Starting Fresh

I started a new blog, sort of. There are no posts yet but there will be soon! Our new address is dalton-inc.blogspot.com

Home Improvements

Good news people...

Our landscaping is ALMOST done...

1599

After 11 weeks of training Devin participated in first TRIATHALON!!! It was not the IronMan (not yet anyways :)) it was the Sand Hollow Aquatic Center Sprint which is:

-400 meter swim

-10 mile bike

-3 mile run

Devin has been training 4 times a week either at the pool, on the road, or the treadmill and his hard work paid off. Calculating the times he was getting during his training we were planning for him to finish in 1:30 - 1:45, unfortunately he finished no where near his calculated time....

Instead he finished in 1:01!!!!!! We were all blown away by his speediness! (I didn't even get to see him cross the finish line because I was planning for the run to take him 25-30min and he finished it in less than 20!)

His goal was to finish in the top three, but unfortunately he finished 17th......OVERALL! He took 2nd in his age class (24-29)!

So proud of this one.

Waiting to jump in the pool...

Hopping in...Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...Out of the water in 8 minutes, off to the bike...Off he goes on his 10 mile bike ride... We watched 2 different people EAT IT on this turn, yikes...End of the bike ride...In the "transition area" pulling on his running shoes...Taking off up the hill...Finished!!!!! (He loves getting his picture taken, especially when he's wearing Spandex shorts, can't you tell???) On the podium for 3.5 seconds, just enough time to snap a pic.So proud of this one.

Craft Day!

After many unsuccessful shopping trips I realized that if you're picky like me, the best option when buying decorations is to not. Instead of shopping you should blog stalk crafty people so you can learn how to make your own decorations like the lady at makeit-loveit.com That's what my friend Nicole and I decided to do last week. Our crafting session consisted of fabric shopping, chatting, and crafting, and this is what I came up with...

These little fabric flowers were the perfect addition to our guest room!

My dog is obsessed

After sorting through my St. Patricks day pictures like this one.... and this one...

I have come to the conclusion that my dog is obsessed with food....

"Hi, my name is Otto and I'm a Food-a-holic..."

A sad sad day...

I'm very sad to say that we sold Red Thunder. After much debating, we made the adult/practical decision to sell the truck that Devin has had since college, and perhaps purchase a truck that gets better gas mileage. Oh Red Thunder, you were a great truck and you will be missed...

Autobots!

What better way to celebrate the coming of a 27th birthday than to party like a bunch of nine-year-olds at a Transformers themed birthday bash?!!? Devin and our Ottobot were definitely down with the theme...

I was even able to find our own little "Ottobot" an appropriate birthday outfit (FYI Otto fits snugly into a 4T t-shirt)My friend Tanya made us this outstanding Transformers cake! Talk about a high quality cake, this thing survived getting stepped on by a 55lb chunky monkey and only suffered a slight, unnoticeable indentation... Junk food and Just Dance on the Wii, we can party circles around those 9 year olds!Otto is a fabulous host and gave loves all around...
There is truly no better way than to celebrate a birthday than to be surrounded by good friends!

Words of Wisdom

"I'm not complaining, I'm comparing."

-Devin Dalton

Exhibit A...

Yes I do cook, contrary to popular belief. To prove it I have for you Exhibit A... Exhibit B is the end result of my little bout of cooking...

What you see above is White Chicken Chili a.k.a. Healthy Heaven in a bowl!

Here's the recipe, you want it I promise!

- Boil 3 chicken breasts until cooked, then shred with a fork

- In a large saucepan saute one large onion and 3 large sticks of celery (thinly sliced) in olive oil until translucent, then add the shredded chicken.

- Add cumin, garlic powder, chopped garlic to taste (the more the merrier!)

- Add 1 can of chicken broth, 1 cup salsa, and 2 cans of Great Northern beans (or any white bean of your choice) and chopped cilantro

- Add 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, one handful at a time allowing it to melt

- Allow to simmer for at least 5 minutes, the longer the better!

- Serve in a bowl topped with avocado and cilantro....Flavor overload!

This was not the original recipe that I was shown (thanks you Marissa Neve and Erin Tate for introducing me to heaven in a bowl) but that is the greatness of chili, you can kinda put your own spin on it and it still turns out delicious(most of the time)! Next time I make this I am going to add more veggies because I will take any opportunity I can to trick my husband into eating veggies! Another perk to this recipe is that it makes for great leftovers especially when you're sitting in the xray control room at 1:30a.m. Whoops, there's a knee, gotta go!

