Christmas Reflections...

Well another Christmas has come and gone, and this year has given me a lot to reflect on and think about as we head into 2009. Its been a Christmas of ups and downs... and I think I've learned a lot about myself and my family this holiday season.

Firstly, I've definitely learned to appreciate all of the hard work that goes into preparing Christmas dinners and events. Heidi and I have been going pretty much non-stop since the 9th and its definitely taken its toll on our energy levels. Today is the first day we've had to pretty much sit and do nothing in almost three weeks.

Still, I wouldn't trade any of the events over the last three weeks for extra rest or relaxation. For the first year in a long time we've been in a position to have dinners, buy nice gifts, and have a wonderful home to entertain in. 2008 has definitely been a year of blessings for me and my wife. I got to experience a lot of joy just having family and friends around, and how exciting it was seeing the children enjoy the holidays.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and that the good times continue in 2009!

Tragedy!

Well... I must say this didn't come as a huge shock. It is with great sadness that I report the failure of Hatemonger University to defend the Fantasy Football championship. For the third time this year I couldn't quite cut it against Effie and went down 57-77 in the championship round. Given my regular season record of 7-6-1 I wasn't expecting to get this far, but I had a lot of fun this season.

So until next August, Hate U will sit quietly by and plot their revenge!

Sibling Christmas Dinner!

With all that we've been able to do this Christmas, we thought it would be a great new tradition to start having a 'sibling Christmas' dinner. Our idea was to have a nice Christmas night with just the kids - myself, my sister and her husband, her kids, and my foster sisters. I also wanted to invite my good friend Jeff and his family since we've been friends since third grade and he's more a brother to me than a friend.

Dinner, I must say, was excellent. We had a glazed ham, yams, green bean casserole, jello, and some tasty rolls. Heidi also wanted to take a shot at making her grandma's sweat mustard sauce for the ham. Everything turned out perfect, although space was pretty tight during dinner.

After dinner we had a small present exchange and then it was time to break out the band! We had a great time rocking out in small groups and even the children were able to get into the act thanks to what we've deemed "Guitar Hero Retard Mode." I guess we could have named it "Child Mode" but it just didn't have the same ring - besides, Jeff could only hack it on the drums at that skill level, so "Retard Mode" seemed a lot more fitting.

While we were busy rocking out, the children took shifts decorating sugar cookies. This sounds like a disaster in the making, I know, but I had the foresight to cover the entire kitchen floor with tablecloths! I'm glad I did because sprinkles were EVERYWHERE!

HOT PIX!!!

Karek and Jackson discuss their haul. Four year olds
reading packaging is a little scary...

Kian thrashes on the guitar. He was averaging over
90% notes hit every time.

Kiera impresses her new boyfriend, Karek, with her
mad drumming skills. She's even got the headbang down.

Jackson and Kian hard at work on the sugar cookies
while Heather supervises.

Cookies manufactured by my beloved niece.
(yes, there are cookies in there somewhere)

The boys at about 1:00am. Too bad we didn't have
any chalk to outline them with lol

The Christmas Sweater

Tonight my wife and I attended the Fathom Events showing of Glenn Beck's "The Christmas Sweater" which is based on the book by the same name (obviously)

The story focuses on a 12 year old boy named Eddie and a Christmas where what he wanted more than anything else in the world was a bike. His mother, like many others, was in a difficult financial position and was only able to make a handmade sweater for his only gift. Its not until his mother dies in a horrible car accident driving home from their grandparents that Christmas night that the story truly begins.

What follows is a story of anger, guilt, sorrow and sadness... whereby Eddie learns the true meaning of Christmas. In the end, this story is really about the storms that all of us face in life, and about finding the courage to push through the storm and keep on living.

The stage show production was excellent. Glenn provided the narration and acting, and was accompanied by an orchestra and gospel singer. I really thought it was a great story... even though the first act was really quite sad. My wife's only complaint was the gospel rendition of "God be with You til we Meet Again" as she was under the impression that it was a "Mormon song" - whatever that means - and shouldn't have been sung the way it was. Even after I reminded my wife that it was actually a Christian song, she still objected to it.

