Redneck Stuff

These are some pictures that made me smile. I thought the gingerbread house was so cute. These pictures are courtesy of my favorite (and only) sister, Stephanie. Thanks Steph!

Our New Seat

For Martin Luther King, Jr.'s holiday Ben and I both had off of work. So we thought we'd invite some friends over and grill out and play the Nintendo Wii for a bit. Ben was worried we wouldn't have enough seats for everyone, so he set off to get some plastic chairs for the occasion. Being in a one bedroom apartment severely limits the amount of "stuff" you can have. Boy, was I surprised when he came back with this! I think it looks like an Amish quilt box, so that's what I'm calling it.
So if any of you come to our place... rest assured you will have a place to sit thanks to my loving husband.

When the going gets tough...

Former California State Assembly speaker, Herb Wesson, kicks Zhang Xiao Ju in a spat over who has the biggest Star Wars collection.

There's more than one way to shine a politician's shoes. Hiyah!










I'm just glad buddhist's don't play poker!

Here's the complete story. An oldie but a goodie!

Picture Fun

I don't really have much going on right now, but I was looking through some of our old photos on our computer and I wanted to share them. I think they are very interesting. Maybe you will think so too! This one is of Ben jumping off of a swing at church. We took this photo on a cell phone camera. We entered two different contests with it and won a free dinner for four at a nice Italian restaurant in town!





This is a photo of when we visited Missouri. Ben ordered a tenderloin sandwich. Never in all my days have I seen such an intense sandwich.

This is a photo of some early graduates of the first Sacred Heart school in St. Charles, Missouri. We went and toured the school. The headmistress used to be a director at our school, so she showed us around. I think it's so neat how they dressed back then. This is later 1800's. These girls spoke French in the school.

This was taken at my parent's place in Alabama. These are hummingbirds. Don't they look like little tiny angels?

30!

Today I am entering a new era in my life... I turn 30. I feel truly blessed and just know my thirties are going to have many wonderful, incredible moments. I had a very good day. Ben gave me a very nice card and took me to see the Chihuly exhibit at Fairchild Tropical Garden. We took SO many beautiful pictures that it was very difficult to decide what to even post. I've been to Fairchild Tropical Garden before with my mom, but it's been maybe five years ago. The mixture of the glass art and the nature was just great. Dale Chihuly is the artist. He is THE major glass artist and his pieces go for a bundle of money. He lives in Seattle, but sets up his exhibits all over the world. You will see some examples in the photos.

You would walk along the path and suddenly come up to some glass art. Beautiful!

This next one is of Ben and I under a canopy type thing. Like my hat? Notice Ben's "John Deere" hat from Alabama.




I wanted to take my picture with these flowers. They are so wispy and pretty.

Look closely at the bark of this tree. It's called a Rainbow Eucalyptus tree. It comes from Papua New Guinea (hope I spelled that right). Most Eucalyptus trees come from Austrailia, but not this one. The air changes the color of the bark from green at first, then it peels, and then to blue, and then it peels, and then to red. Never seen anything like it before!


This is a fun one. This is some of the glass art again. This piece is called Carnival Boat. Notice the iguana on the limb above the boat? We saw lots of them today... they give me the creeps. Apparently, they are really a big pain because they eat all the plants and stuff. I asked Ben why they don't just "accidentally" poison them.

These little onion shaped pieces are called Walla Wallas, but they reminded me of the candy from Willie Wonka. It was pretty.

This is a glass sculpture. One of the many on display. They say that you can come at night to the exhibit and they are all lit up. This sculpture weighs literally about two tons.

Barbeque by Mail ...

My mom was really generous this Christmas and sent us a huge rack of ribs by mail. The barbequed ribs and brisket were made in a restaurant in Kansas city that she swears is that absolute best in America. Well of course, Meredith has tasted some pretty fine BBQ in AL, so I think mom had something to prove.

The fact is - we haven't tried the ribs yet because they're going to take another 24hours to defrost. Why? Because they were packaged in dry ice!

Of course, I've never had my very own dry ice to mess around with so I was immediately more fascinated with the packaging than with the package contents. Here is a quick video we made of me experimenting with the dry ice... and you just thought you were going to read about barbeque here! Pretty exciting stuff!

(Please try to ignore the out-of-sync audio: our camera and youtube.com don't mix well).



