5 days and counting!!

5 days and counting until the Holy War!! It has been a fun football season this year and I have really enjoyed watching the games, surprised me to! I have a hard time deciding what team to root for because I like them both, but I think we are both cheering Utes this year. Jeff has been having a lot of emails going around about the game on Saturday, he sent me this one and I thought it was funny so I wanted to put it on here.

Soccer Pictures

I know the season is over until the spring but I just got some pictures of Kelsi and her team for soccer. One of the moms did a lot of work with photography and offered to do some team pictures. I thought they turned out really cute. Kelsi had a lot of fun this year with soccer and is very anxious to start again this spring!

Goodbye Spike

Kelsi has had her first pet Spike the Red for over a year now. Kelsi was so proud of Spike, whenever someone would come to the door she would make sure they came over to say hi to Spike. She would color him in in her family pictures and count him in on everything. She would place pictures in front of his tank so he would not get bored, she would even sing to the fish. Well Kelsi had a hard day yesterday and to top it all off she found poor spike had passed on. I was proud of how well she took care of her fish and how well she treated her fish. It's always sad to lose your first pet.

Staycation

We had our mini staycation this week. It has been a lot of fun. We went to a Wyndham Sales pitch a couple of months ago and got a free 2 night hotel stay at Heber City and a $100 gift card to Olive Garden. So we thought we would go up and have some fun in Park City.....wrong..... The hotel that Wyndham set us up in was the crummiest hotel I have ever seen in my life. We were afraid to let the children touch anything! There was half way patched up holes in the wall, rusted over vents, the smell I dont want to even come close to describing... needless to say we walked in turned around and walked right back out... Never again Wyndham that sealed your fate! But the $100 gift card was nice, we got a really nice dinner together as a family. We coached, begged and threatned the kids as were going into Olive Garden to please behave and for the most part they did pretty good. Until the end of the meal when they started to get anxy. This is when Kelsi pushed over her chair into the table behind us, knocked her over and landed upside down under their table. The poor elderly couple behind us jumped about 5 feet, I was afraid of heartatacks. Terrible, but really funny once we got away. So since Jeff took 2 days off we decided to do a lot of fun things at home. To make up for not staying at the hotel we let the kids have a sleepover in our room and we stayed up watching goofy cartoons. The next day we went to the Treehouse Museum in Ogden. The pictures below are all from there. We had a lot of fun there. Such a fun place. There was so many fun things for the kids to do, so many hands on stations and dress up clothes for each area, China, Great Britian, Mexico, Medieveil times, ect ect. Plus of course the big tree house and drum room. We then came home and watched a movie together, well until we decided to put one on upstairs for them since we were missing all the jokes, by the way, Get Smart was so funny! Today we have been playing at the pool and gag went to McDonalds to let the kids play around there. The kids have had a very fun couple of days, I am worn out and not looking forward to detox tomorrow and Jeff going back to work. I love it when he is home with us. It has been a really nice break from our normal activites even if we did not get to go anywhere different.

Kelsi the firewomen

Mrs President

He would not leave these trains, everytime we turned around he was back at the trains.

Dunce

Our brave knight

Her knight in shinning armor

The court jester

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Chicken and wild rice soup is one of my favorites and I have been searching for a long time to find a recipe that was perfect. I found this recipe on my kitchen cafe and I thought it was excellent. Try it in some soup bowls it is thick enough for it. I gobbled it up! I thought maybe you would enjoy it with the snowy weather we are going to be getting in the next couple of days! Again yummy!!!

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup
from Mary G.

½ cup butter
1 finely chopped onion
½ - 1 cup frozen corn (or ½ cup chopped celery, if preferred)
½ pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
½ cup carrots, sliced
¾ cup all-purpose flour
6 ½ cups chicken broth (can use 7 bouillon cubes plus 6 ½ cups water)
2 cups cooked wild rice
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon curry powder
½ teaspoon mustard powder
½ teaspoon dried parsley
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 cup slivered almonds
2 cups nonfat half-and-half (use normal half-and-half if you prefer, but you won't believe how delicious this is with the nonfat variety!)

Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the onion, corn, chicken and carrots and sauté for 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and sauté 3-4 more minutes. Then add flour and stir well. Transfer mixture to large pot. Over medium heat, gradually pour in the chicken broth, stirring constantly until all has been added. Bring just to a boil and then reduce heat to low and let simmer.

Next, add the rice, salt, curry powder, mustard powder, parsley, ground black pepper and almonds. Allow to heat through and then pour in the half-and-half. Let simmer 1 to 1 ½ hours. Be careful not to let the soup come to a boil or it won't thicken properly - let it simmer on low heat, stirring occasionally.

Medical Mysteries

Well we have had a couple medical issues come up lately and I wanted to see if any of you have had any similar problems and maybe I could get some ideas on what to do.
The first one is Kelsi and a pretty simple thing. She has flat feet, really flat feet. We took her to a podiatrist last week and this is how he explained it to me. When you start walking around 1 your feet will be about 7 degrees off from normal. Each year that your child grows they should lose a degree as their feet move, so by the time they are 7 it should be a 0 degree for normal foot. Kelsi is at a 8 degree right now, she should be around a 1 or 2. They podiatrist wants to put custom molded lifts in her shoes to help "train" her feet to stay in the position they are suppose to be. But they cost over $300 for these lifts and we will have to replace them as she grows, every couple of years. We put some normal lifts in her feet now to help her with the pain when she is walking, the custom molded ones are suppose to help with the training of her foot. What I am wondering is if anyone has had any experience with flat feet and what they did. I of course dont want her in pain and if the lifts will help we will of course get them, I am wondering if there was other alternatives out there as well. Any suggestions?

The second thing is with me, for a year now I have had issues with my heart racing and spontaneous times. Walking around the house, walking up the stairs ect. I have several "small" episodes daily. These include my heart racing for a few minutes then stopping. This has been happening for a year or so so I have just gotten use to them. The "long" issues usually last a half an hour, they include my heart racing, next going to dizziness, headaches and finally burning in my chest. I only have these maybe once a month. I have seen a cardiologist and I am wearing a ECG monitor all month this month to record any events. Once I have recorded these I send them to the cardiologist and he will review the data. He is going to help me figure out what these symptoms may be. It could be nothing at all and I am making a mole hill out of an ant hill. Or it could be somthing small like the electonic signals are getting messed up. If that is the case they can go in and deaden the nerves so they stop sending the incorrect signals and it would stop. I am wondering if this is a getting older sympton and I am in denial over getting older. Have any of you had any similar experiences.

Trick or Treat Smell my Feet

We had a lot of fun trick or treating this year. Kelsi was a witch, Gabriel was Indiana Jones, and Victoria was our Sweet Pea. We started off the evening by going to the neighborhood trunk or treat, it was packed, there was cars up and down both sides of the parking lot and the back. The kids made a haul just there. My favorite part was our bishop serving up churros and hot chocolate, yummy!!! We then headed out through the neighborhood, the kids had a blast, Kelsi could have gone all night, and Gabe got a little scared of monsters once it got dark and wanted to head home. We had a lot of fun and both of the kids bags are completely full to the brim for our candy enjoyment! Enjoy the pictures of the kids in their costumes. The ones of Tory are blurry and not the best, she did not want to cooperate!