Friends, Firehouse and Fiesta

On Saturday, our family drove a couple hours north to visit some friends.

Laura and I have been friends since I was 14 and she was 15; we’ve seen each other through high school drama and written letters to each other for years ( yes, with real paper and everything!), been in each other’s weddings and now are enjoying the times when our families can get together!  We get some girl time, the hubbys can hang out and Laura’s kids Zeb and Lydia can play and become friends with Ethan and Eliana. I feel so blessed to have such a sister-friend; God has truly given me a wonderful gift in her.

A picture of Me (left) and Laura (right) from 1999.
We were 15 and 16.

Aah! 1999 seems so long ago! Oh wait. It was. hee hee. 🙂

Anyway…

So, the drive north is BEAUTIFUL; with sweeping fields,

foggy foothills,

gorgeous farms

and of course on a clear day like Saturday; Mt. Baker.

Someday I’d love to actually go up on the mountain and explore. That would be fun! Seriously, ya’ll. It feels like you’re in a movie or something. The majesty just blows you away.

Anyway, we visited at the house and the kids caught chickens and ran around and played (they really miss our chickens!), then we went to the beach and found some cool creatures.

It was COLD so we only stayed for a few minutes, until our fingers and noses were feeling numb and the wind was blowing straight through our coats to chill us to the bone.

Then…

We went to the fire station.

Laura’s adventurous hubby Bryan is a volunteer fireman and was kind enough to show us around and let the kids wear his gear.  Ethan (my 5 year old) LOVES firemen and fire trucks and is convinced he is a fireman and will live in a fire house someday, so this was a big deal for E. 🙂

Bryan telling Zeb and Ethan about the tools firemen use.

He had SO much fun! The other kids did too; it was pretty cool even for us adults, I must admit. I’ve never seen the inside of a fire station, where the firemen hang out and watch tv and cook and sleep, so this was neat.

The inside of the station honestly reminded me of a small college dorm…with little rooms with a simple twin bed and a computer in each bedroom, then a large common room with a tv and kitchen. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a fireman pole to slide down. I guess they don’t do that anymore?
And the alarm for a fire isn’t super loud, like in the movies. It’s more of a tone that chimes throughout the station.

Ethan looks pretty happy here. 🙂

Bryan holding Eliana and Lydia

When we’d toured the entire station, played in the trucks, talked about fire safety and not to be afraid of a fireman if you see him in your house and saw all of the fire hoses, we went back to hang out at Bryan and Laura’s for a while, then they surprised us by taking us out to dinner at a delicious Mexican restaurant. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten out with another family with kids- it went fairly well, considering there were 4 pretty bouncy kiddos. 🙂 And did I mention it was delicious? Usually when we eat out for Mexican, I just wish I’d stayed home and cooked our own food because ours is better, but this was really good. Maybe we just usually eat a crappy Mexican restaurants.

So that was our trip! It was so much fun, such a relaxing Saturday with dear friends.  I hope you had a great weekend!

Lydia and Eliana had so much fun giggling together! They were hilarious.

Christmas Tree Hunting

On Sunday, we went on an adventure that I’ve been waiting for since I realized we were moving back to Washington with my parents: The Christmas Tree Hunt.

For as far back as I can remember every year we’ve bundled up in coats and hats and gloves and wool and gone traipsing around out in the woods, getting soaked with the drizzle that is inevitably falling from the sky, looking for that perfect Christmas tree.

My brother, Scotty and Eliana

Handsome Hubby

Now, a wild-harvested Christmas tree looks nothing like the big, bushy trees you find in the local tree lot but they have their own Charlie-Brown charm to them. The fun of debating over which tree to saw down and which one will actually fit inside the house far outweighs the fact that you will indeed get cold and wet. Those sneaky trees always look smaller out in the woods, then you get the tree home and realize…it’s WAY too tall. That’s when you break out the saw.  ; )

Daddy with the tree!

We found the perfect tree fairly quickly and came back home to make spiced apple cider and warm up in front of the wood stove. Then, after realizing that we had little rodent intruders in the attic that chewed through every single strand of lights that we have, Mom and Dad had to make a trip to the hardware store. Darn mice.

