Halloween and other fall activities

It has been a nice, warm fall so far. We had a great garden, and I was sad when I ripped it all out yesterday. It was supposed to get cold and snow on us today, but it just got slightly colder and snowed in the mountains. We did get a bit of rain.

 These were the monster tomatoes on our vines. We had more that didn't ripen in time.

 Here's photo of the garden and the tomato plants.

 This tomato was 1/2 ounce short of 2 lbs.

 This tomato was almost the same size. They are "heirloom" tomatoes, which translates into sort-of-funny-looking-but-OK-tasting tomatoes.

 Our three pumpkins were smaller than the tomatoes.

 A few weeks ago we went on a picnic up the canyon.

 We enjoyed the fall colors, even though you can't really see them in the photo.

 We actually cooked hot dogs over a grill. Amazing. Usually we just eat sandwiches or something like that.

 Lucy looks like she is riding through Monument Valley (if you ignore the plugs on the wall), but she is just at the Natural History Museum.

 We got a better shot of Henry riding past the Mittens.

 Lucy is here at BYU with some of the cast of the opera this fall. We went to a one-hour family concert that had some opera highlights from The Marriage of Figaro. The kids were OK with it, but mostly just miffed that we weren't seeing the whole opera. A week or two earlier I had bought a DVD of The Magic Flute and they all sat and watched it (in German with English subtitles).

 Edward was leading out on his section of the Halloween parade at the school.

 I caught Lucy a bit later as she was walking through the hallways.

The kids had fun with Halloween. We had a blue 2x3 Lego (Edward), a black hole (Andrew), a fancy princess (Lucy), and a shiny dragon (Henry). Two costumes were mostly from previous years, so I really only had to make the Lego and the black hole. Andrew wore a big cape covered in stars and galaxies and then had a circle colored black underneath, "the black hole." We decided that the education level of the people directly correlated with how hard they laughed when he explained his costume. Kirk missed most of the festivities since he is on a research trip to Europe right now.

Spice saga update

It took me more than a week to clean all my spice jars. Then, with the help of my lovely sister Mindy, I created new labels. I'm in the process of finding new sources for spices, and should have an order come in the next week or so. Thanks for the suggestions!

Here's how the spice rack now looks. It is missing a few jars since I was cleaning out old spices and empty jars. I'm sure it will be filled again soon.

The labels are an Avery 2.5" circle in Kraft brown, and Mindy created some templates for me when I discovered the Avery print and template products didn't work. It is sort of fun to have a "new" thing in the kitchen. So far, it looks great. I will see if the print will smudge or not.

If anyone is in need of spice labels, we now have three slightly different designs for a 2.5" circle label. These labels also cover the tops of the small canning jar lids (the regular size, not wide-mouth). I guess they would also fit on the wide-mouth lids, they just won't cover the complete lid.

No more Penzeys spices

If you look at the wall behind the table you can see the spice rack that Kirk made for me years ago. It is filled with Penzeys spices.

I've been upset with the way Penzeys has been promoting their pet political projects (gay marriage, local Wisconsin issues, education, etc.) over the past few years, but things finally reached a breaking point when I went to place my order this last week. They have a big banner supporting gay marriage on their website. I can't bring myself to keep paying money to a company that has decided these political issues are more important than selling spices. So, I will no longer buy spices from them.

Here is the letter I mailed this week (in the regular mail):

16 September 2014

Dear Penzeys staff:

I was introduced to your company almost 20 years ago while I was Ph.D. student in Madison. For years we have enjoyed your spices and mixes. However, over the past few years, I save seen the catalog change from a decent spice catalog to a magazine promoting what appear to be the company’s pet political causes. If I were interested in a political magazine, I would subscribe to one. Generally, though, I tried to ignore the political agenda and just enjoy the herbs and spices. However, when I went online recently to do one of my big orders, I saw that by ordering more spices from Penzeys, I would be supporting gay marriage. As a Christian, I believe that God ordained marriage between a man and a woman, and as His children, we do not have the authority to change or modify His commandments or plan. Since you have chosen to set up your company with this political agenda, I will be taking my business elsewhere. I will also have to inform my family and friends that I do not buy spices from you any more so they don’t get the wrong impression and think I support the same political causes as you do. Please remove our address from your mailing list.

Regretfully,

etc.

I was wondering where to buy spices, but I have now found some other companies and will be trying them out. A few of them seem to be more "organic" and interested in "wellness," sustainable farming, aromatherapy, and stuff like that. However, sometimes I find it easier to ignore the "wellness" crowd's politics--especially since we have so many of them here in Utah--than the "promoting gay marriage" group, though some people would overlap. I guess I will just be careful and read their websites and catalogs to see if they are trying to sell a political position or alternative religion more than sell spices. Here are the companies I've found so far:

The Spice House (This is actually the original Penzeys family spice company, but the man on the phone said their catalog is just a catalog, not a magazine, and they have "the best spices." They are sending out a catalog to me today. Some of the prices seemed better than Penzeys, as well.)

