Pizza

I've been too lazy to try making a good pizza crust from scratch. It always seemed like too much work for a payoff that might not be so good. Last night I was looking for pasta recipes online at foodnetwork.com and saw a little story about making your own pizza dough.

Emeril Lagasse had a highly rated dough recipe, so I tried it out. I had to add a bit more flour than he had before it wasn't sticking to my hands. I let it rise for about 30 minutes, stuck it in the fridge for 15 minutes, and then twirled it out. It stuck to itself on my last twirl, so I ended up just having to roll it out into a misshapen roundish mess. I added some italian seasoning to some canned spaghetti sauce, and topped it with cheese, pepperoni, fresh basil from the garden, onions, and red and yellow peppers.

It smelled amazing cooking in the oven. I was really setting myself up for a huge letdown. It came out of the oven looking like this:



It tasted amazing. The basil was a nice touch. The crust was crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. I also loved how the uncovered crust poofed up just like in a pizzeria but that the rest of the crust was thin. The kids were coming home just as it came out of the oven, and they loved it too. I had enough dough left over for another, so I made a second pizza.

I can't wait to make more, and hopefully someday with sauce made from our own garden. I'll never look at lower tier pizza chains the same way again.

Addie the Musical Genius

Today, I was sitting around staring off into space with my mind a complete blank when Addie came to me and asked if I wanted to hear her song. I figured it was some lyrics or something that she would sing, so I started asking her if it was called I'm a Cucumber, and I started singing it. She said no, and led me to the keyboard that I just brought home from my Grandma Black.

She put a drum beat on, and started playing a song. All the notes seemed to go together well enough, there wasn't just key pounding, she seems to have thought it through. Anyways, she finished, and played it again, identical to the first time. I got the camera out and taped it for her. Here's the world premier of Addie's song "Untitled"

Sea World

Today, I surprised Cam and Addie with a trip to Sea World. Jenn's parents were kind enough to pay for a trip to Sea World back in June when they visited, and paying for one day gives you a season pass, so it was free except for the parking and the gas to get there. Jenn stayed home with Bailey who was too chicken to go on roller coasters, Emery who is too small to go on anything good, and Joelle who is a little sick. I told them to be up in the morning to go shopping. As we pulled away from the house, I let them in on where we were going, and they got excited.

We got there about a half hour before the park opened. We speedwalked to our first rollercoaster of the day, The Steel Eel.



We went on it twice pretty quickly before all the other people showed up and clogged up the line.

We decided to try one of the water rides next, but that part of the park wasn't open for another half hour, so we went to the penguin exhibit. It was cool, but it's amazing how many penguins they cram into such a small habitat.

We went on the Rio Loco as soon as the clock struck 11. We got there well in advance of anyone else, so we were allowed to ride twice in a row without even getting back in line. Everyone got wet.





We went on the water flume ride, which was a long wait, made a big splash, didn't really get anyone wet, and wasn't worth the wait. We went on Rio Loco one more time and the kids decided they had had enough walking around, so we left.

On the way out, we posed with a Shamu statue, I guess Cam was pretty pissed off.

All Moved Out

Today we turned in our keys to the mouse poop house. We've still got boxes all over the place at our new house, but no more hauling stuff around until we get our stuff out of storage from Utah.

The kids are all excited to be in their own rooms. So far, the surprise of surprises is that Addie is keeping her room the cleanest.

I think it's funny that we have this huge yard to run around in now, and Cam still insists on making jet noises and running around in the living room.

We love our house, it's got some personality. We hope it will be a great place to live for years to come, and we thank everyone who had any hand at all in helping us get here.

Home Sweet Home

We did our final walkthrough on our house tonight, we're closing tomorrow morning. All the kids got to see the house from the inside and they all picked their rooms. One of the previous owners of the home was there taking care of a few things and she seemed pretty nice. She said she was happy to see their house going to another large family, they had 4 girls and a boy as well. We're hoping to start moving things in this weekend, and probably move in permanently on Monday.

