Family Home Evening

Tonight we had a fun Family Home Evening! (Not that all our Family Home Evenings aren't fun, it's just that this one was different!) The Kaufman's came over to share it with us. We started out by singing "Jesus Once Was A Little Child" and then we talked about what Jesus' life might have been like when he was the same age as each of the kids. We talked about how he would have played with his friends, helped Joseph in the workshop and learned how to be a carpenter, and helped his mom in the house with his younger brothers and sisters.

Then we talked about what Jesus might have eaten. We tried to remember all the references about food that we could from the Bible -- bread, fish, honey, seeds, milk, fruits, etc..

Then the kids got to try some of the foods that we had talked about. I had prepared a tray with figs, dates, smoked fish, almonds, homemade cheese, a pomegranate, bread and honey. They also got a cup of lukewarm water. Jesus didn't have a refrigerator after all. Anyway, the kids tried the foods. Some they liked and some they didn't, but it was a neat experience for them to see what people ate long before the days of artificial preservatives and ingredients.

Lora the Cheesemaker

A few months ago when I was reading the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" the author mentioned making her own cheese. I was really intrigued with the idea and looked online for the company she mentioned. I found the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company online and ordered their starter kit.

I got the kit a few days later and I was very excited to try it out! I even enlisted the girls' help and they were excited too. We poured in the milk, heated it up and stirred and added the acid and the rennet, we let it cook, and it kind of, sort of separated and then when we put it in the microwave, it just sort of turned to curd soup. Hmm. Not very inspiring.

The recipe very clearly states that you are not to use ultra-pasteurized milk, which I hadn't, but it also suggests trying a different brand if it doesn't work. So, I bought a different brand and tried again. Again, curd soup. Even soupier actually. I was supposed to be making mozzarella cheese and instead we had wasted two gallons of milk.

I emailed the company and said, "Help! I really want to do this, but I am having trouble!" They emailed back saying that dairies are getting away with heating the milk hotter and hotter and so the "regular" pasteurization is actually too hot to make cheese.

So, I went in search of a place where I could get milk straight from the cow. As luck would have it, we have an organic raw milk dairy just a few miles from our house. I went and bought the milk (and holy cow! -- no pun intended! -- it is amazing the prices they can get away with when it is organic!) and tried again. This time as I was getting everything ready, I was refreshing myself on the instructions and I read that the water you use to dissolve the rennet and the citric acid needs to be chlorine-free. I asked Kevin if he knew if we have chlorine in our water, and he said we probably did, so I used a bottle of drinking water instead.

I started to make the cheese and it all started working just like it was supposed to! Yea! I fact, it worked so well that the cheese was already stretching before I even got it out of the pot! A few minutes later I had a beautiful, shiny ball of mozzarella cheese! Wahoo! Finally!

I emailed the company and told them of my success and asked about the chlorine. They said that would definitely affect the rennet, so I am going to try again with a regular gallon of store bought milk and use drinking water instead and see how it goes.

We tried the cheese out with some crackers and it was good, and tonight we are going to have spaghetti and I am going to grate some to put on top! Yum!

Front Page News

I submitted another article to the Kerman News and not only did they publish it (my second byline!), but they put it on the front page. In color even! Cool!

We have known the Hergenroeders since about six months before we moved to Kerman. They live across the street from our home. The pumpkin patch they have been working on had their grand opening on October 1st. Susie knew that they would not have time to take any photos, so she asked if I would come and take some photos for them.

While I took photos, Katrina had a great time running around looking at the animals, going through the hay bale maze and checking out all the different sizes of pumpkins.

We stuck around for a while when the first field trip arrived and took some more photos. We even went on the hay ride. I sent several photos to the Kerman News, but they only used one, so here are the others:















Then here are ours:

Katrina checked out all the different sizes of pumpkins, but she was most impressed by the huge pumpkins that were as big as her!

They have all sorts of animals at the patch that the kids can look at.



Katie and I on the hay ride.

See all the pics HERE.

The Big Fresno Fair

Every year at the beginning of October we get the girls out of school a little bit early and we all go the Big Fresno Fair. We really lucked out this year too, as the weather was in the mid-nineties the day before, but in the mid-eighties yesterday. It was a gorgeous afternoon and evening. We went on Smoke-free Kid's Day, which meant the kids got in free, but unfortunately it did not mean that anyone paid attention to the No Smoking signs posted all over the whole fair grounds.