Frontier Co-op (Some of these products are also available at stores like Whole Foods, Sprouts, etc.)

Mountain Rose Herbs (extreme organic, aromatherapy, tea, sustainability group, but possibly OK)

Monterey Bay Spice Co. (linked to the organic, essential oils group, has two kinds of cinnamon, possibly OK)

Starwest Botanicals (Older company, also selling organic, essential oils, and other stuff, but seems to have lots of spices)

If you have any suggestions or feedback on these or other companies, let me know. 

I also located some companies that sell spice bottles that would match my spice cabinet.

Getting better

So, it hasn't been six months since I last wrote, only about five. Here's a brief glimpse at our summer.

 We enjoyed a week-long trip to Yellowstone. We hiked around and waited for geysers to go off. We saw quite a few major geysers and lots of smaller ones.

 We had an adventure with our tent breaking, but we managed to find other accommodations and had a good time.

 We built a fence along the east side of our property. It was a major undertaking, but it looks great now. Which reminds me, I should take a photo of the completed product.

 Kirk had a birthday and ate cake.

 We celebrated the 4th of July while Kirk was in Chile at a conference.

 Also in July we had someone smash the front of our car while we were stopped at a stop sign. Thankfully no one was hurt and the car was eventually repaired.

 We had a fun Tanner family reunion with lots of people and good food and activities.

 In Washington, while visiting Kirk's parents, we picked about 50 pounds of blueberries.

 They were huge and very good.

 We also visited the tidal pools at Tongue Point, Salt Creek State Park.

 This funny castle rock was out in the tidal pools. It gets mostly covered in water during high tide.

 Even though there is a massive die-off of sea stars, we did find one. It is the small red blob near the kids.

 We hiked to Marymere Falls in the Olympic National Park.

 We played at the beach on the Dungeness Spit in Washington.

 Kirk completed a century bike ride (100 miles). It was his first race and he did great, coming in 6.5 hours after he started. That was about mid-range for the hundreds of people in the race.

 We took the family on some family bike rides now that Lucy can ride a bike and Kirk bought me a bike. This ride was to the Railroad Bridge park on the Dungeness River, near Sequim, Washington.

 We visited the Naval Underwater Museum. The kids were disappointed that the museum wasn't underwater. However, they cheered up when they saw all the submarine stuff.

 They got to play at a submarine command center (disconnected from an actual submarine, of course).

 Also in Washington, Kirk took me on some nice bike rides.

 Henry had fun standing in a tree at the Olympic National Park.

 Lucy also took advantage of the nice tree to pose for a photo.

 I battled nasty stink bugs on our tomatoes.

 We picked pounds and pounds of tomatoes and other garden produce.

 Lucy made a pink pinewood derby car. (Henry made a green one, but I can't find that photo--it is probably on Kirk's camera and he's coming back from a conference in Glasgow, Scotland.)

 Edward came in 4th out of the 14 boys with his first pinewood derby car.

 Andrew won first place with his pinewood derby car thanks to his design and help from Grandpa Hawkins and Kirk with making it, and Uncle Ryan for sending the link to the guide on how to win pinewood derbies (the science side of it).

We picked our peached and ate lots of them and canned 21 quarts from our one little tree. And now, we are in September.

So I haven't written for a while...

Actually, I think it is more than "a while." Make that months and months. Oh, well. We are still here and still alive, and the few people that look at this blog probably know that. I won't try to catch up.

Spring was beautiful. We had one of the very first daffodils in the neighborhood. 

We decorated the house for Easter with our eggs from Austria. We couldn't find any pussywillows since Easter was so late, but we used forsythia. The forsythia didn't last until Easter, so the eggs ended up in a crystal bowl and hanging from a branch over the dinning room table.

Another spring event was the lunar eclipse. We got up at 1:45am and also got Andrew and Edward up for a few minutes to look at it. The red blob is a photo of the moon during the eclipse.

 Lucy turned 6 and had another princess doll cake.

 She made a kite and said that it will fly to "my Grandma."

Andrew didn't want a specific-theme cake for his birthday. He just wanted something with lots of layers. So he got a four-layer German's Chocolate cake.

 We made chocolates for the Easter baskets instead of buying lots of candy. They got a Peep and a Lindt chocolate bunny and some homemade chocolates.

 I tracked down a lamb cake pan and made two lamb cakes. Actually, I made three, but one didn't turn out, so we had to eat it a few days before Easter.

I also made lots of nice deviled eggs, which people in our family don't like. They look nice and tasted good, but there were lots of leftovers. 

Henry is getting bigger and doing well in speech therapy. We are working on phrases now, like "is jumping" or "does work." So the other day, I was helping him say things, "Daddy does work," "Lucy does play," and so on. Then I said, "Andrew does ...?" and Henry said, "time out. Andrew does time out."