Unsurance

In planning our move to Dallas, TX, we have researched several different moving options: U-haul, selling our items, and our most recent discovery; the POD. POD (Portable On Demand Storage) works like this: they drop off this huge box at your house, you pack it up, and they store it for you until you are ready to get your stuff out, when they will deliver it to your specified location. It's kind of perfect for us because we will be living with Tim's parents for a while and will not have anywhere to put this stuff- so rather than unloading it in a storage unit then loading it back up to move it into our house, we can just store it until we are ready. So this is the route we've decided to go. Today we were reading through our contract and the insurance coverage paperwork.

What would we do without insurance? Covered in our plan are:

• Federally Certified Acts of Terrorism, as long as its not chemical, biological, or nuclear terrorism

• Burglary, as long as its before it gets put into storage

• Damage due to ice, rain, snow, sleet, sand or dust, as long as the box isn't first damaged, causing an opening

After insuring all those robbed while the moving truck is in motion, caught in hail storms that damage contents but not packaging, and attacked by terrorists battling with their words only, there just weren't enough resources to cover ridiculous and unlikely events such as;

• Damage caused by improper packing, normal shifting or intentional acts.

Gotta love it. We are in good hands.

Ch-ch-ch-chili Cook-off

Our ward had a party with several activities for the kids...the usual stuff, and a chili cook-off. The Elder's Quorum was in charge of it, and since Tim was in the Elder's Quorum we got suckered into participating. We had a busy day that day so we came up with the fastest chili recipe we could find...turns out, it was kind of a hit. We got 3rd place in the contest (out of about 16) but the funniest part is that people still come up to us and talk to us about our chili (maybe we're just dull and there is nothing else to talk to us about...hmm) and this week at church I got a few requests for the recipe. I told them, there really isn't a recipe and that we just opened up all the cans in our cupboard and dumped them in...they asked me to do the best I could. So, for all who are interested in our Award Winning Chili, here you go.

1 can light red kidney beans
1 can dark red kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 can corn
1 can olives
1 can diced or stewed tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce

Ground beef (However much you want to get rid of. I usually say less is more and big chunks are better). Cook this through with onion, and peppers, and garlic if you like them. Add 1 package chili seasoning (or less to taste) to meat after you drain the grease off.

Bring all ingredients to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes.

Serve with scoops corn chips and sour cream.

Spooky Scarey

For Halloween Tim and I (mostly Tim) wrote a murder mystery and had some friends over for dinner. Between courses each person would reveal something about their character or something they found out about someone else.
We invited several people, expecting about half to come...turns out all of them came. It ended up being a much larger project than we anticipated, but well worth it. We had a blast.

We wrote the characters around every one's costumes. We've got some creative friends so it made for a very interesting story. We had it all:

Little Red Riding Hood
A Snuggie Model
A Skeleton and Melanie Daniels from "The Birds"
S'more and the Flame (a personal favorite)
House and Cuttie from House
A Zombie
I was a mailman...mail woman
and even a Pez dispenser!

He had a fishing reel hooked onto his belt and a line draped over his shoulder. He attached Pez candies onto the strings so when he wound it up, Pez popped out his neck.
He never ceases to amaze me.


We didn't get around to carving pumpkins before Halloween. So we carved them when we got back from Dallas...better late than never. We'll take any chance we get to show them off.

Honda

Sometimes I make fun of Tim's car. It's so tiny. The silver streaker. It's been good to Tim. It's taken him from Texas to Idaho and Washington more than one time. Well, today, we broke a new record. We carried 1 long table and 11 folding chairs from the church in that thing. Very impressive!

We fit all the cargo just fine. I, on the other hand, had my knees back behind my head, one arm on the tables, and the other holding the dashboard for balance. Also impressive.