Archive for January, 2009

Gung hay fat choy!

In honor of the new year of the Ox, the Swensons threw a Chinese New Year party this weekend as our cultural contribution to Utah.  Brynne and Sam, Adrienne and Max, Melissa, Clinton and later Grant came over and feasted on, well, a legitimate feast.  It was an official party, as you can tell, because I broke out the table cloth and cloth napkins.  High class.

The menu (this is mostly for dad):

Egg drop soup with fresh spinach, napa cabbage, green onions, enochi and shiitake mushrooms
Drunken chicken with stir-fried baby bok choy, ginger and shiitake mushrooms
Steamed Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli) with oyster sauce and hot peanut oil
Fried Rice
Pork and Shrimp pot stickers with five sauces (sweet chili, soy/worchester sauce, ginger and red vinegar, hot chili garlic, etc.)
Mango coconut sticky rice (not technically Chinese, but oh so good.  Thanks to Adri, who made this delicious treat)

After dinner, we retired to the living room for a fun game of Balderdash.  Shane was victorious, despite his glabrescent associations with  L.T.A.B. and Plennie Wingo.

Top 10 reasons why we love where we live today

10. World class skiing only 20 minutes away from our house.

The whole Lee family trekked out here for Christmas (including Jeff, all the way from Beijing!).  David and Shane braved the weather on Christmas Day in search of powder.  They found some at Solitude, a mere 20 minutes away from our house.  Apparently it was “epic.”

9. Beautiful views out our kitchen window after a storm.

8. Sledding and playing in the snow, just beyond the fence.

Shane declared his love for me (or maybe just the snow) in giant letters (you can kind of see the I heart Y…).  We made snow angels, threw snowballs, practiced our snownastics, and found a sledding hill and a broken sled that we utilized for the rest of the afternoon.  All in our own backyard!

7. Groceries are so cheap!
Maybe I’m the only one who finds this to be exciting, but check out the price of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and milk!  I have to remind myself that I don’t have a deep freezer and I must restrain myself.

6. Shane has his own personal flying field.

Shane built a remote control plane in our basement and can walk it out the back door and fly it out in the field to his heart’s content.  A few other people have remote control planes that fly here, too.

5. Friends!

Last weekend, over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, was the third annual “SLC MLK SKI GTG,” hosted by the Zimmerli family.  About 90 people from around the world converged here for a weekend of non stop fun, skiing and eating.  I believe there were kids from over 17 states, from as far as Hawaii and Florida and from Canada, Australia and South Africa.  It was a great time seeing old and new faces, and we were sure glad that we had our own (quiet) house to sleep at, only 5 minutes away.

4. Two words: backcountry skiing.

Not wanting to “waste time” on the groomers at Brighton last Saturday, Shane and Ashley Williams found some untracked powder about an hour’s hike from the resort.  As for me, I stuck to the blue squares.  The lifts were invented for a reason.

3. Another two words: rock climbing.

Again, not wanting to “waste time” while in Salt Lake, when Ashley heard that we climb and that she and I are the same size, she easily convinced Shane to take her and Stefan Lindsay climbing up Little Cottonwood Canyon.  They came home with huge smiles, despite having to brave the chilly temps once the sun went down.  I think we might have sold a few more people on the joys of living in SLC.  Skiing AND climbing in the same weekend, only 10-20 minutes away?  Right on.

2.  Good jobs.  We both love our jobs, and that makes the gap between weekends a lot easier to deal with.

1.  Vacation destination.  It’s super fun to have our families and friends come to visit.  Maybe it’s the international airport 20 minutes away, maybe it’s all the super fun things to do, but occasionally we convince ourselves that it’s just because we are here.

Are you sold yet?  We love it when people come to visit, so come on over!