Ginberbread Cookies & Houses Follow-up

As part of the somehow-always-hectic-rev-up to the Holiday season, this year we were preparing for that with some Doc appointments determining what to do with my ankle that I injured back on Feb. 28th. 

As a result, I posted nearly nothing in December and now I am hobbled with crutches and have time to fill, so therefore, I am playing catch-up...

Another short post to tie up a loose end or two...

Mama making some ginger'ish type cookies with two cute varmints.

And the older lad, who had no picture of himself with his gingerbread house in the post here, so we are correcting that slight with this somewhat blurry picture... the only one we have since we fed the houses to the deer and other critters that roam our yard in the shadows of night.

Laundry, Chaos Style

Laundry and dishes... two chores that are never done. 

Sometimes they are made harder by creatures who have other ideas...

Exhibit A: Juno in the laundry basket had determined that it was time for fetch, not laundry.

Exhibit B: Caleb warming himself in a dryer full of warm clothing.  He thinks our house is too cold!

Exhibit C is one of which I do not have a photo of, but I can claim that I am affected by it often; laziness...

Thanksgiving 2015 - Post #2 - Schmitzs

So now we find ourselves at the Griffith home in Bondurant with some fantastic food and equally as fantastic family. There's not a whole lot to say that pictures cannot convey, so I'll let the pictures do their work:

That's a whole lot of humanity seeking their next meal... and finding it!

God bless all of us and especially those of us who seek meals and do not find them on a regualar basis!!

Vacation 2015, #4 - Seattle, Pike Street

Today's vacation post finds us in downtown Seattle at the Pike Street Market. This is one place that was sort of a "bucket list" place for me ever since 1993 when I first sampled the delectible flavors of the Pike Street Brewery and their wonderful XXXXX Stout.  Alas, it was not to be and maybe never will be.  

It was a bit of a tenuous morning as a Kindle got crunched in a car door, people wanted other people to eat when other people didn't want to eat and so on... 

All worked out well as it usually does when humans don't try to make it how they want.  We all proceeded thru the day well fed and had a lot of fun during said day.

 

I tried to capture the depth of the shopping/shops in this photo.  There the ramp up to street level on the right and the stairs to the lower level on the left.  Not too mention all of the "stuff" straight ahead, should we choose to proceed in that direction...

My first real "fish toss".  The boy in the striped shirt had just caught the big fish from one of the workers...

And here, a different worker caught the fish that the boy in the striped shirt had thrown back to him.

This was a shot of the are that will appear a few photos from now under the infamous Public Market Center signage...

That's a shot looking down Pike Street towards the parking ramp from where we were walking.

This is the street corner from which we "enjoyed" breakfast in the aforementioned tenuous manner...  beautiful view, by the way!

Our entourage in full glory.   We were approached by another family which had obviously adopted and they asked if we would take their photo.  We did, and exchanged the favor asking if they would take ours?

Gingerbread Houses, 2015 Style

Since I'm about 6 months behind on posts, I figured I would throw one together that is fully current and proper for the holidays!

I am not only absent from all of the photos but really didn't participate either as I was in the kitchen cooking up some pizzas; a cheese, a 1/2 sausage / 1/2 pepperoni for the kiddos along side a Caprese (roasted tomatoes, fresh basil and mozzarella pearls) and a Chorizo Sausage/ Manchego cheese (chorizo sausage [mexican style], manchego [goat] cheese with red onion and baby kale).

So after the houses were done, we ate and were merry!

The houses with their respective exterior designers.  3 Aunts across the back row starting with Aunt Doris, Dianne and Molly.  Then Caleb, Jonah (hiding behind a house) Sam, Zoe, Aunt Lesley and the inimitable Robby.

Aunt Dianne and Caleb.

My niece Zoe with her lovely Aunt Lesley.

Aunt Molly with Jonah.

And then Sam, absent his partner in house design.

All in all, a wonderful time was had by all and hopefully everyone left well fed!

A special thank you to Grandma Marlene who assembled the houses prior to decoration!

See you next year!

Thanksgiving 2015 - Post #1 - Bushmans

It is Thanksgiving time for us Americans. Growing up, this only meant that we were either likely to have a bunch of people over to our house, or we would be traveling to somebody's house that had agreed to host a bunch of people.  

And I would eat until I couldn't see straight...

Last weekend, due to work schedules and such, we traveled to Crystal Lake, IA the morning after the years first snow, to have Thanksgiving dinner #1.

It was a fantastic spread as usual and just to keep with the traditions of growing up, I ate about four days of food in 1.5 days.

This is the larger American boy after applying butter to his dinner roll for himself.  Grandpa and I were watching him as he diligently covered every side with enough butter for 3 rolls, until Grandpa finally asked, "Robby, what are doing?".  The lad replied, with a smile much like the one in the photo, "Taking after my Grandpa!".   Indeed...

The Fisher Price train set that the both boys have put many many miles on!  Caleb's turn this weekend.  The addition of the xylophone car was his idea.

Once we made it back home safely, I looked at the weather for the week and convinced the boys that they should probably go out sledding with their buddies from across the road since they wouldn't be able to on Monday night and the snow would likely be gone by Tuesday night.  And so they did.

