but nothing on still shot. It wasn't until after we were done and had cleaned everything up that we realized our mistake. So here are some posed pictures after all was said and done. Jeremy received a new golf bag for his clubs. His last bag...well...it has completely fallen apart and wasn't doing its job anymore. He also got a Sarah Brightman CD, new shirts, Jenga, J.K. Rowlins' "The Tales of Beedle the Bard", scrubs, and ties. Jeremy spoiled me this year. It was a very good Christmas. I ended up with a new work-out shirt, insulated ski pants, black high-heeled boots, the Twilight soundtrack, a Belgian waffle maker, and a massaging pillow. Yea, I was pretty excited about everything. Here is the picture of our tree with our unwrapped presents below it. Too bad we didn't get a before shot. Oh well, there's always the next year, the year after that, the year after that, and this coming December 25th in Utah. Thanks Santa for visiting early!

Daily Memories

Here's a glimpse into our lives when we aren't at parades, the North Pole, or in Utah...

Sometimes we go to the park.

Sometimes we look for lost balls under the couches.

Sometimes we clean up the tissues that magically appear on the floor.

And sometimes we play dress up.

Luckily for us, no matter what we do, we have fun doing it.

A Cullen Christmas

All right all you Twilight fans out there, you have to check this out! Jeremy's cousin, Danylle, absolutely loves, loves, LOVES Twilight and is even president of Salt Lake Twilighters Anonymous. She's done TV interviews, Twilight retreats, field trips...you name it. This year SLTA created a tree for the Utah Festival of Trees, "A Cullen Christmas." Check it out here. It is pretty awesome!

Santa pictures

This is Cambrie's Santa picture from Utah...ahh memories...

Christmas pictures

You know it's Christmas when it's time for the annual Kiddie Kandid Christmas pictures. I think they turned out great and once again I had a really hard time deciding what to bring home. Enjoy!

Maybe they'll go away...

Today while we were shopping in the mall, Cambrie did something I've never seen her do before that was really cute in a sad sort of way.

I was holding her on my hip and holding shopping bags on my other arm. The bags started to slip so I set Cambrie down to readjust. As soon as I put her down she sat on the ground, covered her eyes with her hands, and started crying, "Mom. Mom. Mom." She looked scared and I couldn't figure out why. I picked her up and she buried her head into my shoulder. I looked around and saw what was causing this reaction...mannequins! There were four mannequins standing behind the store window that terrified Cambrie! I felt so bad.

Then it happened again. While we were in KB Toys she was so excited about all of the toys that she wasn't paying attention to where she was going. She turned a corner and ran into a man in a wheelchair. She took one step back-but didn't dare turn her back to him-covered her eyes and started crying for me. The poor girl. I guess that's her way of coping with scary things; "Maybe they'll go away if I hide."

Cambrie Chronicles: First edition

This is the first edition of the Cambrie Chronicles. I have decided to share fun, short stories of Cambrie here. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving Dinner

We got home to Philadelphia just in time for Thanksgiving dinner at the Farnsworths. Luckily I had prepared everything before we left so I just had to warm some things up and we could go. Good job ladies on all of your dishes, dinner was delicious. I'm still full! Cambrie had a hot dog on the ferry-ride home so she wasn't terribly hungry for her Thanksgiving feast. She was also too distracted by all the other kids running around to eat much.Of course as the night went on, Cambrie's appetite returned. Her favorite food of the evening were olives, one on each finger :)Here are some more pictures of our evening. We partied with the Wehmanns, Dobsons, and Farnsworths. All of the kids play really well together (and are very willing to share their turkey and pie with each other.)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

This Thanksgiving we fulfilled one of my lifetime goals and dreams-we went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! It was very spur-of-the-moment really. We booked a hotel on Priceline, packed all of our clothes and food into backpacks, then drove up to New York. We decided to take the Staten Island Ferry into New York City so we wouldn't have to worry about parking overnight in Manhattan, and it worked out wonderfully.

