Christmas morning

We had a wonderful Christmas, thank you to all our family and friends who made our holiday merry and bright!

Merry Christmas!!

New food

I the continuing quest to expand our families pitifully narrow food horizons, I made chicken lo mein for dinner tonight.

With the exception of the veggies, this is what happened to it:

Lego cake

Had to post a picture of the cake I made for the robotics end celebration. Shaped like legos, of course!! They kids got a big kick out of it, and it was demolished in short order.

Had to be Leigh's special chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream.

Mr (and Miss) Roboto

Waiting to compete, silly kids.
Today was Liam's Lego Robotics' group competition. It was a day long affair but very fun and exciting! They get three 2.5-minute-long chances to complete the challenges set up by the First Lego League (details here) They also presented a research project done on a transportation problem in their area. Our team chose the parking/access for Birch Hill Rec. Area. They also had to talk to the judges about the design process and the programing challenges with their robots. The teams were also judged on their teamwork and something they term "gracious professionalism". The FFL feels that the team interactions and learning process are just as important as the robot preforming well. The team, called the Weller Lab Rats did very well! The had a high score of 150 points(the highest scoring team got 220) and won an award for being "rising stars". The team that that they wanted most to see return. A good time was had by all!

Blog Interrupted

Sorry for the lack of blog posts, but our life has been put on hold for sickness, a little thanksgiving, more sickness and now LICE! Yes, we now join the ranks of parents of school age kids dealing with this tiny traveler. I am a little surprised Liam hasn't come home with it before, I guess his hair is too short. Abbie's is thick and inviting though...Kyle is the only one to escape so far but I am still making him use tea tree oil shampoo and get checked every day. On the advice of the school nurse, I went with a pesticide free gel and nit comb for Abbie and coconut oil soak and nit combing for Liam and I(followed by the tea tree oil soaping) The combing was about as bad as I had feared and will need to be repeated. But the washing is what is causing me the most angst. 6 loads and counting....with water at $.10 per gallon. Plus fuel to heat the water and lots of electricity to heat the dryer. Not to forget the lice killing stuff I bought today.....sigh. End of ranting, perhaps the day will be better tomorrow.

National Bundt Cake Day

Nice Ganache.

For today's holiday I chose a Chocolate Cabernet cake with dark chocolate ganache. Very good, and it coordinates with Amy's Chocolate stout cake! (Sorry to hear about your cold, Amy.) Not sure where I got this recipe from but it is saved on our server from somewhere in blogland. This cake was much lighter than I expected. But it had LOTS of chocolate flavor and a little heat/complexity from the wine and spices added to the batter. Definitely going in the make again file, if you would like the recipe I would be happy to post it here.

Couldn't resist posting this pic, Kyle's expression cracks me up! I should also give credit to this blogger who did a month of Bundts leading up to Nations Bundt Cake Day, for my inspiration.

More Vegas

Some awwwwwww pictures from Las Vegas. Kudos to Jess & Juzzy for taking good photos of us! I hope we did as good a job for them :)

Our first night, it was really windy! Taken by Kyle.

We went down to Fremont street at night to catch the light show. Definitely more low class than the strip, but the drinks were cheaper. And they had a live band and some street performers out for Halloween.

In front of New york New york.

At the nice, cool fountain in front of the Paris, it was about 85 and not much breeze that day. A little warm for us, the Aussies were soaking it up though!

Trick or Treat

Had to show off the Halloween costumes for this year....Velma from Scooby Doo and Indiana Jones.

Boo!

I am sure you cannot tell who's face is who's??!!

Pumkin carving

Halloween is sneaking up on me this year. Abbie reminded us it was time to carve our pumpkin today (thanks again Granddad and Grammie Lorna!)


Two kids equals a two faced jack-o-lantern! Liam declined to do the scooping out part leaving more time for him to do some sketches. I helped Liam draw on his design and he cut it out.