We got smart this year and took photos of each of the girls at the entrance to the fair so that if anything happened and we got separated we could show pictures of exactly what they looked like. Why didn't we think of that before? Luckily we did not have to use them!

We started at the Junior Exhibits and hopefully got the girls interested in the idea of entering things into the fair. We also think we may have finally convinced Amanda about the idea of joining 4-H, as many of the projects that she saw in the fair that she said she would like to do were done by 4-H groups.

Next we went to the Kid's Zone, and they had a new exhibit in there that was SOOOO cool! It was a kaleidoscope exhibit and it had all sizes and shapes of kaleidoscopes that were made from all different types of materials. There was even a kaleidoscope with a camera inside of it so that when you stood in front of it, you became a part of the kaleidoscope. It was so much fun and it was hard to get the girls to leave so that we could see the rest of the fair.

We went into an exhibit of old cars and machinery, which is always a favorite. Interestingly enough - and this may seem like a tangent, but it will come around - CalTrans is almost done with the extension of Highway 180. In the meantime, we are being routed on a detour. The detour is long, so those of us who have been doing this periodically for the last four years, we know a different road to turn on and it cuts about a mile off the detour. As we were driving down that road on the way to the fair, Kevin mentioned that he had noticed a house on the road that had some really nice old, restored trucks that were out in the driveway. We didn't think anything more about it. When we went into the exhibit, I made it around a partition before Kevin did and I saw a truck that was absolutely gorgeous and I told Kevin to hurry around and see this truck. As Kevin went around the corner he said, "those are the trucks!", referring to the truck I pointed out and the one next to it. Two of the trucks in the fair exhibit came from the driveway of the house we passed on the detour. Cool!

We were out on the grounds when the Anhieuser Busch Clydesdale horse-drawn wagon went by. Wow! That is impressive up close! All the gear on those horses is amazing!

We then went to the family favorite, the Rocks and Minerals building. The girls LOVE this exhibit! They spun the wheel to win different types of rock prizes, went through the florescent rock exhibit, bought a $1 bag of rocks and this year we bought a small geode that was cut in half for them. (That was LOUD!!) There were all sorts of displays of different rocks and minerals. Amanda loved a diorama scene that was made out of rocks, and Katrina loved a huge crystal display. She pointed at it and said, "grass rocks!"

We went over to the HUGE play area that has a huge fort and a pirate ship and they played there for awhile. Then the went over to the gold panning area and then we went over to the Livestock building. We saw the chickens, bunnies, cows and sheep. They don't have a petting area anymore but this year they had a great interactive play area. You could saddle a big stuffed horse, dress a scarecrow, play in a corn crib, "milk" a cow, and Katrina loved riding the kid-sized tractors.

Then we headed over to the Fine Arts building to see how my photos had done. I only got one ribbon, an Honorable Mention, for the photo of Amanda jumping off the dunes at White Sands National Monument. We looked at a lot of the other photos and then we got some dinner. We always get to pick our favorite "fair" food.

Then we headed to the much anticipated midway! (Rebecca must have asked us at least twenty times when we were going to go there.) The girls went to their favorite ride where they sit in swings and then get spun way up high. We took Katrina to the merry-go-round and she was very anxious to go on it until we got on it. She started to cry and fuss and Kevin took a picture of her on the horse. The ride started and by the time we got back around and he took another photo of her, she had a smile that went from ear to ear. We got off she said she wanted to go again. We went a second time and she waved to her sisters as we went by, and I told her how brave she was to let go with one hand!

We walked back through the Commerce Building where all the vendors are and then we went into the Ag building. The Kerman display is always beautiful and this year was no exception. We bought a big cup of fruit and had a late night dessert snack. Then we made our way though another one of the Commerce Buildings and then out to the van and home. We have several family traditions that we have formed over the years and this is one that we enjoy very much!

Blogging my weight loss journey - Month 9

I am not sure which language "plateau" translates into "just quit trying", but apparently in Lora-ese that is exactly what it means. I get frustrated when I am not making progress, and then I soothe that frustration with food. (Curse you Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream!!! You are so good!!) It's a vicious cycle!! I don't feel good and I am tired. I get so fed up with myself, but it always takes SOOOOO much longer to get back on track than it does to get off it. More frustration, so more food.

