Cox Farms

Kim has had a bee in her bonnet to head out to Cox Farms for a while, now that the leaves are finally changing and fall is in the air. I came home from work a little early on Friday, and even though the website said it closed at 6, we thought we'd be ok to leave at 3:30 and spend a few hours there. After battling some ridiculous traffic, we rolled up to the gates at 5:06, willing to still pay the $9 per person in order to enjoy at least an hour, making our painful journey there worth it in some small way. Instead, the 15 year old running the front booth informed us that we could not enter.

"Why not?"

"Because we close at 6."

"Yeah, but it's 5."

"We stop letting people enter at 5, because they won't have time to do the hay ride."

"We don't care about the hay ride, we just want to walk around and let our kids play. Come on, it took us an hour and a half to get here, please just let us pay and go in."

"Sorry, it's against the rules."

"What time is it right now?"

"5:06"

"So if we had gotten here 7 minutes ago, you would have let us in?"

"Yes"

It was at this point that we decided to stop talking to this teenager, and at least take a look around their country store. Conveniently for us, the back door of the country store opened into the farm, and with only a minimal amount of guilt and stealth, we were soon enjoying the wonder that Cox Farms had to offer our kids. We were the only ones walking around without wrist bands, but it didn't overly hamper us. Thanks, Cox Farms!

Happy family of thieves

Seneca Falls Hike, West Virginia

The End of an Era

This is our new house. This is the reason why we haven't been posting, since we've been busy moving. We like it.



If we ever get done unpacking and get around to cleaning inside, I'll post some pictures of that. For now, the important details are:

• It is a stand alone, actual house, not a basement, apartment, townhouse, duplex or any other kind of shared tenement. For the first time in 8 years of marriage, the space is entirely our own.
• There are 3 bedrooms. This is vital, since our baby is due in 6 weeks.
• There is a second bathroom!
• It is about two and a half times the size of our previous place.
• There is a GIGANTIC unfinished basement that is filled with our junk. I think we should just set it all on fire before we move again. As it is, we made 5 trips to the house with our friends' vans, then two more smaller trips with our 17 foot moving truck, and then an entirely full move with our moving truck that still nearly didn't fit everything.
• There is a sun room on the side of the house.
• The owner refinished the (all wooden) floors and painted for us. This led to a crisis of epic proportions as Kim tried to pick out paint colors while I was traveling in Ghana. I won't go into all the sordid details, but suffice it to say that she got her color (if not her sheen) in the end.

Despite all of these wonderful changes, the new house is sadly not on South Veitch St. We've loved our three years on Veitch, and will really miss our friends over there. We're still in the same ward and Megan is attending the same school, but it's sad to think we can't walk up the street for a donut from 7-11 and run into tons of friends on the way.

The new neighborhood is great -- we are still within walking distance of a couple of parks, there are a lot of kids, many of our neighbors have come by to welcome us, and it is not a through street, so there isn't much traffic. We're have reason to believe that even though it is not Veitch St., we might survive. Stay tuned to find out.

The first day of the rest of her life

"Now, Henry, you're not coming to school with me."

"No, I go to school with you."

"Henry!"

Checking out her light-up shoes, which require stomping to work.

Megan and Milan

On the walk she asked Milan, "Are you a little embarrassed?" Milan said, "What?" and Megan said, "I'm a little embarrassed." She really meant that she was nervous.

Megan and Anderson

Bye, Mom.

She was the only kid in her class that was crying on the way in. It was quite the tearjerker. Mrs. Ellison held her hand, and she came home as happy as can be and hasn't cried since. She loves kindergarten.

And just in case you were thinking that Henry and Megan don't get along after watching that first video, here they are in action again.

Henry's Muscle Biopsy

The saga of Henry's possible neuromuscular condition continues as we took him in for a muscle biopsy this week. The doctors hope that an examination of his muscle tissue will help nail down a more precise diagnosis.

Here is Henry in his hospital gown, demonstrating that they are going to make a small incision in his right thigh and extract some small amount of muscle

With his buddy, Pablo, for courage

They started him off with an oral sedative, which took 15 minutes to take effect

He started feeling pretty relaxed as he laid back to watch the TV

Then it really started kicking in and he got pretty loopy and silly

The procedure only took 45 minutes or so, and as soon as he woke up he said, "Mama!" Then he began crying and saying, "I want go home!" repeatedly in his drugged out voice. Unfortunately, they said we couldn't take him home until he calmed down. It became somewhat of a chicken and the egg thing at that point. Turns out that telling him he can't go home until he calms down is nowhere near as effective as the fentanyl they finally gave him. That calmed him right down.

Here's his bandage, and the reason that he's getting sponge baths for at least a week.

His minor surgery has not slowed him down at all -- here he is on our hike in the Shenandoahs the next day

We won't get the results of the biopsy back for a few weeks, so keep your fingers crossed for us, and we'll keep you posted

Stumbled on an Old Post

I was just going over our posts from 2007, trying to make the pictures larger for when we print out our yearly books, and I came across a draft post from my trip to New Orleans that never got published. Check it out.











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¡Jalapeños!

This is the third year that I've had a garden, and I don't seem to be getting any better at it. It turns out that you need to actually take care of your garden, whereas I just want fruit and vegetables to spontaneously appear. Way to ruin it for us, Adam and Eve.




Thankfully there is at least one plant hardy enough to endure my hands-off style of gardening in this lone and dreary world -- ¡the jalapeño plant!


I got home from Tanzania last week and was feeling especially jet lagged (note the bags under my eyes), and decided that a perfect way to get myself ready for bed was some quality time in the kitchen, canning our capsaicin crop.

It was really easy. I sterilized the lids and jars in boiling water, and brought some vinegar to boil.

Loaded up the jars with sliced (non-cooked) jalapeños

Covered the jalapeños with the boiling vinegar

Sealed them up...

...and voila -- border burgers, sunday nachos or jalapeno buttons whenever I want them.

P.S. Austinites, if you followed my border burger link, then hopefully you saw that Ski Shores Cafe is back in business under new management. Try to patronize it a bit more and keep it going this time, would you? Next time I come to visit I want to see it open and running still: "When right, the Border Burger is greasy burger perfection. The bun is soft, sweet and lightly griddled. Melted cheese drapes over grilled onions and jalepenos. A healthy serving of guacamole just adds to the sinful goodness. The patty has a nice TexMexish seasoning. For me, if you are going to dress a burger, it doesn't get better than this."

P.P.S. Hmmm, further investigation indicates some controversy surrounding the transfer of ownership of Ski Shores Cafe. Alright Austin readers -- your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go get a border burger from Ski Shores Cafe (here's a map) and report back on your experience in terms of taste, service and ambience. We need to know if we need to file away our memories of this great restaurant, and pine for it no more.