Sugar Overload

A few months ago, Tim and I watched an amazing episode of Unwrapped on the Food Network. It was about how Hammond's Candy Factory made hard candies by hand at their factory in Denver, CO. Little did we know, we would someday be able to tour this magical factory...

Okay, so there wasn't much going on for the last tour of the day on a Saturday, but we did get to see them pull out and stretch the candy canes and a girl shaped the hooks by hand!
Plus there were free samples. (It's a good thing, too, because the gift shop was expensive!)
Tim almost decided he wanted a different career...
Another reason to come visit us in Colorful Colorado!

Estes Park Winter Festival

Having an anniversary around Christmas has made us pretty terrible about celebrating it, but to celebrate the big milestone of 4 years, we decided to take a trip to Estes Park. We originally wanted to go cross country skiing at Rocky Mtn. National Park, but later found out the nordic center is on the opposite side of the park. Luckily, the second annual Estes Park Winter Festival happened to be going on. There was a huge chili cook off put on by all the local restaurants, and we walked through this awesome ice castle.

We walked our chili off in the Ntl. Park with our snow shoes

You better believe I bundled up.

4 Happy years together!

Tim walking on a huge frozen lake.
It was dusting snow during our hike and the camera caught some of the flakes.

They were supposed to have a hot air balloon glow in the evening, but it was too windy. They ended up doing a "fire show."

This picture looks a lot less exciting than I thought it would:

Tim made this anniversary amazing. I am sure lucky!

...And A Happy New Year!

We spent Christmas in St. George this year. It was nice to take a few days off and especially nice that the whole family came. Christmas eve stared with kids. I made a homemade gingerbread house to decorate. Jonas had a lot of fun (see bottom left picture). I'm not sure he understood that the point of the activity was to decorate.

Then they opened jammies from my mom. Makayla had it right when she said "well, that's not very exciting." But they sure looked cute! It was at this point my camera battery died :(
Luckily, we got a free Itouch for signing up with our bank last August which has a camera on it, but I realized this after opening presents. (I got everything I wanted including an electric throw blanket, a Boulder area hiking book, other books, stamps, and clothes.)
Tim and I got my dad some clay pigeons for Christmas, so we took the guns out to use them.

I have to admit, I look pretty hard core. Too bad the guns were so heavy I couldn't handle very many shots-at least with the shot guns.
We did manage to sneak in some grandkid pictures for my mom.
I sure have cute nieces and nephews!Unfortunately, that's all the pictures I got of Christmas.
On New Year's Eve, Tim and I held a party with lots of food and friends. Sadly, that is when I realized my camera was still dead, so I hooked the battery up to charge and didn't take any pictures.

Yesterday, Tim and I took our new snowshoes up Boulder Canyon to try them out. We found one trail with barely enough snow and took our maiden voyages with them. It was tons of fun!

I even took a picture of my feet in honor of Aubrey.

Though always too short, we had a great holiday season. Tim is grateful he passed all of his classes, and is starting his second semester in a week. I am getting into my new job and started teaching Sunbeams again this year. Hopefully 2011 will be another great year.