Culinary Adventures with the Kings

In today's installment we have two options for your culinary excitement.
1. If your resident cook is feeling a bit lazy you may choose to eat out on a Holiday weekend. This can be an exciting and comical event if you follow these instructions. Take your four small children who rarely go out to eat and do not know how to act at a restaurant. {We chose a small chinese restaurant.} If you are lucky you will start out as the only customers in the place and will be able to let your two year old run over to watch the fish while waiting. Place your order while your kids continuosly ask "do i like that?" Once your food arrives at the table put some on your two-year-old's plate. He should exclaim loudly "I don't want this! It's yucky!!!" for the restaurant staff and newly arrived guests to hear. Let him eat the plain rice instead. It will get everywhere - on the floor, the table, his chair, and even smashed into the knees of his pants when he kneels in it to reach the table. If all goes according to plan your baby will now be climbing out of his highchair and onto the table while your two-year old hides in the window curtains and your 5 and 7 year old beg for more fortune cookies. While this is happening try to be charming as you meet husbands co-workers at the next table. Now, two-year-old should catch the bottom of the 12 foot store front curtains under his feet and pull the whole thing down. Rod and all. With flair. As you turn red {because now there are several others families in the restaurant} and try to gather everyone nicely husband will try to pick up the rice on the floor. He won't have to get it all though because the manager lady will come over and tell him {in a quaint chinese accent} "No, no don't do that. . . That is your wife's job!" Pay a generous tip and leave as quickly as you can.

2. If the cook is feeling more ambitious attempt an Easter feast complete with Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, and some vegetable that that healthy easter bunny left for your kids to find. Except forget to put out the frozen roll dough before church so no rolls. Over boil the potatoes so they are lumpy and starchy. Burn the boiling turkey giblets {because you are getting everyone dressed} so your house will have a lovely burnt smell all day. Now for the gravy. Painstakingly extract the juice from the hot, heavy roasting pan. Remember everything your dad taught you about thickening gravy . . . it still won't work. Now season gently. Shake in some salt then take your newly refilled pepper shaker and start shaking. Make sure the lid is not screwed on correctly. Dump the entire contents into the pot. {Next exclaim "Blast! Blast!" and two-year-old will come running to see "what blasted off!?!"} Strain out as much pepper as you can. Find the lid in the bottom. When you eat it your sinuses will be thoroughly cleared out.

Bon Apetit!

The Boys

At our house we have "the parents" (affectionately or unaffectionately known as Mom and Dad), "the kids" (Morgan and Emma), and "the boys" (Talmage and Peter). It has been so fun lately to see these two boys having fun together. Peter is starting to really have fun playing with Talmage. One of his favorite games is actually to try to steal Talmage's binky when he is going to bed or has just woken up. Peter will crawl over to Talmage, pluck his binky out of his mouth and then look at it and smack his lips while Talmage laughs! Talmage enjoys giving Peter hugs and saying "Petey" with a wry smile, or "Sorry-I-yuv-you" if he has made Peter cry.

Recently Peter has developed a really good smile. He kind of throws his head back, closes his eyes most of the way, and gives a wide, toothy grin. Then he will throw his head forward again and his somewhat long hair will swing wildly around his head.

This morning we caught Peter learning how to climb up onto Talmage's bed. Here's the video we took of them having fun together. Enjoy! (Warning: this movie has a sad ending.)

Rappelling Adventure

Several weeks ago I got to help out with the Scouts by taking them rappelling at the nearby state park which has a cliff that's about 35-40 feet high. It was pretty fun for me and made me remember being the Scoutmaster when we were still in Provo. However, even more fun was that Leslie and the kids met me afterwards and we had a family rappelling activity!

When we first moved here we went rappelling with some friends and I managed to convince Morgan to try it. This time we got everybody down except for Peter (he'll have to wait until he's a little older). And no, I'm not forgetting about Talmage - he went down too! Of course everybody had a belay rope that I worked from the top, and I rigged up a chest harness for the kids, just in case they decided to get a little crazy and tip upside down.

This time I let Morgan control his descent. He used a rack and did quite well. Emma was a little scared since she had never done it before, but she also did great! She was so brave and once she was over the edge she got the hang of it pretty quickly. When it came to Talmage's turn, he just wriggled right over the edge of the cliff like there was no 40 foot drop below him. He kept asking Leslie if she was seeing him coming down. He looks pretty cute in a harness!

