I fly out in less than 6 hours

For the last two years my husband and I have celebrated Thanksgiving with his side of the family.  They have a lot of fun with it.  Lowering the turkey into the deep fryer is always a big event.  The turkey only takes about 45 minutes to completely cook, so I say they're onto something.  They then cut potatoes into curly fries and fry those in the deep fryer too.  It's a lot of fun, but it's over in about 2 hours.

This year for the first time, I get to bring my husband to my home for thanksgiving.  Every year for as long as I can remember my mother's thanksgivings have involved a week of preparation, resulting in ironed tablecloths in fall colors, polished silver, china plates, crystal stemware, a traditional roasted turkey with stuffing, gravy made from the drippings, cranberries, peas, home made rolls, whole sweet potatoes with butter, mashed potatoes, martinellis sparkling cider, and at least 5 different kinds of pies, all enjoyed by a group numbering no less than 20, and often rising to over 30.  I guess not everyone enjoys cooking as much as I do, but the preparing for the feast was a huge amount of the fun of the final moments.  The feast would spread over about 5 of the final hours hours as guests arrived early to help, eat, visit, digest, and dessert.  You dress as if going out to a fine resturaunt.  Dinner includes toasting to what you're grateful for with the fancy stemware.  Guests and family members stay until 10pm catching up with eachother and dozing on couches to recover from the turkey coma. 

Not that either one is better than the other, but can you tell that I'm excited :)

Home Made Commercial

Dale and I made a commercial for Southwest last weekend.  

He's been filling out questionnaires online for Southwest for months so we can earn free flights, then got an email inviting him to make a youtube video to enter a competition to win the equivalent of 100 flights on Southwest.

So THIS IS WHAT WE DID and you can click on the link to see it on youtube.  I don't know if it'll win anything, but I think it was an awesome Saturday afternoon activity, and I think my husband is awesome!

Stone Soup... or stone chili

Yesterday I made something that looks very much like the above picture with a partial recipe. I didn't have over half of what the recipe called for, so I got a little creative with my refrigerator.  The end result incuded:

White beans
Corn
A pork chop (in leu of chicken)
Salsa (in leu of diced tomatoes, green chilis, green pepper, and onion)
Barbecue sauce
brown mustard
honey  (all three of the above were part of the marinade for the pork, whose drippings supplied me with something to replace "a can of chicken broth."  Seriously, who buys chicken broth?)
Pineapple juice
cumin
salt
lemon pepper
cilantro

(The only things I had from the original recipie was a can of corn, white beans, and cumin.  All other ingredients were creative substitutions or stuff I thought would make it taste better.)

Yup. Sounds like it should have tasted nasty, doesn't it?  But in true Stone Soup fashion, what we had ended up tasting AWESOME!!!! My first successful chili, and it was done without a proper recipe!
I just hope I can recreate it some day.

Salt Lake City

With the colder winter season coming on, our marathon run of road trips every other weekend appears to have come to an end.  The longer I stay in Salt Lake City, though, the more I realize that it's a LOT bigger than I originally thought.

Having grown up in Los Angeles County, there were different mountain chains and rock formations so no matter how high up you got, there was no way you could see from one side of the city to the other.  Even if there weren't those mountains, the curvature of the earth, and--yes--the smog would keep you from being able to see it all.

Salt Lake City is just the opposite.

I live on the East side, closest to the Rockies, and the entire city is on a slight downward slope from east to west.  I felt like the fact that I could see it all sprawling out in front of me from one end to the other as I pass point of the mountain meant that it was finite, unlike my hometown.  ...Perhaps it is finite, but still not humanly innumerable.  I end up staying in my own little part of the city: Cottonwood Heights, Holladay, Murray, and occasionally Sandy.  For my non-Utah friends, that's like Northridge, Granada Hills, and Mission Hills.  Going into Salt Lake City proper happens about as often as you'd go down to Broadway.

Well, a few weeks ago, Dale and I went to worship at the Salt Lake Temple.

We go to the Jordan River Temple every month, even though we're physically closer to the Salt Lake Temple.

The downtown traffic isn't great, but this time we went with a group and they wanted to go here, so here we came.  Dale and I walked around for a little bit afterward, which was the first time I'd ever done that after a temple session, rather than as a part of conference or some BYU date. 

The temple grounds as a part of the city are really gorgeous
and I just couldn't help feeling awed by Salt Lake the same way I had felt awed by Mesa Verde, Yellowstone, or the Lewis and Clark Caverns.

Here's to going on adventures in your own city!  I hope my winter is filled with a lot of them!

New Tradition

I got the idea from my cousin Karina. 

It's a Thanksgiving tree! 

Not to be confused with the Christmas Tree, this tree is more of a reflection of fall leaves that dominate this season, before the snow sets in.  It's thankful because the leaves you add all have something you are grateful for written on them.  Because I'm ghetto fabulous like that, my leaves are green sticky notes. (It makes it easier so I will actually DO this project.)

My goal is to put up 5 things I'm grateful for every day.  It's here in our hall that I pass every day so I won't forget.

Already I have 11 leaves up!  I'm encouraging Dale to put up 2 a day, but he says that what he's most grateful for are all parts of my body, and may not be appropriate to write on public display.  I tell him I like the fact that people know he's a fan of those parts!

I'll re-post at the end of this month.  I think it's a festive, and yet apt way to acknowledge this part of the holiday season.  Especially since our little decoration grows in size the closer we get to celebrating the holiday.  I hope it takes over the wall!

Peace Offerring

You cannot tell me that you don't love this tree.  One of the things I love about our apartment complex is how well landscaped it is.  That and the view and the easy access to the freeway, and the local shopping centers... basically, if I could just transport my job to within 5 miles of my complex, I'd never leave.

I am trying really hard to be positive about the changing of the seasons.  I usually hate them.  Loudly.  I am a California girl at heart and I LOVE the sun and a hot ocean sunset.  This is the first year I am living in Utah when neither Dale or I are in school full time.  We are, if passively, CHOOSING to stay in Utah.  I don't have to be outside much (to walk to class, etc), and I have a BEAUTIFUL apartment to appreciate the mountain view from, even if the mountians happen to have snow on them. 

So here's to you, changing of the seasons: I hope you like me enough to love me even though I can only do my best to tolerate you.

Halloween

This is the only picture I got of our Halloween.  Dale and I are not HUGE halloween people.  For one, all of the candy just makes me feel fat, and for another, all of the Halloween activities are usually a huge amount of money ($20 per person to go through a haunted house) that I'd be just as happy to make a salad at home and eat it while learning how to use Dale's old telescope--a holidayless activity. 

Seriously, we didn't even by trick or treating candy, carve a pumkin, or drink hot cider.

This picture was taken at our annual church chili cookoff and trunk or treat.  Dale and I happened to have shirts that said "SECURITY" on them, so we added dark glasses and handcuffs and became the party security system.  It was either that or dress normal and just be "the guy/girl who wears too much calogne/perfume."  (I SO would have done that, but we thought of it once we were already on our way.  Every time someone would ask about what you've dressed up as, you HAVE to put another spray on.  It would have been HILARIOUS!)

Other than this, I forced Dale to watch a scary movie with us on the day of the 31st. 

We settled on a 2 star netflicks option "Season of the Witch."  I loved how amazingly bad the special effects and plot were.  The acting wasn't especially horrible, about at par for Nicolas Cage, and it was sufficiently scary that I felt appropriately festive.

I'm a bit more stoked for Thanksgiving :)