2011 Retrospective

I love the end of the year, when I look back and remember all the things that happened that year. As always, I'm amazed by everything that we did, what happened, and how lucky I am. So here it is: the year 2011.

January: Zara entered the fifth month of her life. We dealt with sleep issues, introduced solid foods, and watched her roll herself all over the place. I finally finished Zara's baby quilt (my first completed quilt; I've since made many others), and undertook a few more sewing projects.

February: Zara falls off the bed for the first time, but we both survive. (And all the 324 times she's done it since.) David and I celebrate our birthdays with our first child-free date since Zara's birth (dinner at a Thai restaurant in Itaewon). David receives LEGO Hogwarts and we buy ourselves our joint birthday present: a brand new TV. David was kept busy at work--as usual--but spent a lot of time studying for the GMAT which he re-took this month. (And he got a much better score than his first attempt.)

March: David finished his application to the MBA program at BYU at the beginning of the month, and then did his phone interview at the end of the month. We crossed our fingers that he'd get in because he didn't apply anywhere else. Zara mastered the art of crawling. And getting into everything. She also grew her first tooth.

April: David found out he was accepted to BYU at the beginning of the month so we could all breath a great big sigh of relief. Zara grew. I sewed. The weather in Seoul improved and we ventured out from our winter hibernation.

May: We soaked up every last bit of Korea we could get during our last full month in the country. We bought lots of Korean items to commemorate our time and we bought a new Nikon DSLR camera.

June: We fly home to San Diego, where we spend two weeks before departing on the first leg of our Rediscover America Super Awesome Roadtrip which takes us to Arizona, New Mexico, Texas (lots and lots of Texas), Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. We explore more of Atlanta and spend time with David's family (and help his parents move into a new house). David finally FINALLY finishes his Bachelor's degree in accounting. Whoo! Zara walks.

July: We embark on the second leg of our roadtrip which takes us to Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nevada, and the northern part of California. We stop over in San Diego for my mom's 60th birthday, family reunion, and family photos. We end the month by rolling into Utah with no place to live and sick to death of living out of our suitcases.

August: We live with my Aunt Debbie while we search for a place to live in Utah. We finally find our sweet 19th century pioneer home in Provo which we move into on August 16th, the same day that David starts school. Zara celebrates her first birthday.

September: We adjust to life in Utah. I work on more sewing projects and Zara and I visit many parks in the area. David loves his classes and what he is studying.

October: We get to spend some time with our good friends from Korea, the Cottrells and enjoy the beauty of fall in Utah. We enjoy Halloween festivities and Zara gets really into the whole candy receiving thing.

November: I apply for and interview for a job on BYU campus. We drive down to San Diego to spend Thanksgiving with my family.

December: I get the job and start working 15-20 hours a week while Zara deals with a little bit of separation anxiety. (But she's getting much better.) David finishes his first semester of grad school (and receives all A's and A-'s) and we enjoy Christmas in Utah.

It has definitely been a great year. Many changes, many unknowns, but through it all, we've enjoyed ourselves and had some truly amazing experiences. For the most part, life is good. Sometimes I think that we'll look back on these two years at BYU and remember them as the best days of our lives. David loves what he's studying and gets to have a regular schedule and spend lots of time with Zara and me. I found the perfect job which I love and allows me to earn a little extra money for our family. Zara continues to both exasperate and exhilarate us with her joyful baby giggle and intelligence. She's a special little person, that one is. We are definitely looking forward to what 2012 will bring us....if, you know, the world doesn't end on December 21st. :)

Holiday Baking

It's time for my annual holiday baking report. In years past, I've gone a tad overboard with the cookie-making and have baked anywhere from 5 to 7 different holiday treats to pass out to friends. This year I decided to simplify my life just a tad and only pick four different cookies.

One had to be sugar cookies. I remember making them with my mom every year to leave out for Santa and I just don't feel that it's Christmas without them. To be quite honest, I love a lot of other cookies more than I love sugar cookies and they are rather time consuming, but I still do them every year. I thought these ones turned out particularly good this year.

Another must cookie are my pumpkin cookies with brown butter maple frosting. They might just be my very favorite holiday cookie ever. Pumpkin and maple are amazing together and are flavors you don't often see in a typical holiday cookie plate.

So I had my sugar cookies (no chocolate) and my pumpkin maple cookies (again no chocolate), so I decided to do a standard chocolate chip cookie. Except these are not your standard chocolate chip cookie, these are Jacques Torres' ("The King of Chocolate") famous chocolate chip cookies which are oh so delicious. David doesn't agree with me, but I think these are the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. (But be warned, they take a while to prepare.)

