Yeah, well so I haven't blogged in about 5 months; I've been busy.  We have ALL been very busy actually, our summer was consumed by having the usual additional bunch of in-laws staying at the Foster Farm-let for several months; a fun but exhausting time, even if they weren't staying in our actual house with us.  Its pretty tough to be that uptight guy all the time in the middle of a bunch of really laid back people; most of whom are retired, currently unemployed, or on some sort of furlough.  Anyway, they all have more leisure time than I do, and if there is one thing besides my family that I am willing bare my teeth and rip out throats for, it is my personal space and privacy. But we made it through it, and due to the advent of an oversees marriage of one of them, it will make for a very small Christmas this year here in the States.  I am planning on sending Wifey over to see it, but am struggling to decide whether I am going or not, mostly because it hasn't exactly been a stellar year financially, due largely to the fact that nobody realizes they need gutters if it doesn't ever rain!
 
 But anyway, lest I sound bitter, I'll move on.  Again we have been VERY busy lately, and didn't ever take any time off work for family vacation time, so in an effort to rectify that we decided to take a series of mini-vacations and do some fun stuff without so much hullabaloo.  Yesterday we went to Kanopolis lake with my sister and her not unsubstantial family.  Very good to catch up and see their kids growing up and interact with them as adults or near to it.

   Wifey and I did find a little time here and there to work in a project or two.  Here is one that I am quite pleased with, although I sure had serious doubts about it all the way through it until it was truly competed:  My first ever chair remodel.  Wifey had been talking about it for a while, and so after coaxing (she should write a book on "How To Get Your Husband To Do Things He Doesn't Want To Without Making Him Feel Nagged" - I still don't know exactly how she pulled it off) I undertook the project as if it were my own.









Here are "before" pictures; you can't really see how  threadbare it is.
She kept telling me: "I reeeeeaaally want this to be good and I just need you to do it so that it looks good."  Stroke, Stroke; Niiiiiice husband!  NICE husband...

And "After" pictures

But it was fun to see her get excited and say "oh wow, this is going to be soooo cool!"  I kept telling her to calm down, because it was probably going to turn out awful, don't get your hopes up, we haven't even got to the hard part yet, etc. But overall, I'm pleased with the end result.
    Other than that, it doesn't feel like I got a lot of stuff done this summer; I did take advantage of the dryness to dig out our pond some; I took the CTL and shaved off the banks in order to make it a little more "beachy" and less "banky" so that the kids could get in without jumping in.
   Ahh, Fall! The Advent of Cooler Weather!!! So glad to see it in so many ways. Monday, Stu-Jack and I took our little pigs to the market.

Since he isn't officially in school, he got to do the ride along, and instantly decided that we had certainly better stop for doughnuts, as that was good and right.  I shouldn't worry about him eating too much doughnut, though, I found half of it in crumbs under his car seat the next day.

   Anyway, that's about the synopsis of our summer, and I'm looking forward to cutting some wood this fall and clearing some more pasture.

Mother's Day, Easter

Stu-Jack has been feeling very inferior lately. For example, Saturday before Easter, I was cooking breakfast for the kiddos, and here he comes, all dejected, head down and shoulders slumped. I asked him what was wrong. He replied: "I not very smart at Easter, I didn't even know we get baskets and hide eggs. I just not very smart at Easter." Poor little guy...

So for Mother's Day, Brynn asked for me to build another level onto the tree fort. Awesome of her, huh? Now that's a gift I can get into; she even helped me on Sunday. It took me longer than I thought, probably because everything is getting higher up now. Here is a picture of the improved fort:

I built the solid fence around it with a ladder on the inside with a trap door in the floor, because it has been increasingly obvious that Stu is a little psycho that has no fear at all. He could hardly be contained from getting on the top deck when I had just 3 boards screwed on. Finally I consented to allow him coming up, as long as he was on his bottom. He promptly scooted (on his bottom) over to the edge and dangled his legs over. Then, when I had the floor completed, and one 2x4 around the edge, he came up and hung his little body over the edge, just hanging on to the board I had just screwed on. I grabbed him and dragged him back inside the railing and asked him if that was scary, he just looked puzzled and told me not really. Should have named him Sean, I guess...
Then as a side note, Stu wanted to make Wifey a Mother's Day card. I wrote while he dictated: "Dear Momma, I love you very much; thank you for all that you do, like make food. I love you. And chicken, yeah, I love chicken, too! Yum" Which sums him up pretty well; Momma and food, not necessarily in that order.