What can I say... my wife is a dirty racist. I myself had a great time, and I'm convinced that these Fathom Events are totally the way to go if you want to see a play or stage show. Tickets are a lot cheaper and you get a much, MUCH better view than you would from any seat in the theater its being performed in.

A Candlelight Christmas

On the way to work this morning, I saw a billboard for A Candlelight Christmas being held at This is the Place Heritage Park. Having never been to this before I thought it would be something fun that my wife and I could enjoy. Even though it was very, very cold, we braved the trek up 8th South to check it out. I also thought this would be an awesome opportunity to test out my new camera!

The idea of the display is how Christmas would have been back in the days of the pioneers. Odd, I thought.. here all this time I've been thinking the pioneers didn't have electricity.. but I digress.


Our first stop was their recreation of the Nativity, complete with the Star and bed in a manger, or in this case a barn. Have I mentioned how awesome I think my new camera is? I must admit I had a difficult time getting the right shutter speed so that it didn't look like these pictures were taken in the middle of the day with flash grenades going off in front of you, but once I got it down I think they turned out great.


Another really neat thing they did was pioneer type crafts. With your admission, you got to build any three crafts of your choosing, and the different crafts were scattered throughout the many buildings of the park. We built a paper Nativity, made a copy of the first commercial Christmas card using a printing press, and made our own jingle bells. It was pretty cool to see how all these things were done 'back in the day.'


Speaking of the printing press, as we were walking through the printing building, I took out my camera to take a picture of a printing machine. I didn't notice until after I'd taken the picture that a slight amount of fog had built up on my lens due to coming into the warm building from the frozen tundra. I think it turned out pretty awesome with the fog effect.


One final thing that caught my eye is we were leaving was a candy display in the window of an old original ZCMI building. It occurred to me that a lot of the children walking around probably wouldn't even realize that the display is something that was a tradition in Salt Lake City for hundreds of years, only to be brought to a dead stop thanks to Macy's purchasing ZCMI a few years ago. Brought back a lot of memories of my brothers and sisters going downtown to see the beautiful candy displays at ZCMI during the holidays.

Pre-Christmas Goodness

Tonight I got my first Christmas present from my dear wife, the above-shown, very hot Nikon CoolPix P80. Sporting an 18x optical zoom, a huge array of features, and 10.1 megapixels of photo taking goodness.

I waited two hours after opening my camera for the batteries to charge so I could play around with it. One of the only complaints I found about this camera online was that it takes poor pictures in very low light, so I decided to put that to the test right out of the gate while I had my 15 days to return the camera if I didn't like it.

These pictures are of our Christmas tree from across the room. It should be noted that the Christmas lights were the only light source in the entire room and I didn't use any flash. I think I can say with safety that the people making the complaints about low light had no idea what they were doing.

Note: these pictures are at 25% of their original size. The originals were 3648x2736 resolution. You can click on the pictures to view them larger.



Love this camera already.

Third Time's the Charm?

Ahhh sweet, sweet victory! I have yet again survived another week of Fantasy Football Playoffs with a great win over Sean 80-61. Thanks go out to the G-Men for playing their worst game of the season in their loss to the Cowboys. It was that game that allowed me to cruise to victory!

Now its on to the finals, where I will again face my arch-nemesis Effie. I've yet to beat her in two prior games this year, so perhaps third time's the charm. We'll find out this weekend!

iPhone Playtime

As you may remember from my earlier posts, my iPhone really doesn't take the best pictures in low-light or indoor situations. About a week ago, I had read a few snippets online about some apps which greatly improve the functionality of the iPhone camera and allow it to take some semi decent shots. Keep in mind, its only a 2 megapixel camera so the results can only get so good.

The first app I downloaded is called SteadyCam. This program allows you to take better shots in low light or indoor situations by using the built in motion detection sensors in the phone. You press the shutter button, then as soon as the phone detects that the camera is steady it takes the pic. Helpful for people like me who inadvertantly shake the camera when pressing the picture button. This program was free and it actually works pretty well.

