Hannah, Hannah, Hannah!

My beautiful Hannah! Here are some precious pictures of my little darling. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the one where she is smiling so big with her mouth open. She is my other delight and brings joy to my heart. My next post will have to be all of Elisabeth.

Thanksgiving - One we could've done without!

Well, our morning started off lovely as I made a wonderful breakfast of "Lemon Blueberry Bread" from the New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins that I received from Matthew's mother sometime last year. It was scrumptious, especially the crumb topping on it and what I loved about it the most is that it was in the oven in about 15 minutes! It was delicious with fresh butter.

Lemon Blueberry Bread

Topping
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 teaspoon gtated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Bread
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups fresh blueberries (we used our canned, whole blackberries)
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Oil a 9x5-inch loaf pan
2. Stir the topping ingredients together in a small bowl until smooth. Set aside.
3. In a medium-size bowl, stir the sugar, milk, butter, and egg together until smooth.
4. In another bowl, toss the flour with th baking powder and salt. Stir this into the wet ingredients, and then fold in the blueberries and the lemon zest.
5. Transfer the batter to the prepared loaf pan, and sprinkle with the topping. Bake until the topping is deep golden and has formed a thick crust, 50 minutes. Cook in the panfor 5 minuts, then transfer the bread to a wire rack to continue cooling.
1 loaf

Dinner was a different story. Things are a little tight this month. We could have afforded a turkey but when you add all the "other" stuff that goes with a Thanksgiving dinner, we thought it be best to do with what we have. We decided to have prime rib from our cow Brisket we had slaughtered recently. When you have a freezer full of beef, you really do have a lot to be thankful for even if you can't afford a turkey dinner. Anyways, the day came to thaw out the prime rib. Unfortunately we found "beef rib steaks" but not a prime rib roast. Okay, we can make due with that. Let's be grateful!

Thanksgiving day - An hour or so before we intended to eat, Matthew seared the steaks on Med-Hi heat for 1 1/2 minutes per side. He placed the steaks in the oven then on 250 degrees as recommended in Cooks Illustrated. After 30 minutes he checked the steaks with the meat thermometer. Barely any change in the temperature. So, we waited some more. After more than an hour there was a "little" change. We waited some more. After 1 1/2 hours he checked and the temperature had gone down a little (he shared with me later). After 2 + hours we decided the thermometer just wasn't working - and it wasn't. We sat down to a meal of mashed potatoes, salad, and one of the "toughest" cuts of meat you ever could find. Add a couple of screaming kids on top of it and there you have your Thanksgiving Dinner!

One Big Storm

Last week we had a pretty good storm. We were out of power for 2 days and because we are on well water we were without running water as well - that's the worst part for me! I had a few gallons of water in the back room for emergency though and we used our wood stove for cooking, heating water and coffee, etc... We did a lot of studying during those 2 days though as we are learning Biblical Greek. We're still working on the alphabet and doing it by learning just 2 words a day.

Anyways, we tried going without the internet last month (as to find it was much more convenient to have for our banking so we're online again), so we still have no idea as to how high the winds were out here. Matthew thinks wind gusts were 70+, I'm thinking some were closer to 100 as they seemed similar to a storm we had here 1 1/2 years ago with gusts around 100 mph.

These pictures are of some of the remnants of the storm. I wanted to get Elisabeth out of the house after being inside for 2 days so I wrapped her up in a sleeping bag so she could watch daddy saw some of the bigger branches for starter wood next year. We have our home up for sale and our power had come on here at 12:30 and we had 3 1/2 hours to get the home ready for 2 parties at 4:00 and 6:30 to look at our home. I ran around cleaning up the past mess of the last 2 days... candles, dirty dishes (no water prior to the electric coming on), and all the other extra messes you have when you don't have power. Plus I had to get the house clean/ready just on the basics. Matthew picked up all the many, many large branches, mowed the lawns and used the blower on the leaves. We finished just in time. Now we're just awaiting word from our agent on if the financing went through or not with one of the interested parties.

Trying Out the Kitchen Table

One day I wanted to try putting Elisabeth up to the table to see how she fared. She didn't do too bad! I'm still using the tray for now but thought I'd post these cute pictures anyhow.

Elisabeth Helping Mommy with Laundry

Peanut Head

Every child should have a little nickname. Matthew came up with Peanut Head for little Hannah - you really can't tell from pictures but she has a peculiar shaped head, kind of like a peanut! It's kind of cute though, she has her own look (you know how it is, every mom thinks her children are the prettiest - Peanut Head and all) and she has her own different personality to go with it. She has a very soft way about her, a very soft, quiet voice, she doesn't get all excited about loud or busy toys but she just loves to be held and talked to quietly. She sleeps from 10:00 at night til about 7:30 or 8:00 most mornings. She's such a pleasant baby. I just love having another baby to hold again. I can't wait to post more pictures of her as she's changed since these were taken a few weeks ago.

