Recital, life and ears.

First I thought I'd post a couple of pictures my photographer friend took of me the night I had my makeup done for the Pioneer Woman book signing. Katie and her husband Dan own Peekaboo photos and are wonderful photographers as well as great people.

Well, not everything I wanted to post is working tonight. Evan and Kaelin had a piano recital a couple of weeks ago. Evan found some Transformers music he really liked but it was too complicated for him to play. He modified it to be something within his range and his teacher liked it so much she asked him to play his arrangement of the music at their piano recital.
The video wasn't uploading for some reason, so I put it on Youtube.(Actually not, it won't load)
We had a nice Thanksgiving all to ourselves. It was just the four of us with the whole shootin' match as far as food goes. I cooked all morning and the kids did the dishes. Nice!
Thanksgiving night we headed up to the VA to see Grandma and Grandpa Grover. While we were there Evan and Kaelin played their piano pieces for them, which we all really enjoyed. That got Grandma in the piano mode so she played her famous version of chopsticks. She was pretty fast at getting going but I got most of it recorded. I'm in the process of putting that on Youtube too. I'm sure Grandma will be thrilled to know she is on Youtube. Then again, I probably won't tell her! (As I have been typing this I have been trying to upload to Youtube. It says the file is corrupt and won't upload. Crap! I guess whoever wants to see it will have to see it here or request a CD. It plays just fine on my computer. I may try again another time.)
We got ready to put up our (stupid and ugly) fake Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving. We put it up in the living room and left it undecorated overnight to see if the cats were going to leave it alone this year. What do you think, can you tell a cat was in there?
We moved the tree to the basement and had to fix every single branch. The cats apparently lounged on each branch and smashed down the fake needles. Now the cats are locked out of the tree room downstairs. It's very pretty, but I miss having it in the living room. Oh well.
We all went to grab a burger tonight and stopped at the mall to do a little Christmas shopping. While we were there I jokingly asked Kaelin if she wanted to get her ears peirced for her birthday. She actually said yes. It took another 30 to 40 minutes for her to work up the nerve to do it but she said it didn't hurt as much as she thought it would and she was glad she did it. What a brave girl!

And last, but not least, instead of the gratuitous cat shot I decided to post a drawing that Evan made. It is of Tom's truck as a Transformer. Pretty cool, huh? And, just for formality's sake, this image is the property of Evan and cannot be reproduced without his permission. (Unless you are a blood relative and I have unflattering photos of you as insurance.) :)

The Pioneer Woman

For anyone who doesn't know who The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, is - click on the link on the side of my blog. She wanted to be a city girl, fell in love with a cowboy and lives on a cattle ranch. She is witty, a talented cook and photographer, and just an all around nice woman. Her blog's popularity has skyrocketed and she just published her first cookbook.
About 5 or 6 weeks ago I saw that she would be at The King's English bookstore in Salt Lake City on Nov 4th. I immediately planned on going. I was going to leave early in the afternoon so I could get there in time but due to kid's various lessons and other factors, I was not able to leave until 6:15 for the 7 pm book signing. I had called King's English at 4:20 asking if anyone was already lining up. They said no and that I should not have any problem getting my book signed if I didn't get there til 7. What I did not know is that The King's English (which I'll just now call TKE) did not really know who Ree was and were very unprepared for her popularity.
My friend Lynette and I got there at 7 only to see several hundred people standing around. TKE had some wacky system of assigning people a letter and number ticket. 20 A's. 20 B's, etc up through R. (Only about 300 tickets) I was in the line of people who had no ticket.
I did see Ree for a second as she walked past the line into the store and got a picture. She was tall and very pretty, smiling and waving.
As we stood in line TKE started calling letters. It took about 20 minutes for the A's to go in, 20 for the B's. After over 2 hours they had been calling H's. We thought it was going ok and were hopeful. About then a TKE employee came out and said if we didn't have a ticket they could not guarantee we would get our books signed. They said they would stay open "as late as they could" but most likely those without tickets were out of luck. She revealed that even though they were calling H's, the actual signing was happening for the E's. 2 plus hours for 80 people's books. With well over 500 people standing there, it was obvious that we were not going to get my books signed. We left.
Even though I didn't get the books for my brother and myself signed, it was still fun. I had a good time with Lynette, we met nice people in line who shared hot chocolate with us. It was a beautiful night, not too cold for November. I was disappointed to have not gotten the signature, but I got a pic of Ree. I had a great time beforehand with my makeup artist friend, Dawn Weidauer who did my makeup for me before I headed to Salt Lake.
I'm thinking that the next time TKE does a book signing, they better figure out who they have coming! Check out this story I ran across this morning from another blogger: http://jetsetcarina.blogspot.com/2009/11/handle-this.html

October

October has been a very fun month. We got to start it out in Disneyland!

