Snow!

 On Sunday, we were blessed with a good snowfall. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment. Samantha was our photographer for the day.

They don't look so white now, do they?

Front path

The gnome is still smiling!

Snow Angel!

The dogs had a blast too!

Happy New Year

Dorothy got a new camera for Christmas, so she will be able to keep the blog updated with pictures more often.

Jarrett started working on a short brick planter that will go around our patio and garden box area.  Here are a couple of pictures of the work in progress.

Norman & Oscar

We've added a new addition to our family - Oscar the lamb. He was given to us because we needed a friend for Norman, our first pet lamb. Why do we have a pet lamb in the first place, you ask? He was going to be Samantha's project lamb for 4-H, but we didn't turn in the DNA samples in time. So he is now our pet. Here are pictures of each of them:

Oscar

Norman

There was a light sprinkling today. Rain in the summer is always a nice surprise.

Corn Harvest

Sunday we harvested the corn.  We ended up with a total of 150 ears.  We shucked, blanched, cooled off in ice water, then vacuum packed them for the freezer. 

Pile o' corn

Close-up of Peaches and Cream Variety

In the freezer

One watermelon, too!

Grape Jelly

It was time to pick the grapes, so of course that means Grape Jelly! This is our third year making it. Last year it won a "Best of Division" at the AV Fair. Here are some pictures of the process...

The neighbors' goat, Jack, watching us picking grapes.

Simmering the grape "puree". 

The mixture was then strained to become pure grape juice. 

The canning process went pretty fast, so we weren't able to get any photos. Here's a simplified version of the rest of the process:

-Mix the pectin into the juice, bring to a boil, and add the sugar. 

-Bring to a rolling boil for one minute, then skim out whatever got through the strainer.

-Pour the juice into the jars, put the lids on, and seal them in boiling water for ten minutes, bringing us to the finished product:

Descanso Gardens

We took a quick trip to the Descanso Gardens located in La Canada today.  Here are a few pictures taken by Samantha. 

Disney World

We spent the last week in Orlando FL.  We decided to do something the kids would really enjoy this year for vacation and exchanged our time share condo for a week in Orlando.  We stayed at the Hilton Grand Vacation Club, which was located about 10 miles from Disney World.  The first picture is of the Hilton grounds, and the second is the building that our unit was in.

 

 

We arrived late on Friday evening and checked into our room at about midnight.  On Saturday we slept in and then took a drive to Cocoa Beach, so that we could put our feet in the Atlantic Ocean.  The water was colder than I expected.

I took this picture of the pier on the way back to the car.

Here is a picture of the kids catching a wave.  They make it look so easy!!

On Sunday we started the 5 day Disney World marathon.  The first day was spent at Disney's Hollywood Studios. 

Lunch was probably one of the best meals that the kids and I had all week...the smoked turkey legs were awesome, and I highly recommend them.

The ride "Star Tours" was actually at this park and not the Magic Kingdom.  Seth took this photo opportunity on one of the props.

On Monday we spent the day at Disney's Magic Kingdom.  Since we were visiting during the off season, most of the rides only had a 10 minute wait.  As a result, our typical day was to arrive around 10:00 am and leave around 5:00 pm (or earlier) having seen everything we wanted to see and ride all of the rides that we wanted to ride.

On Tuesday we visited Disney's Animal Kingdom.  This was a cross between an amusement park and the zoo.  In the center of the park is the tree of life that contains numerous animals within the form.

One of my favorite areas of the park was Asia.  When you walked into this area, you felt as if you were walking into Tibet, and about to start a great expedition in the Himalayas.

Seth, Hannah, and myself went on the Everest ride and it was great.  The roller coaster went both forward and backward.

On Wednesday and Thursday we went to Epcot.

We rode a few rides and then spent the rest of the time walking around the various parts of the world that were re-created.  My favorites were Norway, France, and England.  The next pictures are from...

Norway

 

 

Germany

Japan

France

 

  

 

and England

Seth spent several house playing an interactive spy themed scavenger hunt, where they gave the kids a cell phone like device that has a small video screen and tells them what to do next.  They then have to find that location and activate whatever is there.  He had alot of fun.

Our flight home was delayed by two hours in FL due to bad weather the night before in Dallas, so we ended up getting back to LA later than we had planned.  As such, we fought Friday rush hour traffic most of the way home.

We had a good time in FL, but I think we can all say that after 5 days we are "Disney'd Out".  We were all happy to be home and spent Saturday and Sunday working in the yard.