We finally got the tree up and decorated, just in time for the lights to sparkle through the window out into the night.
There’s something so beautiful and full of wonder about Christmas trees, don’t you think? I just love sitting and looking at the lights and the ornaments reflecting the pretty colors, it’s so nice and relaxing and cozy.

I hope you’re having fun getting ready for Christmas! We sure are. 🙂

Pressing Cider

It’s halfway through November already, and getting cold and dreary and decidedly fall/winterish around here.

We had a few hard frosts and it even hailed one day. No snow yet, but it sure is getting cold!

On Saturday, my Great Uncle Gaylord invited us up (he lives next door) to have a cider pressing party and boy was it fun! And COLD! I never knew apple cider could be so cold and delicious!

None of us had really pressed cider before (besides Uncle Gaylord and my Dad) so we all got to learn how.

First, you get some apples.

These are from Gaylord’s apple trees. They’re “organic” in that they don’t have pesticides used on them. 🙂

From left to right: Ellie, Dad, Ethan, Uncle Gaylord and my youngest brother Scotty

Dad helping Ethan turn the crank on the press

Uncle Gaylord cracking jokes. 🙂

You put apples into the hopper of the cider press and turn the wheel and it shreds up the apples into a kind of pulpy mess. That falls down into a pressing crate thingy (see how much I know about cider pressing?) and when it’s full you slide it over to the press. You put a lid on the pressing crate and then turn the crank to exert pressure onto the crate, which squeezes the cider out into a canning pot.

Tim taking a turn at pressing the cider

Scotty bein’ himself. 😉

Then, when the pot is full, you move it over to the straining table and pour it through a strainer. (Or a clean pillowcase, which is what we used.) Squeeze the juice out of the pillowcase and then ladle it into jugs ( a funnel is very helpful at this point!) and Bam! you have apple cider. 

We just leave it raw, we don’t pasteurize it or anything, although you have to freeze it if you want it to stay good because it will turn and start fermenting in about 5 days if you don’t freeze or can the extra.

What did we do with the leftover smashed apples? Feed it to the cows, of course!
Once the cider was pressed out of the apple bits, we took the pressing crate over and pounded the top out of it, letting the apples fall into a wheelbarrow.

My brother, Brian, pounding out the lid and the apple bits into the wheelbarrow

 Then we dumped the apple bits in the cow field and let the girls have a nice little treat. The kids loved having the cows so close! The cows weren’t as excited as the kids. 😉

The cider is SO good! We drank it right as it was dripping out of the pressing crate, into our cups and it was cold and sweet and delicious. 

The weather was frigid too- somewhere in the upper 30’s so we had to keep running inside and warming our hands at the woodstove so our fingers wouldn’t get so cold they didn’t work.  Mine actually got so cold they couldn’t bend at one point, so I had to take a break. Squeezing that cider through the pillowcase was a chilly job!

We ended up getting around 12 gallons of  cider, which is more than we expected. We’ve been enjoying it immensely- warm, cold, putting it in muffins and bread and using it in gravy.  We’re saving some for Thanksgiving too, to drink in fancy cups with dinner. 🙂

I’ll be back tomorrow and Saturday with some recipes – it’s been a while since I posted any so I’m giving you two- Squash Enchiladas and then Apple Cider Pumpkin Spice muffins!
Have a fabulous Thursday.

A Trip to the Mountains

A few days ago my parents had to go over the mountains to pick some elk meat that my dad had dropped by the processor after getting his elk last month, and the kids and I got to go along. We’d been cooped up in the house for a few days and were starting to go a little stir crazy, so this was the perfect opportunity to get out of the house and have a good time.

On the ferry deck

                                                                                 

                 

The view from the ferry towards Everett

Ellie looking carefully down at the water

The tallest mountains had a dusting of snow on them. 🙂

We had so much fun!
We picked up the elk meat at Owen’s Brother’s, then went and visited Teanaway, which is a valley just over the ridge from Cle Elum. It’s gorgeous, and I grew up camping there with my family nearly every year.

There are a bunch of ranches with cute farmhouses and pretty barns, gorgeous views of the mountains and  more often than not you will find wild turkeys, deer or elk grazing in the meadows along with horses or cows.

At the campground we got out and explored and it was so much fun to see the kids have fun running around playing where I spent so many fall days riding bikes, climbing trees and swimming in the river.

The fall leaves were just gorgeous!!

