Fracture or Sprain?

So, Saturday night we had pizza for dinner and Greg decided to get a Redbox movie while he was picking up the pizza. For those of you not aware of Redbox, it is awesome to be able to get a movie for $1, especially when we only want to watch it once.

Anyway, after the movie, Greg grabbed my leg and wouldn't let me go (he does this frequently). I needed to go hem a shirt I wanted to wear the next day, so when he let me go for a second I jumped up and started running down the hallway. For those who haven't been to our house, when you go down the hallway the bathroom is the first door there is. Greg of course started chasing me down the hallway so I ran in the bathroom (without turning the light on) and started to slam the door shut. However, instead of slamming the door in his face as planned, I slammed the door into my right pinky toe and either broke or badly sprained it. It hurt so much I couldn't touch it for about 5 minutes and I was holding my breath, which led me to get dizzy and I felt my blood pressure drop. I'm sure Jason or Bryce could explain all the medical reasoning of why I reacted to pain by holding my breath if you're interested.

The point is, I don't really think I broke it since I have a mostly full range of motion pain-free. It hurts at the joint to my foot and really hurts on the inner side of my toe, so I think I just sprained it. I've been taping it the last few days since it hurts if I don't. I even took a picture to post, but my feet just aren't attractive enough to post on the blog. The best part was seeing people's faces when I told them I sprained it while running away from my husband :)

Iron Chef Greenland: Battle Cranberries

As I've mentioned, Jeff is Greg's brother and Cori is Jeff's wife. Jeff and Greg are practically twins. Luckily, Cori and I are as well. There are times when Cori and I will finish each other's sentences or get on email to send each other the same internet link. Jeff and Greg thinks it's creepy since we're not related, but Jeff and Greg are so alike that it's no surprise they picked women who are similar.

Anyway, Jeff and Cori were watching Iron Chef once when Jeff told her he is a better baker than she is. Cori adamantly agreed, of course, and Iron Chef Greenland emerged.

Cori asked me to be her sous chef and Jeff has Greg to be his sous chef. Jessica and John and Kim were judges and Jessica and John chose the secret ingredient: cranberries. Now, let me explain that I don't actually like cranberries. This all took place the Saturday after Christmas when Cori and Jeff had been snowed in at our place. Jessica called us at 11 a.m. with the secret ingredient and the boys and Kim took off to Dad's kitchen. Cori and I stayed here and cooked until 2:30, at which point the boys called to request a time extension. We were supposed to be at Jessica's house at 3. Cori and I granted their time extension since we needed it, too. We made a chocolate cake and had to first put it in the snow to cool and then the entire middle of the cake fell out of it! That's what we get for hurrying. Then the pie shell for our tart fell apart and I had to piece it back together. Even though our concoctions clearly tasted better, somehow the boys won by two points. There, Jeff, you are the better baker. Even though the pudding thing the boys made barely required baking...their pie was rather well done.

Cori and I made the chocolate cake on the far left. It was chocolate cake with chocolate-cranberry mousse in the middle (to cover our fallen cake) with chocolate buttercream icing, then with white chocolate, cranberry, and macadamia nut crumble on the sides (Thanks LaDonna!). We also made the apple-cranberry tart on the far right. Greg and Jeff made the cranberry custard pie in front and the cranberry pudding and brownie layered dessert in back.

Greg and I are thinking about doing a Throwdown now. If you've ever seen Throwdown with Bobby Flay, then you know that Bobby Flay finds the person who makes one specific dish the BEST in the country. It could be chicken and gravy, red velvet cake, cheesecake, gingerbread houses, cupcakes, waffles, etc. Then he comes up with a recipe of his own for the dish and surprises the person with a throwdown. Judges do a blind taste test and choose whose is flat-out better. Greg and I are still trying to think of what dish to do, any suggestions? It could be something neither of us have ever made or both of us are great at making. Just has to be fun.

Christmas and New Year's: Welcome, 2009!!

Despite the snow, we had a great holiday season. On the 13th of December, we had a Ward breakfast amid a snowstorm (which I neglected to mention in my last post even though it, too, dumped aout 4 inches). It was rather comical since the High Priests were in charge of cooking and they were planning to do it outside. Leave it to the men to not plan on cooking in the snow in December! Greg helped make pancakes and I slept in and got there about 10 minutes late.

That evening we had the Foster (Greg's mom's family) family party and had a white elephant gift exchange. We got a really nice hot cocoa maker and a box of hot cocoa.

