Liberty, Liberty, Liberty! Liberty is Hear By Granted For All Hands!

And on our left is the rare Georgia Door Handle Frog! This here is my bakin' post. Mainly this will be about the Bake Off / Cook Off that my unit had. And that I baked 3 desserts for. The picture on your left is the recipe I used for cookies. I also baked some lemon bars and Kathy's Trifle. In addition to all of the desserts, I also made some Cuban Pulled Pork... mmmm... pulled pork.Well, The night before the cook off was pretty busy. I needed to make 2 deserts, finish the Trifle and start the pork. We actually started the Trifle on Wednesday. Unfortunately, he Trifle calls for a Blamage, which Kathy buys from a British store. And to have ordered the Blamage packet, the cook off would have been over by the time it arrived. That and shipping was going to cost more than the actual Blamage.

What you see on the right is what I used for the desserts. One thing to help the time go by...music. You can check out what I was listening to here. But moving on. I was able to successfully bake all 3 desserts in a row with out going crazy. Which I think was a first. It took two days to complete all of the dishes (well, technically 3 because of the pork).

The first thing to be finished was the trifle. During that time, I need to read through a recipe a few times before actually starting it. Good thing Cait showed up to help otherwise the shipped cream wouldn't have gotten added. Speaking of whipped cream, when topping the trifle, you should always use the tubs of whipped cream instead of the cans This is because the stuff from the tubs holds up a lot better then the canned version. Moving on. Up next, the cookies! They are small chocolate cookies rolled in powdered sugar. They are delicious! And while the dough was firming up in the fridge, time to start on the lemon bars. For that, you start with the crust.

You can see the flour mixture as its falling from the sifter! As you can see, there was a lot of sifting going on. That bowl in the picture actually contained a lot more flour and other ingredients still waiting to be sifted. Which leads me to my next point. I need a bigger sifter. If you want to buy one for me, I won't complain. The scent that the dough gave off... a little bit of heaven. Once the dough was formed and placed into the containers, time to bake the crust. While this was baking, I filled a bowl with some powdered sugar and grabbed the nice and firm cookie dough from the fridge. You roll the dough into little balls, cover in the sugar and place on a baking sheet. I was able to fit 18 on to each baking sheet.

By the time that I had finished laying all the the dough out, my crust for the lemon bars was done. Time to swap. Crust comes out and cookies go in. Now lets make some curd! You can't have lemon bars with out the lemon, and I used the juice from 3 lemons to give these a nice lemony flavor. Everything about them turned out good, except for the color. And I think was due to the fact that I left out the lemon zest. Oh well.

After I made the curd... you know, curd sounds kinda gross. From now on, it shall be called the "lemon mixture." Now, as I was saying, after I made the lemon mixture (and the crusts had cooled down a bit), I poured the mixture over the crusts and did another swap. This time cookies put and lemon bars in. You can see the cookies above and the lemon bars on the right. See how the lemon bars aren't that yellow? I'm pretty sure that's due to no lemon zest. I might be wrong. If you know, please let me know. Once all of the baking was done, time to clean up catch some sleep. The next day (Friday), I was able to come home after muster and finish getting everything ready. We let the pork slow cook over night. That was a wonderful smell to wake up to.

We loaded up the car with everything and headed off to the base. In this picture, you can see me leaning over the trifle. It was pretty delicious. There were not enough actual slow cooker dishes that wasn't pulled pork to actually have its own category. So they combined the slow cooker and meat categories together. The cook off was a big hit though. We raised over $200 for the morale fund! I'm expecting some very nice Christmas prize at the Christmas party this year. Time to declare the winners. I actually won! In the meat category of all things.And what did I win you ask? I won a day of special liberty! That's pretty exciting. Our deserts didn't get any votes except from Cait and I. Oh well. I had fun cooking. And that's what matters. And now I leave you with what I looked like when I was dancing while baking. Enjoy!

- Brent

Big Wheel Keeps on Turning

This has been a busy weekend. We finally hung up this awesome mirror that we found down in St. Pete. This was probably the easiest time we've had hanging this mirror. The frame is nice, thick, solid wood. After having been underway for a good chunk of last week, I was really looking forward to this past weekend. We had a Bar-B-Que with one of my coworkers. We were also going to have one of my buddies from my last unit (who was transferred up to Sector Jacksonville). However, his wife went into labor late last week. Their son, was born over the weekend. Congrats to him and his wife! We still need to get together for the BBQ and so our wives can have their play dates. Of course, when ever we have an event planned at the house, there is a certain amount of preparation that goes into getting everything ready. Mainly cleaning up the house. That's really the big one. And for the most part, I'll try to ensure that the lawn has a fresh cut. Well, we took care of all of that and we went looking for some shelving for the garage. Our intention was to get the garage cleaned up this weekend as well. It seems that when ever we go look for one thing, we find something else entirely. Saturday was no exception.