Here's Jeremy and Cambrie on the subway. She used to be scared of the noises they made, but now she loves the trains.

We stayed in the Paramount Hotel on 46th St. right off Times Square. The rooms were described as "petite" but we just needed a place to crash. They actually had to upgrade us to a larger room so we could fit a crib in there too. The room was cute. Very trendy with white everything and checkerboard carpet. Cambrie was just excited that the bed was near the floor so she could hop on and off as many times as she wanted by herself. The headboards are portraits. Some of the rooms have artwork in their frame, ours was blank, but still a nice touch.

We woke up bright and early at 5:30 so we could get a good spot on the parade route. We felt a little out of place as we left the hotel. We looked more like backpackers than Philadelphians with our food and clothes on our backs. But it was handy during the parade. We were awake early enough that there was still a lot of available space along the parade route. We headed up to 65th St. and Central Park West where we found a road that was just about to be barricaded off. We hung around just long enough for them to put the the barriers right in front of us. Alacazam! Front row seats to the hottest show in town! It was still only 6:45 and the parade didn't start until 9:00, but we were next to some really nice families who were fun to talk with. Then finally it was time for the longest running show on Broadway to start...The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!

The balloons were even cooler in person than they are on TV. Cambrie thought they were pretty awesome too. The whole time she was calling out, "Balloon!" "Balloon!" Some of them she recognized and some of them she didn't. Regardless, I was having the time of my life seeing some of my childhood friends float by: Smurfs!
Cambrie recognized Big Bird and Elmo from Sesame Street on this float.
It was cold, but not as cold as we thought it was going to be. I love Cambrie's new bunny hat-Jeremy told me that he gets to choose the next one.

There were so many balloon character carriers. Everyone had a costume that coordinated with their balloon. Occasionally the balloons would drift with the wind. Whenever that happened the crowd would all say, "whoa!" I think the carriers did it on purpose to get a response from the crowd. It was fun and energetic. Something I had never thought of before was that the city has to either take down all the stoplights on the route or swivel them out of the way.Jeremy really liked this performing group. They were the executive briefcase drill team. They got very creative with their briefcases.

This was our attempt at getting a picture of Cambrie and one of her favorite balloons-Beethoven. She loves dogs. She was jumping up and down and was getting very close to flying out of my arms yelling, "Puppy! Puppy!"Other big names we saw were Miley Cyrus, Trace Adkins, David Archuletta, Snoopy, Kermit, Horton, Ronald McDonald, Miss USA, and other pop artists that apparently I'm too much of a hermit to recognize. We left about two floats from the end of the parade so we didn't get to see Santa. We had to get home in time for Thanksgiving dinner, and Cambrie's last encounter with Santa didn't go very smoothly so we decided it was okay. Unfortunately we missed the Care Bear float. Cambrie loves "bear bears" right now, so I did feel bad about that. Here's the view we had as we were walking through Central Park to get home: If anyone is thinking about going to the parade sometime in their life, I highly recommend it. It was so much more fun than I could have ever expected. Having front row position definitely helped :) There was such a feel of celebration in the air. We were standing next to a family with five kids, so the performers always came by and threw confetti on us. I got home and was emptying confetti out of my coat, hair and shirt. Here's a picture of Jeremy and Cambrie on the ferry ride home. We had an absolute blast! What a great way to spend Thanksgiving :)

Brownies!

I don't know what it is about Philadelphia or my oven, but for some reason I have never successfully made brownies out here. I can cook them for an hour and half and they will still be gooey in the middle. I got desperate and tried cooking them in a bundt pan once and it actually worked a little better. But tonight, FINALLY, my brownies cooked! This is definitely cause for celebration! I used my 8x8, did everything normally, and the brownie muses smiled down on me. So I am rejoicing in my peanut butter brownies...yum!

