An Eventful Wedding

I had the honor of attending Sheila's wedding on Sunday. It was at Wonder Valley Ranch, a little valley in the midst of the foothills by Sanger. It was a beautiful day. Bethany Lowe was there too; she, Sheila, and I were on the kitchen team at Calvin Crest the summer of '05. We had a good time talking about the memories we have. The ceremony and reception were nice, Sheila was beautiful, the bridesmaids' dresses were pretty, the decorations and cake looked great. Then came the bouquet toss. There was tulle draped on the ceiling and when Sheila was getting ready to toss the bouquet, I knew it was going to get caught in that and fall short of all of us, so I got ready to run for it. Sure enough, the bouquet hit the tulle and fell about half way between Sheila and all of us single girls. Well, I wanted to catch it, so I ran forward and scooped it up, stunned that I had triumphed, then realized no one else had moved. So, there wasn't much competition, but I caught the bouquet and I was so excited, I still am excited. I think it was a little anticlimactic for everyone else though, bouquet tosses often are. It is hard to get a good toss right into the center of the girls where someone might actually catch it, instead of picking it up. Congratulations to Sheila and Josh!

Tip of the Day

If you ever find yourself crushing dried red peppers to make red pepper flakes, make sure to wear gloves and a mask. I did that at work today and had gloves but no mask. I was coughing, sneezing, and trying not to breathe (don't worry, I didn't cough or sneeze near any of the food). Of course, then I had to blow my nose. I took off my gloves and washed my hands, but still got red peppers dust up my nose and boy did it burn.

A Cool Picture of the Moon

Calling all Veggie Lovers

On Saturday, I begin a 21 day behavior change project for my health behavior class. My goal is to improve my eating habits by eating more vegetables, getting up to the recommended daily amount by the end of the three weeks. As part of my project, I'm looking for new vegetable recipes to try. So please send me recipes, tips, favorites, anything vegetable related. Thank you. P. S. These lovely zucchini are from our garden.

An Ode to the '80s

As promised, here are pictures from our wildly successful '80s party Saturday. The girls won for best outfits.

Here's the group.

And, of course, we had to make a music video.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Coming Soon

We had an '80s birthday party for Michelle, and Phil, on Saturday and made a music video. That video is in progress still, but soon it should be done and I'll post it with some pictures.

It's Official

Mom and I just signed up for the Thanksgiving 5K "race against hunger" put on by the Visalia Emergency Aid Council. We are part of the NTC team (Nickell Trevino Chandler). The excitement is building...

Our Very Own Pumpkin Patch

We got to pick pumpkins from our garden yesterday. It was my first time growing pumpkins and the plant was productive, we had nine nicely shaped pumpkins. We have also had a steady supply (and at the moment, an overabundance) of zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and basil. The boys got to ride in the wheelbarrow, which we discovered had a flat tire after we put the pumpkins in. It was fun to pick them and put them around for everyone to see and be surprised by when they got home.

Our Crawdad Feed

We had a fun adventure yesterday, hunting crawdads in a creek in Visalia. To start things off, we had a picnic lunch after church then headed for the creek. It was a beautiful day, perfect for a little exploring. Here we are going down to the creek and starting to hunt. Jaime caught the first crawdad and many more afterwards. It was creepy to be walking in a creek with a bunch of crawdads lurking about with their pinchers. Sometimes they would swim right by your foot and it was startling. Heidi seemed to attract them the most. There were a number of tunnels to go through and that was gross too because they smelled worse and it was dark so harder to see where you were stepping. But all our near death frights, cuts, and scrapes paid off and we caught 39 crawdads. We brought them home, rinsed and cooked them. Then we had a feast and it was delicious. We ate all 39, thanks to me because I ate the tails of the 4 rejects after dinner. All in all, it was a fun afternoon and a tasty dinner.

The Continuing Drama that is My Job

Have I mentioned that I like my job? I do, it is not boring. Yesterday I went in to bake bread and found out the temperature probe, which had been sticking out in the middle of the oven for a few months, had broken off so the oven just kept getting hotter and hotter. That meant I would have to bake bread in two smaller ovens that are on the line where we make lunches. The first batches from each oven were burned on one side and soft on the other, they were pathetic loaves of bread. The back of the ovens were apparently very hot, but I couldn't see back there at all so I didn't pull my bread out to check it until the front was just getting golden and by then it was too late. One of the loaves also got stuck on the top of the oven because the shelf was too high, but I couldn't move it down, so the top of that loaf was a bit mangled. The bread started to improve, but was still browning too quickly so the next couple loaves were doughy. We finally got the temperature and rotation figured out and the loaves started to look much better. I was trying to get all the bread baked before lunch because there is not any room there to bake bread anyway and if people are working on lunches, it is downright dangerous. However, that was not to be and five loaves were left in the proofer while we had our lunch rush and got over proofed. We baked them anyway and they were very fluffy, but should be okay. We didn't end up losing any bread because James decided to do a special of crab sandwiches with crust less bread, good thinking. The loaves at the end actually started turning out better than in the regular oven because the fan in that oven sucks out all the moisture we try to put in to get a good crust and it is a constant battle. But the smaller ovens didn't have fans so they kept the moisture in and we were able to get a nice hard crust that had a great crackle (think Ratatouille: you can tell good bread by the sound). Since the oven was out in the middle of the kitchen to be worked on anyway, James and I rewired the fan switch to be off/on instead of high/low; okay, it was really mostly James, but I helped. The day ended up having good come out of a minor disaster, now we should be able to get good crusted sourdough in our regular oven too.

A Music Video

This is what happens when we are bored and have a new computer. We had a bit of fun making this video.

Tulare County Fair

The Chandler family clan, minus Isaac and Jonah and plus Heidi and Juan, went to the Tulare County fair last night. I hadn't been to the fair in a long time and it was fun. We got to see cows and pigs. Someone was leading around a cow and it came super close to me and Micah, we kept moving over, but it still brushed against my hand, wow. The boys got to go on some of the fair rides and they had a fun time with that. Heather and I had to ride one of them with Evan and Micah and it made us a little sick going around in circles. Next we went to the food area and got Icees and cotton candy. I wanted to see the quilts, but when we got there they were cleaning up from a medical emergency so we didn't get to go in. It was getting late anyway, so we decided to head home.