New Year's Japanese Dinner

My Mom, my Dad, and both of dad's brothers went to Japan on their missions. My mom and two uncles all actually served in the same mission. So needless to say, they have shared the love of Japanese food with the rest of the family and their children. For New Year's this year, we all got together with the Walker side and had our "traditional Japanese dinner". I use quotes because I know it's not really traditional Japanese, but it's our traditional food. Everyone made gyoza (pot stickers) so we had three different varieties, and then we had egg drop soup and ham fried rice. It was so yummy! I loved it.

I also loved getting to see family. We don't get together nearly as often as we used to, and we're all growing up and starting our own families, but it's always fun to see each other.

Wendi & Breckin - 9 months, Marci & Kamri - 1 month, Me - 6 1/2 months

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve was pretty low key this year. We just stayed home and played games and hung out. My brother-in-law Adam came into town that day and came over to hang out before going to St. George to be with his family. I won a game called Easy Money and Brian snapped this picture of me.

Happy New Year!

The day after Christmas, Brian and I decided we were going to go to St. George for New Years. That meant I had 3 days to get ready for our trip. This means I just threw projects in a bag and didn't really have any plans for what we would do while we were down there.

As it turns out, I only brought half of some of the stuff I needed, so I ended up just doing a lot of cross-stitch. We had a lot of fun just hanging out with my sister and brother-in-law. We stayed up late and slept in late and played games and ate lots of good food.

On New Year's Eve we played some M&M Bowling and then went to see "Life As We Know It". I really loved it! Then we came home and played games until midnight. As per tradition, we toasted orange juice at midnight and did some kissin'!

On New Year's I went with my sister to Krumpet's and saw the cutest clock ever! I really really wanted it, but 1) it was $45, and 2) it was 2 feet wide. Where would I put it?! I just hope it will still be around when we move so I can get it then.

Brian had really wanted to go biking but it was really cold while we were down there. Not as cold as home, but still around 30 degrees. He did get one ride in and planned to go Monday morning before we drove home, but Sunday night it ended up snowing. Yes snowing. Only about 1 inch, but still. Kind of spoiled his plans.

We had a lot of fun and we happy to spend more time with Nat & Adam.

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Goals Review:

Last year I had a lot of lofty goals that I didn't quite get around to completing, but I thought I'd post a few that I did right here:

I read the Book of Mormon all the way through again. I participated in a challenge to read 10 pages a day starting November 8th, and we finished on December 31st. It was very cool and I'm glad I did it.

I exercised more last year than the year before. Doing the Hundred Push Up challenge really helped. I got out of the habit during the holidays but we're starting again this year. I will make it to 100 one day!

I made a goal to read 30 books in 2010. I ended up reading 54. Awesome! I'll admit that a lot of those were young adult novels, but I think that still counts. I love them!

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2011 Goals (A few of them anyway)

Read Book of Mormon with Brian: This will be accomplished fairly quickly. My family is reading the whole Book of Mormon together, before my brother leaves on his mission. That's 6 pages a day and we'll end March 30th.

Write a Book: I hesitate to put this out there, but I am going to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I read a book called "No Plot? No Problem!" which gives instructions on how to do that. I'm doing it in the month of January to start my year off right. I will finish a few days after the end of January though, as I am choosing not to write on Sundays.

Keep exercising. I'm going to keep up the Hundred Push Up challenge and just keep increasing the hardness. First do 100 girl push ups and then 100 regular push ups.

Read 75 books: I know this sounds like a crazy goal, but I think I can do it. But this means I need recommendations people!

See Brian graduate with a Masters: I know this is a gimme, but still, I'm very excited for this event.

Move out of the village: I don't know where we'll be going, but we will be going somewhere. I can't believe we've lived in the village for almost 4 years. It'll be a little strange to move out of this place, but we're ready for the adventure.

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Welcome 2011!

Bringing in the New Year

To bring in the New Year, Brian and I (and my parents and two siblings) went down to St. George to spend it with my sister and her husband. We happened to leave on the snowiest day possible, and it took us 6 hours to get there, but it was well worth it. It may have only been 40 degrees outside but we rolled our windows down when we drove the Boulevard because we were so happy it was warm. :) (We quickly rolled them up soon after.)

We got to spend a lot of time with Nat & Adam, and Brian got to go biking so we were all happy. We went to see the movie Avatar on New Year's Eve and got out at 11:55pm. Just in time to race home and watch the fireworks and ring in the New Year.

