Things we were thankful for this November

Here's what I was thankful for this year:

snow boots
snow
good music
babysitters
netflix
infant tylenol (Piper and I both got colds at the same time)
a landscaped yard
a warm house
comfy bed
bread
river trail
eBooks and library eBooks
hot chocolate
skype (Adam went on a work trip and we skyped every night)
handy neighbors (we didn't realize that we had to turn the water off for our sprinklers and our neighbor helped us)
frozen meals

Adam's:

working from home
this blanket (the jeans quilt I and his mom made for him)
you making dinner
in-home humidifier

Clouds and food

Family photos over on the family photo blog! Here are some non-baby pictures for you too:

some kind of caterpillar we found on the river trail

mushroom tree

bridal veil falls

horses!

I like the texture of this brick

Happy Halloween

Hiking Timp

yeah, it rained

radiatus!

In the fall you can go wading in leaves

mushroom

cap cloud on Timp

cute little panni clouds

I had a party for the British Bake-off finale! I made this Pan L'Accienne. Koko ate one of my loaves >_<

Adam and I made minestrone

Our cousin brought macarons and this photo doesn't do it justice. Grapefruit ganache!

My neighbor brought eclairs and they were delicious. Then I got too busy hosting and didn't take any more photos.

One night in November we had the most awesome sunset.

view from our room in Albuquerque

Chobani yogurt

So, ever since high school I've been getting free stuff for helping with Buzz agent marketing campaign things. They should probably pay me money, but hey, free stuff with no legal commitment. For this campaign I got to try some Chobani yogurt from our local Smith's.

woo free yogurt

Here's my rundown of the four yogurt products:

• Chobani flip: It looks like some kind of indulgent dessert and costs $1. Cheaper than a donut and probably healthier. It is awful. The chocolate pieces tasted kind of bitter to me, even though I double-checked that I didn't get the coffee flavor. The pretzel pieces were an interesting idea, but seemed cheap. There's no flipping involved so I'm not sure why it's called a flip. I'm not a fan of sour and chocolate. 0/5
• Chobani kids: I thought they tasted weird, but they couldn't put any fruit clumps in them. It's a yogurt snack-thing that needs to be refrigerated, which means it has active cultures (I'm not so sure about the shelf-stable stuff). My daughter, Piper, is a big yogurt fan and liked these. I thought the Spiderman tie-in was tacky (what do spiders have to do with yogurt?). Also, my daughter could use the extra fat, what's with all the low-fat yogurt? 3/5
• Fruit on bottom yogurt: Tastes like any kind of lowfat yogurt... full of artificial stuff to make the yogurt have a creamy mouth-feel without the fat. There's only so much you can do with lowfat yogurt... 3/5
• 100 calorie yogurt - I'm afraid to try it. :-(

Well, we've established that I'm a complete yogurt snob. I recommend any kind of plain full-fat yogurt. If you're in Utah, Moutain High is super delicious. Best mix-ins: Lemon curd, nuts and honey, and fruit. If you're desperate jam will do in a pinch. Piper loves this yogurt mixed with any flavor of baby food.

we love this yogurt

Walking on the Provo River Trail + cake

The past month or two I've been walking a lot on the Provo River trail with Piper. Almost every time we see something new and exciting. If you just want to see baby pictures they're on my photo blog.

some shelf fungus appeared on a tree after it rained

a dead Monarch butterfly! At least I think it's a Monarch.

I meant to identify this flower after our walk... I never did X(.

the views are amazing

ladybug!

morning clouds in our neighborhood 

there's a part where the river trail goes under a road that has openings of different shapes. The diamond opening was by far the favorite of spiders! You can't see it very well but there were 12+ spiders in this one opening. Test of courage!

There's a spot where 30-40 ducks regularly congregate and sleep near one of the parking lots. We call it "duck city."

Leopard slug

UFO cloud!

we get tons of these bugs around our house... are they mayflies?

There is a house along the trail with a very duck-friendly yard and regular morning feedings (usually between 8-9). This must have been before the feeding and I counted at least 60 ducks gathered here. I call it "ducktopia" because I keep wondering if they're going to harvest any of those delicious-looking ducks. 

Another yard near the trail houses two horses and a donkey. Koko and Piper were pretty interested in meeting it.

look carefully--there's a moth in this photo!

I looked up the tree that is everywhere on the river trail and it's a Fremont Cottonwood tree. Duh! I feel like I should know this stuff by now. Is there a remedial plant identification course I could take?

I started taking Piper to the library and I read a few issues of Otomen, which they have there. Here were two parts I thought were pretty funny (in the first two, the friend is thinking up an excuse to leave so his friend can have a good date or something). In the second two, the traditional swimsuit fan service is completely undermined, to humorous effect.

Okay, now for the last few photos I wanted to share:

sometimes I have really high-calorie snacks? This is goat cheese, cashews, and honey.

I made caramel for a cake I baked

This was the cake before I frosted it. It looked better after the frosting, but I forgot to take a photo.

I baked a cake! It was this salted caramel cake from the Cook's Illustrated magazine. It was actually one of my "little goals" I mentioned in the previous post. The part I messed up on the most was cutting the two layers in half and getting them to line up. Otherwise it was just a matter of following directions, although I was glad I started in the morning, because with all the cooling times of the cake, caramel, and frosting it took almost all day! I have a lot more appreciation for the work that goes into making a cake now.