A RECIPE!!!

Well, it's been quite a while. Since June, the girls have started school, Jon ate his first cricket on purpose, and Becky got a new hat. We've decided to make this our first RECIPE POST!!!! Perhaps that will motivate us to spend more time doing this and post less on the bookface.

So, here we go:

 

Tolman Seven-pan Stroganoff

Ingredients:

About a pound of relatively expensive beef

2 small cans mushrooms

1 medium onion-chopped

1 cup sour cream

5 cups water

2 cubes beef boullion

4 tablespoons love and tenderness

Some random spices

1 bag egg noodles

 

Step 1: Place expensive beef in crockpot with onions, mushroooms, and water. Cook for however many hours it takes to cook beef in a crockpot.  

 

Step 2: When the beef has finished cooking, add sour cream. Leave the sour cream in the crockpot long enough that it curdles.

 

Step 3: Get out two strainers. One wire strainer and one larger strainer with bigger holes. Pour the "juice" through the wire strainer into another bowl. Pour the remaining contents of the crockpot into the larger strainer in the sink. You will now have one bowl of "good" stroganoff juice that smells like a mixture of bile and hamburger and a strainer full of onions, beef, and mushrooms that resembles the android from "Aliens" intestines.

 



 

Step 4. Wash off the expensive cooked beef in the sink using the sprayer and the strainer. At this point, you'll be thinking that none of the curdled sour cream's taste has penetrated the beef which had been completely submerged in the liquid for quite some time. 

Step 5: Skim the little grains of sour cream curds off the top of the "good" juice.
Step 6: Put the now curd-free beef/mushroom/onion mix into a skillet to warm. Add the "good" juice, which should smell little bit less like vomit, some non-curdled sour cream, some water, and some flour to thicken. Oh, yeah. Add some flour to the ingredients list. Sprinkle in the random spices to diguise the still-lingering smell of barf.

 

 Step 7: Boil the egg noodles al dente. Eh? And smother with stroganoff mixture. Sprinkle with love and tenderness. This will now look like stroganoff.

 

Step 8: Serve to your family. If your children love stroganoff, they will eat it, and because they only hate things that they haven't decided they love, only your oldest will notice that somethign is terribly wrong. You will probably notice that every bite makes you feel like you're making out with a very sick cow.
Step 9: Put the leftovers away.

 Bon apateet!!!

Merida's Liberty

We live in Liberty now.

We bought Becky's parent's house and we've been very busy turning it into our house. One magical surprise was the floor we found under the floor in the front room.

We miss our Independence water pressure. These showers won't even wash the soap out of my hair.

Other than that, we've been throwing things away that Becky's parents thought we might use. And painting. And tiling. And installing. And screwing. And organizing. And ...screwing the PLAYSET together, you perv. 

And Lucy turned 6.

She wanted a bow and arrow for her birthday, so we made some out of cheap stuff we found at Lowes.

April....and March

 My, oh my. It has been a while. As life happens, blogging about life is one thing that tends to go out the window.
And goodness, how life doth happen. Since our last post, a number of happenstances have taken place.
These three dears have kept attending school.  Our middle daughter is reading, our oldest is surprising us with her grasp of physics, and our youngest has pioneered the field of empty threats. Notable advances include angrily clenching her fist at her parents, snarling, and warning us that we will get flicked.

 Jon accepted a new position as the assistant director of nursing at Concorde Career College in downtown Kansas City.  He's in charge of the practical nursing program, and if anyone knows any nurses who would feel comfortable and confident in the classroom, feel free to let him know. Only one student has been kicked out for threatening to "cap" a fellow student "in the ass" with her .357. He actually spends most of his time filling in as an instructor and dealing with the traffic on I-70.

Also, we're moving. After getting a little nudge from Jon's older sister, Rachel, we decided to rent our house and purchase another.  It turns out that the best house for the money was Becky's parent's house. They're downsizing and getting ready to go on a mission this summer, so we're buying the house where Becky was conceived.  That'll all happen in May.

Here's a picture that Samantha made for her mother.  We're looking to find a new home for our little, sweet, Pug-Dachshund mix, Peanut. The girls have decided that picking up dog poop is not worth the joy of having a dog, especially in a "new" house.  Their parents have felt that way for some time. She really is a nice dog, though, if anyone is interested. 

I promised that I would never ever ever let anyone see this video, but I lied so here it is. She really would be pissed if she found out that I showed it to everyone.

