Friends

Angel and Carly have decided to be friends. Mostly this involves Carly trying her darndest to sneak up and attack Angel and Angel looking down at her like, "that's all you've got, runt?" while sending her rolling across the room with one paw. But tails wag the entire time, so I'll take it as a good thing.

Off to convince my hubby to lose play a few rounds of Mille Bornes.

Boo Hoo

I'm lamenting the end of the long weekend. I think. On the one hand, the kids go back to school tomorrow (I've got 6 more months until they're both homeschooled full-time, I'm soaking up the "me time" while I can!). On the other hand, that means I need to get back to doing that little thing called "cleaning". I hate cleaning. I have friends who love to clean and I wish they could share their secret. I never feel like I've accomplished anything because it just gets all messy again. And when you're not starting with a clean slate, how do you even get started? Because if you spend a day deep cleaning one room, then move through each room of the house, everything else is trashed by the time you get done. Laundry and dishes--the bane of my existence. Repetitive work that is never ever done.

"The Holidays" are here!

It's that time of year!! My brother and sister-in-law graciously hosted Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. It's fun to be at my own house, but it sure was a nice change of pace to have a lazy morning with no cooking or planning!!!! We had fun...good food, good company!

This morning I truly participated in black Friday for the first time. A couple of years ago I hit some of the stores well after opening time, but I've never gotten up early and waited in line and all that. The big draw this year was a king-sized down comforter for $30 (regularly $160, and even with cheaper brands, I don't think I've seen less than $60). So, I actually got up at 3am and waited outside in the dark for a 4am opening and got my comforter. We felt like we needed to buy the girls one before we move to Montana anyway, so I had to have the sale. Then I headed on over to Target for the 5am opening to pick up some other gifts. I felt a little out of place since I wasn't going for a TV, GPS, ipod or computer, but I got things we needed to get for good prices. The only flaw in my planning--I was done at 5:30 and realized I couldn't come home because I'd wake everyone up! So I went ahead and walked the mall, but didn't really get anything there.

Wanting to get the tree up this weekend and what few decorations we have. Maybe I'll have the girls make handprint wreaths to put up since we never got around to handprint turkeys.

The Holiday Taste of Sam's Club

Remember when I won the plasma car? Well, the same great lady is a sharing the savings blogger and has been doings LOTS of great Sam's Club gift card giveaways. Most recently, she put up this post to let us all know about the Holiday Taste of Sam's Club going on this weekend. She is giving away more Sam's Club gift cards and if any bloggers attend the event and blog about it, they get 10 extra entries. Free food and a chance to win gift cards? Of course, I was there!

So here's the deal: Head on over to Sam's 11am-6pm Friday through Sunday and taste all the great food in the Holiday Taste Of Sam's Guide. If you aren't a Sam's club member, there is a guest membership in the guide. I had grand intentions of taking a lot of pictures, but outside it was raining and inside there was a bit of "traffic" near each sampling station, so I abandoned that plan and only have this picture of Sierra in the car (if you look close, you can see the Sam's sign. You can also see the line around her lips where she's been scraping her teeth and completely chapped the skin--any idea on how to make her stop that??) YES, she was buckled in her carseat, in the back, for the entire drive. The car was parked and off when I took this picture!


Inside, we were treated to all sorts of goodies....one station had plates of ham, mashed potatoes with gravy and green bean casserole. Another had absolutely WONDERFUL spiced apple pork loin. Further down we got to Sierra's favorite station--cinnamon rolls with orange frosting. I was skeptical, but they were very very yummy. We also picked up a plate with a sampling of cheeses---I'm not sure what all there was because Sedona scarfed down the whole plate, but I did get to taste a little brie. Another station had a different kind of cracker and cracker barrel cheese. I'm sad to report the cheesecake station was set up, but no one (and more importantly no cheesecake) was there :-( Last, we swung by and picked up a sample of Martinelli's sparkling apple cider. It's one of Josh's favorites and he'll be happy to know his girls love it too! I might just have to go back Sunday--I can pick up a Sunday paper (only $0.95 at my Sam's!) and that's when they're holding the Chocolate Dipping Event.

When you're out shopping this weekend, swing by and check it out!!

