A fresh attempt at blogging

So, I'm thinking ... I really need to be a better blogger. I have an excuse -- of course. You see, I switched my email account (since I FINALLY changed my name) and I get so much spam in my old email, that I just avoid it all together. Hence, I don't update/check/etc. my blog either.

I know, lame excuse. It's true though, I swear.

Well, I keep getting requests to update my blog, so I'm going to buckle down and do it {hopefully}. I suppose it would be a good idea to keep a record of baby, his development and future birth/life.

So this is me giving in to blogging pressures and creating a new blog account ... and I'll post something legit soon.

Baby Pics

I would have grabbed more from the ultrasound, but it was being very uncooperative.

Daniel + Whitney + Baby = 3!!

Привет!

Well, I'm officially the worst blogger on the face of the planet. I blame it on school, but that's really no excuse. I'm only taking three classes and doing a part-time internship!

But I guess we should announce via blogger that Daniel and I are having a baby! A baby boy, to be exact. I'm due on January 15th, 2011. Two-thousand and eleven -- holy cow. I can't believe how the time has flown by!

I'm about to graduate from BYU in less than four months, have a baby in less than five, and we'll be at medical school somewhere in Texas within a year!

Anyways ... a lot has been going on around our neck of the woods. We went to Yellowstone with Daniel's family a couple weeks ago -- so beautiful! I loved it there. I'd never been before and I thought it was awesome! Some crazy bison came migrating through our camp, brushing up against my tent while we were sleeping (which didn't even phase a very asleep Daniel), leaving us big pies on our walking path and flat out taking a nap right next to our picnic table and tent!

The next week we went to Dan's family's house in El Paso. Dan had his first med school interview out there, so we decided to make a vacation of it. Of course,  while we were there, Mockingjay came out, so we had to take the time to read it. I so want to read it again. I should probably wait until I finish school, though. We had a super fun time in El Paso and Dan did great in his interview.

Currently, I'm a weekend widow for pretty much the rest of this month. Dan has med school interviews all lined up each weekend, which is great because we're getting them all done now! Nicole and David have been kind enough to take this lonely weekend widow in and have let me hang out and eat dinner with them all weekend. And, since I'm super scared of sleeping alone in my apartment (I know, lame, right?), Nicole has agreed to come stay the nights here too.

Let's see ... I'm going to try and figure out how to post a picture of our baby from the ultrasound DVD we got, but we'll see how successful I end up being.

That's all for now, пака!

P.S. The reason for the Russian is that Nicole, Josh and I are taking Russian 101 this semester and I have kind of figured out where all the Russian letters are on the computer keyboard ... how sweet is that?!

Yes, I'm actually making a blog post!

Well, as we all know, I'm quite the blogging slacker. Basically, I have pictures from our trip a couple weeks ago to Arches National Park, and I definitely need to put them up. I haven't even put them on facebook yet!

Today was a special day, however, so I decided I would blog about it. I created a delicious soup, and though I didn't measure a single thing, I'm going to try and guess how much of every ingredient I used so that perhaps I (or others) may recreate it.

• 5 cups water
• 3-4 large potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 can whole green chiles, diced
• 1 can beans, rinsed (I used pinto)
• 1 tbsp chicken bouillon
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 2 bay leaves
• pepper
• crushed red pepper (to taste)
• sour cream
• cheddar cheese
• lime

Bring water to a boil. Add potatoes and onion to water, boil for 5-7 minutes. Add green chiles, garlic, bouillon, cumin, bay leaves, and pepper. Boil until potatoes are almost completely cooked, add beans.  Boil until potatoes are completely cooked and remove from heat. Serve with a dollop of sour cream, cheddar cheese to your liking, and garnish with lime juice (after I squeezed the juice out of my quarter of a lime, I put the whole thing in).

I reckon this recipe would be amazing with some shredded chicken, but I wasn't in the mood for chicken so I didn't add it. This was sooooo good though! I'm planning on eating some more after my meeting tonight =)

Zion National Park

OK, prepare yourselves, because Imma bout to go BLOG CRAZY!

Seriously, though. I have some catching up to do, and I'm doing it now.

First off, I would like to present some pictures and captions from our AWESOME ZION NATIONAL PARK TRIP!!

Here's our lovely campsite.

And if you look closely, there's a squirrel that took up residence on our wheel. 

The beautiful view of Zion National Park when we woke up after our first night in Zion. 

Some lovely scenery. 

This is part of the Emerald Pools. 

This is a sideways picture of the waterfall that fed the Upper Emerald Pools.

Daniel and I below the waterfall at the Upper Emerald Pools. 

This was part of the hike to the different Emerald Pools. We met a very nice couple who had ridden a motorcycle from Vegas to Zion through the HAIL and the RAIN and all sorts of bad weather. They were from Canada and helped us out with a couple pictures. The guy kept saying, "Pictures are free, right? You can never have too many pictures!" 

This is us at the Lower Emerald Pools. There's an awesome path beneath a giant slab of rock that the waterfall flows over top of. It was beautiful! 

Here we are, cooking our tin-foil dinners. It was quite cold the first couple days in Zion, so I was trying to warm my fingers by the hot coals. The dinners were delicious, courtesy of my dearest Daniel!

 Here is another sideways picture. This was in the Hidden Canyon -- which was an incredible trail that went through this ... quite literally ... hidden canyon. It was one of the coolest hikes we did during our stay. 

Here is Daniel looking at ... something ... in the Hidden Canyon. I'm sure whatever it is he's looking at is something I told him to do, but I honestly can't remember! 

