monday music 11.30.09

It's been a busy day preparing for the Scouts' Court of Honor tomorrow night, but I have just enough time to squeeze in a music post...

Anna and the kids have begun putting out our Christmas lights and lawn decorations for family night tonight.

therefore





But I also can't resist posting this one too...



You're welcome.

The Story of Pumpkin

I thought I would chronicle the journey of our pumpkin(s) this week. Mostly in picture form...



The beginnings-


Very cool.

Good size.

Almost completely transmogrified.

Harvested.

Ready to eat!

Yesterday I made pumpkin pie from scratch*. It was pretty cool to take something you've grown, and make it into something else worth eating. We've eaten our corn and squashes, but as corn and squashes. This pie is from our pumpkin. I found it quite rewarding. Hope they taste good.

Here's the link for the recipe/guide I used in the process. I didn't take any pictures of my progress since they would have looked a lot like the website I used anyway.

So yeah. That's my garden post for this week. Have a good Thanksgiving.

*I cheated on the pie crust. It's store bought.

monday music 11.23.09

First thing I want to say is this post is dedicated to Anna...

Today's monday music was easy.

Saturday night Anna and I were fortunate enough to have a date night. We had a coupon for Coco's, and since it's been a long time since we last ate there, that's where we chose to go. As we're waiting for our food to come and enjoying each others company, I hear the beginnings of a song, and I smile.

Anna hears the song and sighs.

It was one of these (can't remember which one exactly)...





Either way, it was Ace of Base.

I don't remember why I like them the way I do. The beat? The melody? Probably the harmonies? All of the above?... Anna does not share my affection for AoB.

As soon as the song became our new topic of conversation, I knew it was going to be my monday music post! I even told Anna it would be, but that doesn't matter, she doesn't care for my monday music posts anyway.

So yeah, there it is, my Ace of Base monday music post.




Bonus Story: We're at Coco's because we have a coupon. Actually, we have a whole flier/advertisement of coupons. About 6 total. The expiration was Sunday, so they were only good for us that night. Anna thought it a shame to waste them, so she tore them all out and handed them to the other people eating in our area. The people seemed genuinely happy to get them, and Anna was happy to spread some holiday cheer.

friday flashback 11.20.09

That's a keeper.

This picture actually has writing on the back. It says, "brothers and sisters getting in on Kevin's photo shoot.", and it's dated (sort of), Aug/Sept 1995.

If my memory serves me right, and it rarely does, Kevin was taking some pictures for his mission paperwork. That's why he's wearing a tie. I believe he was using that yellowy-orangish blanket, draped over a string through the front room, as a backdrop. The blanket made the string droop, so he had to take the pictures while kneeling.

My guess is that dad, who was probably taking the picture, asked/told us kids to all get together for a picture. We might have taken a "nice" picture, but I don't have it if we did. Instead, I have this pretty fun picture of us all.

Someone must have mentioned reacting to something or looking at something to the right because most of us are doing that to some degree. As you can see, Kevin and I are really selling it. Kristi and Keith looked but it wasn't as scary/exciting for them as it was us. Kelly's too busy watching Kevin to look at what's there. Kim is... holding Kristi at finger-gun point? And Kyle is in his pjs looking pretty oblivious to it all.

Yep, that's us. (14 years ago) We're a pretty fun group.

nedrag

Almost forgot about my garden post for today...

The corn is as tall as the zucchini plant now. Nice sunny days have done them some good.


The smaller pumpkin. It looks really cool there days. I'm tempted to pick it in it's current state because it looks so cool. I put my hand in the shot for scale.

Here's the larger pumpkin. It's almost all orange these days. I took this picture kind of upside down so it would look more normal.

So yeah, not a lot of new stuff happening this week. I think the older zucchini plants will finally be pulled out this next week sometime. There's not much growing on them. That will leave 3/4 of that box available for new plants if it's not too late to plant anything else. We'll have to see.

monday music 11.16.09

I remembered that I wanted to put this first song up on my monday music sometime, but I kept forgetting... but not today.

