Chili

I love chili. I love making enormous amounts of the stuff, and being able to pull out a frozen block of it any time I want. I love it so much, I once peeled a green layer of something (mold? bacteria? chili parasites?) off a tub of chili that had been sitting in my car for a week, and ate it. It was delicious. Today, Laura the boys and I went to the Jess and Jason home to make chili. It was delicious, and we all had a great time.
I don't know how to easily fix the pictures. They're backwards. We did not start with an empty pot and fill it with chili. Well, actually I guess we did... OK, we did not start out with a dirty pot and storage tubs full of chili, and end up with a pot full of soaked raw beans.

I hardly knew thee.

This will be news for most of you. My van is no more, probably. The impount guy told me that it would be destroyed(beyond the condition I left it in) soon.As I was driving to work on Monday, I merged onto I-5, and the van stopped accelerating after 55MPH. So, I went onto the shoulder of the next exit. When I stopped, I noticed smoke coming up from around the hood, and a car that had whipped around me when I was slowing down had stopped a ways in front of me. When I opened me door, the other driver came running up and called out "your car is on fire." It most certainly was. I pulled all my army junk out, and waited for the fire truck to show up. They put the fire out and I was late to work. I suggest that if your vehicle is making funny noises, get it checked out sooner rather than later. I wish I'd takin pictures while it was going up.

Birthday, Pumpkins, and Dragons

On Oct 8th, Noah shared a birthday party with a member of our ward. They both had a great time, and enjoyed the cakes that Laura made for them.

Poor Noah has a negligent father, and his birthday passed with the bloggosphere wholly unaware. Luckily, his mother was in charge of the actuall celebration.

Today, we all got to go a pumpkin patch with Nick's preschool class. They even paid for Nick and Noah to each take home a pumpkin, as long as they could lift it up themselves. The farm also had a few different animals to see, like an alpaca, a llama and a reindeer. But the best part was the hay bale shute.

If any of you have not yet seen How to Train Your Dragon, I highly recomend doing so. Preferably with out your children. They're very distracting while your trying to enjoy the show. Laura, Nick and I saw this movie in the theator, and Nick was very well behaved and quiet, and we all really enjoyed it. Over the last week end, I rented the Blu Ray from a redbox, andtook it to a friends house(I don't have a blu ray player). With our kids, and the two other families' kids there, no one could hear much of the dialoge, and while the kids were running and shouting, us adults where unable to enjoy it at all. Oh well. Any way, at Walmart, they had this promotion where if you bring your own camara, they'll print off a free 5x7. These are a couple of the pictures I took. Laura wasn't with us, or I would have had pictures of her and myself.

First days at Head Start

School started last week, but Nick didn't get to ride the bus to school untill this morning. That's what's most important about school any way.
Unfortunately, I don't have any funny or cute anectdotes. Just one cute little head start student.

Ensign Ranch

If you click on the title, it should take you to the church page about this Ranch.

On friday, our family drove a couple of hours out to a town in the mountains called Cle Elum. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints owns a bit of land there called Ensign Ranch. Our ward had a camp out there. We borrowed a couple of tents from our young mens president (He slept on a hammock slung between two trees). This is the first camp out I've been on since I was in the young mens. In fact, I think that the last time I went camping, I went on a bicycle trip to Bush Gardens when I was 17, before we moved to Korea. Wow, that's about 10 years now. Any way, we had a great time. We had an open fire bbq, Argentina style, and every one had a great night. The next day, we went canoing around a lake, swimming and rope swinging into the same lake, and sliding down a giant water slide. We all had a really great time. Nicholas and Noah, surprisingly, didn't get burned, drowned or cut. Laura, Abuela and I, surprisingly, got good nights sleep on an air mattress and a stack of blankets.

Next time we go, We'll plan more time there. I'd like to: try out the climbing/repeling wall; either go horse back riding, or at least lead my kids around to let them ride; float down the river on an inner tube; spend alot more time swinging off the rope swing, swimming and going down the giant water slide(they call it a giant slip and slide[see last picture]).

Swords n' such

When I first saw Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (think Kevin Costner), it became my favorite movie. Between that movie, and the games my brother and I played, I became a fantasy nut(geek, nerd). Bows, arrows, swords, sorcery, and anything about fake ancient technologies fighting against fake monsters became my favorite pass time. Fantasy got me into reading-fantasy novels, of course. Where is all of this going? My nephew, William, asked my brother if swords were real. My brother answered that of course they're real, just obsolete. When William asked his father how he know, "...have you ever seen any?" Mike remembered that between the ages of 16 and 18years old, I had thrown my money away buying a bunch of swords. Being the great dad that he is, he asked me to show William my swords so that he'll see that they are, indeed real. Here they are Will. This is the first time they've served any purpose at all.