Just call me Emeril...BAM!

Funny story: The other night I decided to make the California Pizza Kitchen version of Barbeque Chicken pizza. Its delicious...here's the recipe just in case you're interested...

California Pizza Kitchen Pizza
-Roll out and bake a "can" of Pillsbury Pizza dough for approx 7 min
-Remove from the oven and top with BBQ sauce, shredded chicken( I used Costco's rotissere chicken, yum!), cheese, and chopped red onion
-Return pizza to oven until crust turns golden brown, then remove from the oven
-MOST IMPORTANT STEP: Top your pizza with chopped cilantro! Bam!

This is the finished product... We started eating and after a few bites I asked Devin if he liked it. He replied, " Yes it's good, but I think it would be even better if you put CHEESE on it!"
I forgot the most important ingredient! So this is actually what it should look like...
Devin was right, it WAS even better with cheese! Otto enjoyed it too,but his opinion cannot be trusted since he also enjoys eating slippers, twigs, and underwear

Look what I found...

About a week ago I was "window shopping" through the purse section at Dillards with my sister and we saw this hot little item... Unfortunately the price of this Kathy purse was not that hot...

So we forgot about it and moved on.

Three days later during a quick trip to Ross to buy much more practical items, I quickly browsed through the purse section, you know cuz I was already there I might as well, and I found this hot little item.... And the price of THIS Kathy purse was much hotter than the first...

So I did what any girl would do, I bought it. Did I really need it? I'm pretty 99% of women who buy purses don't actually have a real "need" for the purse, so no. But some deals are too hot to pass up!

Cabin Fever!

Every Christmas since I've dated Devin we have made it our Christmas tradition to travel to Moab and spend Christmas with the entire family! This year both Devin and I had to work on Christmas but have no fear because we still were able to participate in all of the Moab Christmas activitites, they just had to be pushed back a few days. (Thank you to our Moab family for accomodating our schedules, we are so glad we didn't have to miss a beat!) Upon arrival to Moab we had an amazing PrimeRib dinner, followed by white elephants gifts, and then normal gifts....great times. (For the white elephant I was lucky enough to get a belly button lint cleaner along with some real belly lint, thanks Chad!) We got some great gifts from the Daltons (decorations, a portable vacuum, and a FREEZER, yipppeee!!) and some awesome homemade gift from the Shepards. The next day we dropped of Otto at Karen's Canine Cabin (I have a taste for what dropping off our child at the first day of school will feel like, but hopefully their teacher won't have the same smell of cigarettes and alcohol) and headed to the LaSal mountains. We snowmobiled into the cabin but had to stay on the trail because the snow wasn't very deep. The next morning we awoke to this.... and this... (there are seven snowmoiles down there)and temperatures like this...

So the men had to dig out the snowmobiles...

So we could go sledding...

Chad, Kennedy, Macray, Andrew, and Larry Bear at the bottom of the sledding hill
Here I am with Payton, Macray, and Ean at the top of the hill...

and here we go....

At the bottom of the hill, Ryan was waiting in the snowmobile to drive us back to the top of the hill, that's sledding Ellis-style

When it got too cold to be outside anymore we moved the activitites inside to play.....Minute to Win It

It was a fun game AND a fun way to make fools out of ourselves! Case in point, me attempting to move and Oreo from my forehead to my mouth hands-free

Devin attempting to retrieve a penny from th bottom of these pantyhose...Breckin gave up and played his own game with the pantyhose

Britt, Nick, Kent and Chad shaking their cans to get the bouncy balls out of the tissue boxes...priceless!

Rubbing our noses with Vaseline to transfer cotton balls across the room...

Kent (my teammate Woot Woot!) fishing for marshmallows with a gummyworm...

Devin and Steph doing the Russian dance on the Just Dance 2 game for the Wii!...

Check out those moves...

After all of the playing, we did a lot of eating. Here's a big thank you to Joelynn for keeping 20 hungry hippos fed and then some!

After all the playing and eating we had some vegging out time...

And lots of this...

There's nothing better than spending the Holidays with family! See you all again at the cabin next year!