A Cheftastic Birthday

Back on October 26, Jenna turned 12. (Yes, I know this is late, I've already dealt with that in a previous post). On Friday the 22nd, she had an early out day from school, so she invited a few friends over for a Chef Birthday Party. (One was sick :( -- we missed you Hannah B!)
Prior to the festivities we made personalized aprons and decked the place out in cooking utensils. Upon their arrival they decorated their chef hats and their goody bags.
Because it was a chef party, they made their own pizzas (with Karen's fabulous homemade dough, of course!), mixed up cookies to later decorate, and made coffee ice cream.
Once the ice cream was mixed, it was time to freeze. We put it in an ice cream ball: it has two chambers, an outer one for ice and salt, and an inner one for the creamy yumminess. Then you roll the ball around for 20 minutes to freeze it. We played cold potato to make the mixing time seem a little shorter.When the cookies had cooled, they had to be decorated. Each kid had an individual king size cookie; we did these in lieu of a cake.Hannah F wanted her cookie au naturale.
With all that sugar, sometimes you need to get out some energy.Big fun, good food, lots of laughs, great friends!
Since my birthday is on the 24th, we combined our family celebration on Jenna's actual day. Both of us wanted this delicious made-from-scratch chocolate cake. Unfortunately there was a mishap during the baking process -- it grew out of the pan and started spilling over into the oven. And this occurred while Karen was picking up Jenna from school, leaving Anya and Emily to deal with this unexpected catastrophe.

And while neither I nor Karen were here to witness this event, I feel quite confident that had someone surreptitiously videoed the goings-on, it would be viral on YouTube by now. Karen was on the phone and able to get an audio play-by-play. First, the frantic call from Anya that the cake has overflowed the pan -- what do we do?! Her's and Emily's marked fear of putting their hands inside the oven to clean out the spilled batter (now burning on the bottom of the oven) and shrieks of shock (no actual burning of flesh) at the nearness of the heat to their skin -- it's so hot! It's scary! -- then the cries of confusion and frustration when the smoke alarm begins to go off -- Make it stop! How do we make it stop?! -- the lamentations that they just can't do this, please get home quickly, and WHAT DO WE DO WITH THE REST OF THE CAKE STILL IN THE PAN?!?!?!

Whew.

They managed to clean it up and put the remaining cake batter back into the oven for another 20 minutes of baking. But as you can imagine, a cake that has to be taken from it's cooking home for 15 minutes and then returned to that heated environment doesn't come out flawlessly.

On the plus side, it did bake through, and tasted fabulous.

On the minus side, it looked like this
after being dumped/scooped from it's baking pan.

But, honestly, we've had the cake the "normal" way numerous times, looking all perky and chocolate-shiny-luminous. This way made for a much more memorable birthday. Normal is w-a-y overrated.
We spent the family birthday celebration night playing Monopoly. Karen found a vintage one at a garage sale for $2, and I don't think it had ever been played. The money was still so crisp the bills kind of stuck together the first time we played it.In the end, neither of the birthday peeps was the winner. Anya was the property tycoon of the night.But we all enjoyed the cake.

Moabites continued

During our time in Moab, we stayed at a new location. There's a church in Moab that owns a cabin about 30 miles outside of town, up in the mountains at about 8000 ft. They rent it out to pastors and their families for a song. Literally. I just met them at the church and sang a verse and chorus of "All Creatures Of Our God And King" and they gave me the keys.

Okay, not really a song. But dirt cheap. The song was just out of gratitude.

It's a 40 minute drive, through a beautiful winding canyon that follows the Colorado river and then up another beautiful winding road to the cabin.
We'd seen pictures, and they made it look quaint and clean, but we had very low expectations; the attraction was the price.

It was all we'd hoped it would be. Yes, quaint, not too big (2 beds, 2 baths, living room and kitchen), but very clean, very quiet, very comfy, and gorgeous views.Yeah, the decor was probably leftover from the 70s and 80s, but it was warm during the cold nights, had plenty of chairs and couches for us all to sprawl out to relax and read in the evenings, and had a rustic feel without feeling like we'd moved into the Ingalls' cabin and needed to chop wood for the fire, kill a deer for food or sew a quilt by hand. And, where else could we stay and enjoy such a delightfully retro shower?When not at the cabin, we did make a trek into Arches Nat'l Park. We couldn't be that close and not pay some of our favorite arches a visit.And we saw them in a way we'd never seen them before.
See all those colored dots below Double Arch? Those are people. Scads of people. This was the first time in our 7 years of visiting that the park was bursting at the seams with visitors.

We didn't stay too long. We have too many fond memories of quiet moments under and near various arches to have them tainted by the huddled masses and the dull roar that they bring with them.During our lunch stop, in front of Turret Arch, we were serenaded by a man playing some sort of Native American instrument. Kind of like a really big recorder, only tuned to a pentatonic scale. And if that means nothing to you, think of a hollow sounding flute that only plays 5 notes and you get the idea. Mildly soothing for about 30 seconds, then borderline annoying, then just background noise for the crowd that gathered to snap pictures of Irritating-Indigenous-Flute-Playing Man as I fondly have dubbed him.He did move on and tootle his magic flute near another majestic formation. I appreciated the relocation.

