I see seafood!

Aunt Marilyn made this dish several years ago for Erika and I, I think back when we were 'vegetarians' but still ate fish. This year I finally got my dirty mitts on the recipe. Its a pretty basic dish, crab meat, shrimp, celery, onions, green peppers, and mayo with a cracker crumb crust.

I've made it twice so far. First time, it was excellent. This second time I added bay scallops because my theory is, the more seafood the better, and a touch of corn starch to thicken it up a bit.

Problem: The scallops weren't cooked, but everything else in there was (shrimp, crab). I figured I would be fine if I cooked it a little longer. Normally 30 min, I set it at 35.

I wasn't even close. I ended up cooking it for an hour and I 'think' the scallops are done. Lesson learned - cook the scallops BEFORE adding them to this dish.

Despite the scallop fiasco, it was SOOO good.

I Love Burn Pile Day!!!!!!!!!!!

Every year I get to burn a large pile of wood. I love it. I love the fire. I love having my Dad there. I love getting rid of the wood. I wish I could do this for a living. Although this year we had a little trouble starting it. Normally I make these fire-starter things with egg cartons and dryer lint. They make starting fires easy, but this year I was lazy. I handed Dad some matches and a piece of birch bark. Its started, but it was just a little slow in catching. But soon enough it was going full blast. Dad and I sat in lawn chairs, shot the breeze and enjoyed the show (and the warmth).

Nerf Accident

A very rare sight indeed!

Keeping it Real - Part 2

Drew's favorite game

This is my view of Drew when we play 'superman'. He loves it. He started off just going from a heap in my lap to flying over head as seen here, but now he is working on his standing when he lands. He's quite wobbly, but he's making great progress. I think he's going to be able to walk assisted before he's learned to crawl. He's cute when he tries to crawl, but he's pretty far from getting it.

100th post

Let's see, what is going on -

First snowfall of the season is about to occur. My snowblower doesn't roll so it looks like its a shovel for me. And my neighbor across the way is gone for the week so I need to do his too. If any of you know Dan, mention my snowblower is still broken.
**EDIT** Dan called me (thanks Michelle!) and he's going to come and fix my snowblower! What a guy!!!


I've spent the past few days outside stacking, moving, covering and moving wood. All my wood piles are tucked in nicely and covered. I have a bunch of wood on the patio that needs to be split and hopefully the wood splitter fairy will visit sooner rather than later. I'm not sure we have enough wood to last the winter, but it will help with the heating costs even if it only lasts us till the end of January. Next year on top of the wood Dan and I split, I think I'll just buy a cord of wood and see how far that brings us.

Drew's sleeping better. Credit goes 100% to my wife. I've finally started to help a bit and when he cries when its not feeding time I try to calm him and get him to go back to sleep. It works if he is just going down, but it hasn't worked middle of the night yet. Like last night around 1pm he was crying, so I went in and tried to calm him. I could get him to stop crying but putting him down was a trigger for hysterics. So frustrating. He's sleeping now, and that's the important thing.

I'm on vacation this week. Vacations kind of lose their luster when you already work from home. There are a ton of benefits of being able to work from my home, a big one is being able to see Drew during all parts of the day, not just when I would 'get home'. The problem is I'm always at my office. So this vacation, I'm in the same place I work. The only difference is that these days are declared 'vacation'. There is very little escape. I know, boo hoo. I should get over it because come Christmas break I have 16 straight days off.

That's it for now.

Bear with me for a moment...

Oh the puns!

But seriously, we had a bear walk across our yard and tip over one of our bird feeders. I was out getting wood for the fire this morning and in the snow there was this monster foot print. A lot of times what will happen in snow (pay attention there is a lesson to be learned) when an animal makes a foot print in snow, and then the snow melts the size of the foot print increases a great deal and makes a dogs foot print look like Zuul.

Anyways, there wasn't enough snow to melt and alter the foot print too much so I figured it was a bear. How exciting!!! Here is a one of the better pictures of a footprint I got with a ruler, and also a picture from a website of another black bear.

Words of Warning

"Do not snore tonight... BECAUSE I CANNOT CONTROL MY ANGER!!!!"

These were the words spoken to me as my lovely wife headed off to bed. I don't snore. But I still found her warning pretty amusing.

Me and Drew in the Morning

At 5am this morning Drew and I decided we wanted pancakes. Not frozen or from the add-water mix, but from scratch. Scratch meaning starting with bisquick. He settled down with a drink and let me do most of the work. If Drew doesn't have his morning caffine he's a bear.

I made a wondeful replica of Mickey Mouse, but Drew didn't know who that was.

Then the attempt for the Follansbee World Record Sized Pancake...

OH THE HUMANITY!!!