Teanaway River

More pretty yellow leaves

The kids found a bouncy log and had fun playing on it

We walked across this log to get to the other side of the river.  The kids thought that was SO cool! I thought it was a little scary, but still cool.

This is “The Shoe Tree”. For whatever reason, people have been putting shoes on this tree for probably 20 years.  It’s just a big tree at one of the campsites that’s become a novelty. 🙂

We headed for home as the sun sank behind the hills, looking forward to next spring when it’s warm enough to go camping again and to experience the beauty and adventure Teanaway has to offer. 🙂

Skinning A Deer

Warning: This post contains graphic, kind of gruesome images. 
If you don’t want to see raw meat or blood or a deer carcass…don’t read this.



For as long as I can remember, my Dad has been a hunter. He hunts elk and deer every year and is truly respectful of God’s creation and a lover of the outdoors. When I was a kid, we’d all go camping in the mountains for two weeks and my Mom and us kids and my cousins and Aunt would stay in camp during the day while my Dad and Uncle would go across the river and over the ridge up into the wilderness; hunting for the canny, elusive elk. It was awesome.
I remember waking up early in the morning while it was still dark and peeking out of the tent and seeing Dad huddled near the campfire, the smell of woodsmoke and coffee in the air while sparks flew up into the blackness of the sky and the sound of caps from the muzzleloader rifles snapped in the stillness.
I wrapped up in a blanket and sat in a chair near the fire, my breath making a cloud in the frigid frosty morning. I sipped a cup of cocoa to warm up and listened to hunting stories, anticipating the afternoon when Dad would come back to camp with an elk in the back of his truck. Sometimes he did, sometimes he came home empty handed but the experience far outweighed the fact of whether or not he got any meat.

It’s so cool to hand down these memories to my kids, and to see them experience the same things I did that I consider to be almost lost in our current culture of fast food, factory farming and immediate gratification.

My Dad already got an elk this year, up in the mountains about 4 hours from here and its at the processor right now.
He was at work a few days ago out in the woods here on the island and saw some deer up on a hill, and took the opportunity to shoot a nice little doe. During hunting season, what better job could you have than logging in the woods and getting to bring your gun to work so that when you see a deer all you have to do is shoot it? Pretty cool.

Anyway, he shot it and gutted the doe in the woods and brought her home for us.
I’ve grown up helping skin deer, and it was awesome for Tim and the kids to be able to experience and learn how to skin a deer since Tim wants to hunt next year.

These aren’t exactly instructions on how to skin a deer, because I didn’t do the whole thing by myself and am afraid I’d forget something vital to tell you. So this is what I remember about how we skinned this little doe. If you need instructions on how to skin a deer, you can check out Sofya’s great post at The Girl’s Guide to Guns and Butter– she has way more experience than I do, and there’s instructions on how to butcher a deer on there as well. Our deer is still hanging outside, aging and drying out for a few more days before we butcher it.

When she first saw the deer, Ellie said, “Let’s eat it for dinner tonight!”  🙂

The first thing you do when you go to skin a deer is to take the legs off. Make sure you’re using a very sharp knife. You start at the knee, and find the cartilage around it and cut, being careful not to cut the bone or the hair of the deer. This dulls the knife really fast. Also be careful not to cut your fingers.

Once you’ve cut around the outside, bend the knee and cut the rest of the cartilage. Then snap the knee off.

Tim’s first time skinning a deer. He did awesome!

The kids had fun playing with the deer legs. 🙂

Next, cut slits through the hide along the front legs of the deer to the chest,
 so that when you get to that point the skin comes off easier.
Hang the deer by its neck and start skinning from the neck down.
Pull the hide gently away, and cut at the thin white fat between the skin and the meat and the hide just peels away easily. Be careful not to cut too close to the hide, or you’ll cut a hole in it, or too much into the meat. Just go slowly and take your time. There’s no hurry.

Once you get to this point, you can usually pull the hide down and it will just peel off by itself. Grab the edges of the hide and just pull gently, trimming with the knife if needed. Pull it down to the tail, and cut off the tail.

Then, continue pulling the hide down, using your knife if needed to help it along, until the hide comes off the legs. If you want to save the hide to tan it you can, or you can just bury it deep in a hole with the head and legs so the coyotes don’t get it.

