Crock Pot Craziness...

I am a Mormon and Mormons have a tradition of fasting for two meals the first Sunday of every month. The fasting has at least two purposes. First off, the money we would have spent on those two meals we give to those who are in need, and secondly, fasting puts you in a much more humble(albeit sometimes grumpy) state of mind and opens up your heart a lot more.


Anyhow, it's really hard to cook when you are hungry so I know I should try to find good crock pot meals that will not only be tasty but will require very little time in the kitchen. But I often find that the meals are uninspired, unhealthy, old fashioned or all three.  So a couple of weeks ago when I got this forward I was so so excited.

Mike passed along a forward that had a LONG list of crock pot recipes.  And remember how I said I don't like to cook with a lot of canned goods - especially cream of you name it's?   Well, these recipes are are actually pretty free of stuff like that and much more exciting than the standard fare.  Today we had a cranberry pork loin and it was amazing. I mean AMAZING(well, do I have been fasting all day so...)! So here's the link the long list of recipes(well over 300) that I got in that forward:

CROCK POT RECIPES!!!

Goebel Family - Utah Valley Family Photography

Well, the Goebels came all the way from Texas to visit family for the holidays and I was able to spend a little time with them in the beautiful snow.  We headed down to Provo to shoot in this orchard and around town and got some beautiful images...and here are a few of my favorites.

First off, orchards are always one of my favorite places to shoot because of the symmetry of the rows, the lines that draw your eyes on forever, and the organic framing created by the trees themselves.  As you can see here...

And we had such fun playing in the snow and in the trees...loved it.  These girls were truly such dolls.  So easy to capture them having a great time.

I took this first shot after I told the girls to turn around and see what their mom and dad were up to and when they turned back around I got to snap the cute smiles they had.  

Can I tell you how much I love that image of having a kiss blown to me with such sweetness?  Obviously I love it a lot since I'm using it on the right here to link to my photography site.   This little gal was so funny.  She reminded me of my second - so expressive and so much to say.

And here is her older sister who knew how to pose to the max - a little beautiful model...

And I love these - I love the door,  I love the expressions, and I love the snow...

Don't you?  So good job, my Texan friends, at being able to look so great in the chilly weather and deep snow!

It's a new year, folks!

Well, Happy New Year!  Last night I really didn't do much - just the normal we've got babies routine.  We let the kids stay up till ten and then we watched a movie(Julie & Julia) and ate too much food.  As for the movie - it was pretty good.  I think it would have been really good if we could have left out the part about Julie and just heard about Julia.   And speaking of eating too much food...

Today Ashely came over to go over the workout routines she had given me and to help me learn the moves and stuff.  If you didn't know it Ashley is a personal trainer and after I saw the amazing transformation of one of her clients I yearned for her services.  But it wasn't until she called about doing some pictures that I thought of trading my photography for her expertise.  It has been really good.  She really knows what she's talking about and has told me what equipment to get, how to use it, and is helping me train for my races.   In this photo you can see my slobby body as I'm doing fake jump roping.  I guess most of us don't have the ceiling space for regular ropes so she had me use one pound hand weights instead.  You can see cute little Ashley on the right.  So, that was good.  She also had me get a ball and a band and showed me how many many things you can do with those two basic tools.  It was great.  I'm excited to know all that new stuff!