After a quick trip to Grama Cindy and Grampa David's, Abbie cut out her face with a safer pumpkin saw. Pics of the finished dual personality jack on the next post (I was a little too pic happy on this one :)

More food experiments

Today I made chicken bouillabaisse, a new recipe from cooks illustrated. I have not cooked with fennel or saffron before, but now I know I like both of them. Kyle and I enjoyed this dish and Liam liked it a little, Abbie liked the chicken and croutons. I was concerned the anise flavor would be overpowering, but it was subtle an went well with the other flavors (I did leave out the Pernod or Ouzo called for in the recipe. I could only find Ouzo and at $30 a fifth it got the axe.) The veggie stew part was good and the chicken was juicy but with crispy skin, yummy!! The part that really made everything pop was the rouille, the spicy, savory sauce you drizzle over the whole dish. I will definitely be making it again. Maybe next time I will try halibut, slightly more traditional for bouillabaisse!

Coke

We had to go to the Coke factory on the strip and try the funny sodas. Out of 16 small tastes, we found one or two that didn't make us say ICK! None of them were really good, but it was fun!



EDIT: I didn't add much detail...one soda tasted just like fizzy mouthwash, one like chicken bullion, sweet with a hint of banana, coconut, one just really sweet, but the worst of all was one that tasted like crushed aspirin! I don't know how true all of this is, but the Coke people claim these are the top selling sodas from their respective countries...I think I will stick to water. I also feel like I should identify our travel companions for my other family. We went to Vegas with my cousin (on Mom's side) Jessie and her guy Justin from Australia. They had been to Las Vegas on their last trip to see us in AK two years ago. But this was our first visit and our first vacation without kids.

Vegas teaser

Because this is a foodie blog, I had to tease you with one good food pic from our trip to Las Vegas. For Justin's birthday, we went to a Dim Sum restaurant for breakfast. It was a new (and fun!) experience for us! We had lots of interesting things, but nothing could beat the jellyfish salad.

I thought it was pretty good. It had a spicy dressing and reminded me of rice noodles. Kyle couldn't get over the fact it was a chopped up jellyfish! We had lots of other yummy choices though. Dumplings, steam buns, pot stickers, sauteed veggies and shrimp fritters to name a few!

Heres my story

This is what has been happening around here:



Too much fun!! Sorry no good posts, we have been on the go for weeks now. The bacon got smoked and packaged, the kraut got canned, mustard was made. We have had pizza, BBQ and lots of great parties. Jessie and Justin leave tomorrow and we will be going with them to Las Vegas for 5 days. Life should slow down a little when we get home.

Sorry

We had such fun with Zoe and Amy we forgot to take pictures!! It was a good visit and we are sad to see them go, but I bed David will be glad to have his women-folk back. Tomorrow is smoking bacon day...I will try hard to remember to take some pictures.

Bacon 1

Today the pork belly was skinned by Kyle and placed in bags with the brine then stuffed in the fridge. This time we are doing it all at once, a big job but we just have too many other projects going to draw it out.

This is a hint for the next job:

Snow!

Are we ready for this??!!

Kids

Just an update:
Abbie had her last running race, which she came in last and had fun!


Liam bought himself the newest nerf gun, it has a 35 round drum magazine!


Next week starts all their clubs, Spanish for Abbie and math counts and lego robotics for Liam. Gonna be busy!

Uncle Ken's pork tacos

The last time Kyle's Uncle Ken called, he told me about some great sounding pulled pork tacos he made in the crock pot. I went to get my hair done on Friday so it seemed a good time to try it out. Basically I sliced up a pork loin and cooked it in the crock pot all day with some green chilies and some enchilada sauce. I also sliced some red onion and marinated it in lime juice with salt and pepper. It was sooooooooooo good! The pork was very tender and nicely seasoned without being too spicy. But the onions really sent it over the top. They were slightly cooked by all the lime juice (and turned pink!) and went so well with the pork. Mom also made chili relenos (sp?) and we had refried beans with sauteed peppers and onions. A feast!

Angel Rocks

Valerie and I decided to enjoy the last few warm sunny days with a hike up Angel Rocks loop. The way up was tiring but the views are amazing! The way down however is hard, the trail is not really established and a good share of it is straight down and covered in fine sandy gravel. We took about 2 hours and 15 minutes and still got to enjoy the day at the top.

Fall

It is definitely fall here now, the color is so pretty. Lorna, Abbie and I went for a walk at Creamer's Field yesterday to enjoy some of the really nice weather. (Today it is cool and rainy, sure glad we went yesterday!)

Butter me up

When life gives you cheap apples, I am pretty sure you should make apple butter.

Safety!!

