Oh Crumpets!!!

Yes, I know. Yet again I've been gone from the blogging world for far too long. I didn't even log on to see the comment Justine left me until it was almost a month later! lol Sorry Justine; and you're right!

I had an...experience today that made me feel the need to blog. WARNING: This post is rather long. Sorry! :) Here you go:

Today, at Jerrica's preschool, it was International Feast Day! Instead of having a Thanksgiving-style dinner, they asked each family to prepare a dish from their country of origin. At first I hadn't planned on participating, but this morning I started thinking it might be fun.

Being that my family and Marc's family are both originally from England, I only felt it proper to make tea and crumpets! (Well, that and I had all of the ingredients on hand except the tea.) The recipe seemed easy enough so away I went. Since the dough/batter mixture needed to rise for about an hour, I got it all setup by noon and put it in the oven to rise. (I like to turn the oven on for just a minute or two and then turn it off so my stuff has a nice, warm place to rise.) I figured I'd have just enough time to take Jerrica to school, run by the store, and cook up the batter by 2:45 for the party. Pretty ambitious, right?

One of the unique things about crumpets is that, although they're kind of like biscuits, you don't bake them in the oven. Instead, you are suppose to use a griddle and crumpet rings—which are really just fancy cookie cutters—where you pour the batter and grill them up. Well, apparently finding circular, metal cookie cutters is a little more challenging than I thought it was going to be. So after a trip to Walmart and the dollar store, I decided to give up on trying to find the stupid things and figured I'd just make them out of aluminum foil. It was now 1:20.

The panic finally set in as I was driving home and realized that today was early release day for Ally, and I had to go pick her up from school at 1:50. I rushed home, pulled the griddle out to preheat, and started making crumpet rings out of aluminum foil. (By the way, those actually turned out perfectly and ended up working very well!)

My batter still needed to rise one more time after I put the last ingredient in. So I turn the oven on, threw in the last ingredient, tossed a towel over the bowl, popped it in the oven, and ran out the door to get Ally from school.

Yeah. Did you notice one step that was missing back there? Yes, I forgot to turn the oven off.

Luckily the house didn't burn down! By the time I got home, the towel was turning brown and half of the batter had cooked to the side of the bowl, but all was not lost! The center of the batter was still good, so after burning my hands taking the hot bowl out of the oven, I started grilling me some crumpets.

Finally, after some overfilling of the crumpet rings, the use of a frying pan as a lid on my griddle, and cutting each crumpet in half to grill them and make sure that the middle was cooked...I was done!

And not a moment too soon because it was 2:35 which left me about 10 minutes to make the 15 minutes drive to the preschool. I ended up being a few minutes late but let's be honest, when am I not a few minutes late?

Miraculously, the crumpets were a huge success! With the butter and jam that I had provided, they were really pretty good and disappeared by the end of the feast. I even had one lady ask me for my recipe! =O Overall, the feast was really yummy and really fun. :)

So the lesson in all of this? Never...ever...ever make a first attempt at a new recipe unless you have plenty of time to screw up about a billion times! ;)

I forgot to take a picture of the whole platter with the butter and jam and everything,
but here's a picture of one of the crumpets.

Introducing....Mylee May!

I would like to introduce you to our new puppy...Mylee May Weedop. I've really been missing having an inside dog since we lost Man-Man, so when I found out that a friend of ours had Shih Tzu puppies that were ready to go, we couldn't resist. We got so caught up in the puppy excitement, we ended up getting one for my mom for her birthday too!

Mylee is missing her sister, Bella, but she's getting used to her new home in Colorado. I introduced her and Dante today and she's still alive! haha That's a good sign for sure. Dante didn't show any aggression towards her; they're both a little scared of each other and mildly curious.

Dante was only mildly interested in Mylee; he mostly ignored her.

Marc came home from work and said "Hi" to his two furry friends.

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Mylee looking cute as ever!

Here's a better shot of the fancy new shirt I got for Dante. I sewed on a sleeve to protect his bandages.

Oh yeah, and Ally lost a tooth. She even pulled it out herself! *ugh*

She was in a pretty good mood after the whole tooth thing. ;)

Doggie Clothing: Doctor's Orders

Yep, it just keeps getting better people!

After getting Dante all bandaged up yesterday, it didn't take long before the bandage had worked its way down his leg. So, a couple hours later, I went out and bandaged it again but a little tighter. Well, apparently it was too tight because when I checked on him today, his whole leg was swollen up. I finally gave up and took him to the vet!

The vet says this isn't really an uncommon thing to happen but it's a very long and frustrating process to get it to heal. We weren't sure before if the wound was infected but it turns out that he has an infection that runs pretty deep. He'll be on steroids for 15 days and antibiotics for at least 4 weeks (most likely longer).

Instead of using the dreaded cone, the vet suggested using a long sleeved t-shirt to keep Dante from chewing on the bandages. Not only will he look fashionable but he'll be able to get around easier. :) Hopefully the shirt holds up!

So yeah, now we have another appointment in 2 days, his steroids have to be taken twice a day and his antibiotics have to be taken 3 times a day. This is going to be fuuuuuun. =/

Cone of Shame

Hey, stop laughing!