Then, unrelated to Mother's day, we had some good friends over for supper on Saturday that were gracious enough to be our guinea pigs and let us try out Beef Wellington on them. It went OK, but I overcooked the tenderloin, so it wasn't nearly as pink as it should have been...

Wifey also got a necklace from our girls with lots of pretty beads with some that spelled "Momo" in the middle, "because they didn't have any A's." Heh, I love having kids!

one more reason to hate possums

Here is the last picture taken of the Valdois car. Arianna rolled it last Thursday night around 10:30 on her way home from work when she swerved to miss a possum driving on 96 highway at 70 plus MPH. I know, I know! To quote the Highway Patrolman, he said: "You swerved to MISS a possum? Don't you know you are supposed to run those buggers over?!" Luckily, she was unhurt, (wearing her seat belt), but the car was of course in pretty bad shape; the other side was a lot worse. The worst thing is, however, now there is a possum running around out there with an inflated sense of its own toughness. I can hear the stupid thing now, bragging to all its friends. "Did you see that? One look at me and that car just rolled over and played dead!"

Arianna: 0

Possums: 1

Our little secret...

We have been recently quite irritated by Stu waking up Wifey in the early hours of the morning to : "Mama! Cover me up!" He insists that he can't do it himself, and frankly it is easier sometimes just to do it, than listening to him squawk about it, waking everybody else up. So, last Wednesday night, home late from bible study, I was helping a Very Sleepy Stu get into P.J.'s. He remarks several times during this process that he is very tired and he wants to get into bed. We finish getting him "pajamma-fied" and he crawls into bed and pulls his covers up neatly over him. Seeing this, I can't help but bust his chops a little. I said "how come you can pull your covers up over yourself so well, but at 2:00 in the morning you have to come and wake up your mama to do it?!?!?" He smiles sleepily, and with half closed eyes tells me conspiratorially, "It'll just be our little secret, Daddy." Turkey!!!

clever Gracie

Talking around the table after the afore mentioned corned beef, Grace was coming to the realization that her daddy wasn't the lumbering giant she always thought I was. She asked if I was sorry that I was short, and I replied "I need some sort of adversity in my life; if I were as tall as I am good-looking, I wouldn't fit in the house." She thought about it briefly and replied: "if you were really as tall as you are good-looking I've sure seen you when you should be really short!!"
That is a ZINGER! Not bad for a 10 year old. Thanks, Gracie; so sometimes I'm dirty when I get home. I sure hope that's what she is talking about...

cute chicks!!

Speaking of meat, here are yesterday's new arrivals. (03/23/11, it helps me remember when to butcher)
Its not all I think about, but, you know. And its something that Wifey and I like to do together, which there are not that many things that we share creative interest in. Thinking about food is one of them- butchering food is not.
The one little chick closest to the bottom looked sick, so I gave him a poke. He woke abruptly and said: "CHEEP!!, CHEEP-CHEEP!!!" Apparently, he was only sleeping, but the girls just thought it was hilarious; just a little bit ago, I heard them in their beds saying"CHEEP!!, CHEEP-CHEEP!!!" Then giggles all around....

corned beef

Here is a picture of a little something that we ate this week. I love me some corned beef, and after digging through the freezer first part of this month long enough to find some choice roasts and brisket, Wifey and I whipped up brine enough to immerse 15-20 pounds of beef for several weeks in it, and my Mother-in-law was gracious enough to cook it along with the obligatory cabbage and potatoes. Probably one of my favorite dishes, even though my ancestry is overwhelmingly more Scottish than Irish, probably because of my natural common sense rebels at the thought of Haggis, though I would like to try it once in my life.

The brine is pretty simple, though, its just the planning ahead part and the fridge space that is difficult. I did inject the brine into it, which was my own idea; don't know if that was right or wrong. The only thing that we had to buy specifically was the Prague Pink Curing Salt, which I guess accounts for the red look to the obviously well done meat.

I confess I cheated on this one though, my dad raised the meat... It's WAY easier!!!