Barb's Lofty Goal

Barb has started training for her first century bike ride (100 miles in one day). She's feeling a little insane for taking on this challenge right now but has the drive, the support of John and a great team to ride with. The route should be pretty level, no steep climbs (thank goodness!) but still, it's 100 miles and that is plenty. Here's how the route looks:

The ride starts in Wellsville, UT and goes clear up to Preston, Idaho. It should be a fun day! For old time's sake, here is a photo of 3 out of the 4 team members. This was taken a few years back on an all-girls mountain biking getaway in Brianhead:

We all look a little disheveled because we got caught in a surprise hail storm in June (who knew Brianhead's weather could be so volatile?) Here's to lots more riding memories together!

End of an Era

We've watched somewhat sadly as John's old college dorms have been torn down to make way for bigger and better buildings. A few days ago, John snapped some photos of his beloved residence hall halfway through the demolition process. This the same hall which was a witness to many college pranks that only a floor full of freshman engineering students could have come up with. The horizon will not be the same without the looming profiles of Deseret Towers. Can we please have a moment of silence for R-Hall?

Girl's Night!

Tonight was one of my favorite nights of the month--Girl's Night! Once a month the girls night girls get together and go out to dinner. We've also been known to take a weekend getaway together. Girl's Night is one of our favorite traditions and one the we can't do without. Tonight's dinner was at the Citrus Grill in Draper, complete with live music, good food and great company. I'm already counting down the days until next time, ladies :)

LOST Premiers January 31st, 2008

We are hopeless LOST fans and have been waiting since last MAY (yes, May) to see what happens to our favorite castaways. They left us with such a wicked cliff hanger last year, that we didn't think we would survive the wait. Fortunately for us, we did. So we turned on the New Year's Eve Dick Clark thingy about 10 minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve, and in the last commercial before the ball dropped, they aired the Season 4 trailer. We were mesmerized, as it was the first time we had seen it. Since we have DVR, we rewound the trailer to watch it again, and were so engrossed in it that we completely missed the clock striking midnight. Basically, we totally missed the entrance of the new year all because of Lost, and we were actually OK with that. We turned back to the Dick Clark thing at about 12:05, just in time to hear Ryan Seacrest say "That was amazing. Really amazing. It's amazing because there is confetti everywhere. Dick Clark, back to you. What do you think of all this?" Then Dick Clark said, "It was amazing. There's confetti everywhere. Amazing. Back to you Ryan." Then Ryan said "Yes, this is truly amazing." So basically, we didn't feel like we missed a thing.

Just so you don't feel like you've missed out, here is the LOST Season 4 Trailer:


It just gives me shivers. 25 days to go...

New Year's Resolution #1 - Eating Healthier

It's that time of year. Christmas is over and it's time to get serious about our goals for 2008. While we try to eat healthy on a regular basis, I will admit that we had a whole lot of "off days" over the holidays :) But that's what the holidays are for, right? Well, starting tomorrow, we are getting back on the wagon, waking up early and going to the gym every day, eating the healthy foods and avoiding the bad ones. Unfortunately, this will involve spending less time with some of my best friends, cheese and chocolate. However, I will get to spend time with some old friends that may be feeling neglected (sorry spinach and chard, we've been apart too long).

Look for some great healthy recipes that we've come up with on our food blog at http://barbandjohn.com/food/. Here's to a happy and healthy 2008!

Pillage the Village

Some people have very touching Christmas traditions, involving Secret Santa's, doorbell ditching with warm treats or caroling to the neighbors. Our annual Christmas tradition is a little more unique/twisted. Every year, Barb sets up the Christmas Village, complete with a town hall, church, post office, school, and several villagers. It starts out looking quite traditional and delightful, like this:


As soon as Barb completes her rendition of the village, John always sneaks in with some powerful and destructive force that puts the entire village in peril. The first year he did it, Barb came home one day to find that the Millennial Falcon had landed in the middle of the village, and that Star Wars bounty hunters were holding several villagers at gunpoint. The year after that, the village was terrorized by famous Hollywood monsters, including Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman and The Mummy. Last year, the hapless villagers were captured and and plundered by a fierce band of pirates. So after surviving all that, Barb came home this year to find that the village had fallen victim to bloodthirsty pack of thought-to-be-extinct dinosaurs. Here's what our Christmas Village ended up looking like this year:




There you have it. Stay tuned to see what misfortunes will befall the villagers next year. Merry Christmas!

