goes down hot

So it might not be soup or chili weather quite yet, but in the next few weeks you are going to be wanting some yummy soup and chili recipes and this will be the place to come. This recipe is an awesome chili that my sister-in-law, Becky, gave us a couple years ago and it is a favorite. It is not like a traditional chili, it is made with stew beef, veggies, beef broth, tomatoes, two kinds of beans, and even has cilantro, lime and honey in it. The nice thing about this is it is very hardy and it is low fat and low calorie so eat up. I love to serve this with a nice green salad and cornbread.

Low Fat Beef Chili

1 1/2 lbs. stew beef (1” cubes)
1 cup chopped red and green peppers
1 cup onions (chopped)
2 cloves of garlic
3 1/2 cups low sodium beef broth
1 1/2 cups salsa
1 (14 oz) diced tomatoes (undrained)
1 1/2 Tbsp. chili powder
1 1/2 tsp. cumin
1 1/2 tsp. coriander
1/2 tsp. pepper
15 oz. black beans (drained and rinsed)
15 oz. kidney beans (drained and rinsed)
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 Tbsp. lime juice
1 tbsp. honey

Brown meat and drain then add peppers, onion and garlic till tender, add everything else down to the black pepper and boil then turn to simmer and cover for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Next, Add beans simmer 15 more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro, lime juice, and honey.  Serve with Montery Jack on top.

trick or treat smell my feel give me something good to eat

What an awesome holiday Halloween is. I just love it, what other holiday is it cool to dress up however you want and knock on complete strangers door and demand candy? It’s a beautiful thing. Then after you get all the candy you could ever want from a bunch of strangers you get to eat as much of it as you want and stay up way to late until you are finally off your sugar high and then crash hard into bed without a bath, it doesn’t get any better. You gotta love it.  (Check out our video at the very bottom and see all the fun we had!)

This year we started our Halloween at 4:00 with my sister (Erin) and her family at a neighborhood by Entz Elementary where Brielle goes to school. The Spuhlers invited us over to their neighborhood black party that they do every year. It was so much fun, it was like a mini carnival. They block off part of the street and literally party. They had little games, snow cone, hotdogs, popcorn, and a bouncer. It was really fun, I love stuff like that. The kids had a blast and we had fun spending an hour with my side of the family before we headed to Colby’s sisters house for our annual soup and trick or treating.

This year we did our trick or treating at Jami and Scott’s house. We always start our Halloween with some yummy homemade soups for dinner and then get the kids already and take one big group picture and hope for a good one and then head out to trick or treat around the neighborhood.

This year we went out about 6:30 it was a little different because usually Colby’s mom come from Oklahoma just to see the kids and spend a few days here for Halloween and she didn’t this year (or so we thought). So as we are trick or treating this really interesting clown came up to Brielle and started to take her candy bucket, Brielle was horrified and immediately said “No, give me my candy” and ran behind Colby. I kind of thought it was weird because this clown was clearly an adult and I had been watching then for a couple of houses thinking, “Why are these adults trick or treating,” but decided to keep going and have fun. Then when she did that to Brielle’s candy I was a bit horrified myself.  Then this clown would not leave Brielle alone she was very persistent. I almost yelled out, excuse me she is afraid of clowns can you please back off, but before I could say it this clown said, “Hey you little moron give me your candy.” Right when I heard that I knew it was Colby’s mom. (The moron thing is a little family joke, she said she use to say that to her kids when they were younger, not sure if that is true or not) Anyway, the kids were so excited to see their Grandma Bonnie and I was excited, but still in a bit of shock. It was a fun Halloween surprise. You got us good Bonnie. Happy Halloween to everyone, hopefully yours was as fun and eventful as ours.

give the men knives and let them at it

The other day we did pumpkin carving. This is something we do every year and I love it. Maybe because I get to sit back and take pictures while Colby does all the creative work for once. He is usually the one who does all the carving and the kids just have a blast.

This year we invited The Boberg’s over for dinner and “THE CARVE-A-THON”. It was way fun. I think it is so cool when the kids reach into the ooowee gooey pumpkin for the first time to clean it out. It is so slimy and yucky and they just love it. You can tell they really want to take a hand full of that gooey mess and fling it across the room and make a huge mess until they look at me and I give them the eye and they’re brought back to reality. We had tons of fun being creative, taking a big, fat, round, orange vegetable and making it into a sweet little creation by carving a cool face on it, and then lighting it up and watching it glow in the dark.

What more can you ask for?

in a pumpkin patch far, far away....

Today was Brielle's school annual Halloween parade and Grandpa’s Pumpkin Carving (annual for them, first time for us) and since she doesn’t have a grandpa that lives here, (so sad) Colby had to play the grandpa role and do the pumpkin carving. We watched the parade which was so fun to see all the kids parade around the school in their cute costumes. It always gives me so many ideas for years to come that I never thought of and then it was time for the kids to do a little singing and the pumpkin carving. The kids sang about 5 Halloween songs that were so precious.  I was wondering why Brielle has been practicing those 5 songs over and over in the cars everyday on the way home and now I know. Then came the part that we prepared for all night last night; the pumpkin carving.

I figured this pumpkin better be perfect since we went to 5 stores and a pumpkin patch to find the dumb thing and finally found a pumpkin at Trader Joes. All the stores were out of pumpkins. I couldn’t believe it. It was such a fiasco. (Enough ranting about that, cause I could go on and on about it.) Anyway, Colby found the best pumpkin online that Brielle was just going to love; a Princess Leia pumpkin from Star Wars. 

So they copied it. It turned out so awesome, it looked way good, check her out. Everyone was impressed it was by far the most creative and impressive pumpkin there (way to go Gramps).  Brielle, you should be so proud of your daddy he out did himself this year on the Princess Leia pumpkin. Now, I am not so sure how Brielle is going to take it when she finds out we have to throw her away after a few days. Oh well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

halloween carnival

Our kids were so stinken cute as we headed over to a fun little neighborhood Halloween carnival with the Posti girls in the LDS church parking lot by our house. It was great because there were tons of neighborhood friend there, the kids got to dress up and it was just simple and easy and not a huge fuss and totally fun. We had hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, and candy of course. There were fun little games like the cake walk, ring toss, donut eating, dart toss, football toss, but I think the best thing there was this fun little train thing that they rigged up. The kids loved it. I think it was their favorite part of the whole little carnival. Cooper could have done it all night if I let him. Anyway, it was a great time had by all. Thanks Jennifer for making sure we were invited.