Food Connoisseur

Yesterday Tyler informed me that he was going to be on Desertnews.com and on TV. I asked Y and he said because he taste tested some food at school today.

Click on this link to see Tyler in a a beautifully lighted video.

Couldn't Sleep

I couldn't fall asleep last night. I really don't know why. My mind was racing all over the place. So, I decided to make a tarp tent and sleep outside. I decided to use the sleeping bag that I just purchased for Shantell to use on our upcoming hiking trek to view the Anasazie ruins of Bullet Canyon.

I got to bed around 11:30 and the temperature was 54°. I chose the Big Agnes Crater sleeping bag because of its weight, its girth, the self inflating 1.5" sleeping pad, and the sleeping pad sleeve. The bag and the pad weigh 4lbs 8oz. That is pretty light considering some sleeping bags alone can weight 4lbs. The Crater boasts nearly 36 inches of girth through the shoulder and the hip sections. What does that mean? It means that there is plenty of wiggle room so as to not feel claustrophobic in it.

The bag kept me to warm. I woke up around 3(39°) and had to unzip part of the bag cause I was burning up. I went back to sleep and got up around 5(44°). It was a good nights sleep.

Happy Resurrection Day

If you know me, then you will know how much I dislike holidays. It's not so much that I dislike the holiday, it's that I dislike how commercialized holidays have become. The media has done a fantastic job making Easter and Christmas less like religious holidays and more like secular pop-culture holidays. It is apparent that companies and advertisers recognized these holidays as times when people were getting together and exchanging gifts. So they probably began to focus on these elements. They have made people think that this the whole point of a holiday, and boy have they succeeded. Think about it, what do Easter Eggs and Chocolate Bunnies have to do with the resurrection of Jesus?

Easter came early this year. I was a bit shocked when I found out that Easter was in March, as I normally associated Easter with April. Easter Sunday can actually fall on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. The date of Easter, in Western Civilization, is based on Computus. In short, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox is fixed as March 21 resulting in the fact that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25. Make sense? It didn't make sense to Amanda either. She wanted to know why it couldn't be on a fixed date. Halloween has a fixed date.

The kids got some cute Easter outfits. I bought Bre-Bre's last month cause I happen to see frilly dress with boy colors. She liked it when she tried it on at the store, but hated it when she had to wear it for church. She claims it gives her itches. She uses the itches excuse every time she has to wear something that she doesn't want to wear. Luckily Grandpa Thaxton had some magical anti-itch, baby, powder that he put on Bre. That cured the itches. The best part of her outfit were her shoes. You can't see them in the picture, but they had a bit of a lift on them so Bre had a hard time walking in them.

We left Grandpa Thaxton's house en route to Grandpa Berrett's house. It took about two hours to get there. Maybe it was because of this, but probably not.

Grandma and Grandpa Berrett hide easter eggs for all their grandchildren and daughters. Grandpa takes great pride in hiding the daughters eggs in unusual places. This year was no exception. If I hadn't been joking around about turning the water off in the water bucket, then Jessica would probably still be looking for her egg. Bre was the first person to find all of her eggs, props to uncle Mark for helping her. Here are some pix from the hunt. Additional pix can be viewed in the family album.

Special Saturday

The easter bunny came to Grandpa Thaxton's house while we slept. The kids awoke to an Easter basket as well as an Easter egg hunt in the backyard.

Here is a look at what Grandpa Thaxton's property looks like. His backyard is probably .65 of an acre. SO there are lots of places to hide eggs.

View Larger Map

There must have been a hole in the Easter bunnies basket, as there were Easter eggs all over the place. The kids only needed to find a big silver and big gold egg.

Tyler picked up 52 eggs.

After the Easter egg hunt, the kids were treated to a surprise in the garage. Brian and Julie had purchased a Nintendo Wii and had it setup in Gerald's shop. The kids occupied themselves playing Tennis, Bowling, and Baseball. Bre was the champion bowler. She bowled a 184 and had 2 Turkeys in that game. For those non-bowlers, a Turkey is three strikes in a row. She had a blast beating everyone.

They also have a lack luster salad bar, but Amanda didn't seem to care.

On our way home, we stopped by DI to check out the stuff in the "Yard". We found a croquet set for $2.00. Bre-Bre fell asleep on the ride home. She is such a QT3.14.

We played croquet for a bit, the kids lost interest in it pretty quickly. Especially since some stray cat journeyed onto the playing field.

Later in the evening we had a belated birthday cake for Tyler.

It was a good day. The kids were worn out by the end of the day.

5 Hours

We took off for Idaho to celebrate Easter with Shantell's dad. The kids did a pretty good job of packing items to occupy their time.

About an hour into the drive, the kids starting asking "How much longer?". Shantell will always reply with the correct ETA. I on the other hand kept saying "5 hours".

The kids eventually turned my response into 20 questions:

When are we going camping?
When are you going to the bathroom?
Whats my name?
Who isn't going camping with us?
When are you going to die?
When are we going to fly to the moon?