As I said, we went to find some shelves for the garage, and wound up finding an accent chair. As you can see, the chair wasn't in the greatest of condition. However, Cait saw the potential in the chair and we just couldn't turn it down. We paid less that $10 for it at Habitat for Humanity. That was a great deal. So, after some maneuvering, I got it home (strapped to the roof like almost every other piece of furniture we've purchased). Time to go find a slip cover. But before that we checked out a new fabric store in town (Beyond Fabric) and Cait found a fabric that she absolutely loved. However, our original plan was to purchase a slip cover for the chair. We searched both Walmart and Target (which was a bit of a drive) with no luck. So, back to the fabric store. We purchased 7 yards of the fabric. This was also a very good time due in part to the fact that the shop owner said that we might be able to sell some of Cait's bows in her store!

Well, if you've never reupholstered a chair before, it's probably not a good idea to start the night before your BBQ. You can see how things were looking around 0100 on Sunday morning. Not nearly done and that took us a few hours to complete. There was a lot of frustration and a bit of aggravation that went into this chair. That and some E-6000. Well, a lot of E-6000 and staples. But still, we got it done. Of course the sewing machine breaking didn't help either. However, I can add "Sewing Machine Repairman Extraordinaire" to the list of titles I've got. The next morning started at 0630 for me so that I could re-clean the parts of the house that got messy due to the chair. That and to finish mowing the lawn. While I was mowing the lawn, Cait was busy with the chair. And so was Savannah. She was all over the chair and the cushion that Cait was working on. Needless to say, that wasn't to helpful for Cait.
Well, we were able to finish most of the chair right as our guests arrived. The picture on the right is the final product (except for the back). I'm pretty sure that Cait won't be doing upholstery work again. Or if she does, it won't be a rush job. I like how the chair turned out though. Of course if you're her friend on Facebook, you have probably already seen these pictures. On a completely different note, I would like to thank Zack Martin for the good time Friday with Sea Stories of the Submariner world. That and the Walama and Zombo.com. And now, I leave you with this::

-Brent

Strangeness, Silliness, and Pictures

Well all, I think this post is along the lines of needing to get in the habit of posting more often. As you can see, Savannah has her own ballerina outfit. We even found a princess wand to go with it. She loves it. She had a lot of fun the other day running around the house in it. The wand though, is sometimes used as a weapon. It seems that anything we hand her will be considered a weapon that can and will be used against us. Its okay though, she seems to understand more and more that things we hand her are not weapons. On that, it seems that most things we hand her also end up in her mouth. But she's starting to get over that. She's done pretty well on stoping bad habits on her own (for the most part).

On another front, my unit has formally announced the Cook Off / Bake Off. There are 4 categories. Meat, Casserol, Slow Cooker, and Dessert. I've got things for all but the slow cooker category. Although if you do cook a meat dish in a slow cooker (i.e. pulled pork) it will be entered in the meat category. I've got about 10 ideas for the dessert category (but are we suprised?). I've got to narrow that down to about 3. Hopefully, I'll be able to at least take the dessert category. And what are the prizes you ask? Well, the cook of the best dish in each category wins a day of special liberty (that's a day off when I choose for those who don't know) and the overall winner (the best from the final 4) gets to park in the XO's parking spot for 3 days. As you can see from the picture, Savannah is trying to select a baking pan for me to use. She's always trying to help out. As i've said before, I'll keep you posted on the contest. Recipes will be posted after everything is said and done.

Another thing we did was to install a swing on the front porch for Savannah. It was a bit tricky to figure out how we were going to do it, but Cait same up with a pretty good idea. I drilled a hole in 2 rafters and screwed a big eyelet screw into the holes, strung a chain between them and hooked the swing up to the chain. Pretty ingenious. Although I have figured out a way to help make the swing a bit more...stable. But I'm not to worried about it. Savannah loves it and it remains pretty cool through out the day. Everytime Savannah sees the swing she wants to..well...swing. Of course with the weather we've been having, whenever she goes outside the first two words out of her mouth are "hot" and "icky." Shortly after that, she's saying "inside" bringing swing-time to a close. Of course almost a soon as sh'e inside, she wants to go out back into the pool.