Here's a video of Morgan, Emma, and Talmage going down. It's not great quality (it's just from our phone), and some of it reminds me of when my dad tried to film my wrestling matches in high school (you could never see much of the match because he was mostly busy cheering me on - although in Leslie's defense, she was holding a baby while filming):

Sadly, I couldn't take a video while belaying and we didn't want to have one of the kids try doing it, so we only have a picture of the most beautiful person to jump off the cliff :)

You may wonder how we accomplished this amazing feet with four kids and no other adults. At the top of the cliff is a little picnic area. Before Leslie went down we got out the food and helped the kids to start eating lunch. We put Peter in his car seat and asked Emma to feed him an oyster cracker every few seconds. We were most worried about Talmage, so we got a little creative (you have to click on this picture to see it bigger):

But, it didn't work out so well. Even the extra small harness was still easy for him to slip out of. I didn't know what he was doing until Leslie was halfway down the cliff and Talmage showed up next to me to see how she was doing! I quickly yelled for Morgan to help keep him by the picnic table. Luckily, that worked.

Well, our blog post wouldn't be complete without a picture of the rigging master. He may be too small to go down the cliff, but's he's a master of knots (usually tying us into knots, but hey).

Just some pictures of the kids

Just thought some of you might want to see what our kids look like these days. And I promise, not a lot of words this time.
The first one is for my sister - see Katie, boys can look cute in matching outfits too.

 

Two of Emma reading to the boys because it was just too darn cute! That is a pretty typical Peter smile/smirk.

 

 

Morgan and Talmage in their handsome new Sunday clothes.

 

And that's all folks. Hope you are having a fabulous February.

WEB 2.0

And just in case you didn't know, WEB stands for Weather Extremes in Bartlesville. Just as we were recovering from the huge snowstorm we had a week and a half ago, we got another one last Tuesday night. The forecast called for a good amount of snow, probably around 6 inches. Somehow, though, we got lucky enough to be in about a 30 mile wide band of northeastern Oklahoma and Arkansas that got a whole lot more. We woke up to another 14" of snow on the ground, and another day off of work and school. The kids had the rest of the week off, but I had to go back to work on Thursday.

Speaking of Thursday, you may have heard about Bartlesville on the news (on YOUR news). Here's a graphic I stole from weather.com's main site on Thursday:

Yes, that's a negative in front of the 28 there. The temperature at 7:30 AM in other locations around the globe usually thought of as being cold were

Anchorage, Alaska, 30
Helsinki, Finland, 16
Oslo, Norway, 27
Reykjavik, Iceland, 39

But, we're having a hard time guessing how long the huge pile of snow in our front yard will last because of this forecast:

Yes, that's a big hot 75 on Thursday. And in case you're not as good at math as Morgan is, that is over a 100 degree temperature swing in a week (and also remember that we had two days over 70 the week before the first big storm). With the inclement weather and our trip to Utah, we figured out that the kids have only had 15 days of school this year!

Will Rogers is famously quoted as saying, "If you don't like the weather in Oklahoma, wait 15 minutes and it will change."

Blizzard in Bville

You probably know about or experienced the big storm that dumped over a foot of snow along a 2000+ mile swath of the U.S. from Oklahoma to Chicago and New York. We thought we’d share a little about our experiences here in Bartlesville.

Last Saturday the high was over 70 degrees. We knew the weather was supposed to turn colder but we hadn’t really been paying attention to the news until Sunday evening when we realized that we were under a Winter Storm Warning starting on Monday and extending through Tuesday evening. The kids went to school and I went to work on Monday. I checked the weather a couple of times and then called Leslie to tell her that the Winter Storm Warning had been canceled… in favor of a Blizzard Warning. The kids never went to school again (at least for the rest of the week)!

There still wasn’t much to see when we went to bed on Monday night, but when we woke up on Tuesday morning it looked like this:

 

Needless to say, I got the day off of work. The kids and I decided to go outside and have some fun. I was excited to use our snowshoes again (they have been sitting in our garage for the last two and a half years feeling lonely and unloved).

 

After we came back in we kept watching the snow fall outside. Finally it stopped late in the afternoon. Official reports said we got 16-18 inches of snow. It looked pretty neat outside.

 

I started thinking that we could make a quinzee (a.k.a. snow cave made from a pile of snow rather than a snow drift). That is probably not something that we will have the opportunity to do often while living here. We took almost all of the snow from our driveway and some from our yard to make a huge pile of snow (probably 7 feet tall and 15 feet in diameter). We got some help from friends who live close by.

On Wednesday I went to work for half a day, but I had to walk out to another street to catch a ride with our friend, since our street was still full of deep snow. When I got home, Morgan and I started digging out the quinzee. When it was big enough for me to crawl inside I would fill up our sled with snow and pass it out to Morgan to dump it. After a couple hours we were done. And then we got our crazy idea… we would sleep in it!

