My favorite time of year

I love going home to my parents' house in Grand Junction for the holidays. There's good company and food, comfort and support, and time sort of stands still. With a week and a half left of school vacation I forced myself home New Year's Eve, a blessedly uneventful drive. A Saturday night itchy throat turned into a full blown head cold Sunday morning. Today I'm feeling on the mend with the help of chicken soup, sprite, and a mountain of moist tissue balls. Ick. Last night around 3:20 AM when I got up to get a warm washcloth for my head I decided that today would be my computer-working day. I would upload photos, blog, look for a good note-taking iphone app, upload music and movies, and update my resume. Here are some select photos, the rest will be on flickr shortly. Some were taken from Ben's flickr photostream.

The snowy view from my the back balcony. Those criss-crossing tracks are from the deer. They swoop in at night and nibble in the garden like it's a salad bar.

There was a lot of this. And waffles.

After a day in GJ we drove up to Salt Lake to visit family. Grandma made a feast for our arrival. The next day we had a heavy winter storm. I read a book and knit the day away. Ogden offered a nice knitting shop where I got some gorgeous yarn. We had to stop at the Arctic Circle for fries with fry sauce on the way home. By night the roads were clear enough to see the Temple Square lights. They have the best tree lights. No one else knows how to wrap a tree so well. At the end of the night we met Andy and Jen at a french bistro where I had a wonderful beet and goat cheese salad. I'm going to try to recreate it at home this week.

We were back in GJ for Christmas. Andy came down too with Linus. Ben drove over from Denver with Jem, so my parents' house had two cats and two dogs. They behaved surprisingly well with only a few claw-fights. Ben's mom had trouble coming in from Maine because of winter weather. Richard drove her over the mountains late Christmas morning. We opened presents at my folks house on the 25th and at the Masons on the 26th.

I love sharing presents with my family. I like to give handmade gifts when possible. My folks always have a few surprises for us. I knew that we would be getting iphones for Christmas (and I LOVE mine!). But they also found a 1940s nurse's cape and a vintage copy of Julia's Child's French Cooking book. Mom, Amanda, and I have been passing around Child's memoir "My Life in France" all year. It's so funny to read the final recipe book that she spent so much of her life trying to perfect.

The biggest surprise came from Ben. He presented me with a box of sparkly earrings and a card that read "I changed my mind." I've been thinking about getting my ears pierced for months and the only thing holding me back was Ben's insistance that he liked the fact that I didn't have pierced ears. With his go-ahead I had my ears done at the Retina Center. More pictures to come in a later post.

Grandma came down a few days after Christmas on her way to St. George. She helped me figure out how to use my cheese making kit that was under the tree. (Note the lovely anthro apron from Amanda, that has it's own apron! Oh, the cuteness!)

I tried to make the scones from Cooks Illustrated twice. This second version with blackberries and candied orange peel would have been perfect if I'd pulled them out of the oven a bit sooner.

I was able to get together with old friends to catch up.

Funny, it feels like I did so much more than I have pictures to show for. Oh well. Like I said, good food, good friends and family, lots of games and sleeping and knitting. What more could I ask for?