We found a hike that was off the beaten path (it didn't lead directly from the parking lot to an arch), so spent a nice 45 minutes away from everyone else, and Emily practiced her rock-climbing skills.That little leprechaun at the top of the pic is her.

After a crowded day, we returned to the cabin for a quiet night, and a beautiful sunset.
Not a person to be heard or seen. Just the mountains, the sun and some spectacular clouds.
Sigh. Thanks, God!

Moabites

One of our favorite places to visit in Utah is Moab. We've spent several trips in its red-rocked beauty, but mostly in Arches National Park.

In mid-October, when G'pa came for a visit, we headed to Moab once again, but this time took in the wonder that is Canyonlands National Park.It's filled with just what it sound like: lots of gorgeous canyons. And you can view most of them from above. It takes a bit more work and some back country permits to view them from within.

A highlight, and easily accessible by a short hike, was Mesa Arch.This arch is on the edge of a bluff, so you can get a spectacular view through the arch of the canyons and vista below and beyond.We did some good hikes and saw some spectacular views.
When hiking along slick rock, trails are not always easy to identify, like they are when hiking through a forest or fields. So the trails on the slick rock are marked with cairns, which are stacks of rocks. This is the first time we ever saw a cairn in a tree, though.
Everything is more fun when G'pa is along.Good times. And no one fell off a cliff. Even better.

At one view point, Jenna noticed that some of the canyons resembled fingers in a very familiar formation.Spock hand. Gotta love it.

Really big shroom

File this under "freaky".

The inter mountain west, where we live, is generally classified as a high desert. It's been modified by various water pipelines and aquaducts and the planting of orchards and other flora, but it's still a very arid environment.

So, we don't often see things like moss, mold, or mushrooms. It's simply too dry for those things to get much traction here.

Imagine our surprise when the girls found this in our backyard.
We rarely find small mushrooms, much less ones capable of providing the main course on an episode of Iron Chef. Felt like we were the subject of some secret bio-espionage. You know, plant mutant fungi in our yard and see how quickly they bloom. Very J.J. Abrams-esque.

Or simply the product of a very wet October.

I prefer the former.

Homeschool experiment

Part of the fun of homeschooling is the hands-on science that Karen and Emily get to do, and subsequently share with us.

During a recent unit involving atmospheric pressure, they did an experiment involving a candle, a jar, and some liquid. The point was to show how as the candle burned the oxygen in the jar, that reduced the pressure inside, so the air outside was pushing on the water more forcefully than the air inside the jar once its oxygen was depleted.

In the end, it was a very cool demonstration. Click here for the video.

Emily is our very own Bill Nye, the science guy. Perhaps Emily Nal, the science gal?

A Return to Blog

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been over 2 months. I really don't need to hear it, because I've heard it plenty from the young women of my household.

So, I'm back. We'll call this 2 month break a necessary blog-cation. Too many personal musings and too much introspection that I didn't want bleeding into this documentary of our lives.

Now, it's on to the ever-riveting, always entertaining, Rich-filtered diary of the Smithereens.

The next few posts will cover events that are by now outdated. Even while I was resisting the siren's call of the blog, our life did go on (but not our heart, because then we'd have had that ridiculous Celine Dion song in our heads for days....like you will now if you clicked on that link. Heh, heh...)

Back in September there was a great convergence of activity: the grandparents came for a visit at the same time that Emily had oral surgery done. You'll remember that back in the spring, Emily and Jenna got braces. One aspect of Emily's smile that needs to be remedied is a tooth that has implanted itself way up in the roof of her mouth instead of dropping down into its rightful spot. You can see the space on the upper right side of her mouth in this pic.In order to bring the wayward tooth into place, the doctor had to cut her gums and attach a chain to the disobedient thing, so that eventually the orthodontist can pull the tooth down by hooking the chain to her mouth hardware.

Sounds lovely, doesn't it? I think they did something like this in dungeons during the Inquisition.

While she was having this surgery done, the dental team recommended that she go ahead and have her wisdom teeth removed. And we all know what a delight it is to get your wisdom teeth out.

So while the grandparents were here visiting, Emily looked like this.Wow, what a strong jaw she has. She considered auditioning for a live-action remake of the Flintstones. Give her a 5 0'clock shadow and she's the spittin' image of Fred.

She recovered, slowly, and still managed to join in a few family activities like card games on the deck.Although, she looked very pitiful doing so.
After a week or so, her face and jawline returned to normal.During the grandparents stay, Grandma was helpfully loading and running the dishwasher. She asked Karen which container under the sink was the dishwasher soap, and Karen replied the big white one.

Trouble is, both the dishwashing soap and the dishwasher soap are in big white jugs. And when you add the dishwashing soap to a dishwasher, you get a LOT of suds.This shot was after they saw soap emanating from every crevice of the dishwasher and had scooped out the foamy mess more than once.

On the plus side, the dishes were very clean. And we all got a good giggle out of it.

We had a splendid visit with our grandparents. Always LOVE having them here. Before they headed back up to Montana, they and Karen made a blackberry run at a patch down near Payson.Luscious berries and a beautiful spot to pick them.