While at the hockey game the other week, they play a ton of music during the game. Technically it's not "during" the game, but anytime the whistle blows, or game play stops, the music plays. The other thing I noticed, was they never play the same song twice- Each song you here, really, you're only hearing anywhere from 10 seconds to a couple minute's worth each time, but it never repeats. Anyway, one of the songs they played seemed really fitting at the time it played, and it was this song...

That's going way back to 1990! It was such a huge hit at the time. It's funny to see the video and all the Vision Street Wear gear. But I remember thinking, even way back then, that the guys in the video seemed a little off in their fashion. But I was an alternative kid back then, so maybe everyone thought that about me, for all I know. Anyhow, it was a fun flashback moment during the game.




But also, I wanted to share this for today's monday music...

For the past couple years, I've picked up some of the young men in my ward that wouldn't be able to make it otherwise. Good kids in a tough situation and environment. Anyway, on Sunday's I try to listen to classical music on the radio as I'm driving (KUSC 91.5 FM). Each Sunday morning on the way to pick them up, there's a Baroque show on, and I find that I'm really liking that period of music, and look forward to listening for the few minutes I get to. I found this fan made compilation that is a good example of the music.




Also on Sunday evenings, when I'm driving to various other evening meetings or picking up the young men for those meetings, there's also a show called From the Top that's usually on. It features young people playing classical pieces, and sharing their story. It's a fun show, and it's unbelievable how talented some of the kids are that perform on that show. I happened to catch some of it last night, and they had a 17 year old percussionist come on and play a piece that was composed for timpani. It sounded amazing, and I had to look for it to see it performed. This clip is not from that show, but it's the piece that was played.



Well, that's an interesting mix of music today. Hope you liked it.

friday flashback 11.13.09

Came across this gem today.

Both sets of Grandparents are in this picture.

Kyle and Kristi are the only siblings not in the picture. That makes me think that this was taken while Kyle was on his mission, and Kristi probably was living away from home. Dawn's not in the picture, so I'm thinking this is from before Kevin and Dawn were married.

Not sure what the occasion would have been, but it's probably 97 or 98. (Or I could be totally wrong.)

Anyway, still a fun picture. I'm guessing it was taken with the timer on the camera, while the camera was on the lawn. I probably set the timer and ran over to the group to be in the shot, and was so thrilled with myself, I threw up the "I'm #1!", victory pose.

If anyone has a better memory about this picture and it's time frame, be sure to leave that info in the comments section.

up up and away

Yesterday was Veteran's day- A big THANK YOU to all armed forces, past a present- so the kids and Anna had the day off from school/work. Our friends, the Bocanegras, have a 12 year old son, Joseph, who needed to do a 5 mile hike with a map and compass for his final requirement to earn his second class rank as a Boy Scout, and invited us to join them as they helped Joe with his requirement. We said yes.

They chose the Vivian Creek trail in Forest Falls. It's 2.5 miles in, so 5 miles round trip- perfect. The trail was recommended by someone in our ward who has taken his young family there, and said it wasn't too bad. Though he did mention it has a thousand-foot incline the second half of the hike in, but that his kids made it without a problem. Sounded fine.

Sure enough, the first mile or so was really easy- mostly flat, then we got to the switch-backs. There was no way Tegan was going to do it, so Anna and I took turns carrying her. I carried her most of the way, and had her on my shoulders during that time. It wasn't too bad.

I think that's our first time having the kids on that kind of trail. I'm talking about the kind that is pretty much strait down on the down side, so that was pretty stressful to have to really keep an eye on where the kids were walking on the path. We had to keep reminding them to stay close to the mountain side.

In all reality, the kids did AWESOME. There was little to no whining and complaining. Liam was like a mountain goat, and was in the front group for most of the time, and even handled the frequent reminders well. Duncan and Jennan did great as well. Duncan was in the front pack a lot, and Jennan kept up really well. But the switch-backs, and the steepness were taking there toll on all of us. Plus, since none of us had been there before, we didn't know how much further we needed to go.

So, at one point, it was a little after 1pm, and we hadn't had lunch yet, so we stopped at an open flat spot and ate our lunches. (Duncan looks like he's pretending to be asleep, but I think he just got caught blinking. Pretty funny.)