I really should rotate these pictures before I post them, but I'm tired and don't really want to. This is a pretty little spot called Menu Falls. It got its name because at one point, the spring water from these falls was listed on the Zion Lodge menu. There were cute decks that led up to these falls. It was in a really secluded area and there weren't many people there since there wasn't a marker or path to it. We received the exclusive information via a ranger tour we took one of the mornings. 

I believe this is a sideways picture of the Temple of Sinawava. This is at the very top of the canyon. There's a neat trail -- The Riverwalk Trail -- that starts here. It's really easy, but definitely beautiful. This is also where the Narrows trailhead begins, but unfortunately, the Narrows were closed because the Virgin River water was flowing at more then 1040 cubic feet per second ...  and you probably ought not cross a river moving that fast, eh? 

This is the entrance to the super-long tunnel that leads to the other half of the park. It's over a mile long, I believe. If I recall correctly, it was built during the Great Depression as part of an economy booster and employment opportunity. There were awesome lookouts throughout the tunnel ... though I'm not sure of their purpose, seeing as there were no places to pull over and look out of them. Maybe it was just for lighting purposes? Who knows. 

On the other side of the tunnel, there's an amazing trail called Canyon Overlook. It was a fun trail that led to a BEAUTIFUL view of the entire canyon. 

This is me on the Canyon Overlook Trail. Daniel likes to take waaaay more pictures of me than he lets me take of him. =)

This is us at the top of the Canyon Overlook Trail. BEAUTIFUL, right? I might also mention that Daniel is totally pro at setting up the camera on rocks with the timer when there's no one there to take a picture for us. 

We went on a trail called the Grotto, which is a really short, easy, 0.5 mile trail that connects the Zion Lodge to another stop in the canyon. While we were on the trail, we met several deer, who weren't the least bit afraid of us. 

This is a picture I took from Weeping Rock. I tried to get the "weepings" (aka, the water dripping off the rocks by the hanging gardens), but I couldn't -- so I settled for this picture. I think it's pretty impressive! 

OK, I'm going to try to explain this photo, but I doubt I will be able to do it justice. We had gotten off the shuttle at the Temple of Sinawava and Daniel started laughing at the port-a-potties. I couldn't figure out what he thought was so funny. He kept saying, "Look at the port-a-potties! Isn't that hilarious?" and I kept saying, "I don't get what's so funny?!" 

Daniel: "Yucca port-a-potties, get it?"

Whitney: "No, I don't get it. What's so funny?"

Daniel: "Yucca port-a-potties!"

Finally, I understood what he was trying to say ... Yucca (or YUCKY) port-a-potties. I played it off like it wasn't that funny, but really I was slightly embarrassed because it took me so long to get what he was saying. 

We jammed on the guitar at our campsite for a little while. Our super-sweet neighbors kept telling us to keep playing, but my fingers were pretty much dead by that point. 

Just thought this was a pretty picture. Not sure where we were for this one. 

Alright, here it is! The pride and joy of our trip! We climbed, we saw, we conquered ... ANGELS LANDING! We pretty much felt like a hardcore mountain man and woman.

Those were the chains we held on to (or clung to for dear life) as we scaled Angels Landing.

This is us at the very, very, tippy-top of Angels Landing. 

This is a sideways picture of me trying to get DOWN from Angels Landing ... which I think was equally treacherous as going UP! 

Daniel and I, looking good at Menu Falls. 

My handsome hubby rockin' out on the drive home. It was the best trip EVER! Daniel is the best husband ever for planning this after-finals getaway. 

All in all, we did 10 trails: 

1. Grotto Trail
2. Lower Emerald Pool
3. Weeping Rock
4. Riverside Walk
5. Middle Emeral Pool
6. Upper Emerald Pool 
7. Kayenta Trail
8. Canyon Overlook
9. Angels Landing
10. Hidden Canyon

It was amazing! We'd love to go back again someday.

-Whitney

My Pillows!

I have completely finished making the new throw pillows for our couches! I'm pretty proud of myself, so I'm going to post some pictures ...

Here is our large couch. I made all of the pillows except for the gold one! 

I totally love the stripes! 

Here's a close-up of some of the pillows. 

 Here is our smaller couch & pillows. 

 Close-up, once again. 

So ... here they are! Like I said, I'm pretty proud of my craftsmanship, so feel free to leave comments full of praises! ;-)

-Whitney

For the Martineau's ...

I hereby dedicate this post to the Martineau Family (but anyone else can read it too).

First of all, I'd like to thank your genius-ness for coming up with the group FHE  idea. It's totally a blast.

Second, I would like to post the recipe for the muffins you requested on my blog, rather than email it. This is because I feel slightly obligated to update my blog semi-often since I did all those "random" posts about eating family meals.

I reckon muffins are a breakfast food, and breakfast is a meal, so therefore, this qualifies. 

So, without further ado, here is the recipe!

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tbsp baking soda
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 apple, chopped (we used a pear instead when we made them for FHE)
• 1/2 cup chopped dates (next time, we're going to experiment with raisins and craisins)
• 1 cup nonfat, plain yogurt (we used nonfat, reduced sugar strawberry ... any flavor works)
• 1/4 cup agave nectar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Combine all of the ingredients and mix until moist. Mixture will be a little thick. Spoon into muffin cups/pans and bake at 375*. Cooking times will vary -- check after 10 minutes and gauge from there. They're done when the tops start to brown.

-Whitney