We were there with my whole family for 5 days. My folks flew all of us down there so we could all spend some time together. What a great trip we had!

Tom wore his Indiana Jones hat every day, I think he looks pretty darn good in that hat!
We rode the Tower of Terror several times. Here is a picture of me filming the ride. I even filmed the part where the cast member says "please, no video during the ride". Don't worry though, I ended up deleting it, our memory stick was pooping out and I had to delete some stuff so I could take more pictures.

I have a photo of my mom and myself on these stairs when I was little. I wanted to get one of my mom, my daughter and myself. I love these stairs!
Most days we took a break and went back to the hotel to rest and swim. This is one of the few pool pictures. Evan was looking awesome in his swim shirt.
We all had a fantastic time and are so thankful to my Mom and Dad for getting us all down there.
I was finally able to complete and install my windows this month. I am really happy with them and soon will be making a window to go in the transom above the door.
I let the chickens out for a few days while the weather was still decent. The cats were very entertained. We had a pretty rainy month, but that is better than snow, which we started getting this week. Thanks Sarah, I stole this picture off your camera when we borrowed it. :)
Tom and I had 3 Halloween parties to go to this year. We went with Bacon and an egg. I think Tom's bacon costume is awesome! I enlisted the help of my friend Alesha to help me with the egg. It doesn't look hard, but you should have seen the first version!
Tom just can't resist looking for trouble...I'm still surprised that we made it through 2 flights and 5 days in Disneyland without getting sick. 2 weeks later though, Kaelin came down with what we believe is swine flu (based on actual diagnosis of others and some symptom comparison). Thankfully, it wasn't too bad for her though. We now also believe that Evan had already had it during the summer.
Not much else going on. Kaelin is going to be a vampire for Halloween and Evan is a cereal killer. (yeah, cereal. we have little empty boxes of cereal glued to a shirt with bloody knives sticking out of them.)
Next week I am going to a cookbook signing for Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman. Maybe I'll get a picture with her. That would be cool! I'll post a pic if I get it and will also post some Halloween photos.

Here is my first completed window. These shots are all at different angles to show how the colors in the dichroic glass shift as your angle shifts. The side that has the sun shining directly on it has a colored reflective surface. During the day we will see the transmittted color while people outside see the reflected color. At night when our lights are on and it's dark outside people outside will see the transmitted color and we will see the reflected color in the house.
The window is filthy from the flux and patina. I'll be taking it out to the glass studio where it will take at least 1/2 an hour with a toothbrush and little pointy sticks to get the window clean.
The next step is to insulate and seal it between two pieces of tempered glass. Then it will be ready to install in the sidelight.
On to the next one!

September...

Here comes another picture heavey edition of my blog. :)
Tom ran the Bear Lake triathlon at the very end of August. We met my cousins Will and Jen up there who also competed in it. Tom placed 19th overall and 3rd in his age division. I can't remember how many participants there were, but it was SEVERAL hundred.
After the race we went to the home of friends of friends of cousins. Got that? We bbq-ed and headed down to a secluded area of beach from their beach access home. They had four wheelers that Evan practically never got off of. They had a jet ski which dragged a tube around in the water for hours. Kaelin was on it an awful lot of that time. I don't think she was out of the water for more than 5 minutes of the whole time we were there. I got to do a little jet ski riding myself, which I love to do but alas, no pictures. Such a good time! We enjoyed spending time with Will and Jen, who we don't get to see very often.