You can kind of tell from this shot how high up we are.

While we ate, there were two groups that passed us. One coming up, and one going down. They both pretty much said it wasn't much further, so after we were done, we headed up the trail again.

It really wasn't much farther. If we had known, we would have just kept going and ate at the creek. But now we know for next time... next time?

We let the kids play for about 40 minutes.

Here the adults are ready to start heading back.

There was this cool hollow tree trunk, so the kids took a picture in it.

Here's our posse.

All in all, it was a fun hike. It was challenging without being too strenuous. I think the enjoyment of the hike had a lot to do with the kids doing so well in so many ways. Had they been complaining, and struggling, it would have made it more of a headache.

Side story: While we were eating on the trail, there was a couple with their dogs heading back down the trail. As they were approaching our group, the guy starts saying stuff like, "No way. It really is a small world.", and Anna started saying the same stuff back. Turns out, it was a geologist she met while at that GSA meeting in Portland. He went to UCR, Anna teaches in Riverside. They did some of the same things at GSA, stayed at the same hotel, etc. So it was really funny to them to again run into each other in some random place.

Side Story II: We saw a handful of people with dogs on the trail and at the trail head. While we were almost done, there was a couple with two dogs. One of which was a white bulldog. So very cool. We were missing Angus at the moment.

it's a little different

Garden time...

Here's the big pumpkin continuing to change color. It's taking a little longer than I thought it would, not that there's any deadline.


Here's the smaller pumpkin, looking kind of cool, as it too, begins to change color.

Here's the corn, still doing well. Each week, I've been showing you the corn planted in box 2 because it's bigger than the corn in box 1. This week is no different.

Here are two zucchini I picked this morning. The top one came from the newer plants, and bottom one was picked from the older plants. Not sure why it grew into that odd shape.

Here's what box 1 has been looking like with the tomato and older zucchini plants being all over grown. There plenty of grass in the picture too. I need to be better about keeping the grass down and or out of where the veggies are. I decided to pull the tomato plant, and I did. Then I started to pull out the older zucchini plants...

... But then saw this good looking future zuc., and decided to let it be till that one was ready to pick.

Here's what box one looks like now. I did cut off one "arm" of the zucchini plant before I discovered the newbie, so hopefully that wont spell the end of the entire plant before that last zuc. is picked. Half the box is ready for something else. I guess I better head down the Lowe's and see what they've got.

As I was working in the garden this morning, Jennan and Tegan came out to help me. That didn't last long. Then I saw them swinging together, and snapped this picture. Two cutie faces!

The garden is a little different now, but that's a good thing. Got to keep it going.

monday music 11.09.09

Sometime this last week, actually in the past couple days, this song popped into my head. I'm not really sure why. I remember thinking, "Why did this song just pop into my head?" Right after that, I thought, I might as well make it my selection for monday music, and here we are.

Flesh For Lulu, "Postcards From Paradise"



Flesh For Lulu had a great look in the late 80s. They were right there with The Cure, Siouxsie, etc. as having that alternative image. They never really got as popular as The Cure or Siouxsie, though they did have "I Go Crazy" that was a big part of the movie "Some Kind of Wonderful".

Also, I know there's a real video for "Postcards From Paradise", but it's not up on youtube. Neither is the video for "I Go Crazy". This seems weird to me. I wonder if the studio that owns them doesn't want them available to the public? But why not? I don't get why some studios do that kind of stuff. Anyway...

Happy monday music everyone.

friday flashback 11.06.09

Happy Friday Flashback day everyone. As I usually do, I thumbed through the stack of old photos I have, in search of a Friday Flashback worthy picture to share. With this being the month that we tend to focus on eating... um, I mean gratitude, I came across this picture and it was today's winner.

Anna is awesome, and I'm thankful for her everyday!... but is that a Harvest pie she's holding? As I reminisced about Coco's pies, I noticed I have hairy hair on my head in this picture. We're at my folks' house. There's crystal on the table, and I am also in the "rest from eating" pose... this must be the Thanksgiving before Anna and I got married.





But wait, I thought we ate at my Grandparent's (Foutz) house the Thanksgiving before we got married. I know I've seen a picture ... And I found it..