More Pictures of Daddy and His Girls

Wide awake and fast asleep!

Elisabeth Feeling Better

Here is a beautiful picture of Elisabeth. I just took this yesterday. Another great buy at the Goodwill - her pretty shirt she is wearing here with vest. Her daddy had to go to the VA for a doctor's visit today. He took Elisabeth with him today and as the baby slept most of the day I tried to figure out what to do with my spare time other than making some fresh sourdough sandwich rolls. I started catching up on this blog and realized there's nothing that brings me greater joy on this earth than my family. Here my family is away and I can't stay away from them. I love them so very much. They are a blessing from the Lord , prayed for and yet truly undeserved.

Hannah and Her Happy Hippo

Now our 2nd baby gets to play with Happy Hippo. We love this little toy as it is just simple and child like. I'm sad to see how busy all the little toys are nowadays. They don't need much to be entertained, they have good imaginations to be put to use.

Elisabeth's Pretty Dress

Here is another pretty little outfit from her Nana!

Kisses?

Here's a couple of pictures of Elisabeth giving her sister kisses!

Elisabeth and Bathtime!

Freshly clean after a bath!

Poor Sickie

Elisabeth and her dad got pretty sick last week. Elisabeth got it the worst. Here is one of the effects... sleepiness.

Daddy and His Girls

I just love little Hannah's countenance in this picture. It is one of my favorite pictures of her. She looks just completely taken by her father as any little girl should. And Elisabeth, she's just cute as always!

New Pajamas from the Williamsons

Our dear friends John and Karen sent the girls some cute pajamas. Little Hannah's has doe's and mushrooms all over it while Elisabeth's has the saying, "Daddy's Little Star" on it. We stopped by their lovely home the other day unexpected and while they were getting ready to go somewhere, Karen displayed her usual, generous dose of warm hospitality and treated us to a yummy sandwich and some delicious coffee. It is people like these that I try to learn from that I may be more Christ like.

Brisket Anyone???

Here's our cow Brisket. He was born in February, his mother died when he was only 6 weeks old. My husband had to be the new mommy and baby him back to full health with calf starter. He was just slaughtered a few days ago and the hanging weight was 318 lbs. So, he must have been at least 550 lbs! Big Boy! We're waiting the arrival of our beef sometime in the next week.

Update: Brisket's back home! We had New York steak the first night and just had homemade tacos with homemade tortillas the other night. The meat, even the ground beef cannot be compared to the junk you buy in the store. The ground beef is about 6% fat and really healthy looking red with very little marbling as you see in the store bought meat.

Momma and Her Girls

It feels so wonderful to hold them both close at the same time!

Pretty Elisabeth in Blue!

I just love these pictures as she's stunning in blue with her pretty blue eyes!

Daddy and Hannah

Here's Hannah at 4 weeks old yesterday. She looks pretty content!

Elisabeth Walking

Here is Elisabeth walking. She just started about a month ago. She's all over the place now!

Canning and Cooking!

We've been busy this week with some fun things. I made a delicious homemade calzone and my husband canned up 30+ jars of fresh albacore tuna. Goodbye Sunkist! He canned some of the tuna with fresh garlic and herbs and canned a few jars with a little jalapeno which was suggested by Captain Steve of Westport where my husband fillets tuna each Summer.

Gifts from Nana

Here are some hand knit booties and socks for the girls from their nana. Aren't they pretty?

Dual Diaper Change

This is what you call the "dual diaper change." I changed Hannah's diaper and daddy changed Elisabeth's. Maybe next year we'll have three!

Daddy and His Daughters

Here Elisabeth isn't feeling so well the other day. She nestled up against daddy and has sat with daddy each morning for some time while waking up.

This picture of Hannah and her daddy reminds me of one I took last year of Elisabeth and her daddy! I'll have to find the other one and compare!

More Pictures of Hannah

Here are some more pictures of little Hannah. She is such a little Sweetie Pie! She is the easiest baby - she sleeps from 10:30pm to 6:00am already! She has the softest, little personality and has the best eye contact of any baby I've ever had. She is truly a gift from God.

Blackberry Season!

Today we put the little ones in our double stroller and headed down our driveway to our endless supply of blackberry bushes. We picked two large bowls as you can see! We already have 4 gallon bags of these in our freezer. Time to get busy canning these into jellies (Matthew's the canner here) and I may make a homemade blackberry pie in a day or two.