Just Goofin' Around

Wearing Daddy's shirt.




Cool dude!








Spencer only took a pacifer a few times when he was a newborn. He discovered this one the other day and thought it was wonderful. Luckily, he wasn't hooked and this was a one-time deal.

Delayed Laughter

The other night, I attempted to make a pasta casserole for dinner. It was an easy recipe I had made before, so I threw it together quickly while feeding Spencer a snack and doing the actions to "Popcorn Popping" to keep him happy. I didn't read every word of the instructions until I took the casserole out of the oven and noticed the pasta wasn't cooked. Upon re-reading the recipe, I found instructions to cook the pasta before adding to the casserole not once, but twice! Twice! I was spitting mad for the wasted food, money and time. Wonderful Alan dug around in the casserole and found the noodles that miraculously got cooked anyway and ate almost the entire dish by himself! He says he liked it, but I think he was just trying to make me feel better. It's pretty funny to me now, but it took a couple of days before I could laugh about it.

I taught a Relief Society lesson on Elder Wirthlin's last Conference talk "Come What May and Love It" on this very subject last fall. I actually thought about his talk while I was so angry, but didn't have any success applying the principles he taught at the moment. At least I thought about it though, right?

p.s. We wound up having plain pasta with store-bought sauce for dinner. :)

Good practice

Alan directed his first official 5k on Saturday. He decided to offer a free race as a way to advertise the running league and get some practice as a race director. About 150 runners/walkers came out. Amazingly enough, the race was rain free! (A down-pour started an hour after the race finished and continued the rest of the day - making it one of the rainiest Nov 7th's on record for Portland. Yuck!) It was pretty cold and windy and those of us doing registration had a hard time keeping our papers from flying away. Next time, we'll use clip-boards. Alan and I learned a lot and have a list of things to do differently in January when the league officially starts, but everything went quite smoothly and Alan is pleased. He has received lots of positive comments and a few new running league registrations from runners.

Thanks so much to Alan's great parents and two sisters who got up REALLY early on a Saturday to help!


Here's the registration table - where I stayed most of the time. It was hard to flip through stacks of race bibs with frozen fingers.






We didn't get any great pictures of Alan, but he did an awesome job organizing and directing. I don't get to see him plan and take charge of big groups like this very often, so I'm always impressed when I do.






And they're off! The winner finished in just over 16 minutes, and he wasn't even planning on running the race until about 10 minutes before it started! He had come to the race to sell gloves from his running store, but decided to run to keep warm. Check out that sunrise!

Happy Halloween...or not

I had no intention of taking Spencer trick-or-treating this year, but we had a Ward party on Friday night so I wanted to dress him up for that. I found a cute, little tiger costume at a yard sale for $4 and thought it would be perfect. Oh, the naivete of a first-time parent! We wound up forcing Spencer into his costume, quickly taking two pictures of a very sad tiger, and then taking the costume off. Maybe next year we'll just get him an orange shirt.



Regardless of the trauma that occurred before the party, we actually had a pretty good time. Spencer enjoyed the bean-bag toss and fish pond at the carnival, but mostly he loved running around throwing a little ball he found.

The best part was that my chili won first place in the chili cook-off! A couple of days before the party, Alan asked me if I even knew how to make chili. Ha! Here's my lovely award - I think I'll frame it and hang it in my kitchen as proof that I really do know how to cook. :)




Here is the recipe if you're interested. (I got it out of the St. Johns' cookbook for any of my fellow Redskins.)

White Chili

Sharon Raban

1 lb. chicken breast, cut into bite-size cubes
1 med. onion
1 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 Tbsp. oil
2 (15.5 oz.) cans Great Northern Beans
(I cooked dry beans in a crock pot and put 4 cups in)
1 c. chicken broth
2 (4 0z.) cans diced green chili
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 c. sour cream
1/2 c. whipping cream
1 bag tortilla chips (optional)


In a large saucepan, saute chicken, onion and garlic in oil until chicken is not pink. Add beans, broth, chilies and seasonings. Bring to a boil; reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered for 30 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in sour cream and whipping cream. Serve with tortilla chips.