First Day of Kindergarten

Liam had his first day of school yesterday, Wednesday. I think it is a little hard as a parent to let your kid go off to school, out of your nest, so to speak. In fact, he wanted to ride the bus to school by him self yesterday morning too. I don't think any other little kids were on it, just him. ViviAnne ended up meeting him at the school just before the bell rang to start classes. Ha, I say classes, but there is only one class. She wanted to see him off and take some pictures. I am so glad that he wanted to ride the bus, and really proud of him. That is a big deal to ride all by your self and he just did it. With out any fan fair or anxiety, it was pretty amazing. I think that he must have felt pretty comfortable because of all the bus riding that him and I would do after pre-school last semester.

After he got home, I took him and Asa and my niece out for ice cream. They and I loved it, Liam got to tell me about his day while we all watched people clean up after making cheese.

Salmon with Avocado Salsa

I love to eat fish. I remember when I was young, really young, my dad would feed me fish from his plate and I would eat all of his fish. My wife and I came up with this recipe a couple of years ago. It is an interesting pairing: Salmon and avocado, but delicious.

1 lb of salmon fillets
1 lemon
1 lime
2 avocados
1/4 a red onion (a small hand full)
small hand full of cilantro
tomato
citrus and basil rub from Pampered Chef

Put the fillets in a baking pan and preheat the oven to 350. Apply a liberal amount of the Pampered Chef Citrus and Basil rub to the salmon and then squeeze the lemon over the salmon. Put in oven for 20 minutes or so.

Peel and de-seed the avocados and put into bowl. Mash them up a bit. Dice the tomato and red onion and put into bowl with avocado, add chopped cilantro, salt, pepper and the rest of the juice from the lemon to taste. Slice the lime and cut the peel off and discard. Chop the lime and add to the bowl. Mix well.

Remove the salmon. One your plate put a heaping spoon full of salsa and place the salmon on top. Serve with a rice pilaf or potato and veggie. My kids like broccoli, so we always seem to serve broccoli. I like it with asparagus too.

Summer Cabin Trip 07

Each and every year my good friend Josh Holland has a cabin trip in August. His parents' cabin is in the Wallowa Mnts, right at the base of Mount Joseph, named after Chief Joseph. He has been doing this for quite some time now, more than 12 years I think. I have been to about 6 or 7 of them, half is pretty good considering that we had three kids in the last five years. He use to do it on the same weekend as the Blues and Booze festival, but it got to be to crazy in Joseph and around the lake, so he moved it to the week before WSU starts classes.

The Eagle Cap Wilderness Area offers some of the best hiking and backpacking in the U.S. I have only been a couple of miles in, but plan on backpacking it fairly extensively once my kids get a little older. The surrounding area also has some great little rivers and creeks for fly fishing Rainbow, Brook and Brown Trout. The lake itself, at over 300 ft deep has Lake Trout, but you are going to need a boat and down rigger equ. to fish it. I might try fishing the shores this weekend with Liam.

We got a flat tire on Saturday evening around 7:15PM. We were able to make it back to Josh's cabin but we didn't feel comfortable driving 90 miles back to Lewiston on the donut tire. So we will be going back down again this Friday. We will take all the kids this time and maybe Katie, Darcy and Charlotte to stay the night and play at the lake on Saturday morning. Liam really wants to go fishing, so I think I should take him out early in the morning and try the lake a little after dawn.

Fun weekend! and I am looking forward to another.

Thai Turkey

I can't believe I finally did it. I made a Thai Turkey. It was pretty good. I ended up just doing the turkey and not all the other stuff, but it was fun. Here is the recipe.

8 lb Turkey (defrosted)
3 Tbsp brown sugar
3 tsp honey
3 tsp sesame oil
3 tsp soy sauce
3 dried red chili peppers (chopped w/ seeds)
6 garlic cloves (chopped)
3 tsp Five Spice
3 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all the stuff up in a bowl (you can use a food processor if you like) and then rub it all over the bird, inside and out. Put a little bit of water in a roaster pan and then put in a rack. Place the bird on the rack, cover, and cook for about 2 hours. Serve with your favorite thanksgiving foods (potato, beans, stuffing, corn).

I think that I might try this one for thanksgiving. I was thinking with a saffron rice with potato tadehk, pumpkin and sweat potato curry, spicy Thai green beans and asparagus... I am getting hungry.

Preparing for a big feast

Cooking something new is pretty fun for me. Two thanksgivings ago, I made a Thai Roast Duck. It was very good, but it got me thinking that I could do better. So, ViviAnne got me a turkey a couple of months ago. I took it out of the freezer yesterday and I think that I will cook it up on Friday. I was thinking a Thai Roast Turkey (using the same recipe from the Roast Duck), with a saffron rice and some other semi traditional Thai/Thanksgiving combinations, like sweat potato curry and a spicy green bean/asparagus stir fry. I suppose I should invite some people over to enjoy the food, but then again, maybe not. Maybe I will eat it all my self and make everyone jealous:) Ha!

Trips to the River

Vivi and I have gone to river a lot this summer. Maybe four or five times sense May. That kinda doesn't seem like a lot, but it is. Our summers are packed and getting away with the kids is hard to do, plus it is a lot of work. Speaking of the kids, they have been little hellions lately. Mainly just Liam, he can really push my buttons, how the heck do they know exactly what to say to piss you off. Really, it is pretty amazing that they are so intuitive. We went to the river on Sunday, for about five hours with friends (Robert, Heather, Morgan and Nathan). It is was good fun. Plus I got to sit in the water with Darius. He is hilarious in the water, just splashing around with a huge smile on his face. I think he might be a swimmer some day. I need to get boat. That would be mucho fun as well. Vivi wants to get one too, maybe in five or ten years:) At least the kids would be older and really able to enjoy it a bunch. We bbq'ed cheddar dogs and ate watermelon, very traditional river food if I say so myself. I think that I need to take Liam on a camping trip, he would really enjoy it just him and I. Maybe in Sept. and we could go fishing at the same time. Something to think about...

Evening at the Park

I took Liam, Asa and Darius to the park last night. Darius slept the whole time, so I was able to play with Liam and Asa on the swings and slides. Fun. Here are our pics from last night.

We try to go to the park at least once a week, it is nice to get them out of the house and able to run around where there is some stuff to play on. We still don't have much in the way of a lawn at our place. I would love to have the time and money to build them a fun play set, or even to get a giant trampoline, but it is not going to happen for a while. Maybe in a couple of years once Darius has grown up a little and ViviAnne has started working again.

Tomorrow is my anniversary, which I am looking forward too. 7 years and counting. It is nice to think about it. I have loved every moment and look forward to many more years. We are going to head over to Moscow and have dinner at The Red Door. It is a pretty nice place and then we will probably go back home and sit on our front porch and watch the sunset. This will be our first anniversary in our new home.


TTFN

30th Birthday party (a couple of years ago)

I love this pic, thought I would share!