Good vibes/prayer/thoughts Request

I don't normally ask for things like this because I generally find them silly, but (our neighbor) May's little nephew broke his leg today. He was trying to climb on his dad's motorcycle, and it collapsed unto him. He's in surgery at the moment, and just a tiny little two year old. Please send good thoughts his way.

Pie Crust!

So I was raised by a grandmother who did everything from scratch. To me store bought pie crust is sacrilege. I mean there is no way to buy a frozen crust and have it be all soft and flaky. I am also a fan of lattice topped pie. I love rolling and cutting and weaving the tops to make a wonderful lattice and then sprinkling with cinnamon and sugar. I found a wonderful pie crust recipie in my betty crocker cook book and I have never had a bad crust. Once we are settled I will make a pie to demonstrait the beauty that is from scratch.

TSA Agent Say What?

As I mentioned earlier this week, my mom and I did a whirlwind trip to Northern California this weekend. We flew, because a 75 min flight sounded a lot better then a 16 hour drive. We got up at the crack of dawn, drove to the airport (about 2 hours) and got there about 8:30 am. I was tired as all get out, hadn't had coffee (my mom is a non-habitual tea drinker, so the need for coffee in the morning is not on her radar) and had already had two calls from my dad (who was watching the boy).

We checked in, and worked our way to the security area, which as always was packed. They had two agents standing and reminding people to take off their shoes, have out any electronics, yata yata. One new twist was they asked that people remove any toiletries (which were require to be in plastic baggies) and place them directly in the bins. I remove my toothpaste and brush, and am trying to juggle my carry-on, purse, shoes, camera, cell phone, my mom's GPS and the plastic baggy with my toothpaste and brush.

I get a tap on the shoulder and turn around. A TSA agent (who 15 seconds previously was chatting on his cell phone, and obviously not about anything involving the airport) pokes at my hands and says "You can't take that". Now, I'm holding quite a few things and frankly I'm not sure what he's talking about. I asked what he means, he scowls then rolls his eyes and says "that toothpaste".

I must have had an odd look on my face (what wrong with my damn toothpaste?) and he says slowly "Its. Too. Big." I look at it and say "It's a toothpaste bottle". He says "It's 4.6 ounces, you can't carry more then 3.4". Now I'm not sure what traveling god decided on 3.4 ounces as the magical non-endangering number, but right that second I hoped they were burning in hell. I set down all of my things, and pointedly hold out the baggy between us, open the bag and remove the offender. I walk to the garbage can (still holding it at arms length) and throw it away. Walk back and seal my plastic baggy. "Better?" I say. The agent glares at me and walks away. And behind me, the ocean of people begin to clap.

Oh the fun of pre-school years

So the Boy slipped and hit his face on a window seal, in the process putting all his front teeth through his lip. There was so much blood my initial thought was that he bit through his tongue. He's asleep now but his lip is swollen to high heaven.

Any tips or tricks to help with the swelling/pain tomorrow?

Quote of the Day

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

-Winston Churchill

Canning is Cool

Or at least it took an article from the New York Post for my sister to decide I hadn't completely lost my marbles.

beautiful guns

These were just too cool not to share. I never did see any information on the hand gun. They guy who owned it was talking to someone else and I didn't get to ask questions. He said it wasn't a very old gun, it just looked like one. All of the silver on this is inlayed. Beautiful gun with amazing craftsmanship. They have nothing whatso ever to do with preps or survival, they were just something cool I saw at our pioneer festival and I wanted to share.

This rifle is a gun I would love to own someday. Not for any practical reason (obviously) just because it is so pretty. I know, its a girl thing. All of the silver was inlayed and the design on the stock is wire inlay. Coolest gun I have ever seen. Prettiest gun I have ever seen. I could get excited about guns if they all looked like this one! Here is one more.

Returned for a Quick Trip

I just got back from a on the fly trip to Northern California to my mom. It was pretty much a whirlwind, but we managed to see some family (including an adorable niece I had yet to see) and even squeezed in a couple hours in the Bay Area.

Today I'm playing catch up, but I plan on posting quite a bit more this week. In the gauntlet is attempt #1 at Spaghetti Sauce (I'm doing Attempt #2 tonight or tomorrow), canning said sauce, whipping up some buffalo meatballs, hopefully canning (and maybe pickling) some asparagus and anything else I can think of.

Strawberry season is coming any day, and a Jam-A-Thon is in the works. Hopefully I'll be canning quite a bit as the newest veggies and fruits came in over the next several weeks.

Oxen, pioneer preps part 2

We got to see and pet a pair of oxen last weekend at our local pioneer festival. These things are HUGE! This particular animal was 6 feet tall at the shoulder. They were used to pull wagons in the pioneer days because they were stronger and more surefooted than horses. They were slower than horses but were more palatible if food got scarce. As far as using oxen nowdays, I think there are other animals that are much much more practical. Horses are more common but would still need hay to eat. In my opinion the goat is the perfect survival animal. They can be trained to pull a cart with minimal training. The nannies give a very rich milk that can be used for cheese and butter. They often give birth to twins, making herd building fairly quick. They can be used for meat and their hide can be made into leather. They can also eat almost anything! They could easily survive on brush or wild growing vegitation. I have also heard that in the case of nuclear fallout, goat milk will be the only foodnot contaminated. If anyone has any more info on that, I would love to know if it is true.

prepardness pioneer style

We took the kids to a pioneer style festival this last weekend. They got to see Oxen (huge!), they got to watch a blacksmith working to build a wooden bucket, they got to see tanned animal hides, play with pioneer toys, make butter and lot more. Hubby was way more interested than any of us expected. He really got into all of thee technical stuff like how to build his own bow and shelter building with sagebrush, ect. It was a lot of fun. I am going to break up the different parts of this festival into several blog posts, just because mylife is crazy and I doubt I will have much to blog about any time soon.