Santa came early!

Over the weekend we worked on Christmas-fying our house. Although we will not be in SLC for Christmas, we still wanted to put up a tree. The anticipation of Christmas is just as important as the actual day! And then Santa came early to the Morshedi house.

We decided that we were ready to join the exercise equipment ownership club, and so we bought a treadmill. It is starting to get cold up here, and it gets dark really early, so we needed an avenue for working out. We found a nice, gently used treadmill online. Thanks Santa.

Thank an Indian Day

My cube neighbor at work is a Native American. His goal this year was to get all of us to switch from calling turkey day "Thanksgiving" to "Thank an Indian Day." So I have named this post in his honor.

The best part of thanksgiving this year was cooking with Grant. Cooking together is one of our favorite things to do, and we have not had time to do it lately. We woke up early and made cranberries and dressing. They both turned out amazingly well. Then we were off to our friend's Annie and Nate. They invited a bunch of couples that weren't able to travel home for T day.

Annie had a cute little table set up when you walked in where you wrote down what you were thankful for. We then read them after we ate. We certainly have a lot to be thankful for this year.

Grant trying to think of something funny to write.

Me and Annie

Carving away

The group shot

Yummy food!

Slow economy in Japan too

I guess money is an issue now all over the world, as this video might suggest. Although in my opinion, there shouldn't have to be an economic downturn for an excuse to use monkeys as waiters. This should have already been happening.

New blog features

I changed the look of the blog because I was bored, and I was scared you all might be too. I also added two new features down on the right side..."quotation of the day" and "useless knowledge of the day." Hopefully this will help you waste time on the internet.

Sunday happenings

This morning we went to Church with our friend's Annie and Nate. They are a couple that we are starting to become good friends with. Afterwards, we tried a new restaurant (Trio) for brunch. It was a big hit and has been added to our list of favorites to take out of town guests to.

While I worked on laundry, Grant assembled our new outdoor fire place. Now we will be able to enjoy our patio when it is freezing out. Here are some before and after shots.

Update

I haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd better do so...

Things that are new in SLC:

1. I am on my ophthalmology rotation right now (and will be through the end of February). It is fantastic. Makes me happy I chose the right field.

2. I have been near death with some sort of Utah illness since Wednesday (or maybe just a mild cold, but I like being dramatic on the blog). And I have very little voice left at the moment. If you call my phone and hear nothing or a voice that sounds like Estelle Getty from the Golden Girls....that's me. Don't laugh.

3. It snowed a lot a couple of days ago. See Anna's post. Snow like that would've brought in the Army National Guard in Arkansas. Guess we have to learn to deal with it. Funny story about the snow...the first day that it snowed (Wednesday) was the same day that I started getting sick. After clinic that day at the VA, I had to give a ride to a couple of the other doctors (my bosses) down the street to their cars. So we were walking out the door to my car, and there I was all bundled up and shivering/shaking/chattering. But it was because I felt awful and was getting a fever, not because I'm a little wuss from Arkansas who can't stand his first Utah snow experience. Of course I didn't want to whine, so I didn't explain to them that I felt awful and thought I was developing a fever. So I just let them think that I was shivering because I was a wuss.

Blog tag

Areta started up a game of blog tag. Her instructions were to post the forth picture from the fourth picture album on my computer. Here it is. This is Grant working his mojo at the blackjack table in Vegas.

What the heck?

No, no, no that was not my response to the election results. That was more like, "Whaa hoo, YEA, finally, Hooray!"

"What the heck?" was what I said when I stepped outside today and saw snow falling. It is officially really cold here and Old Man Winter has arrived. I just hope I can survive the winter. I think snow is a perfect excuse to buy more sweaters today during my Ann Taylor Loft shift. At least I get the garage spot...poor Grant.