dinner tonight

Chicken Corn Chowder

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup thinly sliced or cooked chopped ham
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 (14-oz.) cans chicken broth
3 tablespoons flour
1 can corn
2 large chicken breasts, cooked and shredded
4 oz. softened cream cheese
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

DIRECTIONS:
Place olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Saute celery, bell pepper, onion and jalapeno until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and ham; cook for another 3 minutes. Whisk the broth with the flour in a liquid measuring cup or bowl and then stir into the soup. Stir in the corn and chicken. Bring to a low boil and reduce heat. Melt the cream cheese a little in the microwave and whisk together with the milk. Add the milk/cream cheese mixture to soup and add salt and pepper.

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Olive Garden Salad Dressing

1/2 cup mayonaise
1/3 cup white vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
4 TB parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp parsley flakes
1 TB lemon juice
2 TB honey
1 clove garlic, minced

Mix all in a blender! And don't let the mayo fool you or scare you away. This doesn't make a creamy dressing. It really is just like the Olive Garden dressing. Yum Yum. Many recipes say to add more sugar but I think it is just perfect with the honey already added. But do as you wish.

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Costco's sourdough bread. MMMMMM. I waited wayyyyy to long in line today just for two loafs of this. But it was worth it. Maybe.

don't be fooled by those gorillas

Introducing...Babies day out at the Hogle Zoo! Oh these babies were so excited. Alta is good at showing her excitement. Ellie...not so much. We have learned that the face you see in every picture is her content and "This is cool" or "I am having fun" or "I am happy" face. She is such a tease.





I loved this little guy. So cute.









I love elephants. Love them. When I was first at the U, I was majoring in Biology. I wanted to study elephants. I wanted to live on an elephant sanctuary and study how they communicated towards one another, how their families worked; all that good stuff. This was shot down after a year of Chemistry which would then be followed by many more. I had to take more Chemistry classes then Biology. NOT worth it. I decided to switch majors but I continued to take extra Biology courses. Hopefully one day I will be able to travel and see an elephant in the wild. One day.





The gorilla exhibit was probably our favorite of the day. For some reason I have never seen this big of a gorilla up close in my life.
He. Was. Big.
Me and Kevin quickly decided that running into a gorilla in the wild would probably be the scariest moment of our lives.
This was then solidified when the mucho gorilla got up, grabbed two plastic bins and started going crazy by throwing them at the window right in front of us and the girls. It was the exact fit of rage you would expect from such an animal. Everyone in the exhibit started to scream; kids even ran out of the exhibit (wusses). My and Kevin were in shock. I quickly surveyed the girls, thinking they would be terrified and screaming, but no, they were in shock too.
Ellie just kept pointing at him.
I will never again be fooled by movies such as Zookeeper (Jeremy...). Yes we watched this. Sadly. It was the only movie in red box.
This movie makes the gorilla look like the good guy. He was sweet and could talk. He was a friendly gorilla.
Do not let those filmmakers fool you! Gorillas are scary.
One of the signs around the exhibit told us that no known gorilla has ever been known to kill a human. Ha. Thats a load of crap. I just bet they haven't gotten that far before we shot it. I am sure they would have no problem killing one of us. No problem.


Yes. That face is scary. He kept staring at Ellie. He might have been thinking "Well thats a cute little human." But I am sure it was actually "Now SHE looks tasty!"



I was sucking on a yummy chocolate in this picture and forgot to smile, or rather couldn't smile. I would say the same about Ellie, but again, we know that is just her 'happy' face.



Alta's enthusiasm and many faces make up for the lack of Ellie's.

the "old" retired couple

We got to spend the Halloween weekend at the in-laws vacation home in St. George. It was such a fun weekend. The weather was nothing but perfect for us. We wanted to make sure it was jam-packed with fun, so jam-pack it we did:

We razored.
We played tennis. Well, rather I tried to play tennis. My good hits were rather inconsistent, but heck, they were there.
We went on a long, beautiful bike ride.
We hot-tubbed.
We ate out.
Kevin longingly watched the old men play golf.

