Christmas Goodies

I didn't really have a lot of time to make Christmas Goodies during finals, but that's okay because Greg's Mom and My mom had plenty of goodies we could snack on in Colorado.

I did manage to find a little time to make some delicious Chocolate Mousse

I also made a sugar cookie cake for the nursery kids at church.

The Lights at Temple Square

The last Saturday before Christmas we went to see the lights at the Salt Lake Temple. They were really good this year, but it was a little foggy. The fog made for some cool effects, but not for very good pictures. We still managed to get a few good ones. Hurray for digital cameras.
Nativities

Greg and Erin

Ben and Christina

The Scenery

An Ode to Christmas and Some Free Time

Every once in a while Greg and I play Wii music and make songs that hurt your ears so bad no one would ever want to listen to them. Today, we went for the Christmas songs and we actually made a music video that was some how satisfying and something we can be proud of, so Merry Christmas and enjoy!

"O Christmas Tree"

(My camera doesn't record sound well so you may need to turn up the volume)

After playing Wii music we played a little bit of bowling on Wii Sports Resort. Of course we were playing the 100 pin version (100 pins per frame instead of 10) because it is a little bit harder then the average 10 pin game. Well, I am happy to say I actually got a strike!

Screen shot of the replay of my strike

I may have gotten my 1 strike, but Greg bowled two turkeys that game. His total score came out to 2,290 (I guess that's like a 229 in a regular game, just harder to come across.) Yep, he showed me up. At least I was able to kick his trash at the table tennis like I always do.

Greg bowling a strike
and another
and anotherand a screen shot of a replay of one of the 6 strikes he threw.

Poster Conference/Demo Day

The end of the semester is known to be busy. This semester I was in two 400 level Sociology cap-stone classes. This meant that I did two big group projects; we did a bunch of statistical analysis and wrote 20-30 page research papers. Part of these papers was to make posters that present our findings and show them off at the Sociology Poster Conference.

My 422 poster: "From Home to School: Does Family Interaction Help Students Test Scores In Kindergarten?"

My 420 Poster:  "Child See Child Do: The Effects of Witnessing Violence on Adolescent Delinquency"

 

 Me with my posters.

 Chaos: there were a lot of people crowded in one little room with a few dozen posters.

 This was about 2 minutes after the conference ended. It didn't take very long for everyone to clear out of there.

Meanwhile, on the other side of campus Greg was at the Demo Day for the Computer Science cap-stone projects. They had to show off a little video and power point that explain the Search and Rescue software that they have been developing. The project he and Daniel worked on was judged against 4 other cap-stone projects. They came in Second place and each got a cash prize of $175.

Greg with his Runner Up cash voucher 

Greg also won a raffle and got a computer science T-shirt. It was a size small so I guess it's mine and I can go around showing off the fact that I'm married to a nerd.

Because the poster conference and the Demo Day were at the same time, we couldn't go check out each other projects, but I was able to make it to the end of Demo Day, just in time to eat the pizza.

Thanksgiving

Greg and I had a nice and lazy Thanksgiving. We didn't have school, we didn't have to travel, we just cuddled up on the couch with some hot cocoa watching the Macy's Thanksgiving, then some bad TV and cooked our own little Thanksgiving dinner.  Thankfully, our Dish network was set up right this year so we could watch the parade.  Greg's Cousin Ben came over and brought the mashed potatoes and then we ate a lot of food and pumpkin pie too. I do have to say a 13lb turkey is plenty of food for 3 people.

Here is our lovely turkey all bagged up and ready to go in the oven.

 

Our festive little table setting

 Here's a close up. Yes, the mashed potatoes were running a little late and didn't make it for the picture.

 Look at that beautiful turkey...

 

...okay maybe not so beautiful turkey...

...that totally fell apart when we took it out of the pan and put it on the platter.

Well, the turkey still tasted good and we had fun, even if we didn't get to spend the day with all of our friends and family. Greg and I can at least be grateful we were able to spend the day together.

Our thanksgiving break had no need (or want) of Black Friday shopping. Instead, we lounged around on Facebook all day and put out our Christmas tree.

Field Trip 2.0

Greg's research lab had their second field trip out to the middle of nowhere. Their stuff seemed to work better and the Mountain Rescue workers from the local Sheriff's were really, really, REALLY impressed.

Here are some shots of the plane

Take off

 Mountain Rescue Workers

  The outside station

Orange vests in the distance

Working in the trailer

It was cold outside, so they brought a giant barrel of hot cocoa.

A screen shot of the viewer Greg developed

Group Shot

A package of hot dog buns

Greg and I stopped at the store to by some hot dog buns for dinner.  You think this would be a short trip, but somehow we can never manage to spend less than $30 dollars when we go to the grocery store. We thought we would  maybe starting getting stuff for thanksgiving. We have no special plans so I'm going to cook dinner for Greg and myself this year.  We certainly don't need a whole turkey just for two people, so I had no intention of buying one. I figured I'd buy a small turkey breast.  Well, as we were walking through the store on this quick shopping trip I noticed a sign near the turkeys that said:

$8 16 - 20lb turkeys

Of course there was a catch; it was $8 with your Smith's card and a minimum total purchase of $25. We have Smith's card and our cart easily had $25 dollars worth of groceries, so I thought I'd look to see if there were any turkeys towards the 16lb end left in the bin, but instead we found a 13lb turkey. This actually made it $6 with the rest of the groceries.  We couldn't pass on such a good deal since that is way cheaper than a turkey breast, so we got a $6 turkey.  Only concern:  Will it fit in the freezer?  IT DID!!! (barely)

DINOSAURS!

This month Mondays as BYU's paleontology museum are free and we were looking to avoid homework, so we decided to stop by for our FHE yesterday.  It was pretty crowded so we didn't stay very long, but it was pretty cool and we found a few things worthy of a picture. Good thing my cell phone takes pictures.

Greg with the triceratops's skull 

Some other dinosaur's skull (don't ask me it's name)

Being eaten by a T-Rex

This was made from a cast of one of the most perfect T-Rex skulls ever found.

A giant crocodile skill

A GIANT sloth