Crazy and Emotional Weekend

This post may seem like it is long and rambling, I guess I just feel like talking. Here's an update into my life this week:

Thursday night was crazy. We had our first YMCA Polar Bear Swim Team dinner. The parents brought the food, and all the coaches really had to do was set up. I'm a little frustrated by how it turned out. There are four coaches, you would think between the four of us we would be able to get the tables and chairs located quickly and set up without much problem. Wrong! The other three coaches arrived 20 minutes after the dinner had already started. Yea, that bugged me. Especially because the first thing they said was, "Why didn't you set up more tables?" I was very, very tempted just to leave. After we set up the additional tables and chairs, it was finally time to eat. Good-I was starving! Of course, they ran out of plates right before I got there. Hm...the other coaches got plates... I located some more plates about ten minutes later and started eating. By this time everyone else was done eating and the parents were getting ready to leave. The head coach still hadn't made any announcements concerning the meet the next day-aah! Again, I was tempted to leave because of all the time that was being wasted. Anyway, I made it through the dinner without quitting my job. I arrived home only an hour after my daughter was in bed, and I had a full twenty minutes to calm myself down before it was time to go see Twilight.

Thank heavens for Twilight. I needed something major to cheer me up. Me and six other girl friends went to see the midnight showing of Twilight on the IMAX screen at King of Prussia. It was insane! There were preteens, college girls, middle-age moms, and occasional husbands lined up in serpentine lines inside the theater entrance. It was a great estrogen rush. Luckily we had friend who got there at 8:30 to save us seats because we were just a little bit slow. We had the top row of the theater, which was perfect for the giant screen. I knew I had to go into the movie with an open mind and expect it to be different than the book-that's just the way movies are. So the differences didn't really bug me. There were just two or three things that I wish had been different: First, I wish they had more scenes of Edward and Bella hanging out at school and home. The interactions between those two are the cutest parts of the book. It went from "What if I'm the bad guy," to "I love you," way too quickly. Where was the eavesdropping in gym? The rescue from the pricked finger in Biology? The long, relaxed conversation on the way home from Port Angeles? So I felt a little cheated there. Second, I wish Edward's skin sparkled more in the sunlight. It looked like wet peach fuzz catching the sun rather than the diamond faceted skin. Other than that though, I really liked it. I loved Bella. I wasn't sure I would, but Kristen Stewart filled in all the holes I had in my character. She did a great job. Robert Pattinson portrayed Edward more as a troubled vampire than a perfect saint which made him more real. It was nice to see that side of him since my subconscious refused to cast him like that. I wish there were more scenes of Edward being relaxed and confident-I guess that's gripe number three. The other characters were also cast well and the baseball scene was awesome. Yea for Twilight.

Friday night was our swim meet. About an hour before the meet started I found out that our opposing team decided not to come. That was a real bummer. Our kids and parents were excited, and we had already endured the dinner. We held it anyway, a little inter-squad meet. I actually cried when I saw two of our relay teams battling it out to the end. I love the kids-they make it worth it.
Friday night was also Dantley's big game. The Wehmanns invited us over to their house to watch it on TV. That was great because we couldn't even find it online at our place. Thank you! The first three and a half quarters were all Bingham. I thought it was over by the the fourth quarter. At least, that was until the two personal fouls in the same play which cost them their twenty yard gain and thirty penalty yards. That was the turning point. Alta got the ball after the punt and scored. Bingham was still ahead, 17-14, but was unable to score again. Then, with 58 seconds left, the Alta receiver made a fantastic catch on the two yard line, which they turned into another touchdown on the next play. Bingham just couldn't come back from that with only 23 seconds left. Two sacks later, they had 2 seconds for a miracle which never came. That was heartbreaking. They totally had it. Even Cambrie was disappointed. She is Dantley's biggest fan. Whenever football is on the TV, she runs up to it and calls out, "D! D!" She now watches Saturday morning football with Jeremy.
Thanks for letting me ramble. That was our weekend, crazy and emotional. :)