Thanksgiving

So here we are, very delinquent in updates, but to our defense we were all gone to our home areas for about a week and a half over Christmas.

We'll just start the new year by filling you in on our activities the month or so before Christmas. Most of us spent Thanksgiving day at Shepherd's Field, or "the farm." Four families from our church live there and we went to one of their homes, Mike and Cheryl, along with a guy named Larry who we had never met, though it was a fun experience and Larry's always excited to see us whenever we meet up again! (Mike helps to manage some of Larry's day to day business.) We ate, played games, swung on the swing (indoors), fed the sheep and took a nice walk.

Ranita swinging

view from the farm

Mike and Ian in the really cool treehouse

Looking down from the treehouse

Heidi and Ian at the bottom of the hill (squint and you might see them in the middle!)

Larry, Mike, Ranita, Heidi, Mike with Ella and Cheryl walking at the top of the hill

And the day after Thanksgiving we turned on the Christmas music and put up our tree!

And just for fun, here our dear Tara went and wasted half her peanut butter pie by falling down the stairs with it! Why again did you take it upstairs??

Here's the real story:

Since I (Heidi) have a sense of humor and the story has otherwise been largely exaggerated (thanks Tara!), I will share the monkey bread story from the day before Thanksgiving!

The kids and I decided to make monkey bread to have Thanksgiving morning and I decided to try a new recipe from scratch (read: no pre-made biscuits in this recipe). Ian and Ella were very helpful, as shown in the pictures, and each had their own sections of dough to roll and rise and cut. Rather than rolling the dough in cinnamon-sugar as I've done in the past, the recipe called for us to dip it in melted butter and sugar. There was a lot leftover, and my first mistake was to not have a proper bundt pan. I used what I had (in great Service Adventure style) and used Mike's cheesecake pan which apparently does not completely seal. My next mistake was to pour the excess butter over the dough, so the butter leaked out the bottom.

We let it rise and finish leaking, then baked it. Then the "Fun" part happened, all in the 15 minutes between Christina leaving for New York for the weekend and Ranita getting home from work. I checked on the monkey bread after about 30 minutes, and found that the bread had risen more and was popping out of the top of the pan, and the butter was not done leaking. So I opened the oven door and removed the bread. In that process, I suppose it was the air getting into the oven, the butter ignited and though there were no "flames shooting out," as some have said, there were flames and it did require a fire extinguisher! Ian wanted to call 911 upon seeing all the smoke (they'd recently had fire prevention month at school!). Our apartment was filled with smoke and everything in the kitchen and living room had a layer of ashy dust following!

So yes, there were flames but they were contained, and without the exaggeration and drama of other storytellers this story really does lack. Sorry.

Oh, the monkey bread was saved and it was delicious. I will be altering the recipe in the future :)