Here's another thing that we got for the little one. She now has more vehicles than Cait and I combined. It's kinda sad. We even re-arranged the living room so that her "new" car would have room to manevure. She loves her car. She'll put her sippy cup and a couple of possesions in the tray in back, climb in the car, wave good by and back up into some furnature. It's pretty funny. I suppose she thinks she's running away, but can't seem to get very far. She has fun though. It's just another tool for Hurricane Toddler to use while working on destroying the house. One more thing, I've made the 4th of July album available on Picasa. You can find that here. I've also created a Google profile found here. Well, I think that's it for this post. I leave you with this video from Improv Everywhere.

- Brent

Video Games, Dead Magnolias and Fire!

Wow. That's a lot of Sims2 games. All of that got me $24 for trade in. That might be able to buy me one of these games new, but oh well. I just added it to the store credit I already had. This has been an eventful few days recently. First, I discovered that there might be a baking/cooking competition at my unit. That sent me diving into my baking books to see what I could make to win. I have a few ideas, but I'm not allowed to share (yet). I'll keep you posted on how that goes. But I'm pretty excited about it. Apparently, the person who brought the contest to my attention has decided to have a throw down with me on who will do better. Another thing is that our Magnolia tree might not be doing to well. We think it is suffering from heat stress. It looks pretty dead to me though. Actually, most of our flowers aren't doing too well. Anyway, I had Friday off and that was spent working around the house. I was finally able to put my "new" lawn mower to good use and it works wonderfully! That night though, I refilled the little gas cans and placed them in our garage for the night. Well, I forgot to move them to the shed after I was done mowing the rest of the Saturday morning (it's a big lawn. It takes me about 5-6 hours with my push mower to cut all of the grass). We went out for the day and came back to a house smelling like gas. After airing the house out, I moved all of the gas and equipment out to the shed. We went out later to try and find some shorts for Savannah (all she seems to have is skirts) and upon returning to our house, it still smelled of gas. Once again, we opened the windows to air the house out. Well, Cait jumped on the Internet (which reminds me, I need to stop her from looking at it when things aren't right. It just freaks her out even more) and found that one possible cause would be a build up of sewage gasses that could cause our house to explode. Well, that's not too good. I contacted Station 3 of the Camden County Fire & Rescue and ended up speaking with the station Chief. I presented my problem and requested that if possible could they send someone to check it out. All I was told was that someone would be there soon. 20 minutes (give or take) after that, Cait and I hear the low rumbles of diesel engines coming down the street.

Looking out the windows showed the ambulance and fire truck that you see in the picture. All we were looking for was someone in a county truck to come out. Definitely not emergency vehicles. Oh well, that's what you get for talking to the actual firehouse Chief. After a review of our air system and a tour of the house, the fire fighters stated that they believed it was the fumes from the 2 gas cans. However, they also believe that the fumes had become attached to the filters in our returns and that we should buy new filters. Following their advice, the next day there was no smell of gas in the house. Of course there was the obligatory FaceBook post (from Cait) stating that the magnolia tree was dead and the Fire Department had just left. Shortly after that post came the worried calls, texts, and responses from friends and family. Maybe we should have posted about the tree earlier...That's been the most exciting thing that happened recently. Mostly.

On another front, Cait is looking at starting her own bow making company. After spending too much money on some bows for Savannah, Cait found a simple way to make bows. Sunday afternoon was spent at Jo-Ann's obtaining all of the ribbon and stuff to make said bows. Although there is quite a bit of ribbon in the cart, the final total of items was a bit more (for the clips to keep the bows in the hair). I'll be creating a section on this blog dedicated to the bows that Cait has crafted. By the time I left for work this morning, she had crafted 3 bows and was planning on making more while I am at work. I can't wait to see what she has made. I've been told that her day has been filled with taking care of Savannah and making bows. Her page should be up in about a week or so. And with that, I leave you with a picture of Moog yelling.