Now to the kind of gruesome part.
If you shot the deer with a gun and not a bow, you’ll more than likely have some bloodshot meat. This is where the bullet went in and came out. You need to cut out all of that icky, bloody meat so the blood doesn’t seep down into the meat and ruin it.

Once it’s all cut out, cut down the breastbone with either a hacksaw or a knife, depending on how big your deer is and how sharp your hunting knives are. Since this was a young doe, Dad just used his knife.

Then you can go ahead and turn the deer upside down to finish drying out- thread a rope between it’s tendons on the back legs and tie them up.

 Then untie the head and let it hang down towards the ground.  This is what the rope looks like threaded through the tendons.

Lastly, cut off the head. Start with a knife and go around the neck until you get to the spine, then use a hacksaw to get through the bone.

The kids thought the head was really cool, especially since they got to touch the deer’s eye and pet its fur.

And that, my friends, is how you skin a deer.

We hung the deer inside one of our shipping containers we use for storing tools (kinda like a garage) and we’ll leave it there for a week to age, if it stays cold enough.
We’ll be butchering the meat ourselves here in a few days, and I’ll try to do a post on that too.
I hope I didn’t gross anyone out too much! It’s really a fun process, and you appreciate the food more when you know where it comes from and how much work it takes to get it to the edible point. I’m thankful I grew up doing this, and thankful that my kids will grow up knowing how to skin a deer and make it into food for their future families too. 🙂

Life In Washington

We’ve now been in Washington for not quite a week and it already feels like home.
It might help that it was my home for 18 years, but even the rest of my family is settling right in as if we’ve always been here.
Of course, we still have moments of adjusting- the coolness of the nights chills us all to the bone, even though it only is in the 50’s and we miss our Tennessee friends. (Hi, friends! We love you!!)
We’ve yet to make any new friends, but I know we will at some point.

But overall, life is good.
Tim has been able to work several days with my brother Scott’s boss doing concrete and replacing broken pipes, digging holes, that kind of work. Even though it’s only part time and probably temporary, we’re incredibly thankful.
The kids have been playing outside and roasting hot dogs over a huge fire and digging in the dirt pit and helping Tim split wood to deliver to someone. (Another odd job to earn some money!)
God is taking good care of us. 🙂

(Lest you think everything is perfect, Ethan is currently grounded in his room for repeatedly disobeying and hitting his sister. Life is not all sunshine and giggles.)

Here are a few pictures of our beautiful home, and some fun we’ve had since we’ve been here.

Here I am, taking pictures of clotheslines again..but isn’t this one pretty? My daddy made it.

A water pump in the back yard. It still works.

My mom’s gorgeous hydrangeas

Itailan Prunes- what could be fresher than just picking them off the tree? Organic at it’s finest.

Ethan watching the cows next door.

Ellie going on a walk down the driveway

Blackberries from the bushes right down the driveway. I made blackberry cobbler with them Yum!

My awesome Daddy, workin’ on the bulldozer.

My sweet Mom, picking blackberries with me

My Parent’s house- and now our’s too!

Tim and Ellie splitting wood together

Ellie’s first time playing in the Puget Sound. She loved it!

Playing at Double Bluff- so much fun!

Cookin’ hamburgers with Poppa Don

Cows!!

What our mornings look like around here.

On The Road..

Hello from St. Louis!
Our family is moving across the country from Tennessee to Washington State- this is our first leg of the journey.
My brother and sister in law live in St. Louis, so we stopped for a few days to see them.
Today we hit up the zoo- it’s free and its next to this beautiful park called Forest Park.
I really wish we had more time to explore the Science Museum and the Art Museum there as well, they look amazing!!
Maybe next time.

Here are a few pictures from our trip today:

How beautiful is this?? It doesn’t even look real, but it is. 🙂

The penguin exhibit was amazing. I got splashed by a penguin swimming by me!

A sweet Father-Daughter moment

Grizzly Bear- he was HUGE.

Andean Bears, just chillin’

A cute camel

Lions catnapping in the sun.

Ethan catching a bug on the sidewalk while we were waiting for the bus to come so we could get back to our car. 🙂

We had a nice day. Tomorrow we’re back on the road- hopefully getting as far as northern Iowa.
I’ll probably not get to post until at least Saturday, so have a good week and if you think of us, keep us in your prayers- that we’ll have safe travels. 🙂
Thanks!

