Saturday (short) day trip

We went to Swan Falls Dam on the 22nd of May. The Dam was open to the public for self guided tours the Saturday before and the 22nd. We headed out after breakfast and it was raining... and it turned to snow on the way there!! It's about 20 miles from our house. It was only 37 degrees! Anyway, the Dam was built in 1901. The original building that we walked through is no longer in operation as the new power plant was built in 1994. They had a wall set up with pictures and notes that told the story of the dam. It was really neat and interesting. Here's a few pictures of our rainy day adventure.

Snake River looking west out of the old building.

Interesting Recipe for concrete!

The fire cart. This was used to carry the fire hose where ever needed. The plant was very remote and had to provide its own fire protection service. It was a full days trip to get from Boise to the Dam back in the day.

The inside of the old building. The green "beam" across the top part of the photo is a crane. The little room with the staircase to it was the control room and the ramp takes you down to see a hydroelectric turbine. We got to stand below where the water level was when it was a working turbine.

Here's a closer view of the crane - a 12 ton Cleveland Crane.

Looking back the other way you can see another crane - a 25 ton Case Crane. And in the bottom middle of the picture is the black doorway that led us into the turbine room.

Walkway outside the building on the east side.

B & T standing in the cold rain checking out the view to the west!

Standing on the south side of the river looking north at the old power plant.

Almost to the top of the ridge on the right side is where the road comes out and you drive down to the plant. The road comes down at a diagonal almost to the left of the photo & then goes back & forth a couple times before coming out right at the plant.

It was a neat little trip even though it was rainy & cold! And then it was back to real life with the teens. Senior party for Brianna to go to. Home long enough for Tiffani's birthday dinner out and then onto another friends senior party...

Our Dad

Frederick McCullough Eggers
1926-2010
84 years old!

We have unearthed some treasures in pictures while going through Dad's stuff and just wanted to share his (younger) life in pictures...


Back of this photo says "Lucea Dorthea Eggers - 8 yrs. Frederick McCullough Eggers - 18 mo."


Back of picture says "Frederick McCullough Eggers 3 yrs old 3 feet high" :)


"4 years old 1930"


Must have been about 12 here and in the 6th grade...


July 14, 1944 (just before going into the military)


Military picture sometime between 1944 & 1946


(Not sure of the date - but I'm guessing in the 40's) Dad & Aunt Lucea with Grandma & Grandpa McCullough. Back of picture says "Fred has the smile that won't come off" And look at that, I think he's the tallest one there! :)

Of course there are more pictures of Dad. 20 years had passed from his time in the Military to June 1964 when he married Mom. (That picture is in a frame about 250 miles from me right now so I can't post it!) Then there's us 3 kids in the mix and the 5 grandkids. There's pictures of him in his blue overalls & hat, and his little red pickup, and the whole family together picture (unfortunately that was a few years ago and is missing the two youngest grandkids), but most importantly is the last (known) picture taken of him just about a month before he passed away - his 84th birthday.

Snow and Peanut Butter

Snow and peanut butter... Really they have nothing in common with each other, just a simple combining of two posts into one! Though it would have really worked out nicely had I done the baking while it was snowing so much. But what probably happened was I curled up in a blanket and fell asleep while it was snowing and made the cookies several weeks later because I needed to make Les his Valentines treat. :)

So here's our snow pictures... Nothing like what the east got, but it was a lot for us! The first 2 pictures are from the evening when it started snowing. The flakes were huge & I was hoping to catch that on the picture, but it didn't really show up!

Take note of the bare branches on the trees in the neighbors yard at the top of the picture...

And the "clean" umbrella...

This picture was taken the next morning. I love how the clumps of snow stick to the umbrella.

And the snow covered branches of the neighbors trees. It was so beautiful. (It lasted maybe a day before it melted.)

I've been craving peanut butter cookies for a long time - every since Coby (one of "my kids" from work) & I were discussing types of cookies we liked, which I think all started from he had to tell me something that was round... Anyway, I kept thinking that I would make some pb cookies to bring in so Coby could have one (he said he didn't know what they were...) but I KNEW I would end up eating most of them, so I kept putting it off. I finally decided that I'd make the mini reese's pb cup cookies (Les's favorite) and then there wouldn't be as many for me to eat... It was a good thought anyway!

I just use the pb cookie recipe on the JIF jar. Use the smallest Pampered Chef scoop & put scoops of cookie dough in a mini muffin tin, press the centers in & bake. While the cookies are baking unwrap all those mini reese's...

As soon as the cookies come out of the oven press the mini reese's into the cookie, remove from pan & let cool. PB cookies are really good this way, but I still prefer just the plain, ol' pb cookie. Good thing there was a bit of dough left...

I think it made about 2 dzn reg cookies and I made 2 dzn reese's cookies. I won't tell you how many I ate that day I baked them...

I did bring some to school and shared with Coby... He told me they were "passable"!