My reply to each of these questions was "5 Hours".

Biff and Rosie Sitting in a Tree.....

Shantell's cousin Biff and his wife Rosie came over for dinner and a visit tonight. It turns out that they live about 5 minutes away. They are a cute couple. They have been married for about 3 months.

I gave Biff a hard time about not trying out for American Idol. This boy can sing!!!!! I tried to enroll the help of his family in my cause, but it mostly fell on deaf ears. Either I am tone deaf, or they didn't think it would be a good idea. He has been taking singing, dancing(ballroom), music lessons for practically his whole life. His three brothers and sister have been as well, but I think Biff has the best vocals of them. In fact, they were all in a band together called "4 Hits and a Miss".

After they left I decided to fiddle around with some alcohol stoves that I had made. I have been scrounging through the trash cans at work and found some big Arizona Iced Tea cans, so I made a stove with these cans. I figured the can could hold enough fuel to bake muffins.

I decided to bake some muffins because I wanted to try out my $.50 purchase from DI. I had previous used my brothers BakePacker to bake. I came across a homemade version of the oven while I was researching how the BakePacker worked. This site suggested making the oven out of an aluminum baking try. I immediately thought that a disposable aluminum pie tin would work better. We didn't have one, so I went in search of one at the local thrift stores. I couldn't find one, but I did find this:

I have no idea what it was or what it was used for, but it met all the requirements that would go into creating the DIY version. The "broven" has a lip, but I didn't think that it would be tall enough to add enough water under it to bake. So I thought about adding some legs to it until I put in into the pot. The broven fit nicely in the larger of my Sigg Tourist pans. The pan has a lip in it so it gave me enough of a gap for the water.

I started the water a boiling and the muffin a cooking. It appeared that I didn't add enough alcohol to the Arizona can, so I had to resort to using another stove to finish the cooking. I have about 8 of these stoves, so I picked the one that has turned out the best of the bunch. Shantell thinks I am to obsessive over the stoves. :) This one fired up like a champ. It finished up the cooking. The muffin took about 18 minutes to cook.

The Three Berry muffin was completely cook and tasked great. Since the oven uses water to bake, so there is no crispy muffin top. I even got Shantell to try a bite. I think that I am slowing turning her into a camper, or at least getting her excitement level of camping up to 0.00000000000001%.

Click! Take a Pic

I went to pull some picture off of my camera's memory card and found some pictures that Bre had taken of herself and me. Here is a sample of some of pictures. You can view all of them in her photo album.

Where's your tooth?

It would appear that the Tooth Fairy pulled out Brielle's tooth while she slept last night. I have been bugging Brielle to pull out her tooth for the past week or so. I was bugging her so much about it that she would say that I couldn't pull out her tooth every time I called her name. Needless to say, she was annoyed with me.

Her tooth was barely hanging on, so I decided to pull it out while she slept. It took a slight yank and it was out. The only problem was that I couldn't get it out of her mouth. I had to wake her and tell her to spit it out. I don't think she really knew what had happened. She fell right back to sleep.

I woke her up this morning and asked her where her tooth was. She exclaimed, "In my mouth! She immediately stuck her tongue in the space where her tooth was and noticed something weird. "My tooth is gone!" Then she got a big smile on her face as she looked in her mirror and noticed that it was gone. She later asked me if I took it out while she slept. She is one smart girl.

I don't like it when my kids lose their front teeth. To me it makes them no longer seem like a little kid anymore. I am sad that her tooth is gone, but look forward to her transformation into a beautiful young lady.

Soda Can Stove

I have recently been reading about lightweight back packing equipment. I carried a lot of community gear on my recent trek to Notch Lake. So I wanted to come up with some ideas to combat the weight of the necessities. E.G. tent, stove, cooking gear,and sleeping bad and pad. My current equipment weighs in as follows:
Tent: Kelty Gunnison 4 9 lbs.
Cook Set: SVEA123 with Sigg Tourist cookset. 1lb 8oz. (not included the weight of the fuel)
Sleeping Bag: Mountain Hardwear Ultralamina 2lb 2oz.
Sleeping Pad: Big Agnes Air Core 1lb. 5oz.
Total Weight: ~14lbs.

The lightest tent I found was thin air. Simply spread out your sleeping bad on some Tyvek and sleep under the stars. Thats all fine and dandy, if it doesn't rain. Also, there is nothing like a paper thin sheet of material to make you feel safe.

I found a couple of ideas for a tent and stove. Many people suggest using a tarp to make tent. I looked around and liked the idea of a pyramid tarp tent. The price isn't right, so I just need to find a pattern , the material, and convince my mom to sew it for me. It would lighten my pack weight by ~4-5lbs. There is no floor to this tent, but I can use my Tyvek ground cloth as the floor.

I also found this pretty cool video on how to make a tent using an 8x10 tarp.

I will have to try this in the backyard sometime. Looks pretty simple to make.