As you can see, our poor Dante boy is having to wear the dreaded cone of shame. Don't worry though, nothing majorly bad happened to him. Here's what happened: while we were in the process of moving down to Colorado, Dante was staying at the staff house where Marc stayed. Well, somehow during that time, Dante scraped up his elbows pretty bad. The one elbow healed on its own but unfortunately, the other one didn't. Dante continuously licked it raw until it become a halfdollar-sized, gaping wound that was just begging for infection.


After several attempts at bandaging it, and Dante subsequently ripping the bandages off, we resorted to getting him a cone to keep him from bothering it. He's been a really good sport about the whole thing. He always lays so still when I'm working on him; he lets me shave his fur, clean the wound, spray antiseptic spray, wrap, and tape his leg with very little resistance. What a good boy he is! We're hoping that the wound will heal on its own and won't get infected. I'm going to be checking on it in a week or so and see how it's doing. Hopefully we won't have to take him to the vet!

Dante is still adjusting to life with a cone. He's always bumping into chairs, getting hung up on his kennel, and I don't think he really fits into his doghouse anymore. Despite all of the obvious shortcomings that come along with wearing a cone, Dante still makes it look good. :)

Nightly Visitor

A few weeks after we moved into our new house, we started getting a nightly visitor. Marc and I were the first ones to meet this pretty kitty, and against my better judgement, I provided her with some food and water. Actually, after some trial and error, I found that the only thing she really likes is milk and maybe a little bit of cheese.

So now, every night at about 8 or 9, we'll hear a very persistent and loud meow at the front door, not unlike Sam-Sam's meow. Speaking of Sam, the girls think that this new kitty (they like to call her "Sweetie") would make a great girlfriend for Sam. She has a very sweet disposition and loves to get pets. Although, I did try rubbing her belly once and she does not like that. ;)

We're not sure who she belongs to, but it has been kind of a fun treat for us to see her each night. It brings a little bit of grandma and papa's house to our new home.

Moved and Settled

Alright friends and family, here goes my attempt to keep you informed from afar!

Since my last post, (which seems like ages ago) we have sold our house, the girls and I moved in with my parents for a couple of months, Ally finished the 1st grade, we moved to Grand Junction, CO, and now we're all on our own!

The girls have started gymnastics, and after some trial and error, we've ended up in a wonderful gym! Ally seems like a natural; she's already holding a handstand for a few seconds. I can't wait to see where she goes with this; she says she wants to do it until she's a teenager! lol Jerrica has been having fun at gymnastics too! Her coach says that she's very strong. Must be those Weedop legs. ;) I'm so glad to have an activity that gets us out of the house and lets us interact with other people.

School starts at the end of August. Ally will be in 2nd grade and Jerrica will be in pre-school. That means I'll have 3 hours/3 days a week, all to myself. What shall I do?! =/ I have to admit, I'm looking forward to school starting. The girls are with each other every day...all day...every second...all the time. Yeah, they fight a lot. haha It will be great for them to get a break from each other!

We really missed family on the 4th of July! Our 4th turned out very differently than any other one we've had. We ended up going down to a place called Blue Mesa Reservoir; it's about 2 hours southeast of Junction. It was so beautiful there and we had a great time, but it was weird being all by ourselves without family or friends. The girls were obsessed the whole time about being able to go swimming and then when it actually came time to swim, they said the water was too cold and they didn't want to. lol

Over that weekend, we discovered some new Colorado laws. Junction had fireworks stands all over the place. So on the way out of town, instead of stopping to get some fireworks, we just decided we would get some in Gunnison. WEEEEELL, it turns it that many cities and counties in Colorado don't allow "illegal" fireworks. And yeah...they do mean sparklers by that. =/ Ok, so no big deal. We'll just get back to Junction on the 5th and get a few then. Oh no, no, no. You can't sell fireworks after the 4th either. So sadly, we didn't get to set off any fireworks this year, but we will be making up for that little fact next year!

Anyway, I don't want to make this post too long. It's weird though, everyday I feel like I have some pressing thing I need to get done, and everyday I realize I don't. I can't wait for our Lake Powell trip in August and then our trip to Idaho in mid-August. I also can't wait to start making some friends here!

Close to Closing!

GOOD NEWS!!! Okay, well not necessarily good news for all of you but it's certainly good news for us. After just two weeks on the market, we have accepted an offer on our house. Well really, they accepted our counter-offer but either way it means that our house is basically sold! It really reconfirms my belief that this move to Colorado is meant to be.

The buyer's offer is contingent on the closing of their house so as long as everything goes smoothly we will close on April 14th. That's only three weeks away! Plus we have a week long trip planned to Moab next week so we'll definitely be pressed for time. The plan is for me and the girls to stay at my parents' house until Ally's out of school on May 28th. After that we'll be movin' on down to Grand Junction, Colorado. We haven't yet figured out whether we're going to rent or buy in Junction, but we still have some time to figure all that out.

So, if anyone would like to help us pack up and move into storage, the door is open. ;)