Introducing Otis

Any of you who know Jeff know that it is really difficult for him to have a gift for someone and not give it to them... so, when I came home from work Jeff had my birthday present.

Meet Otis:




He is almost 3 months old, bichon/yorkie/poodle (none of which we wanted but all together, they make a pretty cute mutt), he is about 3 lbs right now and should end up anywhere from 5 to 15 lbs. The perfect size for our house and we hope the perfect playmate for Moose.

Thanks for the sweet gift Jeff :)

Sewage

Oh yes, the last couple of days are as much fun as the title of this blog makes them sound...

We were supposed to leave for Boise yesterday to meet our new niece Michala. On Thursday Jeff was cleaning out Frank's cage so that we could take him to a friends house, when he went to the basement to get new litter he found our basement flooded... bad... even worse, it was not "just" water, it was sewage.... So, we called our landlord and let her know, she said she would start calling people the next morning so we thought that would be fine. We realized a little later that it was not an isolated event but that anything that went down any drain in our house and our neighbors was causing more flooding, no flushing the toilet, no taking a shower, no doing laundry (not normally horrible but it was time, very low on clean clothes). We ended up staying at the Holiday Inn, we could not be more grateful for Jeff's corporate discount. We both had to be at work at 5 am but we were off at 9 (which is when we were planning to leave for Boise), not too long of a work day and another phone call to our landlord letting her know the direness of the situation. Roto Rooter showed up at 2 and everything was finally going down the drain, woo hoo!!!! By 5 we had everything cleaned out of the wet boxes and drying throughout our house, just in time for Jeff to make it to the second half of his work day and too late for us to still make our weekend in Idaho... Oh well, the roads were not the best for travel anyway, we look forward to trying again in January :)

Thanksgiving and the return of the coffee beans

Thanksgiving has a specific picture in my mind of 70 members of my family eating massive quantities of food and getting as much quality time crammed into one weekend as we possibly can... it is something that we all look forward to all year and as November approaches you get a little more excited about it each day. It was truly difficult not to see my family this weekend but we still had a great day! Our dear new friends, Todd and Jenny Moore, invited us over to spend the day with them. We had more food than 12 people could possibly eat (love Thanksgiving leftovers!) and great fellowship. Jeff was, once again, the big toy for the kids so after a day of cooking and playing we came home full, tired, happy and thankful for our day.

As we reflect on the last year we see some truly difficult times in the loss of our close friend Kelly and the loss of our baby... but the thing that really stands out in our mind is how thankful we are to have a God who carries us through these times, to be able to rejoice in the truth that Kelly and our little one are in the presence of the Almighty and that we have the hope of Christ to rejoice in ALWAYS. We discussed many things that we are thankful for this afternoon so I could give you a list from each of us but the above is what stood out the most.

Back by popular demand (and also just because I miss them) are our coffee beans... the blog is a bit different than it was and hopefully will soon see a few more changes but, at least for now, the coffee beans will remain :)

Here are a couple of pictures from our day:

Comments

So, some insight into Jeff and I with the blog. We write a blog and then proceed to stalk the comments section to see if anyone is reading it and what they might have to say about it :) Sad, I know, but what I also believe is the result of living so far from our family and friends. I know that not everyone has a blog so it can be difficult to figure out how to leave a comment, fortunately our friend Molly has already written a blog explaining how to go about this and this is the link to that explanation http://gtrankandfamily.blogspot.com/2008/10/want-to-get-set-up-to-leave-comments-on.html.

We are going to miss spending Thanksgiving with our Texas family but will be attempting to recreate some of the amazing food that will be there. We plan to have pictures up on the blog with our first Montana Thanksgiving and hope it will not be to terribly long before we can visit.

We want to say congratulations to Tim and Liz on the arrival of our niece Michala Eve Grissom, we are so excited and can not wait to meet her. Her arrival (and a little peer pressure from us) has inspired The Chronicles of Grissom, a new blog that we will be following.

Let us know what you think of the new blog design, there is a place where you can vote to the right of this blog under the list of followers.

Happy Thanksgiving a few days early, hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Recipe 6

I made these the night before we went hunting and I have already made them again, one of Jeff's new favorite items:

Apple Pie Muffins

2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg [beaten]
1 cup buttermilk or sour cream [or substitute]

2 cups diced peeled apples
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped apricots or prunes [optional]

Topping
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts [or pecans]
1/3 cup flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 Tbsp. melted butter [or olive oil]

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cream brown sugar and butter. Add vanilla, egg, and buttermilk. Mix well. Add wet to dry and sprinkle with diced apples. Stir just enough to moisten dry ingredients. Mix first four topping ingredients, drizzle butter over and toss with a fork. Spoon batter into large greased muffin tin - filling only 3/4 full. Sprinkle topping on top and put another spoonful of batter on top. Or - stir topping ingredients into batter until just barely blended in and spoon batter into muffin tin. Bake at 375 F for about 25 min.

[Buttermilk substitute - 1 Tbsp. vinegar and 1 cup of milk. Let sit for 5 minutes]

THE HUNTRESS

2008 continues to be an astonishing hunting season. LeeAnn and I got up early and went hunting this morning and by 4:00 pm we had a deer and an elk in the back of the truck. The Elk have been hunted pretty hard this year and are quite spooky so it took us a while to find them. . . quite a while, but I was able to knock a cow down shortly after noon. After she was in the truck we went down to the lower part of the ranch and I am very proud to report that LeeAnn shot her first deer shortly thereafter. It's a sweet first deer too actually it's just a sweet deer period. He is a nice four point mule deer and unfortunately for him he was more interested in chasing does around than he was in running away from my wife's bullet. LeeAnn made a nice shot nice shot and down he went. Here are some pictures

Rouladen is RAD!

I know I just posted a dead deer recipe and some of you may not have any dead deer to cook, but rest assured this works on dead cows too. This stuff is great!! Thanks to my sister in law Suedee for sending it. . .

Here's the rouladen recipe: Slice the round steak or roast thin (about 1/4 in. Make sure it is a very lean cut of meat) cut into pieces about 4in. by 6in. and pound each side well. spread with mustard and salt and pepper. put a slice of raw bacon on meat and a thin slice of onion and roll up and secure with toothpicks or cooking string. brown in a little oil on all sides. Put in a dutch oven pot or slow cooker and add water or beef broth (I use water with beef broth base) and simmer 2-3 hours with a lid on the pot or in slow cooker on low all day. If the liquid gets low in the pot add more. It needs to cook until the meat gets tender. We also like to add mushrooms at some point. The broth becomes gravy so you serve the meat rolls with the gravy on the side. Let me know if you have any questions. It's not an exact recipe...just passed down in our family.