We then realized what it will be like when we retire. What fun we have to look forward too!

Our trip started out kind of scary. Halfway there we stopped to get some gas. Kevin ended up needing a big bomb burrito (ha) and a drink to stay awake. I remember as we were buying these, a big In-n-Out truck was pulling out of the station. When we got back in the car, Kevin realized he really had to pee so he ran back inside. It's usually me we have to wait on since Kevin is always in a hurry. A few minutes back on the freeway and there were a bunch of headlights up ahead. We slowed down. Right when we slowed, we drove over blood, guts and who knows what. I got nervous and thought we were going to see a mangled body. To the left we passed a huge bull; he was completely mangled, guts hanging out, horn torn off.
It reeked.
Boy did it reek.
We then saw the cars that careened completely off the highway, multiple semi's and then we saw the rolled car. We knew it had just barely happened because they were still trying to pull the guy out, and the In-N-Out truck was right in the middle of everything. No cops were there. No ambulance. Just people involved in the crash were helping each other. They made room for traffic to go off to the side and a guy signaled to us to go ahead. We drove by in disbelief and sincerely hoped no one got seriously hurt. We couldn't believe that if Kevin had not run back inside to go to the bathroom, we would have been pulling out right when that In-n-Out truck had and who knows, we could have hit that cow. We felt extremely blessed to still be safe and to have just missed the whole crash by mere minutes. As we drove on we counted 6 cop cars and an ambulance storm down the other side of the freeway. To say the least, we were wide awake for the rest of the drive.



First things first. Razoring.




Kevin got bored of the view. He wanted to look at the razor.


What we razored our first day.

We then went and walked the grounds of the St. George Temple. Kevin got artsy-fartsy.






"Mal to take a good picture you just get real close to something and take the picture. Then they don't know what it is. That's art."- Kevin Brower

We then went to puke burgers for dinner. Oh wait, Red Robin. Sorry. I got really grossed out here for some reason. Every. Single. Person. walking in was big. Huge.
Appetite gone.
So I am not sure if my food was really gross, or the people eating there turned the food on me. Who knows.
Stupid bottom-less fries. I didn't even get to take advantage of you.


The next day I cooked Kevin a hearty breakfast since toast just wasn't doing it for him.



We then went on our biking adventure up Snow Canyon. It was a good (but tough) ride. It was around 5 miles of continuous uphill and then you looped around and had 12 or so miles of downhill on a nice paved trail! It was like a roller coaster at some parts with really steep downhills and then steep uphills right after. It was fun. It made the hard ride uphill all worth it.
In total, it was a 17.14 mile ride that took us around an hour and half to complete.









After our bike ride we went and played some tennis. Kevin won.

And then we went and razored again.

Kevin got himself in a little pickle and I only thought it was funny because I was out of the razor videoing. He would almost tip the thing trying to get out and would let out a little "Yelp!" I am pretty sure if I was in there I would have been screaming a little "Yelp!"
I am actually pretty good when I ride with him. He goes pretty darn fast and sometimes I have to close my eyes because I am too scared to see what will happen next. It doesn't work that well. My hands are pretty worn out by the end of the day from holding on so tight. He loves to get that one really scared scream out of me and is determined to get it at least once every time we razor. Once it happens, he is satisfied. Sadly, he knows the real ones from the fake ones.





Since it was Halloween, we went and ate at Cafe Rio. They go great together. They even had a bowl of candy so we felt like we got to partake somewhat of Halloween.

Kevin hates scary movies. And when I say scary, I mean somewhat scary. He thought The Sixth Sense was horribly scary. Since that is probably the least scary movie I could think of, I made him watch it with me in Halloween spirit. He still got scared.

We were welcomed on our way home with this:


Winter is upon us!