Snow Day!

Right on cue, December 1st arrived with the first real snow storm of the season. It was snowing when we woke up this morning and it kept coming down pretty much all day, until about 6:00 tonight. I love snow days, especially if they come on weekends when you don't have to drive in it unless you really want to. To celebrate the first Snow Day of the season, we slept in, made hot cocoa and popcorn, played Christmas music, shoveled the driveway (not necessarily a celebration), stocked up on groceries for the rest of the weekend, and rented a movie to watch at home tonight. Pretty much the perfect snow day :)

One of my favorite things about a good snowfall is how pretty the trees in the front yard look.

Ready to brave the snow and go shopping. John doesn't look as excited for the snow as Barb because he would rather be enjoying some tropical surf and warmer weather, but he'll survive.

Little Known Fact--We Can Dance!

For those of you who don't know about our hidden dancing talent, click on the link below to be blown away and to enjoy some holiday cheer:


If you want to make an elf of yourself, or if you want to see our dance in more detail, go to http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1113256356, and you can create your own elf.

Some "Enchanted" Movie

Last night we went to see the new Disney movie "Enchanted" and we absolutely loved it. We weren't sure what to expect and were very pleasantly surprised by how well they pulled this one off. Disney actually brought back the musical genre, and did it with style, thanks to the help of Stephen Schwartz who brought us the amazing music of "Wicked". In fact, for those "Wicked" fans, the original Elphaba, Idina Menzel actually has a part in this movie. Our favorite, though, was Amy Adams, who was the perfect Disney princess brought to life. "The Office" fans may remember her as the "Hot Girl" from seasons 1 and 2. Prince Edward will also seem familiar to X-Men fans, as he played "Cyclops". Who knew Cyclops and the Hot Girl could sing? They are actually really good, and the music is just so much fun. And of course, Patrick Dempsey of Grey's Anatomy fame rounds out the cast with a dry sense of humor and a great performance.

Bottom line is, we left the theater with huge smiles on our faces, and this movie just made us feel good. So do yourself a favor and go see Enchanted soon! If you haven't seen the trailer, you can watch it below:

Time Capsule Discovered

So we spent this last weekend cleaning and organizing some closets in our house. Throughout the course of the day John discovered a veritable time capsule--an entire Tupperware container of undeveloped film. Now this really was a blast from the past because let's face it, who uses film cameras anymore? So I headed down to the 1-Hour photo place at Sam's Club to see what was hidden in those little plastic canisters. It was weird having to wait for an hour, and it seemed horribly backwards, but c'est la vie. It was like opening a time capsule when we started to look through the stacks of lost pictures. What we came across was one of the tackiest photos we have ever seen, starring us. Here's the story: We went to a friend's wedding, and they wanted us to take a picture with them. I'm assuming the end result the photographer was looking for was a shot of the bride and groom sharing a kiss, and us, the supportive couple, looking on admiringly. However, when the photog got ready to shoot the picture, he said "Now go ahead and kiss," and we assumed he was addressing all of us, so John laid a big fat kiss on me. The funny thing was that the bride and groom actually didn't kiss and just stared into space. So now we have a picture of us making out at our friends wedding while they look bewildered. In the photo below we have blurred the faces of the innocent.


We also found one other gem, in which I look like a refugee and John looks like a Sith Lord. The ironic thing this was supposed to be a historic photo because it was taken at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake. At the time the picture was taken, I was hoping for something a little more classic. In our defense, it was about 10 degrees below zero. So here is our historic Olympic portrait:


We also found a lot of cool landscape and underwater shots that we took years ago, so it was just kind of a fun discovery. If you ever run across old film, always develop it! You never know what you might find :)

Patches - The Coolest Horse Ever!

OK, we never would have believed it if we hadn't seen it with our own eyes. Animals are capable of anything! Wow! There really is no other horse like Patches. John used to care for a horse, and although it was very smart, it wasn't riding around in a car and answering the phone.

Scary Mary

We both grew up watching Disney movies including the classic Mary Poppins. We just never quite grasped how creepy the show was until we saw this version of the trailer. Enjoy!

Fainting Goats

Thanks to this video, we are have a new favorite animal. When we have enough land to have farm animals, fainting goats will be some of the first additions for sure. The only problem is that we'll have to figure out a way to limit the amount of time that Barbara spends scaring them.