Shtuff

I'm being invaded by Amish Friendship dough! It was time to make more tonite. I decided instead of making two loaves of bread, I'd put it all in a 9 x 13 pan and hope for the best!

It looks and tastes yummy!

The absolute best grilled chicken sandwich on a homemade roll from LaBella's in Easton!

Our saxophone playin' nephew, Kieran

And then there's our drum poundin' nephew, Conor

Pic that Alyssa made to email to Stellan's picture gallery

Thanks, Julie!

One of our wonderful patients in the office brings us these yummy noodles when she comes for appointments. She was in this past week and brought this container for me. There's noodles, chicken, cabbage, and red peppers in it. It worked out perfectly...I'm normally off on Thursdays, which is the day she was in for her appointment. But because I had to make a big stock pot of soup for church on Wednesday night, I had switched my day off to then and ended up working on Thursday. Kurt goes to a men's Bible study at 7, thus I don't have a lot of time to cook, especially when I often don't get home from work until after 6. This was still warm when I got home, so all I needed to do was throw it in the microwave to warm it up a bit more and we were set. I had picked up side salad's at McD's ($1 for a salad, can't beat that when you're in a hurry!), so we had noodles and salad. It was delish! Thanks Julie!!

Best Laid Plans

Jamie and Josslyn were supposed to come visit today and help me make a huge stockpot of soup to take to church tonite for our Wednesday evening Lenten supper, but since Josslyn was being a little on the gretzy, not so happy, side, Jamie decided it was probably best just to sit tight at home. That left me with a nice big container of yummy egg salad that I had gotten yesterday at Wegman's for us for lunch. On a whim, half joking, I called my sister-in-law, Martha (you know her, the one married to Fernando??) and asked her if she wanted to come for lunch. Now mind you, it was already noon when I called. A friend of hers had just arrived and they had planned on going through Arby's drive thru for lunch. Well, instead, they went through my drive-thru...LOL! We had a lovely, totally unplanned, visit. (And Jamie, jsyk, you owe me a visit!! I'll get us more egg salad!)


This is a picture of Adam's traffic light that he made for his honors Physics project. The two little blocks in the middle are the actual traffic lights, when he gets to school tomorrow, he plans on coloring in the red, yellow and green using Sharpies. In addition to the light he designed, he needs to hand in calculations used to design the project. Rather him than me....LOL! He's so good as stuff like this, he'll make a great engineer....


I'd like to ask you to pray for this little guy named Stellan. He's been through quite a lot in his short little life. To make a long story short, he was diagnosed with heart failure while in utero, doctors were not sure he would even survive. He did, was born full term and appeared to have been healed fully. The poor little guy was admitted to the hospital three days ago with a heart rate close to 300 beats per minute, and has been going in and out of SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) since then. If you click on the picture, it will take you to his mama's blog, which explains his condition in detail. I don't know any of the family, have just been following her blog since she was pregnant, but have come to feel as though I know them through her posts. Your prayers would be appreciated by them, I'm sure. Thanks!

Prom!

Ok, so they didn't go to the prom, but it's still prom weekend! They decided it was going to be too costly to go to the prom this year. Instead they decided to go out to eat at a nice restaurant. A promise had been made by his Auntie Fifi months ago that he could borrow the Lotus to go to the prom. Permission was secured to still allow him to use it even though there was no prom. They had dinner last evening at the Hanoverville Road House, then friends came over around 11 pm and they had a bonfire til after 1 a.m.

Getting ready for the bonfire

Adam couldn't wait for everyone, he and Erika went over and started the fire before everyone arrived

A picture for Adam for remembrance sake, he won't see this parked here again for quite some time

The aftermath

Going to clean up (some people have their own mode of transportation...LOL)

Adam and Erika in heaven!

Pasta!

Brown chicken breasts in oil

Add seasoning

Cut up into small pieces

Steam broccoli

Add cooked pasta

Toss all together and add some fresh Parmesan cheese

Enjoy with tossed salad!

Randomnicity

(Is that a word??!?!!?)

Pulled pork plate from Grumpy's BBQ Roadhouse
(Pork, coleslaw, 'smothered potatoes', cornbread)
YUMMY!!

Hangin' with his buds

Playing with my Amish friendship bread...LOL!

Olympiad Update

1. Bridge broke, didn't place.

2. Water clock wasn't accurate. He tried to explain it to me, but I have no clue what the heck he was talking about!

3. Placed fourth in the 'Problem Solving' portion (see medal above). I didn't even know they were doing this and Adam said that they didn't even prepare for it! Turns out he and Richard were the only ones who placed in any events from their school.

I'm still proud of him, they put a lot of time and effort into the bridge and water clock. (Even if they waited until the last minute....LOL!!)

Good Luck Richard and Adam!!

Here is Adam and Richard's final bridge. The first pic is what it looked like last night when they finished putting it together. Tonight they sanded the bridge and drilled holes in it to make it lighter. His ex-Chemistry teacher must really like Adam because she let him bring home her ($300) electronic scale to measure the bridge as they were sanding it and drilling the holes in it. Adam says the final weight is 24.8 grams.