- Brent

Halo Me This

Happy Video Game Day! That's right folks, today is Video Game Day. Not to be confused with National Video Game Day which is on September 12th. I would like to thank Shawn for the title of this post by the way. I felt that he needed to be acknowledged for his contribution for this post. I know I intend to celebrate tonight with what will hopefully be the final battle in Dragon Age. And although the consoles (like the big 3 you see above) are what people primarily refer to, we can't forget about those that helped pave the way. Ones such as the Atari (any will do), Nintendo (once again, pick any), Sega (I mainly remember Mortal Combat at my friend's house. That and Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast.), and who can forget the arcades? I've read that in Japan, Sega has developed an arcade that updates your Twitter as you play.

And while all of those mentioned (and I'm sure there's some that I've forgotten), We can't discount the computer. I know Cait will be celebrating as well by playing the Sims 3 Ambitions. From what I've heard, that game is pretty fun. But in all seriousness, we can't continue to let these little known holidays continue to slip by unnoticed. I say we stand up and let the world know about these! Or I could just be rambling and looking for an excuse to play video games. Who knows? I wish you all the best as you celebrate this holiday!

- Brent

And After the Show, It's The After Party

With the 4th of July come and gone, its time to recap! Our celebration was really on the 3rd of July with the parade in St. Marys followed up with the night time fireworks display. That was pretty fun. I didn't quite realize that there were going to be booths and vendors. It had a carnival like atmosphere. The parade was sponsored by the Kiwanas and seemed to contain more politicians than any thing. I must give credit to the gentleman in the picture though. I think that was one of the most creative campaigning get-ups that I've seen. Granted, I haven't seen many. Mostly just from the parade... Moving on. It was a pretty good parade. They were tossing out candy and beads and passing out leaflets and there was lots of waving. The parade featured a display of tractors and cars and motorcycles. Of course, interspersed in all of those were the politicians. But enough about politics. The carnivalness featured a lot of vendors selling hand made goodies. Cait wasn't able to find any bows for Savannah with a monogrammed "S" on it :(. I did give blood though. Got a free t-shirt that Cait promptly stole. Oh...and a carnival isn't complete without overpriced funnel cake and even more over priced lemonade. The lemonade wasn't the greatest, although it did make me want some Pronto Pup lemonade....mmmmmmm...Pronto Pup.

For the 4th, we went to the Jacksonville Zoo! That was a good time. We had a coupon for 1 free admission if you're in the military. So, we paid all of $13 for 3 people to get in. I'd call that a good deal. That took a good 5 hours that day. We visited all of the animals, petted the sting rays, rode the train, visited the minuscule 4th of July celebration area, and ate some overpriced food. All-in-all a good day. Savannah really had a good time and was excited to see all of the animals. It makes me want to add to the zoo we have at home. Mostly with the addition of some tropical birds and a leopard or two...

Because the 4th was on a Sunday, the government gave its employees the 5 off as a national holiday. That was a nice relaxing day. Except for the part of me mowing the lawn in the blistering heat. My lawn mower literally exploded the other day, and we were blessed to have meet some friends from church who were looking to get rid of their old mower. For $20 I got a Craftsman mower with a 4.5HP Briggs & Stratton engine. At first I was a little leery of buying a used mower (the exploded one was purchased for $40 at a flea market...) again, but it actually cuts better than the exploded one did. But after the lawn was done, time for a dip in the pool. And it felt wonderful. Savannah joined me pretty much right after I got in. She loves the pool.

The pile of ingredients you see above eventually turned into the picture on your right. Those are red white and blue mini cheesecakes. They were fun to make. The red and blue is velvet cake and the white is cheesecake. I know that Shawn enjoyed them at work the next day. So did some others. I made about 5 dozen cupcakes and took 3 to work. Of course I do love red velvet and cheesecake. And now that they've been combined together...mmmmm...delicious! I've been told that whenever the MOMs Club of Kingsland is doing a bake sale, I need to bake more delicious treats to sell. How many actually make it to the bake sale...we'll see how that work when the time comes. To wrap up, the 4th of July is not only a day to celebrate our freedom as a country but to remember the sacrifices given by those who have helped ensure that we remain free. A final picture:

- Brent

I Haven't Been There For The Longest Time

Wow. Almost two months (give or take) since I've posted on here. Of course there were the postings on our travel blog here. That took up a week. But, I'm starting to get the blogging bug again and am going to start working on this blog again. So here it goes. As I sit here listening to a random mix on my iPod, I'm trying to look back on the past couple of months. A lot of things have happened. The major events are...is mainly our vacation to Idaho. Like the picture? I took that in Idaho. It's a wonderful state. We met family, took in the sights, relaxed, and Savannah got to meet her Great Grandparents. That was really the main reason for the trip. I'll post the link to my Picasa album with those pictures. They will only be available for a short time though. I need to add pictures to facebook. This trip made me realize the true need for a DSLR camera. I mean our camera is nice, but the pictures could be so much better! But I digress... We spent a week up in Idaho just having fun.

