21 inches.....GACK!!!

21 inches was the "official" total for the Livermore Falls area. I would like to see what measuring stick they used, because we had 24 inches in some areas!

Colored snow

4 spray bottles - $2.00
4 bottles of food coloring - $5.00
Writing things in the snow....priceless

Iced Tea Cupcakes with Lemon Icing

So here it is Sunday with a horrible snow-storm coming on, and what do I have a hankerin' for? Iced Tea. Namely, Grammie's Sweet summer tea with lots of lemon. I get ready to brew it up and think, "Wait a minute! Didn't I see a recipe for Iced Tea cupcakes on the internet?" I did! So I printed out the recipe and tried it out. The results were...um...rather unspectacular. The lemon icing was fabulous! But the cupcakes were rather...um...subtle. I think that next time instead of using tea bags I will use unsweetened instant tea mix. They are dense little cakes to. Not cupcake like, more muffin-like. But it was a neat experiment.

New arrivals just flew in

Saturday Nathan and Chris went over to Oma's to roof rake the barn and pick up crickets for the various cold-blooded creatures that reside in Amelia's room. He flew in with a little something extra. In fact, TWO little something extras! Presenting the newest additions to the Pillsury menagerie...Edwinna and Rocky (who was originally Optimus). Rocky is the blue one and Edwinna is the yellow-looking one (she is actually green with yellow wings). This picture was taken on the light below the celing fan in the living room. They are both very sweet as long as you don't try to pick them up to put them back in their cages. Luckily they don't have super-sharp beaks, or Rocky would have put a serious hurting on me this afternoon. Rocky seems to be much easier to train, as he is already stepping up onto your finger most of the time. Edwinna (whose wings are NOT clipped) prefers to fly frantically about and pretend that she doesn't know what the heck it is that you want. Don't let her fool you...she knows, she just doesn't care.

Weekend Treat

I made Farmhouse Potato Bread this weekend. I couldn't resist adding some rosemary and garlic, because in my estimation, rosemary and garlic make everything better! I skipped using the breadmaker to knead and raise the dough because it was too small, so I wound up spending a lot of time in the kitchen on Sunday. 8 hours to be exact. But the individual loaves were a big hit! This recipe is a keeper! I also made gingerbread waffles and cookies and cream cupcakes. Top all of that with Chris' amazing turkey soup and we had a meal to remember! Cady came over in the afternoon and had fun with Nathan playing with his train set. One of their favorite things to do was figuring out where the street signs should go!
Andi also visited, but she spent more time looking out the window and protecting us from the people who were passing by on the street then hanging out with us.

Dinner Experiment

I got a bread maker from a friend at work and today was my first attempt at making bread with it. I only used it to mix and knead the bread, because I wanted to make bread bowls for soup. Normally you would make bread bowls with sourdough, but I don't have any sourdough starter (and after looking up how to make it on the internet...yikes!), so I just made a very simple french bread, turned out the dough and separated it and made 4 bread balls. We were going to have clam chowder in them, but Mia does not like it, so we settled on tomato soup to which I added a little basil. The we all inhaled it. The kids thought the bowls were really neat! I was paranoid about them leaking, so I put them in regular bowls (good thing, mine and Nathan's leaked). Here is a shot of mine...

Weekend Breakfasts

So here it is...the kids favorite so far...chocolate waffles with chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. It is a little sweet for me. Last weekend we had plain waffles flavored with orange instead of vanilla....even with chocolate chips the kids weren't big fans. I, personally, LOVED THEM!!!! The only thing that I don't love about the waffle breakfast - the clean up. Can you comprehend how difficult it is to clean a waffle-maker? Why do they not make them with removable irons? That would make life so much easier! (Aha! I think that I will write to them right now!) Anyway, out of 18 waffles, this was the only one that didn't get eaten. Here's a little word problem for you...If Chris ate 5 waffles and Mia ate 3 and Amy ate 3 and there is one waffle left over, how many waffles did Nathan eat? If my math is correct...the 7 year old ate 6 waffles. 6!!! The evidence is still all over his face (and in his ears....how did he get chocolate chips in his ears....don't ask me, because I really didn't want to know the answer to that question!)

Wintertime Fun

So it got up to a whopping 38 degrees today, and I actually found myself saying, "Wow! It's warm!". Can you believe that? Thinking that 38 degrees was warm??? But you have to realize that for the first time in almost 2 weeks, it was above freezing when I went out to warm up my truck at 6:30 am for the drive to work! I hate to say this, but sometimes I really miss California weather! So, on that vein, here are some more pictures of the kids having fun this past weekend (when the temperatures were struggling to reach the teens).

The reason for coming back to Maine

My main (maine..hehe) reason to coming back to Maine....

Winter videos

Here are some videos of the kids snow tunnel that they made out front...

California Images

Here are some pictures I took when Pilar and I went hiking in Carmel Valley about 3 years ago.

Bird footprints in the snow

Just darn cute...

A little bragging

So, when I lived in Montery, CA, the ship used as the Black Pearl in Disney's The Pirates of the Carribean movies came into port. We didn't hear about it until late and it was sailing out, but here is a picture of it.....

Family Portrait

Pictures taken of all of us at Amelia's 10th birthday party at Grammie and Pop Princes'.

Halloween '08

Here are some pics of the kids from Halloween...can you tell they were having fun?

Amelia's Birthday

Amelia had a great birthday at Grammie and Pop's. We all had fun hanging out and playing with the balloons and party hats that Grammie bought. Amelia especially loved her Turtle cupcake cake!

The begining

So, I have tried doing blogs before....the attempt to buy a house, as some of you may remember. This one will be exclusively for family stuff...photos and keeping everyone updated with our day-to-day growings-on. I'm posting a few photos that you may or may not have seen, and some videos of the fun we have been having.