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!