I found a good deal on a lightweight cook set, so I bought it. I found a web site that discusses the use of homemade backpacking stoves that are fueled by denatured alcohol. Many of the stoves weigh less then an ounce. This concept intrigued me. So I built a soda can stove. Before I left work, I dug through the trashes and found some empty some soda pop cans. I found the following DIY instructions and built me a stove.

It took me about 30 minutes to complete it. I salvaged several cans, so I think that I will try and build some of the other types of stoves. Here are some pics of my work and of the stove in action.

The GSI cookset and alcohol stove weigh in at less then a pound, not including fuel. The only problem is that the stove and cookset will only comfortably accommodate two people. So I will probably only use this combination of cookset and stove when I go off hiking by myself or with one of the kids.

So when all is said and done, I am probably better off cutting down on just the weight of the tent if I take the kids with me. I better hurry up and get sewing if I want to have a completed pyramid tarp tent before the summer hits.

It's a boy!

Once upon a time I wished to have all daughters. This probably stemmed from the fact that I have 3 brothers and no sisters. This wish came to an end on March 12, 1998 at 10:47pm.

According to the ultrasound of Tyler, he was supposed to have been a she. You see, the ultrasound technician gave us a 99.9% certainty that our second child was going to be a girl. Not only did the tech say this, but she also said that she doesn't see any boy parts. She only saw girl parts.

I was in a bit of a shock when the Dr. Glenn pronounced the birth of our son. I remember that moment in my life just like it was yesterday. This was a problem, as we weren't prepared for a baby boy. The nursery was setup for a baby girl. The only clothes that we had for a boy, were white onesies and pajamas.

Well, today marked the 10th anniversary of the birth of Brent "Tyler" Berrett. T-y is a great kid. He is a tender hearted kid that really and truly loves his family. I have always told him that it is his job to protect his sisters. He is often reminded of this by Brielle when he isn't being very nice to her.

T-y has a lot of good friends. They always seem to be at our house playing games or making messes. I found some pictures of his best friend Reese from a while back.

Here are some pictures of T-y over the years.

We typically allow the kids to open their presents before school starts. T-y received a bunch of cool gifts:
He got a couple of shirts, included a coveted Volcom shirt.
He got 6 pairs of boxers.
He got a pair of mini-speakers for his Zune and NintendoDS.
He got a Pyramat G-Flex Gaming Chair
He got some Skull Candy ear buds.
He got the following games for his DS:
Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Asphalt Urban GT 2
Pokeman: Diamond Thanks Brian and Julie
He got some Pokemon game books. Thanks Brian and Julie.
He got a 62 piece took kit. Thanks Grandpa Thaxton.
He got a book on how to juggle. Thanks Granpa Thaxton.

Happy Birthday T-y.

I Love You big much.

La Familia tan Marvillosa

Here is a copy of her talk.

This photo of her mysteriously appeared on my phone.

Here is an additional photo that I snapped of Amanda earlier in the month.

Do You Know The Muffin Man?

I would like to introduce to you the real muffin man, Tyler Berrett. T-y doesn't really care for cold cereal for breakfasts anymore. He likes a hot breakfast. So lately I have been trying to cook hot breakfasts for the kids. I have used Jiffy muffin mixes for a couple of months now. T-y has helped me make them a couple of times, and has become addicted to them.

Well this morning, T-y decided to make them all by himself. The ingredients and cooking instructions are pretty simple; 1 egg, 1/4 cup milk, and the mix. Cook for 12 minutes at 350 degrees. Here are some pix of the Muffin Man in action and the kids enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Ultimate Carmel Pull-A-Part

Here is an easy recipe for a hot breakfast.

16 to 18 unbaked frozen dinner rolls
(I like to use Terrel's Cinnamon Chip Rolls & Scone Dough)
1 (3-ounce) package regular butterscotch pudding mix, not instant
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup pecans, chopped (optional)
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, melted (can be reduced to 1/4 cup)

The night before place frozen rolls in well greased Bundt pan. Sprinkle dry pudding mix over rolls. Sprinkle brown sugar over pudding mix. Sprinkle chopped pecans over brown sugar. Pour melted butter over all. To prevent the dough from forming a hard crust while its rising overnight, cover with a damp towel or tightly wrap with plastic wrap. Let rise overnight at room temperature, about 8 to 10 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Bake in oven for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Turn pan over onto a serving platter to remove. Serve by pulling apart chunks with forks.

Short "A" Line Please

I took Brielle to get a haircut today. She was really excited. I took her to see my hair engineer, Dr. Laura. At least thats what I call her. :) It was fun to see my little girl act so big. She was very polite and very chatty. It helped that Brielle and Laura take Karate at the same Studio. After Laura finished the cut, she started to roll brush Brielle's hair. Here is a sample of conversations they had:

Brielle: I don't like my hair curly.
Laure: I'm not putting curls in your hair. I am putting some rolls in it.
Brielle: I don't like rolls in my hair. I like it straight. My mommy straightens it.
Laura: Ok. We will straighten it.

Here are some pics of her new hair cut

Here are some videos of the Karate Kid.