It's that time again! One of our favorite church activities, the Chili-fest (or Chili-Cookoff), is upon us this weekend. We look forward to this event every year. It is so fun! We get to talk to our friends while enjoying some great food. What's not to like about that?
This year we decided to not make a chili for the contest. The ingredients are expensive and, not to sound petty, we never win. But, in the end we should have made one because this year there were only 13 chili's entered. For whatever reason there were not many attendees this time around. Last year there were almost 40 chili's to choose from.
The video above is but a small sample of the festivities. There was a live band, provided by some members, and later there was a pinata for the kids. Last year the pinata wouldn't break and had to be smashed by an adult, but this year the 3rd of 4th kid blew the thing apart.
It was a very fun night, but like was said before there weren't so many people there tonight. I don't know where everyone was, but they weren't at the fest. I really hope that this lower turnout doesn't deter the leadership from having the party next year. One of the things I feel about our ward is that all of the activities are always on shaky ground and can be forgotten about too easily. I am always looking for church activities to get the kids involved with and I would hate to have these fairly rare events go away completely.
Oh, by the way, our former Bishop won the "Best Chili" award this year after 10 years of trying. I didn't get to taste any of his chili but I'm sure it was yummy.
We had a very serious clog in one of our sinks the other day and I had to make a special trip to the hardware store to get some plumbing parts. While there the kids once again exercised their creative spirits by using various plumbing fixtures as headwear. I'm not sure what they're wearing but they looked like floppy hats. Even Cami's puppy looked good in one.
Last night was the 2011 Blue and Gold Banquet for our Cub Scout pack. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work to pull together, but our Cubmaster did the lion's share of the work. She deserves a lot of credit. Thankfully my wife reminded me to get her a small gift to thank our Cubmaster at the end of the ceremony. It was just a small gift but at least we were able to publicly thank her for her efforts.
Cami likes to wear hats. She has a fair number of them at the house, but today she forgot to wear one when we went to the hardware store. Not to be outdone, she found some suitable headwear (headware?) in the plumbing / electrical isle. I would have bought it for her if it wasn't so expensive, or if it had been hailing outside.
I was walking to downtown Evanston today and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw some plants popping up from underground. I didn't expect to see any for at least two or three more weeks, basically I didn't expect to see any until around the middle of March.
This Valentines Day was on a Monday, meaning that it was too busy for any dinners out, so we had dinner in. My folks came over, because my dad wanted to take me to the hardware store and buy us some new shutters for our house, and they brought KFC with them! Woohoo!
A few days ago my friend Brian ("Uncle Brian") gave the kids some really cool Star Trek stickers. There were all sorts of "Radiation" and "No Personnel", labels and the like. The kids found some "Poison Gas" warning labels and their creativity (such as it is) went to work. This is the result.
Cami has several passions in life. One is staying warm and another is looking good. I think this morning she has achieved both. Oh, and a third passion is eating some of Daddy's donuts. If you look closely you'll notice some white powered sugar around her mouth.