For my last cookie, I decided to try a brand-new recipe. I knew I wanted something very chocolatey and when I stumbled upon these chocolate cookies with mint chips, I knew I had a winner. Plus I liked that it added another flavor (mint) to the overall composition of the plate. Strangely, this recipe does not call for any eggs, which I liked, but it did leave the cookies a tad crumbly, so you have to be careful about that. I decided to use mint M&Ms to give my chocolate cookies a noticeable punch of green and red color. Above are all my cookies prepped and ready to be packaged.
In the past, I've piled cookies on plates or in metal tins. I prefer using tins but they are a tad pricey, especially to give to each friend (and we are kinda poor right now). Plastic/styrofoam plates just don't hold many cookies and they shift around a lot in transit. Plus, I've never found an adequate way to cover them and still have them look pretty. This year I remedied the situation by picking up these cookie boxes. I found them at Big Lots for $2 for a pack of two. (I saw them other places as well.) They held far more cookies than a plate and kept them secure and snug during transport. Plus, they provided a little window to display the goodness inside. All around a great idea, and one that I'll be using again in the future.

How was your holiday baking this year? Any good new recipes? I've included my recipes for sugar cookies and pumpkin cookies with maple frosting below. :)


Tessa's Sugar Cookies

3 1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. margarine
1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 sour cream

Sift together dry ingredients, set aside. Combine margarine, sugar egg, and vanilla. Add 1/2 flour mixture and sour cream until well blended; add remaining flour. Roll out to 1/4" thickness (or if you're me, even thicker :) and cut out cookies using cookie cutters. Bake at 400 for 8-10 minutes.

Frosting:
1/2 c, unsalted butter, softened
1/4 c. milk, room temperature
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 lb. powdered sugar

Pumpkin Cookies

1 cup pumpkin
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon milk
1 cup chocolate chips (optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees

Dissolve baking soda in milk and set aside. In large bowl whisk together pumpkin, sugar, oil, vanilla, and egg.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and then. Stir in the baking soda mixture and then chocolate chips. Spoon onto cookie sheet. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until done.

Brown Butter Maple Frosting

3 cups sifted confectioners sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup milk
2 tsp maple flavoring

Sift sugar and set aside. Melt butter over medium heat until golden brown. Watch closely so it does not burn. Add butter to sugar, scraping all the butter into the bowl. Add milk and maple flavoring. Stir until smooth.

Merry Christmas!

I really can't believe that it's already Christmas Eve. I mean, honestly, where did the time go? I feel like time goes into hyper-drive after Halloween.

We're all very excited for Christmas at the Malone household. (Though we've been a bit slow on getting everything ready for the holiday season.)

Zara, though, is as cute as ever and excited to open all those gifts underneath the Christmas tree. (And of course, she's got way more gifts than David and me combined. How is that fair?) Still, she's super cute, so I guess I'm okay with that. Also, how did my baby get so gigantic? I really have to train myself to not call her a baby anymore.

We decided to stay in Utah for the holidays in part because of my new job which I started two weeks ago and in part because we couldn't afford to travel anywhere else for the holidays. I'm glad we opted to stay put. Yesterday, we drove down to East Carbon (a tiny little town in eastern Utah where my mom grew up) to visit my Grandma Urbanik. My sister and her family also came to Utah for the holidays to spend time with her husband's family, but we get to spend a little bit of time with them which will be awesome. Tonight, we're spending Christmas Eve with my aunt and all her family. Turns out, we get to spend the holidays with lots of different family members. What could be better?

And since it's been a little while, here's a few recent photos of Zara in all her adorableness:






Merry Christmas to all our friends and family around the world!

Gratitude Countdown Rundown

So I kinda dropped the ball on that whole gratitude countdown thing, didn't I? In my defense, we drove down to San Diego to spend Thanksgiving with my family and I didn't have a lot of time to update this old blog. But since then, several other things have occurred which give me lots of reasons to be thankful.

First and foremost is that I got a job! My first day is tomorrow and I'm all sorts of apprehensive and excited about it. It was one of those rare opportunities where the job was absolutely perfect for me and I was absolutely perfect for the job. My official title is "History Internship Coordinator" in the History Department at BYU. It's a brand-new position which they've created to helped facilitate and administer the internships which both family history and regular history majors undertake each year. I'll be working closely with two faculty members and the students to help them find internships and to help them navigate the legal and academic requirements of the internship. I really hope I'll be able to help the students become acquainted with the many diverse places a history major can work (or intern) and help them recognize what a great opportunity it is to intern (as it is how many organizations hire new employees).

The job is part-time (which is great, I didn't want to work full-time) and even though we plan to arrange my work hours around David's class schedule next semester, we still had to find outside help to watch Zara for a few hours each week. We were, of course, quite apprehensive to trust the care of Zara to anyone else, but after meeting our new daycare provider (Audrey), a lot of that fear and guilt has disappeared. She runs a small daycare out of her home and I think Zara will gain a lot from spending time with someone other than me all the time and being around other children her age. We'll see how it goes, but at least I'm not feeling like a horrible mother at this point. And that's progress.

David and I also (FINALLY) receive callings in our ward today. It's not official yet, so I don't want to say what it is right now, but I'm super excited about it. And that almost rarely happens.

Also, David has finals all this week and then he'll be officially done with his first semester of graduate school. He's worked very hard and enjoyed his studies so much, but I am looking forward to two weeks of unencumbered David time (meaning that he won't have to spend his nights doing homework). I'm really looking forward to Christmas and celebrating it with my little family.