Merry Christmas

Here we are celebrating Christmas 2008 already. This year was decidedly low-key. I stayed home with the kids on Christmas Eve, and Jennifer worked until noon then did a little last minute shopping on the way home. We went to the Christmas Eve service at church at 4:30, then came home for dinner, cookies and presents. We had little smokies and ham and cheese with crackers. I decided to try a different cookie recipe this year and made chocolate crackle cookies - they turned out great and Santa is sure to gain an extra pound or two.
After we finished dinner, we opened presents - Santa didn't come during church this year, so we had to wait until morning to see what he would bring.







Alison got a "Belle" Disney princess costume, a dance-along DVD, a coloring book, a bouncing ball, pajamas and a robe. Eli got a dump truck full of mega blocks, a big stuffed dog, a tool kit and a Little Einsteins baton. In the morning, Santa brought Alison a DVD (The Little Mermaid) and Eli got a new flashlight. Flashlights are very popular around here!



It finally warmed up a bit around here today - it's almost 20 degrees! Both kids got to play in the snow for a while. This was really Eli's first time being able to play in the snow, and he seemed to enjoy it.





I just asked Alison what else she got for Christmas, and she said "Jesus! Jesus is the best present!"

Dug out

Gee, that was fun. We got about 10 inches of snow over the weekend, and it formed a very lovely series of drifts across the driveway and street. I watched the city play with their new toy last night - apparently they have a new New Holland tractor with a bucket on the front and a snowblower mounted on the back. The driver got to the entrance of the neighborhood, then turned around and began attacking the snow drifts with the blower.



I tried tackling a little of the big drift across the driveway last night, without a lot of success given the strong winds. I didn't have to go to work until 12:30 today, and Jennifer was home all day, so I had plenty of time this morning to work on shoveling. Luckily it didn't take too long. I cleared a small patch about 6 feet wide - just long enough for our neighbor to see me and drive over with his skid steer. Ben had the entire driveway cleared in about 5 minutes.

Big Bad Blizzard

We are officially going nowhere today. We're getting somewhere between 7 and 13 inches of snow, but the wind is gusting to 47 miles an hour so it's a little hard to measure anything. Half of our driveway is completely clear, but there's a pretty big snow drift across the other half.

The local news radio station posted up this video of driving around Fargo - it's proof enough that we don't need to go anywhere.

Alison's First Time Skating

Here's a short little video of Alison's first time skating.

Super Holiday Mega Blog

Warning - many pictures ahead! It's getting closer to Christmas and there just seems to be too many pictures to take!
Last weekend we went to Jennifer's Christmas party in Grand Forks. The bank booked a block of rooms at the CanadInn, which also has a large waterpark attached to it. The kids had a ball at the water park, but the party got a little too long for them and nobody slept very well. By the morning everyone was pretty tired and cranky, so we came back home pretty early.
I don't know why, but I really like these two pictures. I think it pretty much captures the pace we're living at now.





Just cute. Eli managed to do this all by himself.



We got the tree put up this week. I was having some problems finding one of the plugs for the lights, so Alison decided to get "under the hood" and help me out.





Eli had to make his final inspection to make sure all the lights were working.



Today we took Alison ice skating for the first time. It was also my first time in at least 10 years, and amazingly enough we both stayed off our butts. Alison's decided that she really wants to take lessons now and go skating every day.

Serious about grilling

We had some wonderful hawaiian barbecue chicken kabobs for dinner tonight. I'd like to share the North Dakota version of the preparation tips with you.

First, assemble the kabobs and place in marinade. Next, open the garage door. Start the lawn tractor, lower the plow blade, and clear a small area in front of the garage door. Stop the tractor and roll the grill from the garage into the freshly cleared area. Start the grill. Return to the plow while the grill preheats and clear off some of the driveway. Drive the plow back to the grill so the headlights illuminate the workspace. Retrieve the kabobs from inside and place on medium high heat. Plow for five minutes, then brush kabobs with marinade. Continue to plow, turning kabobs occasionally, 10 minutes or until chicken is done.

For added convenience, wear leather gloves while plowing - it eliminates the need for tongs to turn the kabobs.

Turkey day

It's definitely the holiday season now. On Tuesday night we went downtown to see the annual light parade on Broadway. It was warm enough this year that we didn't feel bad dragging the kids out for it, and there was no snow or wind. Both of the kids really enjoyed it, and we've got yet another bag full of candy to get rid of.



Alison really was having a good time - she was just a little upset in this picture that she had to turn away from the parade.



We've got a couple of chefs on our hands. Alison and Eli decided to make "alphabet soup" by taking all of the letter magnets off the fridge and stirring them in a pot.





It's a good thing I got that turkey last weekend. After it was dressed out and ready to go in the pan, it weighed about 13 pounds. I was a little concerned that being a wild bird would make it a little tough or dry or gamey or something, but that was definitely not the case. I used a roasting bag and stuffed it full of sage and onion stuffing, put it on top of some diced onions and celery, brushed on some butter, and let it go. It turned out to be some of the juiciest turkey I've ever had. It was slightly darker than a store bought bird, but the taste was wonderful.



Yes, this is my boy. He's the only other one in the house that will eat pickles or olives. He also likes egg nog and sour cream and onion chips.

Thanksgiving "shopping"

Yes, I saw the grocery store ad. Yes, turkey is only 70 cents a pound. But mine was more fun!

November's here!

Definitely one of my favorite times of the year. I always look forward to the first Wednesday in November - no more campaign ads! We stayed up late to watch Obama's acceptance speech. Wow.



I don't think this picture needs any explanation - Alison and Eli both were looking for snacks, and the crackers seemed to do the trick.