The second program is Camera Bag. This program allows you to take pictures using 12 different picture lens effects - ranging from black and white to a grainy 1970s camera to some more modern effects. I really like this program a lot as it allows you to do some really creative things with pictures you're taking right at that moment. Here's a couple pictures I took using a black and white effect, and then a 1930s camera grain:



The final app I downloaded is PhotoLab which allows you to do a lot of creative, on the fly photo editing before you email your pictures off. I'm not sure how extensively I will use this app, as I can do all of these things using Photoshop, but its great for times I won't have access to my computer and need to do some base photo editing. I took a few before and after shots of my beloved Alessandra and a Mountain Dew can to show off some effects. I uploaded these directly from the camera 'photo roll.'

Sadly I did not get to take this picture in person

This is using the stencil effect


This is the dramatic black and white effect

All hail the Dew!

The pencil with color effect, which produces cool results

MoTab Christmas Concert!

Last night, my wife and I had the opportunity to attend the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. This is probably one of my favorite Christmas traditions, and for us always marks the traditional beginning of the Christmas season.


The theme of the concert was "Ring Christmas Bells," with many of the musical numbers featuring the bell choirs from Davis, Fremont, Jordan, Murray, and Riverton High Schools. The special guests were Brian Stokes Mitchell, who has been in more Broadway productions and received more awards than honestly anyone else I can name, and Edward K Herrman, who is well known for his portrayal of FDR in "Eleanor and Franklin" and more recently as Richard Gilmore on CW's "The Gilmore Girls."

The concert featured many, many un-traditional Christmas songs, some of which weren't even really Christmas songs. One thing I immediately picked up on was how prominent Brian Stokes Mitchell was in this concert - largely featured in about two-thirds of the overall performance. At many times I felt like I was at a Brian Stokes Mitchell concert with the Choir in the background.

It should be noted that this was not a bad thing! Mitchell has a powerful, amazing voice that completely blew me away. He was absolutely fantastic in all aspects. My favorite peices of his work that evening were two songs: "Through Heaven's Eyes" from The Prince of Egypt and "New Words."

A trend I've noticed in recent years is that the Choir will do a peice centered around a story from history. This year the story was told from the Civil War, and a man named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was during this timultuous period in our nation's history that he wrote four stanzas of a poem which would later become the Christmas song "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." Edward K Herrmann narrated the story, and did a fantastic job. He has a really awesome story-telling voice.

Overall, I felt the concert was one of the best in recent years, mostly because so much new material was performed. It didn't feel like the same old rehashed Christmas concert, something unique and wonderful to experience! I hope the Choir keeps this up in the coming years ahead.


Here's a shot from the final song, "Angels from the Realms of Glory" - my favorite Choir Christmas song ever! Sweet, sweet forbidden pictures!

Dying in the Firey Flood

Leave it to me to interject politics into the holiday season, but I just couldn't help but make a post about our impending doom from the global firestorm that is "global warming." Even though the winter of 2007-2008 was one of the coldest in many years, our deaths are still a certainty. Remember, the science is settled. Global Warming is caused by man, not that giant ball of fire in the sky.

On an unrelated note, it snowed in New Orleans today. The last time it snowed in the Big Easy was on Christmas Day 2004. In Amite, LA today, eight inches fell, crushing buildings from the sheer weight of the snow. The last time Louisiana received this type of significant snowfall was in 1989.

Move along, you Holocaust denier. Move along.

Wheeler Farm Party

This evening was the Christmas party for my mom's church, courtesy of the fine folks at Wheeler Farm. Even though we don't attend the same church as my mom, she was kind enough to extend an invitation to my wife and I as well as my sister's family and my grandmother.


It started off with a great country fried chicken, mashed potato, and stuffing dinner with more bread than should be allowed under state law. All the butter and jam currently in circulation couldn't have covered the demand of these rolls. Thankfully, only a small portion was eaten. This was pretty much my nephew Scotland's first major major event but he seemed to handle it really well.


