Tears of Sorrow, Tears of Joy

I was too efficient at work last week, finished my project early and worked myself out of a job. Well, not permanently, but since I’m on contract per project, I have a few days off until the next one. Brynne also had the day off, so she came over and we made Ina Garten’s chicken chili. We each decided to make the full “party” amount (12 servings… it was from her Parties cookbook, after all), and were overwhelmed by the amount of onions that we had to chop. SIX onions EACH! Luckily, neither Brynne nor I are particularly dramatic, so we hardly noticed.

The chili turned out DELICIOUS, and Shane and I will be enjoying it for six more meals. (I did freeze half of it. No matter how delicious it is, I think I’d OD on it pretty soon). Here’s what 24 servings of chicken chili looks like:

I spent the rest of the evening doing very domestic things like laundry, dishes and blogging (?), since Shane was gone at volleyball. No girls allowed volleyball. Hmph. Brynne and I are still trying to figure out something that we can do on Tuesday nights that will make the boys jealous. You know, activities that do not involve scrapbooking or stamping, the regional pastimes.

I went outside at around 8 pm to go get the mail and was greeted by the most beautiful sight: SNOW!!! This was the first time that I have ever experienced snow in my own front yard. Oddly enough, I was quite giddy. I think all this altitude has gone to my head. Just look at my little Saabaru all covered in snow!

EDIT:
This is what it would look like if you had black and white night vision goggles:

Giving Thanks by Snugging Pups

Although there was a small threat of having to learn how to cook our own turkey for Thanksgiving, we ended up heading up to Huntsville to have Thanksgiving with the Stacks. They recently moved here from our area back home, and we are actually not so distantly related through marriage, so we really did feel like we were celebrating the holidays with family. They live about an hour north of the city in a nice house with views of Snowbasin from their living room. Not too bad, although I think it was a little torturous for Shane and Bryan (their youngest) to be that close to be able to see the runs but not be able to go skiing because of a lack of snow. Besides the wonderful food and company, the Stacks’ mini dachshunds had puppies. PUPPIES!!!! My favorite was the little one with the purple collar named Nurple. They made me miss Linus and Rigby, if you can believe that. I don’t know if there is a correlation or not, but ever since Jeff started taking 33 units, the dogs have blogged significantly less frequently.

The rest of the long weekend was spent relaxing, eating, reading books and scouting climbing routes in the freezing (literally) Little Cottonwood Canyon. Shane is a little heartier than I. Check out the ice on the rocks in the creek that we had to cross. Yes, the red fleece hat made yet another appearance. Mollie, I hope you destroyed the matching red gloves after ice skating when you were here. Shane mentioned that he wanted to wear them the other day. This has got to stop.

Dog Days of November

The last few weeks have been filled with good friends, good food and lots and lots of dogs.

Marshall, Mollie and Nyah came up a few weekends ago and brought with them a lovely stackable washer and dryer that I had purchased on craigslist down in Las Vegas, and they graciously brought it up to us. Apparently Las Vegas has an abundance of unwanted washers and dryers, unlike SLC. I had been looking for a set ever since we’ve been in our new apartment, and was not looking forward to yet another trip to the laundromat. One of the other benefits of having M&M&N come up was that Manly Marshall helped install it. It was no easy feat. A 28 inch washer/dryer and a 30 inch wide closet with hook ups in the back does not make installation easy. Luckily Marshall is flexible. Nyah supervised the installation.

We had a great time showing them around Salt Lake. We drove through both Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons, scoped out the ski resorts, took a walk around the lake by Brighton, and played an invigorating game of “bags” (or the more unfortunately named “cornhole,” depending on your region) with little pebbles and a hole in the frozen lake.

We met up with Brynne and Sam for Napoletana Pizza at Settebello downtown before hitting up the outdoor ice rink at the Gallivan Center. It was Sam’s first time ever ice skating, and although I think Brynne had to do some heavy convincing to get him out there, he did a fantastic job. By the end of the evening, he was racing Shane around the rink. Shane did agree to only use one leg, but still. The weather was crisp but not too cold, and the twinkle lights were out in force, and even though there wasn’t any snow on the ground, it definitely felt like winter. Hopefully we did a good job showing M&M&N the joys of Utah living. We’re recruiting. Anyone interested? Great benefits packages, including world class skiing, great shopping, affordable housing and US!!