It was really disheartening to realize that I will not be able to reach my main goal. I thought that my goals were very reasonable, so I am depressed that it looks as though I will not be able to reach it. It took me eight months to lose 40 lbs., I can't imagine that I can safely lose another 40 lbs. in the next 2.5 months. Arg!!

I have to say that it is not as fun to blog about losing weight when you are not actually losing weight. I know I have gained weight, as I am feeling tubby, but I am still fitting into the same clothes, so I know I haven't gained TOO much weight back. Although any weight is too much weight. The worst part is that I absolutely stopped exercizing!! I exercized last Thursday for the first time all month! Not very productive. All out to nothing!

The sad thing is that most of the things I have been eating don't really taste all that great (except for the Ben & Jerry's ice cream), and I don't feel good after eating them. But, unfortunately that doesn't ever seem to stop me.

The thing to focus on is what I have accomplished! I have lost 40 lbs. I am healthier than I was at the beginning of the year. I have to get things back in the right direction. I think I will be blogging a little more often than once a month, as I feel like I try to straighten up right before a blog post, so if I do them more frequently, then I will straighten up more often!

A New Record - 36 finds!

On our trip to LA and back, Kevin and I managed to break our family's previous record of 34 finds in a day! Today we got 36! Awesome!

On Saturday when we were heading down to LA to the concert, we weren't going to do any caches on the way down, we were just going to hustle down there and cache on the way home. As we were heading into Tulare, Kevin suddenly went veering off the freeway onto the offramp to get a cache that he decided at the very last minute that we had to get RIGHT THEN! The cache was in a mobile home park and it was hidden in a cairn in the front of one of the mobile homes. It was really good that we stopped when we did, as the cache owner, California Cash Cow, and his wife, were packing all their belongings into a trailer to move to a new house. We were probably the last ones to find the cache at this location. We ended up being there for an hour, swapping stories and discovering each others geocoins and travel bugs. His dog and his truck are both travel bugs, which we thought was GREAT!!

On Sunday, after we had a nice visit and breakfast at Denny's with Jer and Renee and the twins, we were on our way home - the LOOOONG way! We started with several caches north of Castaic and then we headed out the 138 towards Palmdale to the northern Ridge Route. There were 18 caches on that leg of the route that we hadn't found yet. We love those caches! Great scenery and great history and we even met a few other cachers along the way. We also did a lot of benchmarking. Kevin even found a gravity station, one he has never found before! He was very excited! Out of all the caches we went looking for today we only had 2 DNFs (did not find), and those are pretty great stats! At one cache we saw a bobcat! It was too fast for our camera, but impressive none-the-less. We had a great time!

When we went through Bakersfield we stopped to see Kevin's grandparent's house. Kevin's dad has been down for weeks getting the house ready to be sold, as his grandmother lives in a nursing home in Modesto now. As we walked around the back porch and yard, Kevin was pointing things out to me and telling me memories he had about them from when he was younger. He took a lot of photos, too.

Then we headed back to Kerman to gets our girls. It was a nice weekend to spend together!

See all the Geocaching pics HERE.
See all the CA Cash Cow pics HERE.
See all the Bakersfield pics HERE.

Nightwish - Part 3

Okay! It's official! We are Nightwish groupies!! This is the third concert in a year that we have seen them. (We actually debated about going to the San Francisco show the night before, but we really thought that would be excessive!)

We drove down to LA on Saturday morning and we got to the Wiltern at about 4:20pm. There was already a line forming on the north side of the theater. Since we had seen told that the box office would open at 5:00pm, and there were only six people ahead of us, we figured we would just stay there to pick up our will call tickets. 5:00pm came and went, and the will call line got longer and longer. 5:30pm. Someone comes out and tapes a sign above my head that says this line is for LiveNation.com ticket holders. (We bought our tickets from Enter the Vault.com) 5:45pm. A few people in Wiltern shirts came out and everyone would try to get information out of them, but each time and with each person there would be different and conflicting information. We were told at one point that if we had enterthevault.com will call tickets we were to definitely stay in the line we were in. Ten minutes later, at 6:00pm, the same lady who said that walked by us saying that the enterthevault.com ticket holders were to follow her to the back of the building. Since she was walking from the front of the line to the back, the line kind of reversed itself and we ended up being much farther back in line. Arg! Now we waited at the back of the building for another 45 minutes before they started giving us our tickets. (We got a kick out of the fact that there were signs that made three lines, A-G, I-Q and R-Z. Those of us in line speculated as to what would happen if your last name started with H. Would they not let you in? Was there a separate line behind the dumpsters just for the H's? Too funny and very indicative of the chaos and disorganization we experienced.)