As I mentioned before, one of the highlights was Savannah meeting her Great Grandparents. I know my Grandfather was rally excited to meet her. Family members have been saying that every time someone comes over, he's showing them the book of pictures we sent. I know too that he has also wanted to have a girl. But they really enjoyed seeing her. Kyle also rode up from Salt Lake City to see her for the first time. Too bad that His motorcycle tire wasn't doing too well. He ended up spending the night in Filer, ID and taking a U-Haul back down the next day. But it all worked out in the end. Although Savannah still doesn't seem to trust him... Oh well. Hopefully she'll get to know him better over Christmas. Continuing on with our story.

The next big thing that happened is...we got a pool (as you can see)! Granted it's not an in-ground pool (those cost way too much), but we're pretty happy with it. It's 16' x 3'6" and holds about 4,000 gallons of water. It took a day to fill it up. The only down side to the inflatable pool that we have is that the ground needs to be perfectly level. No joke. If there is any tilt at all, the whole pool has the chance of...not working out... Plus, check the ground for rocks. It really stinks when the pool is full an you discover that there are a couple of rocks underneath. That and expect any grass under the pool to be dead. But for the most part, it's pretty fun! We've already had a party and Savannah loves it. I promise that although the picture is of the pool being filled, it is much bigger. Sadly we don't have any other pictures of the pool. But still, if you're in the neighborhood, stop on by and take a dunk!

Lets see, what else has happened? Oh, Cait and I built this headboard that you see on the right. It was pretty easy. Just a piece of fiberboard, some 2" foam, batting, fabric and decorative buttons hiding the nail holes. Not to shabby if I do say so myself. We're going for a luxury hotel feel (that is subject to change depending on what Cait says after reading this...) and I think we're getting there.

We also updated the lamps to some fancier ones that don't look like the Eiffel Tower and we found some nice tall (and blue!) candlestick holders. Of course we found the required tall candles to go with them. They look and smell pretty good. We're slowly transforming the bedroom into the relaxing retreat that we need. I'm looking forward for when its done. There's still quite a bit needed though. I know Cait still wants curtains, a sconce, and more art. We'll keep you informed of updates and such. But lets keep moving. We've still got some more stuff to cover!

Keeping with the whole "decorating" theme... On a recent trip to Jo-Ann Fabric to pick up the table for Savannah, we managed to find ourselves in a clearance section. Of course we had to stop and peruse. And we found some vinyl wall decals. Cait's creative brain went into overdrive and soon we had some decals to apply to the wall of Savannah's new craft area. I picked out the little purple guy. I'm proud of that. The stickers went up really quick and look really good. The table and chair were originally plain wood (unpainted) with some missing part. Thankfully I had some extra screws lying around and we were able to get it put together. Surprisingly, it took 6 cans of white matte spray paint to cover everything. While it took a little bit, we were able to get everything set up the day we bought it. Savannah was really surprised the next morning. Cait said that she wanted to eat breakfast at her new table and wouldn't sit in her high chair. Only a couple more things to go, I promise.

Bring on Uncle Kyle! Kyle was kind enough to buy Savannah a Dora tricycle. We've been wanting to get her a tricycle for some time, but one without lights and noise makers. Kyle managed to get her a tricycle...with all of the lights and sounds... I'm pretty sure that he is still laughing about it. Sadly, thought it's still too big for Savannah to reach the pedals even with the seat up as high as it will go. After lowering the seat, she can now "walk" her way around the house on her trike. She's still not to good with the steering part though. Kyle came down for a visit a couple weeks ago and (I would like to think) had a lot of fun. There was spending time with the family, playing video games, going to the beach, playing video games, and just having fun. I know Cait and I enjoyed having him visit and look forward to seeing him at Christmas (hint hint).

One thing that I do miss about Idaho, thought is Moxie Java. They need to become the next Starbucks. They make coffee, but it's wwwwaaaayyyyyy better than Starbucks. Each cup is lovingly made by people who care about you. I think. Either that or they care about your money... But that's just business. But, still, they need to expand beyond the Treasure Valley. And with that, this blog is complete. For our final image, I leave you with this.

-Brent