Dad's Birthday / Weekend

Last week was Dad's 84th birthday! The whole family brought him into the 21st century and got him a laptop for his birthday. He was totally surprised and totally loved it! Now he's just gotta get used to it. The "dinosaur age" computer that we passed on to him was not working and he couldn't even play solitaire on it any more. So hopefully this one will fulfill his needs and will continue to entertain him. Les got the CD of card games loaded on it and we have a mini golf one that we don't use any more that we thought he might like to try. If anybody knows where to find a CD game of sudoku let me know... we'd like to get that for him, too, since he can't get on the internet.



Still thinking it was a VCR / DVD player...

Very touched and happy with what it really was!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!


Les, Tiffani, Simba & I went down last weekend for his birthday and Les made his pancakes for a slightly belated birthday breakfast. Brianna had to work all weekend and Tessa stayed home with her as well as her friend Heather.

Tiffani and Mom played domino's, a favorite pastime of theirs.


Dad got to know Simba, and had a ball playing with him.

Tiffani loved showing how he can "sit pretty". Decided we needed to call it "sit nice" or "sit handsome" instead of pretty since it is a HE! But he sure is a pretty, handsome dog. :)

Simba curled up in Tiffani's chair in her room.

Simba

Simba came to us on January 22nd. My friend Jerri has a friend that runs a corgi rescue and Jerri ended up fostering Simba while looking for a home for him. Jerri had him for a few months and then started asking if there was anyone who wanted to adopt him. On a whim I showed the picture to Les and he wanted to go see him. That was all it took (well, I think the picture is all it took!) and we made arrangements to get Simba after he'd been fixed. Earlier in the week, Jerri had brought Simba over to meet Tessa and then Friday night he was ours!

Simba has quite the history already... We have an "Italian" dog in our house... really! Simba came from Italy - he was a puppy with a service person there. And then was moved in with a different service person at about 9 months. In March of '09 Simba's owner was coming back to the US and Simba came with him. Fast forward to now and Simba's owner was getting ready to deploy again and happened to find Jerri's friend that has the corgi rescue.

In looking at the records that came with him, we found 3 different "birthdates" ranging from the beginning of Dec. '05 to the end of Jan. '06 so we went with the middle date and are guessing he's just over 4 years old. He had kind of a rough life before this and was injured in some way - he lost part of his tongue (he eats kind of sideways & when he's panting there is no tongue hanging out...) and he's had oral surgery of some sort. But he is the cutest, sweetest dog (Just ask Tiffani!) and has a TON of energy. He absolutely adores Tiffani and the feeling is pretty mutual. Even before he was officially at our house, Tiffani cleaned a spot for him in her room and reserved it for Simba. He was sleeping there at night, but now goes up in the morning just before she wakes up and stays with her while she gets ready.

Here's a few pictures of Simba.
Tessa & Simba checking each other out.

Simba getting some loving from Tiffani.

Tiffani letting both Simba AND Tessa know that it'll all be ok.

See, we can co-exist if we aren't too close together! ;)

How much longer do I have to wear this thing? Do you have to take a picture of me in it!?

I couldn't get the video to upload... We have one of Simba figuring out how to climb the stairs sideways with that giant cone on and one of him just walking (prancing!)around with it on.

Some random pictures

Lots of random pictures (sort of - most are projects...) Figured I'd put them all in one post instead of lots of mini posts!


Les finally got our bed frame done - way back before Thanksgiving. This picture should have been posted a long time ago. There are 3 deep drawers on each side - they go almost to the middle of the bed frame. It is awesome!




This is Tiffani's new giant cupcake pan.








Baked cupcake, with the two parts frosted together.






Here it is frosted next to a regular size cupcake! The ridges on the cake top/sides kind of got lost in the confetti frosting. Tiffani thinks she needs to practice with fondant so the ridges would still be noticeable.




Message on top of the box that lots of new stamping toys came in for me to play with. Extreme excitement probably just covers it if you would have seen Brianna's reaction to her monkeys - and she even knew she was getting them! :) Plus new stamps, punches, paper, mmmmm :)



3 monkeys on a vine... Brianna wasn't sure where she wanted to put the monkeys, but I suggested her desk chair since she'd be taking that to college with her. So she put the vine on the back and let the two brown monkeys hang from it & then since the 3rd monkey was the same color as her chair, she hung him down below the seat. Cute!




I got a new stamp set and made this card for a swap with it... but the green ribbon isn't current product so I couldn't really swap it that way, so I had to come up with a different plan.







Plan 2, changed out the ribbon for twill & narrower ribbon on top - current product, but only had enough for 4 cards (needed 8).








Plan 3. Embossed a strip of paper with my new embossing folder. I like all 3, but my favorite is my original one.









Brianna before her first ever piano recital. She wasn't looking forward to it at all!






After - as in w-a-y after. The recital was done & over and I got a "posed" picture of her. Talk about a huge grin of relief!!








Tiffani was/is way excited to have a new family member. She cleaned her room and reserved a spot for Simba. You can't see the floor in the picture but nothing was set there for over a week!!




Simba, our newest family member. He is a corgi/golden mix. More pictures to come later on of him.