I should say though that we had a great time talking to several of the people that we were standing next to. The two guys who had driven from SLO were the best! It was also fun to people watch all the cars and pedestrians going by. When the cars would pull up to the light we would watch the passenger crane their necks to see the marquee and then you could see them mouth, Nightwish?! Their reactions to the lines around the building were varied and often comical. Most of the people in line were dressed in black and looking very goth (in fact one of the Wiltern staff actually stopped twice and jokingly told Kevin, who was dressed in jeans and a red plaid button-down shirt, that he still had time to go home and change) and one mother and several small children walked by looking a bit fearful. Kevin said he caught the eye of the smallest child and smiled and the kid broke into a big grin! It was funny!

At 7:00pm we finally had tickets with our names on them in our hands and we now had to go around the building and join the line that had been steadily increasing in size since we got there. We first went across the street to a pharmacy, used their restrooms and then bought two granola bars so that we would have something to "eat" before we went into a three hour show. (After standing in line for two and a half hours by now.)

At 8:00pm on the dot (the watch on the arm of the man standing behind us in line beeped at exactly the same moment we started moving forward) we started into the theater. The Wiltern is a gorgeous old Art Nouveau movie theater that has been converted to a music venue. The outside was impressive, but the inside was phenomenal! Our photos do not remotely do it justice! It was beautiful!

We got a spot on the second tier back from the stage and we were behind some people who were standing at the railing. From that vantage point we were level with the people who were on the stage. It was a great spot to be in! There was a screen above the stage that people could text messages to and they would scroll across the screen. It was a great time killer reading all the texts and so the concert seemed to start pretty fast, even though we stood there for about another 45 minutes. (I honestly have to write to Rocket Dog, as this is the second concert I have stood through with their shoes on and this time it was 9 hours!)

The concert started at 9:00pm with Sonata Arctica, another Finnish band. Kevin had played a few of their songs for me before we came, so I had heard them, but I didn't know their music very well. They were great! Apparently though, as the opening act, they didn't rate a spot light so I never really saw what the lead singer looked like, as he stood in front of the stage lights most of the time. The lead singer is very energetic and has great voice quality! He had some power behind those notes he was singing! They played for about 45 minutes and then they were off. Not enough time for them. We wanted to hear more. (YouTube Video Links: Don't Say a Word & Paid in Full)

During the set change Kevin had a funny conversation with a guy who was trying to convince Kevin that he was a bigger Nightwish fan and so we should let him stand in front of us. (He looked a bit like Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley, only with a mowhawk.) First he said he was shorter than me and so we should let him go in front, then he tried see what CD Nightwish had released when we started listening to them. Dude, if you wanted to stand in front of me, you should have been in this spot before me. He tried this ploy out on a couple of other people around us before he gave up and just stood where he was.

At 10:30pm the lights went dark and the crowd went wild! Nightwish came out and even though we had seen posts on blogs about earlier concerts, it was still weird to see Anette with blond hair! She looked great, but different! The concert was great! The sound was great! They have really been putting their own style into things! Marco is actually a classically trained guitarist, so it was nice when he was playing "The Islander" that he added in some great extra riffs to the song! (And, this time, Anette was wearing the tiara again! Cool! Her part in that song doesn't seem right without it.) Jukka was fantastic as usual. With our vantage point we got to see more of him than we have at any other show! The same thing with Tuomas. We were able to see him better than before. We could see his fingers moving as he played the keyboards. It was great! And Empuu was his amazing self! His solos are so impressive!

