Halloween 2020

November 10, 2020 8:00 pm

Halloween was on Saturday this year, which was a good thing because we didn't get around to carving our Pumpkins until the day of. Heather designed a pumpkin to represent the flag of the Fur and Freedom Fighters (a group from the book series she's been reading, "Redwall"), which is a spear breaking a chain. Corinne's design is a goofy face, and my design is the Sheikah Slate symbol from the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild video game.

As usual, I did all the pumpkin work myself because everyone else thinks it's gross.

Corinne insisted on being in some of the pumpkin pictures and dragged Jess in too:

The girls wanted to be Elsa and Anna from Frozen 2 this year.

We didn't participate in trick-or-treating this year due to the ongoing pandemic. But instead, we got together with our social-bubble buddies. I made a Halloween trifle of brownies, chocolate cream, orange-dyed Cool Whip, crumbled Oreos, gummy eyeballs, gummy worms, and Reese's Pieces. If you ate around the gummy things (which were really only there for ambiance) it was quite good.

We did leave a bowl of lollipops out on our front step when we left, but it was basically untouched, so it would seem most of the neighborhood was also skipping the trick-or-treating. Which is good. Our county's numbers have been steadily improving for the last couple of months while much of the country has been experiencing full-blown outbreaks that are threatening to overwhelm hospitals.

The kids ran around and played until they were exhausted. And that was Halloween this year. Hopefully next year things will be back to normal.

Easter 2020

April 18, 2020 10:27 am

I spent Saturday cleaning up the yard. Everyone knows the Easter Bunny likes a cleaned up yard. I made rolls and at some point the Easter Bunny sneaked through the yard without anyone noticing. Not even a pandemic can stop the Easter Bunny.

Some of our flowers in the backyard are looking pretty good:

After accidentally adding 50% too much flour to my double-batch of rolls I had to turn it into an emergency triple batch. The flour was already mixed into a dense mass, so I had to slowly work in the extra liquids by kneading it on the countertop. I was pleased with how well it still came out. And I came up with a new TV show: "Recipe Rescue" where professional chefs are given a recipe that has gone wrong and they have to salvage it. For the early episodes they're told what's wrong and in the later episodes they have to figure it out themselves.

Thanksgiving 2019

December 21, 2019 11:15 am

We drove out to Utah to spend Thanksgiving with Erin's family this year. We arrived on Sunday night and stayed until Saturday morning.

On Tuesday we went to the Thanksgiving Point Natural History Museum.

Thursday was a busy day of baking 131 rolls, both baguette-style and soft-dinner-style, making cream puffs, eating food, and the girls playing in the snow.

I needed to make a lot of rolls, but the standard mixer bowl wasn't big enough. Turns out it works just fine to use another bowl of similar height and hold it yourself (and spin it around to help the mixing).

A whole gaggle of girls who had a ton of fun running around all week. Heather looks twice their size. I think it's mostly because she's all stretched out, but she's also tall.

On Friday we visited some friends that live in Lehi. Then we had to shovel 4 inches of snow off Erin's driveway to park the van. I don't miss shoveling snow!

We packed up Friday night planning for an early departure, but had to shovel more snow off the driveway in the morning in order to safely get to the street, which was not plowed.

We eventually got moving though had to head South due to the storm system coming through which also made I-80 across Donner Pass really dangerous with dozens of accidents and disabled vehicles. Shortly after we left, apparently a propane tanker overturned on I-15 around Lehi and had I-15 closed in both directions all day, but we avoided that.

The unicorn headband is also headphones!

Once we got out the bottom of Utah we had gotten ahead of the storm and the weather at least cleared up even if traffic didn't. We had hoped to get home in one day, which should have been possible with ~15 hours of traveling. Any dream of that happening though was shattered by the CA agricultural checkpoint which had traffic completely stopped for 27 miles.

We, and much of the rest of the highway, tried to stop for some food at the only town in existence for that stretch of road, Primm, just inside the Nevada border. We headed for a Taco Bell that Google thought existed, but did not. So we ended up at the busiest McDonald's I've ever seen. We grabbed some food to go and got back in the traffic jam. By the time we got up to the checkpoint they were closed for the day and you could just drive through, but it takes a long time for 27 miles of stopped traffic to start moving again.

We made it to Barstow and stayed the night there. When we got up in the morning, the checkpoint still had 5 miles of stopped traffic (according to Google Maps). We got moving again and made it back home after another 7 hours of driving. Patches of driving rain and poor visibility, heavy traffic, and incredibly unsafe drivers (gee, it's pouring rain, I can't see more than 2 cars in front of me, but this guy left 20 feet of space in front of him, I'm going to take it!). It was not a lot of fun.

At least a Raspberry Pi loaded with TV shows and Movies kept the girls entertained.

Halloween 2019

November 2, 2019 10:09 am

On the 30th we worked on carving our pumpkins. Which means I worked on carving pumpkins since everyone else thinks it's too gross cleaning out the inside of pumpkins.

Heather developed a cat-like design for her pumpkin. And Jess helped Corinne with a friendly-face design for hers. My design comes from the recently released game "Untitled Goose Game" in which you play a goose that terrorizes the neighborhood. Honk!

And costume pictures:

We started trick-or-treating at 6:30. The neighborhood seemed to get busiest around 7:15. Heather was scared of any decoration that looked like it might have the potential to move suddenly. Corinne was scared of any house without any decorations. But we made it down one side of the street, back up the other, and then back to the house. Then the girls were exhausted and Heather helped hand out candy while getting ready for bed (seems to be her favorite part of Halloween).