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!

Home Improvements 2

Today I decided to go to the movie True Grit (amazing movie, I highly recommend it) with my sister. As I was leaving the house Devin mentioned that he might head to Lowes and check out prices on wood for the shelves in the garage. I came home to this....

...Our beautiful new garage shelves! Hooray for organizing! Hooray for handy husbands!

Sidenote: Sorry for the backside shot of Devin(or should I say you're welcome), he's not a fan of pictures so I will settle for whatever side of him I get ;)

Sidenote 2: The dirtbike in the second pic is for sale, tell all of your friends!

Meet Larry Bear

Larry Bear is Andrew Dalton's firstborn and is officially the newest addition to the Dalton side of the family. I met Larry for the first time this Christmas and he was a delight to say the least. After spending lots of time with Larry Bear shacked up in a cabin here is what I learned about him...

He enjoys his naps as much as the next dog, or human.

He is well-rounded in the "trick" department. Double high-fives are his specialty.

He loves to snuggle, almost as much as his Grandpa does.

He loves to play in the great outdoors, rain or shine or 10 feet of snow.

He has many friends of the canine kind, one of which is his cousin Otto.

He is not hard to keep track of. If ever you can't find Larry, a sure bet would be to look within a 3 foot radius of his Dad.

Welcome to the family Larry Bear! You are in for a fun ride!