An exciting day!

Guess what happened today??

We didn’t win the publisher’s clearing house $5,000 a week for life prize (I know, that’s what you thought it was, right??) . 😉
We aren’t pregnant.
We went running this morning around Patriot Lake at Shelby Farms, and it was great.
We said farewell to some sweet friends who are moving back near where their families are. Best wishes and lots of love to them.

Also….(and this is the exciting part!!)

We got our first chicken egg!!!!!

I seriously almost burst into tears when Ethan brought it to me, his eyes shining with a huge grin on his adorable face.

It was freckled, tiny, and beautiful.

Also it was delicious.

We fried it right up in some butter (because E dropped the egg and cracked the shell) and oh. my. gracious me.

It was DELICIOUS.

Bright orange yolk full of gorgeous nutrients…MM!
If you’ve never had a free-range mostly grass fed chicken egg, you have to try one. Right now.
You’ll never want to buy eggs from the store again!

I’m so excited to see the rest of our chickens start laying, it’s going to be fun!
In the meantime, does anyone have advice about actually getting your hens to lay eggs IN the nesting box?

Ethan found ours in the yard, right by the back fence where the hens like to hang out and take dust baths but I’d really rather them lay eggs in the nesting boxes. So if you know, please tell me!!
I read something about keeping the hens in the coop til mid morning because that’s when they usually lay?? Does that work?
I don’t know.
I suppose only time will tell. 🙂

Also tonight, we pulled up our dead squash plants and found these cute little snakes under the dirt.

We all held then and visited with them for a minute, then we let them go back to their home.

Eliana laughed and said the snake was licking her when she saw it’s little tongue flicking in and out. 🙂

That’s all for tonight.

I’ll be back in a few days with a sewing project: how to renew your cloth shoes (aka knock-off TOMS because I can’t afford to pay that much for shoes) by re-upholstering them. Fun!

Summer Fun

Hi!
I know I haven’t been writing on here as often lately, and it’s because we’ve been having too much fun enjoying the summertime to spend it all on the computer. (Not a bad thing at all, I might add!)

My son, Ethan; turned 5 on Tuesday.
I feel like I’m finally a “real” mom! I don’t know why but in my mind, I’ve crossed over the threshold of “newbie” mom into “seasoned” mom now that I have a “big” 5 year old. 🙂 I guess it’s because we’ve survived the baby and toddler years! Not that the school years are easier, they just are different. More sleep. Hopefully.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of his birthday party:

E and his construction birthday cake

Dinner time!

“A Monster truck!!”

Some best friends: brothers Owen, Ehren and of course, our Eliana

Ethan’s first look at his Buzz Lightyear. (Thanks, Nana!!)

Owen, Ehren , Ethan and Eden

Feeling blessed. 🙂

And here are a few pictures of other things we’ve been doing this summer:

E got a slip n slide for his birthday too- they play on it almost every morning.

Ellie LOVES it-last year she was terrified of water, so I’m thankful she likes it now. 🙂

Baking Soda +vinegar+food coloring=awesome fizzy fun! Seriously. The kids will sit for about an hour and dump drops of colored vinegar onto plates of baking soda. They did it til we ran out of vinegar this morning. It’s pretty cool! Great “it’s too hot to be outside” activity.

I love Eliana’s face here. 🙂

Ethan found a little tiny snake outside in the bricks this morning! Sorry that picture was blurry, my camera was having trouble focusing on the right thing. 🙂

It wasn’t any bigger than a worm, in fact that’s what I thought it was til I saw it’s head with little eyes and it’s cute little tongue.

We’ve been having a great summer so far.

Around here, school starts on August 6th, so summer is almost over!  I can’t believe it!

Of course, we’re homeschooling Ethan, so we can somewhat set our own schedule.  We’ll be starting school a little bit later, then going later next spring than the city schools do.
I’m excited and kind of scared to start homeschooling him, but I know that my mom did a great job homeschooling us, so as long as I stick with the program, my kids should turn out just fine! 🙂

I hope you all enjoy what is left of your summertime!
See you tomorrow with Food Waste Friday – I have a somewhat embarrassing confession to make on that subject.