Street smarts and book learnin'

When I was 15, I (along with all my friends) took driver's ed. It wasn't offered at our school, you had to go through a private company. In my course (in the suburbs of Houston), there was a lecture series and a driving series you had to complete. For the driving series, there were 7 one-hour practice drives. They were standardized, you went certain places and did certain things on each lesson. When lesson 7 came around, it was pretty much up to the student what they wanted to do. Parallel parking was NOT a requirement (and is not tested in your driving test in Texas, at least for me it wasn't) and it seemed scary and not too useful at the time, so I opted to skip it and take an extra hour of practice on the construction clogged Houston freeways. Reasonable choice at the time.

Fast forward 6 years...I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah and rented a basement apartment very near downtown. There was a small parking lot, but with 5 apartments (it was a house converted into apartments), it wasn't uncommon to have to park on the street. Not to mention going to visit anyone involved parking on the street, and quite a bit of shopping required parking on the street. So I learned to parallel park the hard way, the way that ingrains it into you....by doing it, in traffic, with people waiting. I'd like to think I got pretty good at it.

Today the library parking lot was full. I parallel parked the minivan (which I've never done before). On the first try. My spacing from the curb and the other cars was as perfect as it gets. I will always credit Utah for my parallel parking skills (and an awesome street numbering/address system). Real world learning rocks.

Carly

Having a new puppy is like a mini-dose of having a new baby. A doctor once told my mom that if she wanted to have a baby, she should try a puppy first. Good advice, I say! I only have two caveats: start with a young pup and do it right. That means you take the time to use positive reinforcement, you "puppy proof" the house, and you make the effort to get up in the night for potty breaks. Well, okay, Josh is making the effort to get up in the night for potty breaks, but I did nurse through the night for over 2 years total, so I've put in a fair amount of time already.

After two human babies, canine baby isn't such a difficult job. I've found out a set of cloth diapers will last through two babies and one puppy (she's doing great on house breaking, but there are still plenty of puddles to soak up throughout the day). It gets a bit crazy when both girls are home and Josh is gone. That's a little worse than just having a human baby. A 7 week old human baby doesn't run laps through the house grabbing kids by their pant legs and occasionally catching skin with a needle-like tooth. So the canine baby requires either constant supervision or kenneling at this point, which is doable, just a bit busy.

Carly wants so badly to play with Angel (my 11 year old labrador), but Angel wants nothing to do with her. She's not mean, just indifferent. Carly pounces on Angel's tail and tries to gnaw on it, Angel just flicks it away. Carly jumps up and paws at Angel's shoulder, Angel just looks down like, "why is this runt jumping on me?" For now, they're mostly leading separate lives. I think Angel is a bit jealous of the attention Carly gets from the kids, but then she is definitely gloating about the fact that she is always free to roam the house while Carly is kenneled whenever we're gone or sleeping.

Applesauce

Apples got down to $0.77/pound, so we bought 24 pounds and made applesauce.

First step, if you're going to be processing apples on a regular basis, a peeler/corer/slicer is a worthy investment. We found ours at the grocery store for about $12 one year.

Prepare your jars. For every 12 pounds of apples you will get about 4 quarts or 8 pints of applesauce.

Next, wash, peel and core the apples. Since our handy gadget slices them also, we quarter the apple and are left with smallish chunks.




Treat the apples to prevent discoloring. I mix 1/2 cup of lemon juice with 8 cups of water to do this. Josh and Sierra do the peeling/coring and I quarter the apples and cut out any little pieces of core that might have been left behind and dump the pieces in the lemon juice/water.

Drain the apples and put in a large pot with enough water to prevent sticking. I find using my hands to scoop the apples out of the lemon water and just giving them a quick shake leaves enough water to not have to worry about adding any.


Cook apples over medium to medium-high heat until soft, stirring frequently to prevent sticking.

Working in batches, scoop the apples into a food processor and process to desired smoothness.



Add 4 tablespoons lemon juice (per 12 pounds of apples) and reheat the applesauce to boiling (be careful, it'll sputter and splatter). If you want, you can add some sugar and/or spices at this stage. We used gala apples, so we didn't add sugar. We did make some of it spiced though--just mix up to 4tsp of ground spices per 12 pounds of apples (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice). Your spices are less likely to clump if you mix them in with a little bit of sugar before adding to the applesauce(1/4 cup should do it).


Ladle the hot applesauce into hot jars leaving 1/2 inch head space, put on your lids and bands (see link above about preparing jars).

Process by boiling water bath for 20 minutes (for pints and quarts)