Then December 15, I had my work party during our lunch hour and had another white elephant gift exchange where I got two pretty candles.

On December 20, we had the Greenland family party and, you guessed it, another white elephant gift exchange. This time we got a mini shopping cart (yes, you read that correctly) and dish towels. The mini shopping cart is apparently supposed to be used for picnics. I am so sick of white elephant gift exchanges! The cool part is I didn't buy a single white elephant gift, even though we were supposed to for one of them.

Greg and I went to see the lights on Temple Square Christmas Eve and then upheld my family's tradition of going to dinner. We went to Benihana and enjoyed meeting another family and the food. We even saw Santa at the parking garage, but noticed he took a break to finish delivering gifts.

For our wedding, my roommate, Nicole, let me pick the fabric and she made us adorable stockings. We hung them up on our living room wall, put a garland on top of our entertainment center, put a wreath on the door, a snow man nativity set (last year's white elephant gift) on the microwave stand, and Greg was very creative in decorating our balcony in white lights. Then we put our 3 ft. tall Christmas tree up and decorated it. When we put the presents around it, I insisted that they not cover the living room. Which resulted in covering half the Christmas tree:

See the pretty square red box in front? That was from Santa, and it's my new LG Dare phone:

Greg also bought me headphones, a 4 GB memory card, and the protective plastic covers for the touch screen. I tried to call my family members with my new phone after I activated it, but the calls kept cutting out due to the snow storm mentioned in my previous post. I also got a collected works of Edgar Allan Poe (1178 pages) which is amazing, and new shirts. Greg got two new suits, new shoes, two new ties, a new blanket (he likes to steal the covers), and a organizer for nails and screws and stuff. It freed up so much space in our cabinet we don't know what to do with it.

We both got new board games (Thanks Bryce and Cathi! Thanks Kim!), gift cards (Thanks Grandparents!!), towels and cookie sheets (Thanks Dad and Marilee!), and money to frame a bunch of pictures we have (Thanks Dad and Mom!).

Cori and Jeff got a Wii for Christmas and we played that Christmas night and the next day. Thanks to Mark, Bryce, and Erin for playing N64 MarioKart with me when I was younger. As a result of the hours of practice, I beat everyone on the Wii MarioKart. Jeff now has an unnatural rage against Yoshi :) And everyone enjoyed the sound effects I picked up from playing with Erin.

We spent New Year's Eve at John and Jessica's (Greg's sister and her husband) house. The kids were already in bed and we had so much fun having a fondue party and playing Wii and Last Word (a board game we got). I even beat Greg on the Wii boxing and Cori videotaped us, but that video has mysteriously disappeared. Greg promises he didn't delete it. We had so much fun we didn't realize it was 2009 until 12:02, so we hurried and opened a bottle of sparkling pomegrante-apple juice and toasted in the new year. Jeff and Cori spent the night again and we spent New Year's Day again playing Wii. This time, though, Jeff and Cori had been practicing and they and Greg all beat me at least once on MarioKart.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow...

There are times in Utah when I forget that I am not in the East Coast. If it's a humid (like 30% humidity) day and I go to a park by a river and I'm by some bigger trees, I almost feel home again. Almost. Most of the time, though, even after four years, I'm very aware that I live in a desert and parts of the culture are still very foreign to me. Then there are times when Utah likes to remind me of the...um....joys? of living in Utah. Like the Friday before Christmas, when I was sent home from work early because it was snowing so hard. When I arrived home, it looked like this at our condo:

Or the day of Christmas, when we were at my in-laws house and suddenly realized it was snowing. Cori and Jeff (Greg's brother and his wife who is practically my twin-at least in personality) were staying at our house that night so we all hurried and left so we could get home safely. Kim (Greg's sister) came along as well at the last minute and a normally 20 minute drive took us about 40 minutes. It continued to snow all night and all the next day. On the evening of the 26th, it looked like this:

This picture was taken from the bottom stair of my stairwell. Yep, still snowing. Can you see where the sidewalk is? Where it ends? Where you are supposed to drive? Nope, me neither. Then we got hit again last night, but I'm too cold to go take a picture. Each storm dropped 4-8 inches, which started to melt just in time for the next storm. This would never happen in Maryland! Don't get me wrong, I love the look of freshly fallen snow, but enough already!

On the upside, apparently the ton of fresh snow is increasing sales at the ski resorts which puts Utah in a good position to recover from our economic recession ahead of other states. And we won't be in a drought again.