The Pleiades- life is a journey: family

Showing posts with label family. Show all posts

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Junior Park Ranger McBrayer

While the AR McBrayers were here, we took a side trip out to Mesa Verde, one of our favorite places to visit. The entrance is only about 35 min from here and they have just finished their brand new visitor's center at the entrance to the park which as it turns out, is quite stunning! ( I wish I had pictures to show you).

Not sure how many of you know but all National Parks (and most if not all State Parks) have a Junior Ranger program that is designed for kids from 4 years old to 12. It's a program that encourages kids to protect their parks and learn a bit more about each park during their visits. If you fulfill all of the requirements by the end of your visit, you can take the oath to become a Jr. Ranger and are awarded a medal to show off!.

Here are my little Jr. Rangers working hard on their booklets inside of the archaeological museum.

They took this project very seriously. Greenpea is hard at work.

The kids were so engaged that I ran with it and had them complete almost the entire booklet before I realized they only needed to select a few activities. There are different activities depending on the age groups you have too.

Here they are making cornmeal that they even bothered to taste! (I imagine it tasted just like sand since there wasn't actually corn in there and eroded rocks turn into just that!)

"Raise your right hand…or your left, or maybe just any ol hand and repeat after me."

Right from left. Something it looks like we all need to work on...

I am always amazed at just how thoroughly these rangers double check the kids work and correct them as they go along. They don't give these badges to just anyone, you know.

I am proud to announce that we left Mesa Verde with 4 Junior Rangers that day!

Saturday, November 23, 2013

I'm makin' pies

First you have to play this just to get in the mood…

I don't usually make an abundance of pies during the holidays and 4 is about my limit. In the last week though there just seems to be some many excuses for pie that I've made 7 pies and I have 4 more to make this week! I'm getting good at the home made crust. And since a friend requested the recipe and how to, here we go.

This recipe came from one of Justin's high school friends and I've been using it for over 10 years!

Josh's Homemade Pie Crust

(makes double crust)

2 cups flour

dash of salt

1 Tbsp sugar (omit if you are making quiche or anything savory)

2/3 cup + 2 Tbsp butter or shortening or butter (you should really use butter)

4-6 Tbsp ice water (8 Tbsp if you live in the dry West)

Cut the butter or margarine into the flour until it's roughly pea sized crumbles. (I'm a butter kind of girl. I never use shortening for this and never margarine. It's worth the splurge. You are eating pie for crying out loud, it's not worth trying to keep the lbs off! You will cry yourself to sleep thinking on how good it could have been if you'd only used butter. Just trying to save you the drama of disappointment here.)

Fill up a glass with water and some ice cubes. Dip out the water and add to the dry mixture. Toss it until everything is sort of wet and looks like it will stick together.

The trick is to not over work the dough. All of those crumbs of butter will melt away in the oven and create little air pockets in the crust to make a delicious flakey goodness.

Work the dough just enough to get it to stick together while you roll it out. A peel is really helpful if you have one, other wise you have to use more flour. Roll it out and then drape it over your rolling pin and transfer to your pie plate.

Trim the left over so that the dough hangs about 1/2" over the edges. Roll the draping edges under to rest on the edge of the pie plate. Using your thumb and forefinger on your right hand and your forefinger on your left, push your left finger up against your right all the way around to create a zigzag design. If you look closely, it will have a marbled look to it with the pockets of butter in there!

I learned a long time ago that your pie can be elevated from just yum to spectacular with a homemade crust and decorations for the top. Use the left over dough to cut out shapes to place on top of the pie when it's done. They can be baked on a cookie sheet until lightly brown and crispy and then used on top after the pie is finished baking (unless you are using a lot of them for a fruit pie, in which case you can bake them with like a top crust.

Brush the pie crust and the decorations with a little 1/2 & 1/2 and dust with sugar before you put it in the oven.

Bake for 15 min @450 and then 15 min at 350 if you are planning to use it for a cream pie or something that doesn't get baked after filling. Otherwise, just fill it and bake it with your pie. Cover the edges before they get too brown if your filling isn't done when your crust looks finished.

Have fun!

