2010-11-25 Tiny Little Birds

No turkey for me! Just the tiniest little game hens from Cornwall!


We decided to go a different way with our little Cornish Game Hens, and it was a welcome break. I found I didn't even miss the turkey.

But once we dispensed with the eating, we had to find things to do to entertain ourselves.

First, a family picture...


OK, check. Next, let's watch Pippin interact with the new kitten!


OK, that's done. Now...hm....what should we do? Oh, I know, my niece said...let's all take a picture with our faces sticking through a poster board with a Thanksgiving scene, just like I made my 1st graders do last week!


Yeah. That's how we roll.

2010-11-24 Sugar on Fire

Nope, that's not a brush fire in the distance. It's a sugar cane field being harvested.


I grew up in a sugar town and in a sugar family, so please, next time you see me, let's have discussion about sugar production!

Anyway, I saw this out in the distance and thought I would share what the skies looked like every fall as the sugar workers would go out into the fields and set them on fire in a controlled burn. The smell, a mixture of burned vegetation and caramel, permeated the air. Sometimes if the field was especially close to the house, a light snow of ashes would rain down through the air.

Once the field was burned, the men would move into the fields with machetes and pile up the giant stalks of cane onto the trucks. The trucks trundled their way into town to dump their contents into the never-ceasing mill. On the other side of the process, a huge warehouse began to fill to bursting with 2-story mounds of fresh brown sugar.

2010-11-20 Pippin and Jeff

Pippin loves to cuddle...


Jeff is trying to enjoy a nice evening of TV and Pippin needs to cuddle with anyone who is laying on the couch. (Don't be freaked out by the eyes -- the picture had red-eye and when you fix it, he looks like a zombie!)