One of the critters on the snow board.

Caleb on their little snowmobile sled.

And in another hour from the time I sit here typing this, I will be engaging in Thanksgiving #2 with the Schmitz Family.  

I promise to keep my lifelong tradition alive.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

Halloween 2015

A little late, but hey, that's the story of my life! 

We didn't even get pumpkin's this year much less have time to carve the silly gourds...

So Halloween night rolled around on us in a fairly quick fashion and we were left shadow boxing for events.

We ended up having a great time at my sister's church in Bondurant with dinner and games prior to heading out into her neighborhood for proper trick n' treating before heading over to my mom's retirement village for our night cap.

Dinner #1.  My nephews, Sam and Jonah.

Dinner #2.  Calebber.  My niece Zoe, and nephew Sam.

At my sister's house with all five varmints.

Missing Zoe, but at this point, you take a picture with as many as you can happen to capture!  That's my mom in Halloween orange, with Caleb, Jonah, Robby and Sam.

And thus, we wrap up another Halloween season!

Vacation 2015, #3 - Seattle Ferry Ride to Poulsbo

So here we are in the third vacation post... yes, the third, even though it happened nearly a half a year ago. 

This time we're on the ferry in Seattle getting ready to cross the Puget Sound heading to Poulsbo WA. to see Aunt Kay and Uncle Sam.

Thinking back, this boat ride may have been the set-up for the down-fall of our next boat ride on vacation...  which will be covered a few posts from now.

This is shortly after "lift-off" and while nobody is sick yet.

A little further out from shore...  I'm snapping pictures like a wild man so that the coast guard and other investigative resources can immediately identify where our boat went down and henceforth, where to find the bodies...   In case you didn't know this about me, I'm a "land-lubber" and proud of it.  Even more so after we got home and I learned of the term liquefaction.  Do yourself a little search on that.

A similar shot to the above but zoomed in on the space needle which will be featured in another post very soon.

I'm from Iowa.  I don't know what boats like that are for, but I can assume that it is a cruise ship.  You know, one of those where you catch botulism and dysentery after a few days at sea.  :-)

I'm often captivated by the waves that boats leave behind and truly how quickly they're swallowed up by the power of the water.  Just another little sign on Earth letting us know how small we are in the overall scope of the universe.  Humbling, but sort of peaceful as well knowing that our God who created this has it all well in hand.

Speaking of creations, here are two of my absolute favorites!  This was at the very front of the ferry where the cars will eventually exit once we get to that shoreline way off in the distance.

Shame on us, but we took no pictures while we were at Kay and Sam's house.  Why?  We weren't there long enough to realize it and were having too good of a time visiting and going outside with the boys to feed tiny worms to the plants that Uncle Sam is currently nurturing thru a drought.

And so it was...

Next up, the space needle, underground tour and Pike street market.  Stay tuned...

Ridiculousness...

Our boys...  they go to the neighbors house on the mornings when Mom works overnights and Dad goes into work early.  They were both crazy excited about a week back because they were getting new "breakfast cups" at Mikey and Diane's house.  So what were these prized cups?  Well, they were NFL cups, the Browns for Robby and the Seahawks for Calebber.

Bob & Ted's Big Adventure

It was that time again... what time, you ask? Time to brew more beer! 

My friend Bob, who owns the equipment and the house that the equipment is in, and I have been trying to get together to brew again since it had been last January that we brewed together.  With kids' schedules, vacation, and those pesky things known as jobs, it took a while to accomplish that, obviously!

But alas, the time had come.  I had envisioned a rather simple recipe using Simcoe and Amarillo hops and Bob helped me refine that with his brewing knowledge.

Here we are.  That's Bob and the boys adding the grains into the mash tun.

Robby taking his turn stirring the grains making sure that everything is moistened and eventually covered with 170 degree water.

At this point in the process, we got to talking and drinking some of his previous "potions", playing football with the boys, and cooking a pizza amongst some other things that I've likely forgotten.  I bring this up because the photos skip to the next day here...

What can I say?

This is his new conical fermenting chamber.  That light colored stuff you see climbing the walls is the yeast doing it's magic.  When the boys and I left on Saturday afternoon, the yeast was in probably the bottom 3 - 4 inches of the conical.  It became that active in less than 24 hours!

This is the hydrometer reading. It measures the density of the liquid which more or less tells you how much sugars are left in it, aka, if it's done fermenting, or not.  I'm mostly unsure of how to read these yet, but my day is coming!

And there she sits in all her regal beauty after being racked into the secondary fermentation vessel.  She'll get a dry-hop addition and then loaded to the keg for carbonation.  I should be tasting it in about 7 more days!

Field Trip!

One of the pure joys in life is when you sit down to upload pictures from the camera and find stuff that you knew happened, but forgot about. In this instance, I remember when Mama took the boys on this field trip, but I don't recall ever looking at the pictures! 

So imagine my surprise when I uploaded photos and found these gems from the Botanical Center in downtown Des Moines, as well as the walking bridge across the river and the Victory Pogoda and Robert Ray Asian Gardens. .

I'll just let the pics speak for themselves since I wasn't there.