After all the other kids were in bed, Morgan and I went out and crawled into our cave. We each used two mummy sleeping bags and took a bottle of hot water to keep our feet warm. We knew we had to be prepared because the forecast was for a low of -14 degrees! We covered the entrance with our trash can lid and then filled up the entrance tunnel with our snow clothes on top of the sled. It was so comfy and warm in our quinzee that I had to remove my hot water bottle and even poke my head out for a while to cool down. I was so proud of Morgan! He did great. He even wanted to sleep in it again the next night (we didn’t). Here are a couple pictures:

 

When we went inside the house in the morning, around 7:15, we checked weather.com to see what the temperature was. At 7:30 AM it was still -11 degrees outside, and for those who don’t believe it, here is a screen shot:



Leslie said I should email pictures to the local news station, so I did it and lo and behold they showed them on the weather segment of the 10 ‘o clock news on Thursday night. We recorded with our video camera to show to Morgan. Here it is (I didn't know that "Nate" was such a difficult name to pronounce correctly):



On Saturday we played outside in the snow again (it’s going to be around for a long time). Here are a few more pictures, including a collage (which you can click on for a larger version), of us in the snow cave. The ceiling is a little lower than it was the first night! Sadly, I was never able to convince Leslie to sleep in it.





Morgan and Emma also had fun collecting icicles and making a “city” in the snow. I think it looks a lot like the place that springs up out of the ice on Superman. Anyway, we hope that if you were also affected by the storm you have been able to have some fun, too!

Journey to Utah

Being alone for Christmas was made much easier because we knew we would be seeing family just a week later.
On Christmas Eve we left early and drove to Utah. Yep, all the way in one long day. It took us 21 hours, through 4 states, and a 72 degree temperature drop (from 58 in Bartlesville, OK to -14 in Green River, UT) but we made it to my parents house just as we welcomed in the New Year. It was so fun to be there. My sister, Katie, drove in from California the same day and it was one big party. My parents have remodeled their house since we were there last. It looks beautiful! We loved every detail of what they did and had so much fun in the new space.
We got to spend some time with the Willises, our good friends in Provo and saw lots of friends when we went to our old ward there. I saw Jill in her new house in my parents' Stake. We visited Nate's brother Jamie and his family. We went bowling and ice-skating and to the planetarium and just generally had a lot of fun.

ice skating for Morgan's early birthday party

hanging out with cousin Lochten

bowling at the U of U

We also got to meet my brother Greg's fiancee. They got engaged a few days after Christmas. It was fun to meet Meisha. We are excited for her to officially join the family in May.
On Wednesday my youngest brother, Clark, returned from his mission in Canada. It was so, so fun to see him. We all went to the airport to meet him. When he left, Talmage was not yet 3 months old and he had never even met Peter. It was fun to introduce our little boys to there very cool, good, handsome uncle. In the next picture, that cute girl in the gray jacket is my youngest sister and Clark's twin. She was so excited to see him. Once she caught a glimpse of him she could not hold back the tears. It was great to see them together again. Also beautiful Karen and Annie and in the back, Greg with his new fiancee.

Waiting. The red, maple leaf t-shirts say, "on the 'Eh' team". They were made by Greg

Cute Clark. I love that kid

On Friday we had our family gift exchange. As our gift theme for this year we chose Moe the Dog in Tropical Paradise as our guide. It is a little picture book about a dog who creates a tropical paradise in his own house to escape the winter drudgery. So everyone gave someone else an imaginary vacation. Holly gave me Moe the Dog in Austria. She gave me salt (Salzburg), a PEZ (invented in Austria), a curtain (think Sound of Music), etc. I gave possibly my favorite gift ever. My mom said something that gave me the idea and I sent Moe and my Dad to "Musical Merryland" I wrapped up a favorite family musical DVD, but what i really gave him was his very own musical. I found a karaoke accompaniment and changed the words of a song from a musical. It was all about my Dad and how great he is. Then i emailed all my siblings to help. When we all got together we practiced anytime both my parents were out of the house (I wanted to surprise my mom too). I assigned speaking parts to a few people so that the talking melded into the song - just like it does in an actual musical. We had a few "technical difficulties" getting the music going but my dad was surprised and it was a lot of fun. Thanks to all my brothers and sisters and in-laws and Nate for going along with my crazy ideas. I included the video of it here. I handed my Mom the video camera and told her "just in case she wanted to use it" but i neglected to show her how to use it or take it off zoom. So the video is pretty much just for the sound. Watch at your own peril. Enjoy.

It was a great trip.