Friday was the opening of North Dakota deer season - I was able to fill my doe tag after about 4 hours of hunting on Friday afternoon. I passed on at least 6 shots hoping for larger deer this year. I still have a buck tag to fill, so I'll have a couple more days in the woods.

Halloween

Ah, Halloween is finally here! Instead of carving a pumpkin this year, Alison just wanted to draw on it. That still leaves the opportunity for pumpkin pie, so she was pretty excited.



Alison and Eli got to have at least one more Halloween being a matched set. Alison was Little Bo Peep and Eli was a sheep. It wasn't until today that he'd actually leave the hat on, but after the party at the Community Center, he actually seemed to enjoy it!

Done?

It's raining again. I think that means the end of beet season for me. It was fun while it lasted - all in all I had 68 loads delivered to the plant in 9 days of work. And a parting picture of the equipment.

Now it's back to regular work for me. The office is slowly getting back to normal, but it appears that I lost my computer to the raging waters. My desk was reassembled today, so now it's a matter of cleaning up and getting re-settled.

Back at it

Back to beets again today - fields were still very soft, but still got 9 runs into the plant today, total of 46 trips now. Alison took up her job as photographer at home today, so here's a few of her photos.

Noah who?

Still too wet to harvest beets, but things are looking positive for the weekend. I was planning on working in the office this week until things dried out, but a water main burst in the office on Monday and filled the building with about 3 to 4 inches of water. Now it is too wet to work outside, and too wet to work inside.
We took the kids to Maplewood State Park on Monday afternoon to see the leaves, and it was a great display.



Tuesday I recovered some of my personal items from the office so they didn't get damaged from the humidity, then spent the morning browsing Scheels and Gander Mountain.

I had a very short stint of work this morning giving a presentation to a GIS meeting in Bismarck. I left here about 5:30, drove to Bismarck, and was done by about 10:30. It's dry in Bismarck, which was nice. Since I had some time, I drove home by way of a promising hunting spot. I pulled the truck off to the side of the road and proceeded to shoot two pheasants, miss a few more, and generally have a grand old time. I walked back to the truck, started down the road and was home by 4:30. It's a rough life. I walked in the door and Alison greeted me just like I was coming home from work. I think I'll keep that little secret to myself.

I'm still shut down for both beets and office work tomorrow, so I'm going to make the best of things. I hope to get new tires for Jennifer's car early in the morning, then perhaps sneak out in search of pheasants again.

Duck weather

As predicted, it was much to wet to even think about harvesting sugar beets this weekend. The southwest got snowed on, so I spent Saturday morning duck hunting about an hour and a half southwest of here. My neighbor and I left at about 5 in the morning and started putting out decoys in the dark at about 6:30. Ducks were already trying to land in our decoys before we were done setting decoys. By the time it was light enough to identify birds, things had settled down a bit. The first two birds to come into the decoys were a pair of Canada geeese. I was astonished when they committed to land and worked to plop right down the landing zone I had set up. I managed to get one, but didn't shoot at the second goose because I wasn't sure if the shotgun load would be big enough to cleanly finish the bird. Well, apparently it was and I finally got my first goose. I weighted it when I got home and it was 11 1/2 pounds. We also took home 6 blue winged teal, one green winged teal drake, and a gadwall.

Rained out

We've been shut down for beet harvest since Sunday evening. Sunday and Monday saw an inch and a half of rain and made everything a muddy mess. So, back to reality for a while. There's more rain forecast for the weekend, so I don't know when we'll be back to harvesting. I was hoping to go fill an antelope tag this weekend, but they're forecasting 6-10 inches of snow for my hunting unit. So, it's duck hunting nearby instead.

Our neighbor called me this morning and said "You wouldn't believe the size of the track in our back yard! I don't know if it's a big deer or a moose!"

It's a moose. Mind you, moose bites can be very nasti.



There's been several moose sightings around here lately, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

The beet goes on

After living in the valley for 14 years now, I figured it was about time to participate in the fall sugar beet harvest. I'm driving truck for a grower near Hillsboro. Load beets, drive, dump beets, drive, load beets, drive, dump...repeat for 12 hours. I snapped a few random pictures today. It'll probably be pretty quiet on the blog front for a while until harvest is done.

Following the beet lifter:


One of six pilers at the processing plant. Yes, that is a LOT of beets.


Ha. Ha.


I discovered a new smell today. On my first run into the plant my air brakes cammed over and caught fire at the weigh scale. After the flames were put out by the fieldman I weighed in then limped the truck out of the way until the brakes stopped smoking. I was able to get to the piler and dump my load, and that's when I discovered the new smell...burnt brakes and processed sugar beets. It's, uh, nasty.
Long story short, we were able to get the truck to the shop for repairs and I spent the rest of the day driving a backup truck.

Pumpkins and berries

A short series from last weekend in Lake City. We headed for Grandma and Grandpa's for my birthday weekend, which was kind of the last free weekend before a busy October.

WestFest

I'm playing Mr. Mom this weekend while Jennifer's in Bismarck. To occupy the kids today, I took them to Bonanzaville for WestFest/Harvest Days. Here's a couple of shots from the day:

Release!

Friday morning was extraordinarily foggy, and the sun was just breaking through before I had to go to work. I grabbed the camera and snuck outside to get this shot.



Saturday was the Fargo-Moorhead Bridge to Bridge Bash, a running race from downtown (on the Main Avenue bridge) down to Lindenwood Park, then back up to the floating pedestrian bridge, across to Moorhead and then to Center Mall for a total of 5 miles. I was pretty happy, I was able to shave 10 minutes off my previous best for a 5 mile run.

We had a successful hatch of all 5 chrysalides and today was the big release. Alison was very excited to let the painted lady butterflies go, and it was finally warm and dry today.



Eli got to meet his first tiger salamander this weekend. It's nice living in the country!