Afternoon Showers

Things I like: eggs
Things I don't like: messing up my eggs so that the yolk breaks. I take a lot of pride in my ability to prepare eggs. Sometimes it can be crushing to my ego to mess up my flip.

Something else I like: the most awesome cake ever that I made yesterday. It's called Easiest Best Chocolate Mousse Cake. Mmmn...

Note the ingredients:

1 lb. bittersweet chocolate
2 sticks butter
8 eggs


Yeah, you read that correctly.

And I for one have died and gone to heaven. It even partly makes up for my badly fried egg.

September Silences

Babies are sleeping for now, that is except, for Max. Maximilian for the last few days has just slept in snatches prefering instead to practice supermans, arm flapping, and rolypolies. I think he is pretty nice company though, whenever I look at him he grins at me with this huge open mouth, and a look of pure adoration. Who could resist that?

I haven't written anything in so long that every word I write looks funny as if it's misspelled. Eric has been begging me to start up the ole blog again, he thinks I don't hold up my end of the posting. Which is true. Sometimes though its hard to find things that I'd like to write about.

Mmm... I smell coffee brewing in the next room. Paul and Chip, a couple Youth Apostle friends of ours, stopped in to visit a couple weekends ago. They had this one cup coffee maker with them and left it in our care as they won't be needing it in the future. Both of them are becoming consecrated in the fall which is very exciting. And also good for us because the coffee maker brews some damn good coffee and it's fast. A whole lot faster than my trusty french press.

Tuesday was an interesting day. I was having a rough time with the babies, it seemed as if all four had been crying all day. Morale was low. I called Eric in desperation and he came home early from work, we all got in the Cobra and drove to Taos. It was my first time there and I loved it. So charming. We ate at this place called "The Love Apple" which was set in an old adobe church. They had mismatched glassware and flowers and Zucchini picked from their garden decorating the tables. I really enjoyed the setting and the food was fabulous too. All the food is locally grown and raised. They use traditional methods of preparing food (very Weston-Price) and everything was delicious. On our way back we stopped at Taos's natural food store and bought some grass fed beef and a few other tasties. The sun was setting over the Rio Grande gorge as we drove home and no one was crying anymore.

Thanks, Oscar!

Today we woke up to find that our neighbor's cat, Oscar, had given us a gift... a dead bird for our porch! IU knew something was missing out there, I just thought we needed some flowers...

we haven't identified the bird yet, but hope to soon...

Oh, Hail no!

At work today Logan called me on my cell phone. "Is it hailing where you are?" "No" "Well, it's hailing golf balls here." We live about a mile from the Church where I work. "Oh wait Logan, I see one just hit the ground. And another..." in about 2 minutes, it was coming down. Hard. I'd hate to have been stuck out there...

My office is in a building about the size of a double wide. There's the office part, and then the main room with couches, etc. I moved to the main part, and open the front door to watch the hail come down. it started pea size, then got gradually bigger... and bigger... it started ricocheting off the railing of our front step and shooting inside. I decided it would be wise to close the door at this point, no sense in getting unnecessarily bruised! I turned around just in time to see one of our skylights break. glass and hail started falling from the ceiling. There was now a basketball-sized hole in the ceiling, the hail was getting bigger, and the hole in the skylight was getting bigger. If you walked near the skylight, you'd get hit with hail. I played it safe. When it was over, I found some large hail that had fallen in the building. There was one that was literally the size of a golf ball that landed inside, but it split into two and melted before I took pictures.

I ventured outside once the danger had passed. It had been a nice day, but the temps had plummeted with the hail. Now they were back up, mid-80's, and the hail was melting fast. our car was... well, it will start. but the windshield is cracked, with at least 5 or 6 obvious impacts. Time to call our insurance... oh, what fun.




The skylight... note the clouds. The skylight is about 2 feet x 4 feet.
There are two layers to each skylight in the building. The five other skylights were broken on the outer layer, and this was the only one where the hail got all the way through.




found these little guys inside. they had already started to melt. There were bigger ones that fell outside, but these were the biggest I found after I started taking pictures.

Bourbon Milkshake

Milk
Ice Cream
Bourbon

Blend until frothy and delicious.

Tonight, ours was on the thinner side, I'll use less milk next time. When I discover an acceptable ratio, I'll let you know. In the meantime, I'm enjoying this nice summer evening, this nice summer evening bourbon delight, sleeping babies, and a wife who'll soon fall asleep with me as we cuddle and watch a movie. Praise God!

but where were the amber seas of grain?

Logan and I took a nice drive with the newest babies down the hill to Española today. On the way down we caught the last gasps of breath of the setting sun, and it was spectacular. It is amazing how the same landscape can have so many different manifestations, depending on light, season, clouds, and whatever else makes this the land of enchantment.

Slot Canyon!!

I went to Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument today with some kids from my church. In addition to seeing some pretty sweet rock formations (from the volcanic rock in the area and way-cool erosion), we got to hike through a slot canyon.

They're way cool, but you gotta be wary of the weather... a sudden heavy rain could be deadly.

see that little crack in the rock? It's about 1/3 up from the bottom and 1/3 from the left edge of the photo. That's the slot canyon we hiked through, then hiked up to the top of the mesa, then were greeted with 360 views of NM. You can see some of the formations for which the Nat'l monument is named (they look like tents... or at least upside down ice-cream cones...) The tent rocks were interesting, but it was the slot canyon that stole my heart.