The last month or so has been jam packed full of garden harvest. I was able to rent a 40 x 40 foot garden plot in a community garden this summer. I planted a lot of pumpkins and gourds there which have not been harvested yet but one thing I have already harvested is corn! We got about 5 dozen ears of the most delicious sweet corn ever! Here are 48 ears that I wanted to preserve. The next picture is of the kids shucking corn. Kaelin was crying like crazy because there were bees and bugs out there. I kept telling her that Doman girls aren't afraid of bugs but it didn't help. I think she shucked about 5 ears, I did about a dozen and Evan did the rest. I got a dozen 2.5 cup bags of wonderful corn. I am looking forward to eating that this winter! Next year I'm going to plant a lot more corn.




I have started feeding the birds this summer. I sometimes had 2 dozen mourning doves out there along with a couple dozen little birds. I learned though that if I let the feeder go empty for too long it would end up being a problem. Those little birds would stick their heads into the holes in the feeder and eat what they could reach. Eventually one of them would stick his head so far in the hole that he couldn't get it out. Evan helped me save 3 dumb birds this summer. Evan's hand was small enough to fit down into the feeder. He would press on the bird's head or beak while I gently pulled on it's body. Eventually the birds would pop out, poop on me and fly away. I either need to make the hole smaller or feed smarter birds!



I built a 30 gallon skippy filter for my pond this month too. The water goes in the pipe, is released at the bottom of the bucket, goes through a couple of types of filter media and comes out the little spouts on the top. This is not only a mechanical filter - meaning it filters out particulates, but it is a biological filter too. The filter media doesn't get changed or cleaned very often and loads of beneficial bacteria build up on it and change harmful things like ammonia from fish waste into a harmless form. It has a spigot on the bottom at the back so I can drain sludge out when necessary. So cool!I was able to go on a much anticipated overnighter with my Girls Night Out group in Park City. We had so much fun! Pictured below are 5 of my best friends (I'm so sorry Brandi! We didn't get a picture with you in it!) These are the ladies that I will still be going out with when we are old and wrinkly. I couldn't ask for a better group of friends. Maybe next year it will be Vegas!I did tons of preserving. Along with the corn I juiced the grapes from our vines. Here is Buster looking concerned that I am going to juice him. Not to worry, no one likes cat hair in their juice.
I was excited one day to open my compost bin and find some visitors! I hope they were in there feasting on the naughty mice and voles that hide in the compost bin in the winter. Although it looks like one snake, that is the head of one along side the body of another. Crossing my fingers for baby snakies next year! Maybe I should play some Barry White next to the bin and pour some wine in there ...
A picture of my beautiful daughter doing who knows what!
More fruit. Peaches from our tree. Our 4 year old tree produced over 400 peaches this year. 90% of those got canned by myself or some of my friends. Then we have apples from our Honeycrisp tree. Next is Buster trying to get the pears to ripen. He is such a helpful cat! Then we've got beautiful pears all jarred up. Those were the most delicious pears ever! I even have proof that the kids helped me out. They helped peel and core pears for two of the batches.
Over the last month I have bottled 35 quarts of peaches for myself, froze 5 quarts of cobbler filling, bottled 14 jars of pears, 5 jars of pear/applesauce, 2 jars of strawberry applesauce, 1 batch blackberry/raspberry jam, a dozen jars of blackberry/raspberry syrup, a batch of peach jam, a batch of raspberry/peach jam, the frozen corn, a dozen quarts of grape juice. Whew! Can't wait to eat it all!




My friend Ana W. is a genius! She told me that she makes the peach pie filling and pours it directly onto ice cream. I gave it a whirl and it was wonderful!.

Last of all I have some pictures of my all-summer-long project. I am making stained glass windows to replace the sidelights by my front door. It took most of the summer to select, order and get all of the glass I wanted. I got everything cut out during the week and was able to start assembling today. I am so excited! The colored diamonds are dichroic glass. They look different depending on whether the light source is going through the glass or reflecting off the glass. It is gorgeous! I can't wait to get them done, insulate them (with the help of Holdman Studios!) and get them installed. I have most of the first one assembled. I'm hoping to get as far as soldering it tomorrow.

That about sums everything up! Kids are in school, doing well. I have enjoyed getting back to the glass studio more while the kids are in school. We have some fun plans coming up soon and I'll update the blog as soon as they are over.