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Mama + kids = music, art & sports

Daddy + kids = science, math & history

It's so funny to me to watch the activities of the boys when they are influenced by either me or Justin. When we take our turns with the boys separately, the days are geared so differently. With Daddy, the boys are all about science, math and history. When they are with me, it's all about art and music and being active. While Justin was away, we spent our week making field trips to the college practice rooms for their real pianos to practice on. We spent three nights at Sugar Creek rehearsals getting ready for our gig at James Ranch and then an evening of performing and goat herding. (We had a baby goat join us on stage for Wagon Wheel!). We spent a day at the lake swimming and went on countless bike rides. I got the stuff for them to craft in their scrap books and I've had watercolor "classes" at the kitchen table. And we piled all the balls, bats, tennis rackets, frisbees and the sort and went to the park one day to have some skills practice. There is a reason God intended there to be two parents. They learn so many different things from each of us.

Here are a few captures from James Ranch.

First Week Report: Camp Daddy

In case you were curious just how my first week back to work was for the kids was, here is a recap of the activities I came home to witness over lunch and at the end of the day.

Science. Bases versus acids. They tasted EVERYTHING.

And kept detailed notes about each one.

Sushi for dinner! Mango as well as avocado nigiri is remarkably simple and delicious.

Potato gun building and launch.

It took some fiddling but they eventually got this thing to shoot potatoes to the edge of the trees.

On our way home we found the most terrific toad.

Check out this beast!

A history time line in the hallway of Animas.

Thanks to the history prof down the hall from Justin, they scored some history books that they were able to cut pictures out of to use for the timeline.

Color coded for Old World, New World and people. They add to it each day. And they did reading and math flash cards each day. This Dad's default is education and there is just no way around it. They may thank him one day for all of this.

I am pretty sure, they don't miss me at all! What do you think?!?!

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Alpine Adventures: Stage 2

After one final night to ourselves at Lost Wonder, we headed up to Aspen via Independence Pass. It's only open in the summer, and we now know why. Parts of it aren't even two lane and nothing over 35 feet long fits because of how winding the road was. They don't even pretend The lines in the middle just mysteriously disappear at times! How festive that we do on the week of 4th of July!

Here we are at the top. I'm trying to groom some young photographers so that we make it into some of the photos. They are beginning to get it I think.

The pass is almost as high as Engineer Mountain at 12,095 feet!

Nothing like a summer snowball fight.

Sounds like a disaster to have a black football that is intended to be thrown in the dark but somehow this thing works with reflectors as long as you are willing to look like forest monsters so you don't get pelted in the face.

This picture says "life is good." To see your kids frolic in an Aspen grove is heaven to this Mama and says we've done some thing very right by our move to Colorado.

We stayed at a campground called Weller Campground which was situated in a beautiful shimmering grove of Aspens, right outside of Aspen, CO.

We spent the day in town. We visited a park where our kids looked nothing less than homeless having come stright out of the woods in probably the most pretentious town I have ever been to. All I could think was, "Damn, I forgot to pack the seersucker on this camping trip."

The boys played in a fountain in the sidewalk in downtown Aspen and although they were soaking wet in sweatpants and tennis shoes, they looked sort of clean. Next time I will be more prepared by bring ~~my bar of soap~~ a change of clothes for them.

They got to picnic up Castle Creek in t-shirts and bare bottoms while their pants dried in the sun. I found this funny, but they found it a bit embarrassing despite the remote and private location on the bank of the creek.

This valley is just southwest of the famous Maroon Bells and happens to be ungated and free to drive. Go figure Aspen charges for entrance in to public land that isn't even considered a National Park.

The boys picked out the biggest marshmallows for the trip.

These bad boys are roughly the equivalent of 4 regular marshmallows. Such peaceful and beautiful family time!

More to come...

Sunday, July 7, 2013

A new chef moves in

Aeneas has finally reached the ripe age of learning to cook with Daddy. Of course his first pick for dinner was mac and cheese for the main course. No surprise there. It was a beautiful meal and the little guy did a great job.

This kid is a taster. He has to taste everything right down to the spices.

Here he is making his roux.

The table was set outside on the patio.

This happened to be during the week we were trying out gluten free hence the two pans of mac and cheese. In case you were wondering, we couldn't tell the difference between the rice and the wheat noodles.

He also learned that if you have a heart heavy main dish you have to round it out with something healthy. So we had a fruit salad with a delicious citrus juice sauce over top.

He even insisted on doing the dishes. At this rate, they will be making all the dinners by the time they hit the ravenous appetite stage of high school boys.