The majority of the night's entertainment was provided by the a cappella group Hangtime. One of the highlights of their show was a funny as hell rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer. Prior to the show, they asked people for various nouns, verbs, etc and ad-lib'd key parts of the lyrics. They also roped my foster sister Tiffany into helping with the act by playing the part of the poor embarrassed reindeer (see the above pic)

There was also a reading of the biblical story of Christ's birth and a silent auction to benefit their church. Last I checked I was the high bidder for a pair of Phantom of the Opera tickets for a show this coming March. Hopefully my bid held out because its been forever since I've seen Phantom live.


As usual, I was a complete and total sucker for my neice Kiera. I couldn't help but snap pic after pic and she was more than willing to give me all the photo shoot time I asked for.

Overall the evening was a lot of fun and everyone I talked to had a great time. The entertainment was fantastic, and this was a great way to kick off our fifteen days of action packed Christmas hell... I mean joy. Christmas joy!


This is what a total sucker looks like, right here. I'm still kind of a noob at this self-picture taking thing though.

Wild Card!

After Monday Night's game between Carolina and Tampa, I had resigned to the fact that my Fantasy Football team would not be joining the glorious ranks of the playoffs for the first time in the 8 years that I've been running leagues. My coworker Effie edged me out by a mere 2 points in our final game for what would have given me the division championship.

Imagine my surprise to wake up this morning to find myself in the playoffs!

That's right, boys and girls, thanks to some rather ill-timed losing streaks on the part of the stronger 'middle ground' teams, I have secured the lone Wild Card spot by a one-half game margin! I'm not exactly proud of my 7-6-1 record this year, but I will live to play another week!

This week I'm up against Kristen's husband, Sean. In our matchup this season, the Diablo Vino bested me by a meager 5 points, however since then I have outscored Sean's team 330-232 - an average of almost 25 points per week. The guys over at NFL.com are giving me a razor thin 1-point edge in our matchup preview for this week, so it should be interesting to see how Sunday turns out.

Kickin' Off the Holidays

Tonight officially kicks off the Christmas season for me and my wife. Thanks to Lu at my office, the finishing touch was put onto our Christmas tree this evening (the bow on top of our tree) I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out.

Unlike most years, the two weeks before Christmas are going to be jammed this year with all kinds of events with friends and family. The good ol' blog should see a multitude of updates over the next two weeks. So, until the next post, have a merry Christmas!

Chicken Alfredo Bake (Booyah!)

My good friend Mike has shared his magic chicken alfredo recipe with many of us at work. It always smells so good and even Kim has sung its praises (which, hey, if Kim likes it then you know its safe) However, here in the Fortress of Blood, simple recipes simply do not exist. I was prepared to kick it up a notch in the name of culinary greatness.

What you are about to witness is the fusion of Mike's Magic Chicken and a dash of ripping off Pizza Hut's pasta bakes.

INGREDIENTS!!!
3 Boneless Chicken Breasts
2 Packages of Mostacolli
2 Jars Alfredo Sauce
8oz Package Shredded Mozzarella
Parsley and Oregano to taste

Warning: It may not seem like it, but this makes 8 very very large adult portions.


We begin by making about half-inch cuts of the chicken breasts and tossing them into a frying pan. I use a pretty nice non-stick pan and used only a little cooking spray just to ease the initial scoring of the meat. As with most of my cooking I try to keep oil usage to a minimum. At this point you'll want to start boiling your noodles, they should be done just about the same time your chicken is.


Here I put in the parsley and oregano. These two herbs will add excellent flavor to your chicken. You'll want to cook the chicken until its just barely done cooking. The chicken will be spending some time in the oven so its ok if its a tad underdone at this point.


When the noodles are still just a little chewy but almost finished, poor them into your baking pan. I used a glass 9x13 cake pan... however my noodles almost blasted all over the place so you'll either want a bigger pan or less noodles. Poor the alfredo sauce straight from the jar onto the noodles and stir.


Top this off with your chicken and a layer of delicious cheesy goodness. This will go into the oven at 350 for roughly 15-20 minutes. You want the cheese to slightly brown, so I'd recommend checking it at the 15 minute mark and every 5 minutes past that. Total cooking time for mine was 23 minutes.