So now, I'm a little confused. I don't think we had two Thanksgiving dinners that year, at least not on my side of the family. Based on the food in the second picture, it has to be Thanksgiving. We didn't have that kind of food during Christmas at the Foutz's, it would have been tamales and ham.

But because the food in the first picture has already been consumed, we can't know for sure. My new guess is it's a Christmas dinner we've finished in the first picture, and Anna just happened to bring a harvest pie to it. That would make it the Christmas right after we got married. Christmas dinner would explain the crystal, my hair, the fact that we're sitting around the table at my folks' house, etc.

That only makes these pictures about 14 years old... wait, what?!

way more fun

We went to Disneyland last night. We got to the entrance plaza at about 5:45pm. There were no lines at the gate to get into Disneyland. That was a good sign. We walked in, and it felt like we were there during a "special" time, as if it wasn't open to the public. Tons of room to walk around.

Anna was so amazed by it that she took this picture in hopes it would show how empty it was.


We planned on going on Buzz Lightyear first since we haven't been on that ride for so long. The entrance said 5 minutes, but our wait was probably less. After I schooled Anna and the kids on Buzz, I took Duncan, Liam and Jennan on Star Tours. Anna took Tegan on the rocket ride. The wait for Star Tours was probably 8 minutes. Here's a picture of Tegan in line.

Once the 3 older kids and I were done, Anna took them all on the rocket ride. She had to do it in 2 shifts. First she took the girls.

Then she took the boys. The rockets are way too spinny for me.

Jennan put in a request for the carousel early on, so we made sure to make it over there. We walked right on. Not that there's usually a long wait for it on a busy day either, but it was very easy to sit the kids all together.

We made our way to Pirates, where we walked right on. No one in line in front of us, in fact the boat in front of us was empty. There were a handful of people behind us as we walked on, so we didn't get a boat all to ourselves, but we were in the front, so it didn't matter.

Anna took this shot right as we went down a "waterfall" on Pirates. Jennan's expression is awesome. That's a kid having fun.

Then we walked over to the Haunted Mansion where there was no line at all. It was crazy to see the wait time as 3 minutes. We didn't think they put anything under 5 minutes. We walked right on, they didn't have to pack us in with the other people for us to fit. So nice.

Not pictured is our stop at the wishing well. It was so nice to have the room to walk, and not have to keep the pace of the rushing crowd. We could walk at a leisurely pace, and still make it onto what ever rides we wanted. This was one of those off-season visits that make having the passes so worth it. Not sure we'll have another visit like that in a while with the Christmas decorations coming up later next week. I'm sure it'll get kind of busy again.

Fun stuff.

energizer garden

...It keeps going, and going, and going...


Here's the larger pumpkin in the early stages of color change.


Here's the new other pumpkin. It's about the size of a large softball. I think it probably won't get much bigger before it turns color.

The corn really shot up this week. I'm sure it's because of the warmer weather we've been having. That would be so cool if it was ready to harvest by Thanksgiving, but I don't know that it will be ready yet. Might be a Christmas harvest. Either way, I'm just happy it's doing so well.

Also in the picture above, you see all the dried vines, except they only "look" dried up. That's where the pumpkin vines all come from. There are a couple smaller ones that are dead, but the main ones are the life lines to the pumpkins.

Here is this weeks pickings... I picked the tomato a day of two ago. It's the best one so far. There are others that size, but not all red. The zucchini came from both the older and newer zucchini plants. Just as I figure to pull them out, they produce something great. I noticed today, that there are two others that will probably be ready by next week. The energizer zucchini plants.

Another crazy thing this week and last is the amount of bees around the garden. There aren't very many blossoms, but I noticed, that's not what they're going after. It seems they are very interested in the mold on the leaves of the zucchini plants. I didn't have much of a problem with mold until the season changed a little, and the little bit of haziness and dew we've gotten allowed the mold to grow. The bees seem very interested in it, and it makes checking the fruit kind of challenging.

So yeah, still very cool to have a working garden.

scout activity

This Friday, the 12-13 year old scouts are planning on going to Boy Scout night at the Ontario Reign hockey game at the Citizen's Bank Arena. The older scouts are participating in a Varsity Scout over nighter.

