For Thanksgiving this year, we started a new tradition. . .

Pie contest!!

The contestants:

Bonnie and Aubs went all out. . . homemade crust, new pear pie recipe. . . the works

Shawna had it a little easier. One of my sweet students (ok- lets be honest- one of my sweet parents) gave me a pie in a box: Homemade apple pie filling, the crumb mixture for the top, and the caramel sauce to drizzle on top of that. All I had to do was provide the delicious nilla wafer crumb pie crust and pop the whole thing in the oven!

Last minute entry- Cayden. After a silly orange/honeycomb pie failure, we booked it to Vons to grab a premade oreo crumb crust, filled it with some kind of ice cream that was chilling in the freezer, and covered the whole thing in the instant freeze chocolate. A ten minute pie for sure.

And Mom. . . she went to Costco...

Cayden got all into it. Immediately after dinner he got to work making ballots and a ballot box. Though he did refuse to put mom on the ballot. Something about store bought pies not being allowed.

Then a couple hours (and quite some nagging from Cayden) later, our stomachs had finally settled just enough to dig in to our very own "sample" plates.

It was a tough decision...

They were all so good!

(no worries- mom still got a write-in vote)

And the winner was declared. . .

But what does it really matter WHO won? It was the fun of the contest right?

Though I must say, I almost wept when my pie was gone. It was meant to be the winner.

I forsee this tradition living on in the future Kelly Thanksgivings. . .

What I was doing on. . .

11/11/11

1. Flew out to Indiana!

2. Bonded with Brooklyn

3. Shopped with Molly

4. Took a few naps

5. Mikki comes to visit from Chicago!

6. Photo shoot by the clock at exactly 11:11!

7. Touristed around Indianapolis

8. Drank some delicious Frozen hot chocolates

9. Bowling and Chilis!

10. Said goodbye and went home :(

11. yahoo. . . first class!

Groupon hits again!

I went mini golfing in a parking lot. Kind of weird, but it worked I guess.

The website claimed to be the only outdoor mini golf course in the city. So I pull up to the shopping center on a blistery cold and dark evening not really sure what to expect. And there it was, right there in the parking lot, a fenced in area where they somehow shoved together 18 little green putting holes. It was no Boomers. We had fun though.
I tried to get a picture of the set up. I was basically standing in front of the store. You walked out into the parking lot and there it was!

The boys (BJ and Ammon) doing some putting. Weird that I didn't notice that night, but they are totally matching. Funny.

And with Holly too.

I think we made it through the whole course in like an hour. Good thing. It was cold! My hands were numb. That's probably why I lost. :) Just kidding. I got 3rd. It would be embarrassing to lose to Ammon- he was terrible!

Rated i for intense!

The hotel Circus Circus has a big pink dome enclosed adventure park that they spook up at Halloween time. Last week, my friend Jeremy took me for my first experience of Frightdome!

It doesn't open til after it's dark. They fog it up, and put lots of strobe lighting in it. Then there are tons and tons of scary people and clowns wandering around to spook you. They have 5 different "haunted houses" you can go through, plus all the rides are open as well.

Sadly, its not super easy getting good pictures in this atmosphere so I didn't really take many.

The first chance I got was when we went into the 4D show

right after the wet wet water ride- perfect!

The whole Frightdome is not recommended for anyone under 12, but the 4D movie seriously probably wouldn't scare a 4 year old. Lame. That definitely has to go.

We did get on a few rides early in the night, then went through 4 of the haunted houses before hitting the coaster one last time. On the way out, we passed a Frightdome hearse perfect for a photo opp.

The kind old man that offered to take our picture kept insisting on zooming. It was the end of a long, crazy night though, so sadly, zooming is probably what neither of us needed at that point.

Another year. . .

Soup in Pumpkin bread bowls and building a haunted house, two of my favorite Halloween traditions.

(Even after pulling out the hot glue gun, we never did get that darn house to stay up)

On your marks. . .

I went to California this weekend. I got there Friday night, and stayed with Bonnie and her kids the whole night helping her on a little project she was doing. The next day was busy. We made dinners in the morning, went to Cayd's soccer game after that, and then on to a late lunch. Somewhere between 4:30 and 5 Saturday evening, I remembered that I was supposed to ask dad to help me out on my own little project I needed to do. . . whoops!

So I found pops, and told him I needed a little stand made to hang donuts from, for a donut eating booth at a Halloween carnival I had coming up. In seriously like 10 minutes, dad had the whole thing whipped up! We had to go to the Depot for one little 57 cent part, but everything else he just had, even black paint to make it a little more decorative!

Of course that night, just a few hours later, us Kelly's were having our own donut eating contest... (we had to test it out!)

My dad is the BEST!

I was wrong

With getting ready to leave town for one little night, I had so much to do that I misplaced my camera. which has since been recovered! So I used my phone to get one picture of my St. George trip number 2. Look familiar?

I drove up to St. George immediately from work on Monday. There, I met up with my friend Kellie and her friend Jen to see the play The Little Mermaid. I was much more impressed with this show than the last. They did a really good job with it. We stayed the night at Kellie's Grandparent's house and the next morning went to breakfast, did a little hiking, got some ice cream, then I was headed out. It was a fun little visit and it was nice to see Kellie again. Maybe one day I'll talk her into coming down to visit me some weekend. . . 3 years here and I've yet to have any luck. . . soon though I'm sure :)