All right, I know, it is way more than one day!! Did you know a gun safe is hard to photograph attractively? Kinda boring. And as Kyle pointed out, a little creepy to publish here on the interwebs. Here is the best I could come up with:

So after scoping out the prices around town, Kyle decided on a safe from Sam's Club. He took the pick-up back to town to get it. After getting it all the way home, he discovered it had been returned....the hardware in the home depot bag and all the duct tape securing the packing back on kinda clued us in. Back to Sam's Club he goes for a new one. After finding the manager to load it and while tying it down, he discovered this safe was also a return. Again the manager is paged to the loading bay and this time they removed all the packaging to make sure it was new and all pieces were included. Luckily Kyle insisted on some sort of compensation for the extra gas and 3 hours of his time this had all taken, so we ended up getting about $100 off! After the use of an appliance dolly and some willing volunteers for the heavy lifting (500 lbs. or so!) it is now safely installed in the garage.

Updates

Just an FYI.....the kiddos bus was a little late today. I was wondering why, for an answer I was given a paper (handed out to each kid) informing me there was a lockdown at the school and they would be releasing more info later. After getting home we heard a message left on our answering machine stating it was a bomb threat (!!!!) all the kids were safe and it was investigated by the appropriate authorities. The official press release can be read here. Liam and Abbie do not seem too concerned so the staff must have done a good job keeping calm. Liam was upset to miss his ELP math class and Abbie was tired of being quiet in her classroom. Everything seems to be OK now and as far as I know, school is open tomorrow. Scary, but you can't spend your life hiding inside and life is no more dangerous today than yesterday. In the mean time, Kyle was at Sam's Club trying to buy a gun safe. Something we have been thinking of for a long time and finally just decided to do. It was a long and arduous journey which I will write about tomorrow (with pictures!) Time for bed for me, I hope your afternoon was less eventfull than mine!

Rat-patootie

Have you seen the movie Ratatouille? I am unnecessarily fascinated by the animated people cooking....it is a cute movie and I really identify with the idea that a food or smell can evoke memories. Food is so much more than just fuel to me, it is a creative outlet, a way to love my family and a way to remember times or people. So with a movie for my inspiration I decided to make some ratatouille with fried polenta, we also had some grilled pork chops and foccacia. It was very good, I think I will try a different type of eggplant next time, this one was too big around to make a pretty pattern with the squash, zuccini, and tomato.

100?

I was going to post about Abbie.....I took a break from cleaning the haz-mat site in the garage to attend Abbie's first cross country running race! Unfortunately I forgot the camera, but she had a great time. The kindergarten, first, and second grade kids start in order and run a one kilometer loop. Everybody gets a medal for finishing and Abbie was in the middle of the pack. There are three more races this fall, this one was all the way out at Two Rivers and I think the next one is in Salcha, but there should be two at Birtch Hill. It will be nice not to have a 30 minute drive! Anyways, back to the title, when I logged in, the dashboard counter said 99 posts! Is this really 100?? How cool!

Yuck

This is what we did yesterday:


Our basement/crawlspace had water in it at some point, we are estimating about two inches at the low points. The water is mostly gone now, but it certainly left its mark. We had to junk a lot of stuff and are discovering a lot of mold. Most of the Christmas ornaments will be salvageable because they are glass, but lots of papers are beyond saving. I haven't found anything yet I am distraught over loosing, a few handmade lace ornaments are pretty moldy but it might be possible to get them clean or sucker Mom into making me replacements. It is a big job to get it all clean and re-packed in plastic totes, and we will be making a dump run today. Next up, better drainage for the basement!

Escapees

Just wondering if those of you with babies are missing anything?


The first item is affectionately named "corn poop" the recipe says it is fresh polenta and my Mom says it is creamed corn. I make it by grilling corn on the cob then cutting off the kernels and simmering them with milk and butter before pureeing. It is sweet smoky and good, whatever you call it. But, it does look a little.....funny. On the plate with sausage is the newest batch of beer mustard, the best for most anything you would eat with mustard. I made it last week and it is already half gone! Again, tastes great, looks funny.
(I didn't take a picture of it, but Zara's kraut is funny too, she had purple cabbage to use up so the kraut is a vibrant maroon!)

Grandma's birthday

Family photo taken at Grandma's birthday party, August 17, 2009.

First day of school!

August 17, 2009...Liam Arron, age eleven and Abigail Rose, age six. Sixth grade and first grade.