They started with "Bye, Bye Beautiful" and ended with "Wish I Had An Angel" as they have through all phases of this tour. This series of concerts was actually billed as the North American Tour - The Final Chapter, as they are finishing up their Dark Passion Play tour and heading back to Europe and then to the studio. They won't be back in America in 2009. (:( Sniff!) Where are we going to get our Nightwish fixes now? They sang several songs off the Dark Passion Play CD - Amaranth, The Islander, The Poet and the Pendulum, Whoever Brings The Night, Sahara and 7 Days To The Wolves - and then they also sang The Siren, Dead To The World, Wishmaster, Higher Than Hope and Come Cover Me (this is a really old one that I didn't even remember hearing before!).

We talked about the difference between the three shows we have seen. Back in November Anette had just started and so the songs all sounded very much like they do on the albums. The band was tight and it was mostly the new music. In Vegas Anette had learned more of the older songs and so there was a lot more variety to the set list. This time they are more comfortable and were putting their own spin and sound into the songs we all know and love.

After the show was over (at midnight) we went out to where the buses were parked to see if we could see the band. We weren't able to get VIP tickets this time, and I had brought the photo of me with Jukka and Marco from Las Vegas and I was hoping to get it signed. We stood there and talked some more with the guys from SLO that we had been in line with earlier. One of them had actually got a copy of the set list off the sound board and was going to try to get it signed.

We didn't have to wait long and Jukka come out! I got right up there and he signed my photo first! I said again how great a drummer we think he is. He said thanks and then I backed up. Kevin said, didn't you want a picture with him? Arg! People were really packing in, so I couldn't get back up there. Then Marco came out! When I held out the photo for him to sign he looked at it for a minute as if he was trying to figure out where it was taken. He said, "I look sober!" He signed it and I got another picture with him , and this time he made sure he didn't look sober! :) I was very glad to have been able to have my photo signed! By this time I was able to get back in to where Jukka was and I got another picture with him as well. Then Tuomas came out and I was able to get a photo with him as well! I shook his hand and told him how much we appreciate his music. We waited until 1:30am but Empuu and Anette never came out, so we got in the van to drive to Jer and Renee's house where we were going to crash for what little of the night was left!

This has been a fun adventure this year heading off to here and there to see this band that we have grown to like so much! It has been neat to see the crowds growing at each show (and the prices of tickets going up with each show) and seeing that Nightwish's fan base is really growing here in the US! Hopefully they will get that new album done soon and be back to the US as early as possible in 2010. Because, when they do get here, you know where we will be!

See all the Nightwish at the Wiltern pics HERE.

Marco, Jukka, & Tuomas!

Lora got more pics with Nightwish!

Never Forget

Lily and Zachary's 2nd Birthday Party!

This morning we left early and drove down to Castaic for Lily and Zachary’s 2nd birthday party. They had the party at Scooter’s Jungle which is like a big, huge bounce house! (We all laughed at the irony that last year when the party was outside it was 107°, but this year, when it is indoors, it is only 85° outside. Go figure!)

There were slides and bouncy houses, games (like ping-pong and air hockey) and a zip line. All the kids were having a great time! When Amanda and Rebecca first climbed to the top of the slide, Amanda stood there nervous for a moment, and then Rebecca went flying by her and down the slide. She must have figured that it couldn’t be that bad, and then after that we could barely keep them off the slide! Katrina went down a few times with Kevin and Lora, but she mainly stayed in a little toy area that she was comfortable in.

There was a lot of food and the kids got pizza for lunch and then there was a yummy cake! We all song Happy Birthday to them (one half of the room sang Zach and Lily and the other half sang Lily and Zach so it would be even!) It was a fun birthday party!

After the party we did a few geocaches (15 of them today!) while Jeremy and Renee got the kids to sleep and then we went over and visited for a while. The twins opened their present from us (we love these books by Leslie Patricelli - Yummy Yucky, Quiet Loud, Big Little, and No no Yes yes) and then our girls opened their gifts from their aunt and uncle. The kids had a great time playing!

We finally had to go and we got a few more caches on the way home. We stopped in Gorman, on the Grapevine, on the way home for dinner. Traffic was pretty light, mostly because we were traveling the opposite direction of the holiday traffic, and believe it or not, we made it home before 10:30pm!

See all the birthday party/road trip pics HERE.