From start to finish this took about 35 minutes, so its a great item that you can wip up with not a lot of time. That right there is some good eatin'!! Bring big appetites or a lot of people!

Blatant Violation!!!

So after working almost a full day on Saturday, I was looking forward to coming home to a nice relaxing night of World of Warcraft. Work had been rough, I've been on the edge of death with my Man Cold, and I needed a good few hours of rest...

I come home to my loving, dear wife... only to find that the sacred Man Cave has been violated!!! My once humble solace of gaming pleasure... battered and raped in my absence...


Memorial services will be held on Wednesday, December 17th at 6:00pm.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well today was the big day. By "big," I mean the day I put on about 10 pounds from various foods and desserts (including the mystery pie) In all seriousness, its a great day to give thanks and see members of my family that I don't get to see all that often.

My mom hosted dinner tonight at her church, which was great of them to let us use their building and kitchen for our large group. One of the high points of the evening for me was the opening toast, where we went around every member of the family and we all made a toast to something that we were thankful for. I was really impressed by some of my nieces and nephews who gave answers like "my parents" and "my brothers and sisters." My youngest foster sister, Tiffany, said she was thankful for school (and she was serious to boot) Stephanie, the older foster sister, said that she was thankful to have the family she was now a part of.

Then there were answers like that given by my stepsister Lori, that she was thankful for her new dog. I was seriously blown away that the oldest of the children was the only one to give something completely material as something she was thankful for. Her husband Matt seemed pretty unimpressed.

PIX!

Mom, Michelle, Tiffany, Stephanie, Traivs, and Grandma
(I think the girls were just pretending to eat for this photo shot)

Rick, Lori's kids, Lori the Dog Lover, and her husband Matt

The back of my wife's head, Adam's parents, and Adam
(Melissa is hiding on the center-left)

Here's the kids hard at work at the craft table
(awesome idea on my mom's part, I must admit)

Their creation, the four-legged turkey
(......)

The Great Pie Experiment

This Thanksgiving I have decided to attempt something I have never made before as my contribution to the family food table. I have been camping on a pecan pie recipe for months now, secretly holding it away for the Thanksgiving feast. I figured that if there was ever an opportunity to test your dessert on unknowing subjects, it would be Thanksgiving dinner.

Here's the rundown. This recipe is for a 9.5 inch pie.

CRUST!
1 cup flour
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) cold butter
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1 large egg

Now, you will probably notice the complete absence of any water in this crust recipe. After making this, I'm convinced this is a typo as one egg simply doesn't provide enough moisture to make a respectable dough of any kind.

Mix the flour, sugar, powder, and butter together until it forms loose clumps. Then add your pecans and egg. Keep turning the dough until smooth. Make it into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, throw it in the fridge for one hour, then pull it out and make your crust. I added water to the dough as needed to allow me to form the crust properly.


FILLING!
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup heavy cream
3 tbsp butter
3 large eggs
2 cups pecans

First, put your sugar, corn syrup, cream, and butter into a medium saucepan and cook on medium heat. You'll need to get this mixture just up to a constant boil so keep an eye on it. Be sure to stir frequently as, since its mostly sugar, you don't want it to completely carmelize. While this is heating up, take your eggs (in a separate container) and beat them until all the yolky lumps are out of it.

At this point, start heating your oven to 350.

Once your sugar mixture has hit the boiling point, pour it into a separate bowl and allow it to cool. After it cools down, pour in your eggs, and give it a good mix. Once you got it all mixed together, pour it into your crust and then top it off with your 2 cups of pecans.

Stick that bad boy in the oven for 45 minutes. I'd advise covering the crust with aluminum foil at the 35 minute mark to avoid burning.

The final result should look something like this.


My family all thought the pie was great, although I will say unless you absolutely love pecans with a passion I would cut the toppings down to about 1.5 cups or even 1 cup of pecans. Overall I was pleased with the pie, but I will likely lower the nut quotient next time I make this.