Should be pretty fun. I happened to look up the Reign's website for some additional information that night...



Looks like the pre-game festivities are sponsored by Hooters that same night? Below is the "flier" from the promotion's page.

I think it's great that it's 2 for 1 hotdogs, and free oil change night the same night as they've invited the scouts to come, but pre-game by Hooters? Either someone is getting a big laugh at that combination, or is kind of clueless. We're not planning to be there too early, so we might just catch the tail end (no pun intended) of any pre-game festivities, so I don't think it'll be a big deal. Now if it was all during the game, that would probably be a deal breaker.

Anyway, I just thought it was kind of odd, so I thought I'd share.

monday music 11.02.09

I've enjoyed the music from this band for quite some time now, and they just came out with a new album in Sept. called Sci-Fi Crimes, they are Chevelle.

Here's their song "Jars" from that album. But you'll have to click on the link to see it.


I think a lot of people consider Chevelle's music as all sounding the same. I kind of like knowing that more of the music they make will most likely be something I like, since I know I like their other stuff too. I don't consider it "the same", but more like a "variation on a theme". Similar, but different.

Most likely, this CD will make it onto my Christmas list.

Give it a listen, and share your thoughts.

halloween fun

Halloween this year, was kind of busy. The boys still had karate to go to. Then we had to hurry out to Cody's baptism in Glendora. After that, we hung out at Cody's house for banana split sundaes. Then headed off to Grandma and Grandpa McAlister's house to have dinner and go trick-or-treating.

It was a busy day, but a good and fun day.

Here you can see Grandma putting faces on the "mummy dogs" for dinner.


We brought our GFCF corn dogs for the boys. They still made good "mummy dogs".

We're all dressed up and ready to go! The kids had their first "theme" set of costumes. Duncan and Liam REALLY wanted to be Mario and Luigi, and they all thought that Jennan should be Peach and Tegan should be Yoshi. Luckily for us, there was a green and yellow dinosaur costume that fit Tegan in our Halloween boxes, and the kids accepted that costume as Yoshi. I'm not sure if we already had Jennan's Princess costume already or if Anna bought it this year, but it was a good Peach costume.

Trick-or-treating went really well this year. No one did any complaining till much later in the evening. Even Tegan was quite eager to trick-or-treat and keep up for much longer than expected.

We trick-or-treated with Josh and Sara's family again this year, as well as an old friend of Sara's family. Brenna (sp?) was a peacock (and made sure every person who answered their door knew it). She's probably 5-6 years old. They also have a baby boy who spent most of the time in the stroller.

This house was cool. It had two red spot lights with Halloween scrims, and ghost lanterns in the yard.

Here's Anna and I in our costumes. Anna wore that outfit at school on Friday as well. One student said she looked like Ozzy Ozbourne. I'd like to thank the vertical stripes on the ref. shirt for their slimming effect. Though next time I may have to wear platform shoes.

It may have been kind of hectic at times, but Halloween was a fun day. At one point though, Anna and I got a chance to just sit and chill for a moment while we were at Neil and Cyndi's house before we headed out to Pasadena. It was a nice mini break. The kids were great all day. TONS of candy. And we finished it all off with free blackjack tacos from Taco Bell.

SIDE STRORY: Blackjack Tacos

While in Pasadena, I had a quick chance to run out and get a Tommy's burger and a free Blackjack taco from Taco Bell. They were giving them away from 6pm to midnight. Anna had a bite of it, and I ate the rest. It was good. On the drive home, we realized we could probably still take advantage of the give away. There's a Taco Bell near us, so at about 1o:45pm, we pulled into the drive thru- inquired about the tacos- yes, they were still giving them away- I said there were 6 people in our van that would like to try one- pulled up to the window where a bag of taco's were presented to me- I said thank you, and we drove home. Awesome. (The kids were all asleep.) We put the kids to bed, unloaded the van, and sat down to some late night grub. Anna emptied her taco fillings onto a plate, I doubled up on taco shells, and we ate. The tacos were a little on the "piddle" side, but we didn't care. Food that is free is always good.