I really liked the movie though. I thought I wouldn't because it was so futuristic and seemed like a guy movie, but I loved it! It's a long movie but you don't get bored at any point. And the story is really good. Everyone says it's Pocahontas in the future, which is kind of is, but it's at least Pocahontas for adults. :)

On New Year's Day we slept in a little, and then helped Nat & Adam move. They've been living in his mom's house while she was on a mission, but now she's back and they wanted to get their own place. They moved to this really great one-bedroom apartment with a huge kitchen and living room. Well, comparatively speaking. :) But I really liked it and I think they'll like it too.

It was great to just hang out and be with family and relax in "warm" St. George. I was not too excited to come back to the cold. :(

Christmas 2008 & New Year's 2009

As we all know, life gets hectic around the holidays. And so it was with us. But it was good to be busy with family parties, lunches w/friends and just getting to spend time together.

This year we spent Christmas Eve with my family, as usual, because of the Barlow Christmas Eve Bash. All of my mom's family (along with my dad's parents) comes to my parent's house for Christmas Eve. We have a big dinner and play games and do a gift exchange. Then we usually sing carols or have a little program, and then the Christmas story is read from Luke while someone plays Silent Night on the harmonica. This is significant because my Grandpa Barlow did this every Christmas before he passed away. Then we all sing Silent Night together and everyone goes home for the night.

This year was the Walker year. Meaning me and my sister were with our family instead of the in-laws. I don't know when this tradition started, but we all used to sleep in the same room Christmas Eve. Because we're older now, and bigger, and some of us have bad backs (Phil, hereditary, and Adam, fell off a roof), some of us need to actually sleep on a bed instead of the floor. So we had to split up into two rooms this year. But it was still fun.

We woke up Christmas morning around 7:30 and got dressed and ready for the day. Most people think we're crazy that we have to get dressed and do our hair before we open presents but it's our tradition and we like it. (Well, Brian thinks we shouldn't have our kids get dressed, but I am insisting on the next part.)

Then we all line up to go downstairs, youngest to oldest, with our eyes closed. As you can see, my mom leads us so we don't fall down the stairs. Also, even though Adam is older than Phil, we let him stand behind Nat because they're married. I still insisted on standing behind Brian because I am older than him. :)

Then we all eat the traditional breakfast of Monkey Bread, orange juice and hot chocolate. When we were little my parents positioned the table so we couldn't look at the presents and the tree, but we have too many people now. We still try not to look so it keeps the suspense going.

Then we can go downstairs and look in our stockings. And then finally, after building all that suspense, we can go upstairs and open presents!

This year, like last year, we tried to make it to all the obligatory visits. We did Christmas morning with my family, then we drove the mile down the road to do presents with Brian's family and talk to his brother Derek on his mission. Then we drove up to Bountiful to have lunch with my family and extended family up there. Then my family usually watches a movie and naps and plays games, but we had to leave so we could catch the late lunch at his grandparents house in Salt Lake. It was nice to see everyone but just not as relaxing as I want Christmas to be. So we decided that from now on, until we have kids, we'll just stick with one side of the family for the holiday. (Though we'll probably still do both families in the morning because they're only a mile apart.)

We did get to go home early though and have just our own little Christmas with a movie and cookies.

We spent most of the Christmas weekend at my parent's house because my sister and brother-in-law were in town. We went out to eat, a lot, and played games, and watched movies. And I got to have those well-loved chats with her that I miss so much.

For New Year's Eve, we hung out with Brian's family. We went bowling, had pizza, and watched a movie. His youngest brother Stuart was so excited to get to stay up late, but then by the time 11:00 rolled around he was ready to go to bed and wanted everyone to leave so it would be quiet. :)

Another fun thing we did over the break, was shopping. We realized that we still had a bunch of gift cards from our wedding that we hadn't used and thought now would be a good time to do that. And sadly for Brian, most of the shopping was for me. He took me out to dinner, and then we went to exchange some shoes I got that didn't fit, and then we went to Seagull Book, and I got a new book and a shirt, and then we went to Deseret Book and I got 3 new books. Oh, and did I mention that I got 5 books for Christmas to start out with? :) I love to read. I've already read two of my books and I'm starting on the 3rd. I got the whole Twilight series, even though I've read it before, because I wanted to have it to keep. And I got the Host. So I'm waiting to read those again, until I read my new ones.

This week I started back to work full time, after having a really nice break of only working a few hours each day the past couple weeks. Brian still has this week off before he starts back to school for his final semester!! He spent most of the break working on his portfolio to apply to Grad school here at the U. It looks fabulous and I'm really proud of him. Hopefully we'll be getting to stick around for another couple years here. :)