Where Should I Start

It's been a while, and there are a bunch of pictures and things I wanted to talk about so here goes

Indian food,

We're about to start looking for the ingredients for our chosen indian food, and I'm worried that I won't be able to find/identify some of these things. Does any one know where/how to find the following: garam masala, cardamon pods, fenugreek leaves, chaat masala? I'm heading to the grocery store today, and we'll see what I can find...

Piano

I've been wanting to aquire(not buy) a piano for quite some time, and a series of events came together to make that posible. Pianos are heavy. I was aware of this, but had still underestimated. I bought two furnature dollies, and borrowed a trailor and a truck(more on this later). I contracted two sets of elders to meet me at the pick up spot(they where paid in a home made lunch), and the five of us still had a difficult time getting it down the five front porch steps and lifting it into the back of the trailor. Once we got to our house, I had an even more difficult time trying to back up into our drive way. How do other people back up with trailors? I don't think I'll ever try that again with any other options. Once the trailor was backed up in our driveway, we unhitched it and manhandled it into our back yard and at a funny angle to our back poarch. Getting it off the trailor and onto the poarch wasn't as difficult as we'd imagined, but it turned out that it wouldn't fit through the sliding glass doors. Once I'd removed one of the doors(the other wouldn't lift out), there was a clearance of 1/2 an inch at the widest part of the piano. Of course, that clearance only existed if the five of us could have gotten the piano casters(wheels) lifted over the ledge and maintained the piano in a perfectly level state. This was not the case. While trying to use the "brute force", or "primative Pete" meathods of entry, the piano tilted into the house and was then dropped back to its original position. This caused the piano to slam down onto it's castors, and snap one of them clean off. Undaunted, we brute Peted our way through the door, and ripped off the other caster pushing it the rest of the way through the door. So now my piano is resting on some 2x4s.

Waterslide

A little while ago, we bought a bonzai waterslide in a garage sale. When we got home, we found that there was a large rip in one of the panels. No big deal. It came with patches. Big deal. The un-opened tube of adhesive only had about a split pea size drop in it. After going to the store to get some more, we ran into destructo dog problems. Bubu had decided that the slide would make a wonderfull chew toy, and had ripped out a much larger gaping hole in another panel.

Patriotism

So, I went a bought some duct tape and I fabricated the entire panel.

A sister in our ward borrowed our van to take some young women to youth conference and left us her 1978 Dodge pick-up.

Between the truck and the duct tape fix, I've never felt more American in my life.

Or maybe it's Redneck I feel...

I guess the question I need answered now is, should I put the piano up on cinderblocks?

What should we call Laura's sandwich?

Last night, before going to bed, Laura, Abuela, and I watched a program on TLC about the best food in the USA. Last night, they did sandwiches. They ran down a list of the 10 best sandwiches sold in the states. As we watched and drooled, Laura was making plans. Today for lunch, this is what she made us for lunch.

She sauteed onions and mushrooms, made a kind of pico de gallo(parsley, garlic, tomatoes, salt pepper, olive oil), cooked some thin sliced beef in a spicy barbaque sause, toasted some fresh french bread and let a slice of pepper jack melt on before piling it all up with lettus.

On the show, each sandwich had a name. The one I'd like to try the most was called the Sasquach. So, what should we call this one?

I just called it YUMMY!


Oh, and check out below, there's another newish post down there about our dog (who would have gotten a taste of Nicks sandwich if Laura hadn't stopped them at the last minute)

Our Dog,

in the middle of our yard.

A couple of weeks ago, Laura and I went to a marriage retreat were we learned, among other things, that men think about nothing as often as they can.

On our way back, we stopped at a pet shelter and adopted a dog. Nick has named him Booboo(bubu in spanish). He's only about 5 months old, so still has alot to learn, but he's doing fairly well as a back yard pet.

On another note, our boys aren't doing nearly as well learning to be inside children. If you look closely at the last picture you'll see where Nick decided to cut is own hair so that he would"look good for church."

I found out just a couple of weeks ago that posting with just a few pictures instead of the five I've been doing will drasticly improve the terrible time out rate I've been getting. In case any one else didn't know that....

Our House,

In the middle of our street.
So, I planned on posting about a bunch of different things in one post, and then putting lots of pictures up later. After selecting the five pictures from the different topics, the load timed out. I decided to do the specialized posts and then the general post so that it's at the top and it's the first thing you see... Unless it happens again and I'm too frustrated to try again. We'll see.
Any way, here's the inside of our house. And I say our house, what I really mean is the house we're renting from some guy. We have become one of those families that never eats at their dining room table. We now eat on the counter table tingy that separates our kitchen from our officy room(the one with the red chair and desk).