Christmas Decorations

In preparing for the Home School Christmas activity at our house, Mom put up more Christmas decorations.
Stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and a fire is lit to singe Santa's hair.

Many of the women coming to the home school Christmas activity a few days ago had heard about Mom’s nativity sets and had asked if she would have them available to see, so Mom set some of them up in displays. They look really good, so I thought I should take a few photos and post them.

I also shot close ups of several of the sets, but I did not want to post all of those here. I will include one clos up of one of my favorites:

Next to most of the nativity sets are signs that read "from Italy" or Germany, Peru, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, Spain, Jerusalem, Holland, etc indicating where they came from.

This one is labeled "from Uncle Mark"

Christmas Tree

On Saturday, we got a Christmas tree. This first photo is Joseph holding the tree up on our deck. You would think it was cold the way he is holding it.

Once in the house, we put lights (400) and ornaments on it. Not all of the ornaments are on yet so it looks like we do not have enough on the lower portion of the tree.
This is what it looks like with the lights on in the room and using the flash on the camera.

This is what it looks like with the lights off and without the flash. The only light is from the 400 little lights on the tree.

I also took some close up shots without the flash of two of my favorite ornaments.

Mom got a new ornament this year of Captain Kirk and the Tribbles. This is photo of it.

When the button is pushed, tribbles fall from the overhead hatch and Captain Kirk speaks three different excerpts from the TV show. I recorded all three quotes, but the macro focusing ability of the camera does not seem to work in video mode.

Old Photos

I was going through computer files to delete old things that are no longer needed and found some old photos that were fun to look at. There were lots of them, but I thought I might share just a few that brought back some fun memories. The first photo is the family cruise that all of us went on in May 2000.

This is young Joseph outside in the rain.

Katie and Sheri with Nina at the house we rented while our home was being built. This is the same place where John had an altercation with a door while trying to startle Nina. Julie saved the day.

This is young Julie. If you look at the front part of the seat of the chair, you can see John's teeth marks.

Neil and Bret went fishing with Grandpa during the floods of 1993 and caught quite a few fish. Of course the "big" one got away. Joseph was not too sure about the fish.

Joseph wanted to be "cool" like his brothers. He also wanted to be tall like them. I don't know about the "cool" part, but he passed up his brothers in the tall catagory.

Our trip to Bryce Canyon. Julie wanted to climb every rock, but some of the tourists got pretty nervous. Katie, Sheri, Sarah, Joseph, Mom and I hiked on the well traveled part of the trails. The hike up from the bottom of the maze was invigorating.

There were lots of other old photos and I was tempted to put lots more but decided that I had better stop.

Warm Chocolate Melting Cake

When Mom and I went on our 30th anniversary cruise, were on the Carnival Valor. There were some aspects of our experience on Carnival that was not as enjoyable as our experiences on Royal Caribbean cruises. One of the areas that Carnival did a really good job on was the food, especially deserts. One of their best deserts was “Warm Chocolate Melting Cake”. It is an individually baked cake that has a hot center of chocolate fudge like sauce. I was able to find a website that had the recipe that Carnival uses. There were two different versions, so we needed to try them both. I think I am getting close to getting it exactly like we had it on the cruise. This photo shows what it looks like after my first two bites when I made it last week.

I tried it with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream. It was good that way too, except the ice cream cooled the hot chocolate center down.

Last week, Mom bought some Ghirardelli gormet baking chocolate. Last night I used the 60% Cacao dark bittersweet version and it came our really good. I did not get a photo of this version, but it was a darker brown and tasted even better than the version shown above. Mom also bought some 72% Cacao Ghirardelli gormet baking chocolate that I have not tried yet. I think I am getting close to getting the recipe perfected.

We are planning on making this one night while everyone is here for Christmas.

The Guitarist

Joseph has been playing the guitar he made. He practices several hours a day and is developing some pretty good skills, but he thinks it will still be a while before he is ready to do a concert or produce a CD. Here is Joseph playing.

I guess they call it “Fall” because of what falls from trees this time of year.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a couple of days of below freezing temperatures, which caused many of the trees to start changing colors. Then we had a lot of wind that blew down quite a few leaves, although there are still a lot in the trees and some of the trees have not even really changed colors yet. The oak trees by the road to our house lost a lot of leaves and they are covering parts of the road:
A branch also broke and fell down that had a huge wasp’s nest attached to it. It is hard to tell the size of the wasp nest in these two views, but it is about a foot in diameter. It is a very good thing that the nest seems to be currently un-occupied. It was in the road, but I moved it off to the side of the road. I was prepared to run faster than the wind if I heard any buzzing noise, but I did not hear anything.