Apparently not everyone signed up for all the projects and they were given this additional one to create. It is called a water clock. He and Richard were busy doing math calculations all evening trying to figure out how to create this clock so that so much water would flow out in 5 minutes. It's almost midnight, Richard has gone home and Adam is still at trying to get it just right. I've been in the kitchen several times now and either the water emptied in less than 5 minutes....or it took over 5 minutes to empty. The pic shown below has the water draining from the bottom, which emptied too quickly. They changed it to have it drain from the side (see video) and then it took too long! His next step was to shorten the tube that comes out the side. I asked him if they give them any leeway, like 10 seconds either way. He said they would be penalized 100 points for every 10 seconds....there goes that idea!! I hope he figures it out soon...he needs to be at school by 6:30 a.m. in the morning!

Yummy Pasties!

I have had the ingredients for these home-made pasties for about a month now, but just never found the time to make them. With Alyssa home this week, we decided to make the time to do it today. I generally buy pasties, but Jamie's been telling me about her mom's home-made ones and I decided I needed to try to make them. As you can see in the pic, I did kind of cheat by buying the pre-made pie dough. Jamie and her mom make the dough....I don't do dough...LOL!!!

They were quite tasty, although a bit on the huge side!! I only ate half of mine, I figure I'll take the other half in to work tomorrow for my lunch. We made six, and have one left over (Richard was here to eat with us). Other than cutting everything up ahead of time, they really weren't all that difficult to make. We had to dice potatoes, onions and meat. I used two london broils; one thing that worked out well was that I had the meat frozen and just took it out of the freezer this am. It was still partially frozen when I cut it up, which made it much easier to slice through the meat.

Sunset Again

I think I've figured out why it had been a while since I took sunset pics. It gets dark early in the winter and it's not unusual for me to leave the office in the dark, which makes it tough to take sunset pics!! Tonight as I was driving home at 6:45 and it was still light out and the sun was setting and I was driving into a church parking lot to take this pic, I was realizing that I was actually driving home in the daylight. Two months ago that wouldn't have happened!!

Happy Birthday Kurt!

Yesterday was Kurt's 53rd birthday. We celebrated by going to the Newburg Inn for dinner and then coming home for cake and ice cream. Alyssa made a delicious chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. I got the recipe from a friend from work; believe it or not, the cake takes a cup and a half of pureed red beets!! It is a really, really moist cake! The peanut butter icing is really good, too (if you're a fan of PB, that is...LOL!). I would have been perfectly happy having a white icing on the cake, but anyone who knows most guys in our family would agree that peanut butter is the only way to go!! There comes a point in time when you run out of ideas to get each other. Alyssa suggested we get him some James Bond movies, which I thought was a good idea, so we picked up two boxed sets of 8 different Bond movies. (Yes, he does like Bond...LOL!!)

Decorating the cake

. Happy Birthday Dad!!

Blowing out the candles

Icing on the Moose

My Newer BFF

At least this one doesn't sing....


But on a side note, my new buddy needs a name. In the spirit of MckMama (some of you know who I am referring to), I am officially announcing a contest to help name my new friend. I confirmed with Mr. Geiger that this is indeed a ROOSTER (not a chicken), thus he requires a boy name. Now I don't expect I'll get 1,000 comments, like she would, but I hope maybe I'll have at least 2 or 3 to choose from...LOL!!

Chicken and Mushroom Casserole

I found this recipe in my Rachael Ray magazine. It was kind of odd because there were pictures of each step, plus all the ingredients were listed, but not amounts. You had to go to the web site for the actual recipe. Alyssa, Kurt and I really enjoyed it, and it was fairly easy to make. It takes mushrooms, heavy cream (I used light cream), marsala wine, a rotisserie chicken cleaned off the bone and rice. There was parmesan cheese on the top.

Whatcha' Makin?!!?

A bridge....

Adam and Richard were making their new bridge for the official Science Olympiad which is being held at Moravian College on Friday. They placed fourth with the last bridge they made. The bridge needed to be lightweight and could hold up to 35 pounds. I'm not sure how they do the judging, because the bridge that won first place broke with less than 35 pounds, but was lighter than Adam and Richard's (which is amazing because that first bridge they made only weighed 2 ounces!!). This time they are making an arched bridge, which is what they unsuccessfully attempted with the last one. They soaked 1/8 inch pieces of wood in water that was mixed with some type of wood glue. Soaking the wood made it pliable, and glue mixed in with it made the wood stronger. They made a mold and put several pieces of wood together in the form of an arch and put it in the oven at 200 degrees for a few hours to try and dry. More on the bridge later once it's together...I'll be sure to take a picture.

Mmmm Good!

Thanks to Chris and Steph for the Amish Friendship Bread batter. I had batter about a year ago and made two loaves of bread that were totally different than these two I made tonight. Those loaves had cinnamon and chocolate chips in them. The recipe I used tonight did call for cinnamon, and raisins were optional. I didn't have any raisins, but did have craisins (dried cranberries), which I thought would add an interesting twist to the bread. I didn't think cinnamon and cranberries would go well together, so I decided to skip the cinnamon. It turned out really, really good. Adam and his buddy Richard each had a slice and liked it, too.