Don't try this at home ... erm ... like we did!

Cooking in Winter

Ben and I decided that we would try out his Christmas gift to me- a pasta maker. I've never made homemade pasta before, but in the instructions it says that with practice you can make pasta like a real Italian! So here are some pictures from tonight's adventure with pasta making. The pictures really don't do justice to how it tasted. It was good. Oh, and also I will include my recipe for meatballs... they are good!



Pasta is made of flour and eggs and a little bit of water. Once you have the dough, you cut it into sections and make flat sheets. Ben liked this part.

















Then you run the flat sheets of pasta through the cutting part of the machine. We decided to make linguini style noodles tonight. I've seen on TV how cooks put their pasta in "nests" or little piles... so here are my nests.








Then, after boiling the pasta for 4 minutes, you mix with sauce and it's ready. Here's Ben giving his vote. When he saw this picture he said "now, why does my head and my fist look unusually large?" I thought it was funny.










Italian Meatballs

1 lb lean ground beef (I used ground turkey)
1/2 C Italian style bread crumbs
1/3 C water (more or less)
1/4 C grated parmesan cheese
1 medium onion
garlic (I eyeball it)
salt (I eyeball it)
pepper (I like pepper a lot, so I add a lot)

Mix all ingredients... not too much water, moist only
shape meatballs with damp hands and place on broiler pan, broil. (I use parchment paper too) Broil until slightly brown and turn. (about 4 minutes on each side... watch carefully because the broiler will burn them easily)
Add to spaghetti sauce and simmer at least 20 minutes.

Christmas

My dad. I gave him a Bob Hope DVD set.














My brother Preston. Yes, I know we look alike. I gave him the first season of Tales of the Crypt.











My sister Stephanie and my mom. While we were home we took some photos.

















My nephew, Clay. He is so handsome and has the prettiest teeth you've ever seen. I asked him to show me his "pearly whites" and he smiled and then seriously added "I'm kind of gorgeous". I thought it was so hillarious.















My niece, Chloe Anna. She is so small, but so strong and she's also super charming. She can sing all kind of songs and talks all the time. One day when mom and I picked them up from daycare, Chloe called out to her friends "bye.. bye... happy New Year". I thought it was very cute.















This is one of my "artistic" photos. If it weren't for the grave out the window, it would have been great!












Also this Christmas I had a reunion with my college friends. It was so wonderful to see them all and their families. This is a photo of my college roommate, Olya, and me and her beautiful baby, Anna. Olya and her husband Adam are missionaries to Volgograd, Russia and are home on furlow for a few months.






I have many photos and many good friends who were there that night, but this last one is of all of the children that were there that night. We've all changed and been very blessed!

My Hometown

Boy, have we got a lot to share about Christmas vacation! First, I'd like to share some info on my hometown that I think is amusing. Ben and I drove this time which is about a 15 hour drive. We took it in two days going up there, but coming back we did it in one day. We were super tired of being in a car as you can imagine. My hometown is called Holly Pond (Alabama). Apparently they named it that because when they first established the community in 1911 there was a pond with holly bushes around it. It is a small town of maybe 640 people. It's quiet and pretty and full of hard-working farmers. Here are some shots I took when I was home.

This first one is of something that mystifies me. In my hometown we have a Dollar General store next to a Family Dollar store. Um... am I missing something here?














This next one is in Holly Pond park. (where the pond with the holly around it was) For many years the mayor of Holly Pond was a man that was in a wheel chair and always smoked a cigar. He has now passed away, but the town erected a statue in his honor. I think it is very unusual to see a statue of a man in a wheel chair smoking a cigar.













This next one is pretty funny to Ben and I. This is a photo of one of the two banks in Holly Pond. That's right... it's in a trailer. I am assuming there will be a building eventually.










This last one is of an owl we spotted while driving down the street. We were very excited to see such a beautiful owl!

Wii must be crazy

I have a dream... that one day little boys and girls would be able to buy Nintendo Wiis without chopping off their right arms for them. Maybe that was a nightmare. Anyways, I decided that I wanted a Nintendo Wii gaming system for Christmas. We searched and searched and alas could not find one. I decided that I needed to "step up my game" in order to get one. I was determined to camp out outside a Best Buy store until the morning when I knew they would have some. I wasn't sure how many they would have though. (gulp)

I lined up at around 11pm. Around 3am an "assistant property manager" that was only about 22 years old showed up and told us we had to get lost or he would call the police. Of course, nobody moved a muscle and the police escorted us off the premises 20 minutes later.