Churn it round, baby.

Nora slams it like it's a puddle. She throws it like it's a puppy.

 These girls sleep it like it's a snack wagon. They dream it like it's a 1970's blacksploitation film.

 Sam makes ice tables like they're a snappy snickerdoodle. Lucy sits at ice tables in her fort like she's a great big Brent Spiner fan.

Keen

I have a sad story to tell you...

Nogs and Logs

Ho Ho Ho.

We attended the annual Proctor Elementary Holiday Program a couple weeks ago. They used a new format which shortened the run-time significantly, which was appreciated, but it made it difficult to get a decent picture of our eldest, who was stuck in the back.  

She's the blond on the left.

Lucy was right at the front of the stage though, which made her the photographic center of attention. She performed well, despite being stuck between a couple of yule-log Saxons throughout the duration. Those two boys spent most of  two numbers throwing fake snow at each other with Lucy between them. 5-year-old Neanderthals, that's what she has for schoolmates.

 

 

 Then we had Christmas. Here are a few pictures of children, delighting in the holiday consumerism. We are grateful that they are still at an age in which they don't realize or care that a good many of their gifts come from the thrift store or craigslist.

We thought that our eldest had figured out the true nature of Kris Kringle. She told us a couple times that she knew who Santa Claus was, but when she came downstairs at 4:15 AM, she said, "Look what he brought!"

Good Pictures after a Bad Day

I hate that I feel guilty for having a good day yesterday.  I got accepted to grad school.  I worked at the hospital.  I went home and saw my three beautiful daughters and gave them all hugs and told them that I loved them.  There are some parents in this world that will be going quite some time without having a good day.  I'm sorry.  These are pictures from a recent trip we took to Austin to see my sister and her lovely family, who are also all alive and well. 

 

Nora's expression is due to the fact that she caught that fish, but she didn't know how to not express emotion in front of her intimidating Uncle Adam.

 

Thank You, Independence Youths

So, we've been using our wood-burning stove. We like it. It keeps our little house toasty warm and it feels like winter and we don't have to pay nearly as much in gas. Win win win. Well, the other day, I scooped out the ashes, as is necessary with wood-burning stoves and I deposited those ashes in the garbage on the side of our house. There were a couple of tiny glowing embers. I've done this before. About 10 or 15 minutes later, we left to go to church. As I walked to the car. I opened up the trash bin to deposit my caffeinated soda can. I noticed that there was smoke in the bin. I thought to myself, "I better let the heat from those embers dissipate." So I opened the bin, and we left for church.

Well, it turns out, that rather than dissipating the heat, I actually added the third essential element of fire production. We already had some heat. We already had some fuel. We had only been lacking oxygen. 

The rest of the story comes to us via our next-door neighbors. Says Mel: "I guess some kids were driving by and saw a fire and they stopped and tried to find your hose, but since you don't have an external spigot, they knocked on my door, but our hose didn't reach, so they filled up your bucket there and and we got it mostly out, but by then the fire department had shown up and spread it around to make sure it was all out."

We had two, big, blue, plastic trash bins. This is what was left of them when we got home:

If you look close, you can see the rod that used to connect the wheels of the other bin that was totally consumed.  Amazingly, the only damage to our house was a little bit of bubbled paint on the wall. The wooden overhanging carport was undamaged. The nearby truck was unscathed.
Lesson: If you're going to stupidly leave fire hazards around your house, make sure you do it while you're at church.

Autumnish

 Three pictures:

Nora, swirling through a vortex of joy on a fiberglass pony.

 Lucy, chowin' down in the clink.

Samantha, making breakfast.

Linkin'

 So, I realize that it's been a while since we blogged. We missed Becky's birthday, the girls' first days of Kindergarten, 2nd grade and preschool, Becky's pacemaker implantation, and Jon's little run-in with the Russian mafia, but in our defense, revealing the whereabouts of a murdered hooker can take up a surprising amount of your free time.

We went to see the Terrys on saturday. Ben just took a new position at the University up in Lincoln and they bought a beautiful labrynthine house. Lucy did not mind the frigid festivities in their backyard.

Sam and Eva were elegant and/or swarthy.

 Spencer played basketball in a recycling bin because that's what 12-year-olds do these days.

Becky and Peanut became one with the pool chairs. 

  Ben provided nourishment by heating the flesh of animals.

 

And this is how we felt when we left.

 

 Jon, Rachel, and Becca avoided the camera.

The End.