A rian storm came a few days after I took these photos and the entire nest fell apart into clumps of wet paper. It is amazing that the nest survived so well until one storm destroyed it.

Varsity Rendezvous at Daniel Boon Home

For the last several years, we have had a Varsity Scout Rendezvous at the Daniel Boon home property. It was on the third weekend in October. There are lots of mountain man activities and competitions in events such as black powder rifle shooting, tomahawk throw, flint and steel fire starting and other events. This first picture is our camp with the beginnings of fall colors and a little misty fog as it was getting light Saturday morning.

This next series of photos are of Joseph participating in the tomahawk throw.

I did not take many other pictures this year as I was working on the Dutch oven feast. The adult leaders all fix food in Dutch ovens and have a huge potluck feast. There were 30-40 Dutch ovens with a huge variety of stews, chilies, deserts. One guy made chicken enchiladas that were really good. I made a thick version of chicken noodle soup that was more like chicken noodle stew in my old Dutch oven. I also used the ginormous Dutch oven that Julie got for me and made a triple batch of cornbread. The cornbread came out perfectly. Since it was the only cornbread there, it was the first Dutch oven to be emptied. This is a photo of the crumbs in the bottom.

Joker Joe or "Joe-ker"

Saturday night was the Tri-stake Halloween dance. Joseph wanted to go as the Joker from the Dark Knight. Since it was inappropriate to dress as a nurse the way the Joker did in the movie, Joseph decided to dress in scrubs that were gender appropriate. This is what he looked like before he left for the dance. I hope he did not scare away the girls.

Oil Lamps

In Mom’s seminary class, for the lesson on Matthew 25, the students made clay oil lamps a couple of weeks in advance. For the lesson they could put oil in them and light them in the parking lot to see what it would be like to use an oil lamp the way they would have used them 2000 years ago. Joseph made a really cool looking lamp which you can see here. When lit at night, it actually puts out enough light to see where you are going. It burns for quite a long time, although the wind would blow it out if not careful.

This is the seminary class with their lighted lamps. Unlike the story in the parable, Mom brought extra oil - enough for everyone.

Frogs in the Pond

Several frogs have taken up residence in our pond. There is a large one (4 inch long) that spends part of his time in the bushes and part of his time in and next to the pond in the front yard. There are at least two, but I think it may be three smaller (about 2.5 to 3 inch long) frogs that spend almost all of their time in or next to the pond.

When anyone walks out the front door or approaches from the driveway, the frogs dive under the water and hide. This one did not dive but just watched me until I too close for his comfort level. He is one of the small ones.
I zoomed in with the camera to get a closer look, but he dove under a few seconds later. I think some of our fish are big enough to not get eaten by the frogs, but I do not know about how safe baby fish are. I think we may relocate the frogs to the pond on the other side of Jamestown road when it is convenient. Of course that means we have to catch then first. I'm sure Joseph can move fast enough.

Rope Swing Down

When the remnants of hurricane Ike came through here and dumped about 8 inches of rain early Sunday morning (September 14), the wind also blew pretty hard and broke a quite a few tree branches. I discovered that one of the branches that was broken in the storm was the large branch that the rope swing was tied to. It looks like rope around the branch prevented the branch from growing properly and caused it to die. It looks like it broke at the spot that the rope had been tied. This the part of the branch that is still attached to the tree.

This is a close up of the end of the branch (way zoomed in). A tripod would have been helpful in holding the camera still to reduce the blur.

This is the part that fell with the rope still tangled up in the branch.

I will cut up the branch with the chain saw and perhaps we can burn it while everyone is home for Christmas.

At least the rope did not break this time, but having the log fall on top of someone might have hurt as much, if not more than when the first rope broke about 16-17 years ago. What do you think Neil?

First Squash from the Garden

I was late in getting things planted in the garden this year, but the first squash was ready to pick yesterday (Sunday, Sept21). This is what I picked. It was quite tasty when cooked. I planted yellow and light green squash (2 hills of each), two rows of green beans and a hill of cucumbers.

This is a close up of one of the hills of yellow squash after today’s squash was picked. There should be more to eat in a day or two.

The green beans and cucumbers are loaded with blossoms, so we should have those to eat in a couple of weeks. I have a three foot high chicken wire fence around the green beans to keep the rabbits out. Sometimes I see a rabbit looking longingly at the green beans while he eats the grass and weeds. Too bad for him. If things continue to go well, we will have lots of extra green beans to make several jars of dilly beans to eat at Christmas time.