So for another 4 hours we waited across the street from Best Buy (in the rain some of the time), until 7am when we could officially walk onto the premises and line up. Meanwhile, all night long when we would see someone lining up outside of the store we would have to walk over and tell them that the line is across the street. At 8am they opened the doors and told the 100 strong crowd that they only had 24 Nintendo's and everyone else should go home. The first 15 people in line (other than me) were all college & high school kids that were going to sell their wii's on EBay as soon as possible. Parents didn't start lining up until around 2am, so only about 8-10 parents actually lasted the night to get a system at all.

Then just as I was leaving the store with a Wii in hand and I thought the drama was over, some of the college guys approached someone outside of Best Buy to try and sell their brand new Wii's. Two police officers were right there waiting and jumped out and started shouting at them to leave the premises immediately or get arrested for trespassing. I think Best Buy must have been paying the police to kick out anyone trying to resell their Wii because they seemed to be sitting around waiting for something to happen.

So after 9 hours of waiting I finally got my Wii for Christmas. Unfortunately Meredith cleverly wrapped it while I was sleeping on Sunday afternoon so I haven't even played it yet!

A Hard Nut to Crack

So I've been in love with this idea of taking home one of the coconuts that I found at my new workplace. Yesterday I utilized my new scooter rack to carry a really sloshy coconut that I found by the lagoon at the BK building and I was determined to split that puppy open and see what it was like to sample free unbridled pre-dessicated and unadulterated coconut milk.

This was harder than I anticipated.

I was thinking that my coconut was shaped very differently to the ones I've seen in the grocery store. Then I realized that I need to peel off the outer skin to get to the actual nut with the milk. This was a nightmare! First pieces of bark are flying everywhere as I'm bashing it with a huge knife and then even after making lots of slices into the shell/skin thing I couldn't peel it off. The skin had welded itself to the nut, in defiance of modern cutlery.

Finally I was able to chip away enough bark to start peeling away small strips of the outer shell. Much was my joy.



The nut revealed! At this point I knew I had the upper hand. This must have been the sloshiest coconut I've ever heard of. I thought the coconut milk would practically explode out of the thing so I did the next step very carefully.







Chipping a hole in the nut, I drained out about a cup and a half of the milk inside.

Now for the tasting!






Oddly enough it tasted just like pecans!

New chrome for my scoot!

Christmas came early this year - woo hoo! The new front rack for my scooter is the perfect size for carrying coconuts as I just found out today. Thanks to my wonderful mom for this early Christmas gift. Love you mom!

School Backdrop

This is a photo of the backdrop for my primary Christmas programs. Isn't it beautiful? Last night we had a faculty Christmas party, so that's why there is food in front of it. What I did was choose the image that I wanted for a backdrop, give it to a parent, and she had it blown up by an architectual firm into a huge size. Then we put the panels together and taped them to the back bar of the risers... and there you go. I chose this one because I thought it was really neat looking and because I thought all races were represented. You've got the black angel, then the Latin guy, then the Jewish guy, and then the white guy with blond hair! Merry Christmas everyone!

The Ultimate Santa Claus

... and what would you like fo Christmas fool!

Oh, I'm sorry former first lady Nancy Reagan - I thought you were someone else.

- Mr. T

Nativity mishap

At school I was helping a girl learn her Christmas lines and her lines were:
"The story of the first Christmas, taken from the gospel of Luke, Chapter 2... Cesaer Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. So Joseph and Mary began the long and tiring journey to Bethlehem, the city of David."

Well, this girl is a first grader and so she is just beginning to read, so she said "The story of the first Christmas taken from LUCKY chapter 2"... I corrected her and said, "no, it's not lucky.. it's Luke..it's a book in the Bible." She laughed and said "oh, I thought it was lucky...and the Christmas story is in the Bible?"

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry... but I thought it was innocent anyway.

Then I try to help her with her other lines and she was having a hard time saying "Cesaer Augustus", so I asked her if she'd ever had a Cesaer salad and she had. So every time we came to that part I acted like I was eating a salad. Then she kept saying "Cesaer Augustus issued a DEGREE"... it took a long time, but I think she's finally got it.