The Adventures of Don and Corrine

Thanksgiving may not feel like its here yet, but it is. Well atleast for us.  Every year before the 4th Thursday of November (traditionally Thanksgiving day).  Our local group of friends usually gets together and celebrates thanksgiving.  We have pretty much what you would expect to have in a normal thanksgiving.  Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, etc, this year was no different.  Instead of doing our turkey this year in an oven, like we have for year, one of our friends mentioned that her dad had a deep fryer for turkeys if we wanted to try it.  So after very little persuading, we decided to give it a try.

Here are a few pictures of the setup.  Big fryer, propane tank, a place for Don to hide and stay in the sun but out of the wind.

After cooking a 20lb turkey for 60minutes we took it out of the fryer, and this was the result. Not too bad if I do say so myself, since this was our first attempt at frying a turkey.  While I sat out in the cold waiting to make sure the turkey didn’t blowup or anything like that, Corrine was inside making soup and making the tables look pretty.  Here are a few pictures of the house.  And it wouldn’t be a cold day at our place with out a fire.  

After everyone arrived ate a good meal we went down by the fire to play games, and just have a good time.  Here some pictures of 22 people in our basement around fireplace.

Last night we planned on having a bonfire, but since it rained all day of Friday, we decided that it would be a bit wet so we had an indoor bonfire.  We had about 12 or so people come over for a cookout, where I cooked some burgers and hotdogs on the grill and then just hung out for the rest of the night. We then burned some wood in the fireplace and played some wii and had a good time. People stayed over and hung out till around midnight.

Saturday was a busy day as well.  Corrine and I started the morning, with choir practice and then Corrine and the girls went out for lunch, and since it had rained the day before Rob and I decided that we should have the bonfire anyway and burn the brush that we had acquired for the past few years.  So we burned a lot of the tree that Rob cut down the week before, along with a whole lot of the brush that we have been building up for the past 3 years.  While Rob manned the fire Corrine and went off to learn how to make dumplings at a dumpling making class.  It was a lot of fun, and we got to eat a whole lot of them, they were pretty good.  We then came home from the class and helped Rob and John finish putting brush on the fire and then we ended up having a pile that was about 12 feet in diameter of ash and embers. Then we all came in an played some more Wii.  Great weekend of fun.

Tags: Bonfire, fire, John, Rob, Wii

Incase you haven’t heard, there were winds close to 80mph were recorded in the Cincinnati area on Sunday.  The reminants of Hurricane Ike, combined with a cold front to cause crazy winds to come through the area on Sunday afternoon.  We lost a tree in our front yard, and many shingles off of our roof of the house, but otherwise not that bad.  During some of the storm I was out in the yard putting things away, and saw white caps on our swimming pool.  Thats just nuts.

Our power went out Sunday afternoon, but it came back on around 3am Monday morning, so we were definately one of the lucky ones.  Most of our friends in Oxford didn’t have power, so they came over to our house on Monday, to charge laptops, cell phones, etc.  Whatever they needed to keep going.  Our big freezer in the garage is now full with food from people, who still have no power.  So it was an awesome blessing to be able to serve our friends.

Here are a few pictures, from our house

Here are a few pictures from Rob & Annie’s house of the huge tree that fell in their front yard.

Tags: Annie, Rob, Roof Damage, Shingles, Winds

I was out working today, and I had my little garden wagon attached to my lawn mower, and I was reminded of Grandpa.    Actually I kinda felt like grandpa.  I was driving my tractor, with a trailer on the back, I had it packed with branches and other brush that I had been trimming.  My tractor is much smaller then grandpa’s tractor, but felt the same, it was cool.  I felt just like I did when I was growing up, when I would ride around on grandpa’s tractor as we did stuff around the house, it was the same but I was bigger and my tractor and trailer was smaller. I haven’t thought of grandpa in a while, but I did today for some reason.

I’m not sure whats gotten into me this week, but I feel like posting.  And I keep thinking of different things that I want to post about, and things keep happening, so I figure I will post about them.  As most of you know our house is pretty much on farm land, flat open land, because of this it can get windy and hot.  To counter this we are planting trees.  We joined the Arbor Day Society last year and they sent us 10 bare-root trees so we planted thost this spring, all seem to be doing quite well.  I still don’t know where we will plant those in the yard, so they are currently behind the shed, so they are shielded from the wind, and they are in the garden area, so I remember to water them and take care of them.  So that is the start of our nursery.  Then earlier this summer when Annie, was out weeding her flower beds around the house, there were trees growing in her flowerbed, so she dug them up and brought them over to our house so we could plant, them.  There were two maples and an oak tree, the oak tree didn’t look too good, a little weak but thought it could survive, and the two maples looked great, one a little better then the other, but still good.

We planted the Oak in the front yard, it doesn’t look like it will make it, but maybe.  The Maple’s still look great though.  The bigger and I assume older of the two trees is probably close to 3 feet tall right now, we put it in the back yard between the pool and the shed, so in a few years it should hopefully be a good size so that it might provide some good summer afternoon shade over the pool.  And the other Maple we planted to the South end of the property just past the shed, it too is doing well.

Then a few weeks later, Annie, found one of those propeller, seed things of the maple tree with a little sapling growing out of it, so she gave that to us too, its pretty little, but currently doing well in a flower pot on the back porch.

Now I come to the reason, I decided to post this little story.  Corrine has wanted a big weeping willow tree, in our yard, and we have this nice low spot in the yard that seems to collect water so I began looking around for a nice tree to put over there.  I began talking to Paul, my co-worker and gardening buddy, about Corrine’s desire for a willow tree, and Paul happened to have a nice Willow Tree in his back yard, so he cut off a branch and we planted it in a cup of water here at the office.  It has been getting quite big maybe like a foot tall, and had a whole lot of roots so we decided to plant it in dirt.  So I finally took it home yesterday and planted it in a nice sized flower pot.  Hopefully it will do well, and I will share pictures later, as how it looks and how it is progressing.  But it looks like it has potential to be a nice tree, a few years down the road.

Tags: Maple, Oak, Trees, Willow