Joseph's Eagle Court of Honor

We had a court of honor for Joseph on Saturday evening. Joseph completed his eagle board of review in April, the day after his birthday. Jared Dolle in our ward and Robbie Poeppelmeier in the Florissant ward also completed their eagle boards of review this summer. We decided that we could just combine all three in to one court of honor. For part of the display of Joseph’s scouting activities over the years, we made a poster of photos of various scout activities. We noticed that there were a lot of photos that had Joseph, Jared and Robbie together on the same campout. Since they did everything together in scouts, it was appropriate that we have a combined court of honor.

There were lots of people attending. Almost all of the chairs were filled. There were at least 70 or 80 people in attendance.

Sue Hodgson made the cake. We were in charge of drinks, so we had root beer floats that were greatly enjoyed. We went through 5 quarts of ice cream and 10 liters of root beer.

The scoutmaster, Ben Fuhriman, conducted the court of honor. His father has lots of American flags and flag type decorations that were used. It looked really cool. Bishop Fred McCormack did the eagle award presentation. He did a really good job. This is all of us on the stage for the awards, including mother’s and father’s pins (no stab wounds). There were mentor pins for the scout to give to someone that was particularly influential. Joseph and Robbie both gave their mentor pins to Brother Wood. Jared Dolle gave his to Brother Liesman.

After the awards, each of the scouts spoke. Joseph did a very good job.

This is all three of them together.

Jared and Robbie turned 18 just after they completed their requirements, so Joseph is the youngest of the new eagles at 17. He already has enough merit badges for his first palm.

Go Joseph!!!

Peach Pie

Peaches have been in season for the last couple of weeks. Schnucks had Eckerts peaches for sale so I bought some. There were really good, so I bought more.

Katie asked me for the recipe for peach freezer jam, which I think is about tied with strawberry for the best freezer jam ever. I responded to Katie that the best way to make freezer jam is to buy the pectin and use the recipe that comes in the package. Thinking about peach freezer jam got my taste buds really going, so I made peach freezer jam that evening. It was really good.

Then I decided that jam was not enough, so the next night, I made a peach pie. Since the best way to eat peach pie is with vanilla ice cream on top, I made a new batch of homemade vanilla ice cream using mom’s new ice cream maker.

We have used the peach pie recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook for years, but I did a search on the internet for peach pie to see if I could find something even better. I found the following recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Peach-Pie/Detail.aspx

After reading many of the reviews, I decided to compare it to the Betty Crocker recipe before deciding how I wanted to make the pie. The recipe from Allrecipes.com listed 10 peaches while Betty Crocker called for 5 cups of sliced peaches. My peaches were big and 5 peaches resulted in 5 cups. The recipe at Allrecipes.com called for 1/3 cup flour compared to Betty Crocker’s ¼ cup and Allrecipes.com called for twice as much butter and no cinnamon and no lemon juice. I used the flour and butter amounts from Allrecipe.com and used the lemon juice amount from Betty Crocker. I omitted the cinnamon.

The Betty Crocker recipe has you mix the lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon and flour into the peach slices and then put the butter on the peach mixture. The Allrecipes.com method mixes the sugar, flour and butter into a crumbly mixture. The peaches and crumb mixture are layered in the pie shell. I took a photo of the pie just before the top crust went on.
When I put the top crust on, I did not do a very good job of sealing the edge, so juice leaked out of the edges instead of the top when it cooked. I made my typical cinnamon and sugar sprinkled pie crust strips and put them into the oven when I baked the pie. I put them in a pan under the pie but on top of the cookie sheet on the second shelf that catches the juice. I forgot about the pie crust strips and remembered them when the pie was almost done. They were a bit overcooked, but much of the peach juice had dripped on the pie crust strips. They were quite good. I used the Betty Crocker cooking method of 425 degrees for 15 minutes with foil to prevent over browning and then reducing to 350 degrees. One of the comments on the peach pie recipe at Allrecipes.com said that one way to prevent the peach pie from being too runny was to leave it in the oven for a while after turning off the heat so the juices can continue to cook and set up without overcooking the crust. I did this. Also, this recipe has a little more flour than the Betty Crocker recipe which also makes it set up well. Once the pie was cooled, it was nice and firm.

The first piece was not firm, because it was still hot. Fresh homemade ice cream cooled it down nicely. It not only looks really good in the photo, it tasted really, really, really good.

I’m not sure if there will be any left when Joseph gets home Saturday night. I might just have to make another one.