Below are some links to an accident I responded to last night. In the video, I am the one who squatted down to lift the stretcher wheels up off the ground when we were loading it into the ambulance. Then I stand up. It's so exciting :)


http://www.ksat.com/video/27700450/index.html

http://www.ksat.com/news/27700495/detail.html

Update

We were invited after our last offer to send in a new offer that the sellers could accept. We offered 182,500 for the house on 2 acres. The next door neighbors are buying the rest of the land since they're working the land already anyways.

We have to have a surveyor come out and redraw the land, and we're hoping that goes fast. We'd like to be moving at the end of April. But more time here at the mouse poop house means more time to save money and less time of driving the kids 10 miles to school each day.

The news

One of the cool things about working in a big city is that a lot of the major fires and traffic accidents that we see make the news. I've already seen the back of my head on TV (I'm one of the taller guys on most calls, and I've got distinguishing orange probie stickers on my helmet) The other night we made a fire at an abandoned home that was fully involved when we got there and ended up being a total loss. My friend happened to be working on the ladder truck at the same station where I was on the engine, and he ended up getting on the news as they were cleaning up the mess and waiting for arson (we were put back in service, so I never saw the news crews). We were 2nd in to that fire, but since it was decided that we were going defensive from the start, I got to pull one of our preconnects and actually help put out the fire.

We're hoping to have found our home, a 6 bedroom home out in the country. It's an older home that is going to require some work, but it's nice and appears to be clean. The people selling it are asking a bit much for it, and they aren't budging much on the price, but we think we may have found a compromise. The property that is for sale is a 1.5 acre lot with the home on it, and 4.7 acres of excess land that's currently being rented out for farming. They wanted 215,000 and we offered 180. They said they would sell us the land that the home is on only for that price, but we'd like to get some land to grow some fruit trees and a big garden. We're trying to get them to redraw the property lines and give us 2 acres, and sell the other 4.25 acres to someone else. Here's hoping it works out, there aren't a whole lot of 6 bedroom houses for sale in that area, but we want to make sure we're getting a fair deal. When we hear anything we'll post it.

Oh My Gosh I Almost Stepped On It!!!

Saturday we were leaving the house and getting the kids in the car. It was raining outside and we were taking the kids to the library to reward some good behavior. Jenn started carrying Joelle over to her side of the car, and then she screamed the title of this post. I was puzzled for a moment, but quickly figured out what must have happened.

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This is the first snake I'd seen since we've been at this house. I think it looks pretty cool, and all the kids concurred, even Emery. It just sat there, staring at us. We left it alone and went to the library. Jenn is just going to have to get over being afraid of snakes, I'm sure it won't be the last time she sees one.

Back on the information superhighway... in a Pinto

Blogspot only lets me post 5 pictures with them, so I made a gif out of some pictures that our class historian took. It's pretty cool, and it ends up being a lot better than 5 stupid pictures on top of each other.



You should see me doing an emergency bailout. Lucky for me, there weren't pictures of when one of my SCBA straps got caught in one of the grooves of the ladder beams, and I got stuck up there for a while. This bailout went pretty smooth.

Jenn and the kids moved down with me on Christmas day. Our rental home still doesn't have cable internet hooked up as of today. We've had 5 visits from Time Warner trying to get our home hooked up, and each time they send someone who is incapable of hooking up our home, even though every time I schedule an appointment, I let them know of all the issues we've had and that they need to send someone who is qualified and able to do the specific work that we need. Our home is right near the edge of Time Warner's service area. I believe the line runs out about 500 yards past our house. It's been verified that service is available, it's just inconvenient for them to install it. I finally gave up and am now on Virgin Mobile 3G broadband. I don't know if you can call something that connects you at 100kbps broadband, but it's a connection, and I guess it's all we're going to be able to get.

I graduate from the fire academy in 3 weeks. I'm nervous and excited to get started. It's going to be weird starting a new routine, and losing contact with most of the friends I've made in the past 5 months. We're doing live fire at the academy next week, and after that, it's just studying for the city and state tests, and administrative work. After 5 months of training, I can't believe they're just going to throw us all out there after a 20 minute date with the burn building. I'm praying for good officers when I get out into the field, because I'm pretty sure I'll be lost for a while.

I'm hoping to finally get to post a bit more, now that I do have some form of internet access.