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Showing posts from October, 2015

Halloween and birthday!

For the 4th and 5th parts of our 5-in-1 holiday, we celebrated Halloween and Allen's birthday. Because the kids are soooo grown up, they are happy with going to the store the next day for 50% off candy, so no more dressing up. Except Lizzy decided the cats needed costumes anyway! They were super cute, but not super happy. Really not happy.  Really, really not.  But they still wanted to make a birthday card for Allen, with some help from Lizzy.  And the kids prepared a big breakfast.  And he got a new trail cam from Josh, which he's been needing for his tree stand since his last one died.  So a pretty fun day, except for the cats.

Adoption Day!

We celebrated 3-out-of-5 of our 5-in-1 holiday a day early today. Tomorrow we'll finish up with Allen's birthday and Halloween. But today we celebrated the adoption anniversaries for Matt and Lizzy (9 years) and Josh (14 years).  We went to a fun restaurant for burgers, fries, and milk shakes. Photobomb by Allen. Then we went to Branson Landing to see the fountains (water, fire, light, and music show by the same producers of the Bellagio fountains - which we saw when we hit Vegas in 2010 ).  The boys hit Bass Pro while Lizzy shopped for as long as I could keep up with her.  A yucky, rainy, but fun day!

Fall, football, hunting, and silly cats

Fall sure is pretty on the mountain. Fall also means Buckeyes games and buckeye fudge!  And deer processing, lots of deer processing. Today Josh just decided to learn to tan hides. He's tried a few techniques and is getting pretty good. Amazing what you can find on YouTube.  The cats enjoy "helping" with deer processing too. I won't show you all of that, but you can see them trying to get a good view of the happenings.  Chewie really, really likes to copy his mama. It's just strange sometimes how much.  

Instant Pot Layered Enchilada Casserole

We've been experimenting with enjoying our new Instant Pot pressure cooker and I'll be sharing more about this great time and space saver soon!  So far, we've made pulled BBQ chicken, chicken legs, rabbit, and green beans.  Fast, easy, and only one pot to clean. Tonight we tried Layered Enchilada Casserole and we loved it. Dinner in FIVE minutes. It's crazy. I just used cooked, shredded rabbit meat I had on hand (I mean, who doesn't keep that on hand?) instead of ground beef. And I used flour tortillas instead of corn, because yuck. And I only had cheddar cheese and dried cilantro and I didn't have black olives... come on people, improvising is necessary yummy. There's definitely a learning curve to cooking with the Instant Pot (or any pressure cooker), but learning is what I love to do. By trade, I'm a scientific researcher and by life, I have weird things to cook, so now I'm on a mission to get all our meals pressure cookerized . Make all

Sleepy kitten

We are constantly "losing" the cats, but since they're supposed to be working barn cats and not pets, we should stop looking! But they always turn up, generally asleep, and usually somewhere weird. Lately it seems to be in the greenhouse. The other night, they were both piled in a chair outside on top of a WWII gas mask. No idea on that one. No photo either. Since it was late, and dark, I was busy assuming some snake was waiting to kill me, so I was focused on that. There wasn't one, just fyi. This is how we found Chewie in the greenhouse today.

The hunter's deer stand

Allen built one deer stand in a tree down in the woods, that I figured out I could spot with my zoom lens. The tree is downhill, so the top is above the trees behind our goat/chicken pen. He's right in the middle. See him?  Oops, I'm busted! He's not a fan. :) 

Happy birthday Jack

Jack is now 8! We celebrated with cake, but didn't give him any. :)  Jack has definitely made our lives more challenging interesting fun!