Thanksgiving
Well, yesterday was a great day as I was able to eat three of my favorite foods:
- Real mashed potatoes
- Spiced yams
- Pumpkin pie
We also tried my brother’s ham recipe, which basically involves lots of sugar as a glaze.
The best part was having both sets of grandparents over for the big meal. The kids love playing with them and Cheryl and I get some adult conversation. It was a lazy day where I didn’t do much on my to-do list, but just enjoyed the time with my kids and family. Very restful.
Here is the yam recipe I use. The yams were my assignment this year.
Southern Style Favorite Yams
- 29 oz can of cut yams, drained and mashed
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tbsp melted butter
- 1/4 cup cream
- 16 large marshmallows (abt 120g)
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Mix everything together except marshmallows. Mix in six marshmallows. Turn into greased baking dish. Put remaining marshmallows on top. Bake for 20 minutes or until marshmallows are golden brown.
I found it on the label of a can of Bruce’s Yams. Not being from the South, I have no idea if it is authentic. But it seems tasty enough.
Amberly is Crawling
Well, it’s been a while since I wrote. I’ve started using a Twitter account I created a long time ago and like actually it. Twitter makes is really easy to make comments.
The big news is that Amberly is crawling! I am pretty sure I saw her crawl just a bit yesterday. But Cheryl didn’t really believe me. Amberly has been able to move around by getting onto her hands and knees and then sitting down in a different direction.
But tonight Cheryl saw her crawl about six feet, directly towards the top of the stairs. We rushed to grab the camera. And of course she won’t crawl for the camera. But we hope to catch her at it again soon.
Go Amberly!
Wall-E
We went to see Wall-E yesterday with some friends who were in town for the weekend. We don’t normally take the kids to movies very often (the last one was Ratatouille, if I remember right) because usually someone will get scared or restless and need to go out in the hallway. It’s always been a big stresser for us, but we keep trying every so often because we love their pure enthusiasm when things are going well.
However, Wall-E went really well. It may have been because they’d watched the previews and trailers so often. But whatever it was, everyone lasted the whole 97 minutes, even Amberly.
And Wall-E was really good. It feels like it goes a bit too quickly, but we all liked it. Tyler asked if we could get the DVD. He was only a little disappointed when I told him it wouldn’t be out until we got closer to Christmas.
Picture Update
I updated our web gallery with some recent pictures. Most recently, we’ve been doing a lot of work in our backyard, which isn’t quite done, and we took a trip up Payson Canyon and walked up the Grotto Trail to see the waterfall. Very fun.
Two Fortunes
At lunch with some coworkers today, I was lucky enough to get two fortunes in my cookie.
Your present plans will be successful.
The second was:
A pleasant surprise is in store for you soon.
One coworker chuckled, “You read those out of order.”
Spring Is Here
We’ve had some really nice weather recently. However, it always seems to snow one last time just as I start feeling like I can leave my coat at home. So the kids were able to play in the snow for one last day. I upload some pictures to our picture gallery along with some schoolwork the kids recently brought home.
Tyler really got into the spirit of April Fools’ Day this year and played several jokes on his parents and siblings. We found books in our pillow cases, stuffed animals in our toothbrush drawers, and various missing articles of clothing. He liked it so much he kept playing jokes on his parents over the next few days.
This is one of my favorites.
More Pictures
I uploaded some older pictures to our .Mac page. These are from Katie’s wedding, fishing with the kids last summer, our trip to a dude ranch with the Davis clan, and our trip to Phoenix for Thanksgiving.
Just a few clicks to get it all up there. I like it.
MacNN Review of Mozy
My job involves working on the Mac version of Mozy. It’s good to see very positive reviews of our work. I know there’s room for improvement too, but it’s great to see happy users.
Pretty Cool Illusion
This is a cool illusion that tricks your eyes into seeing a color picture.