Author Archives: joel

42 Words of Wisdom: #10

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

- Douglas Adams

I know, I know - it's been a long time since I posted one of these. But lately I've taken a renewed interest in increasing my posting frequency. So here's to the resurection of "42 Words of Wisdom"! This one hits especially close to home. As some of you may know, I recently discovered that the previous owner of our house had built the front porch himself, and had botched it. When he attached the ledger to the house, he didn't bother using any flashing. So due to the lack of $10 worth of flashing, water has been seeping behind the ledger for years. Once I tore down the porch and pulled off the siding, I found that a significant amount of the house's framing that was behind the porch had rotted out. At this point I've got all of the rotted wood replaced, and that section resided. But now I've still got to build a new porch - hopefully before the winter sets in. This going to end up costing us hundreds of dollar, and costing me hours and hours of time, just because someone couldn't be bothered to spend $10 and 5 minutes to install flashing - which is not exactly a closely-guarded secret of professional contractors. On the plus side, I was never really happy with the original porch and don't mind the chance to rebuild it the way I'd like to. I just would have preferred to hold off until next year to do it.

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Anagrams

I recently came across an anagram generator online, and played around with it a bit. Unfortunately, if the words you put in contain enough letters, you get tens of thousands of potential anagrams - which makes finding the good ones a bit difficult. But after only looking through the first page of results, I did find a few interesting ones.

The Salad Days => A Deadly Stash

I like this one. It makes it sound like the things I am posting here are somehow dangerous to you, my loyal reader. Beware! Pictures of cute children within! Enter at your own risk!

The Salad Days => Dad Steals Hay

This one just struck me as funny. I swear, I have never stolen any hay. I may have "borrowed" hay and forgotten to return it, but that was forgetfulness, not malice.

Sean Lord => Also Nerd

This one resonates with me. I would love for Sean to grow up and be a geek like his Daddy. I need somebody to play videogames with. So here's to our future nerd!

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Recipe – Penn. Dutch Apple Cake

My mom used to make this when I was kid, and I could never get enough. I'm hoping to make it soon myself, as soon as I get the right pan.

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Recipe – Peach Butter

Sean and I made this one about a month ago. It was the first recipe I ever tried to can. The kids love it, and from what I hear Tracy does as well. We picked the peaches ourself at a local orchard, and we planted the pits from the peaches this past October. Hopefully we'll see some trees sprout up next spring.

Posted in Food | 2 Comments

Recipe: Pat-Flat Cookies

I'm working on putting together a family cookbook of all our recipes, and doing the individual recipes scrapbook-style. When it's all done - which probably won't be for another year, as each recipe needs to be cooked, photographed, and a page created - I'm going to publish a small run through Blurb.com as Christmas gifts next year. Here's the first of the recipes I've made a page for - Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, otherwise known as "Pat-Flat Cookies".

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Amesbury Town Playground

A friend recommended a new playground to Lori - the Amesbury Town Playground. As you can see, the kids loved it. I've yet to see it myself, but I'm looking forward to checking it out. Only one downside, although hopefully they've learned from the experience. Sean sat in the very center of the spinny-thing (as you can see in the photo below), and after the other kids spun it for a while, he threw up. Hee hee. Live and learn.


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Halloween 2008

We're going to have to hit my mom up for whatever pictures she took - as this is the only picture we have of Sean in his costume. And we don't have any of Carter. They sure did love Halloween though. This was Carter's first year trick-or-treating, and she got the idea right away. Coming down the stairs from the first house, she reached into her bucket, pulled out the candy bar, and said to Lori "open this please, mommy?". It wasn't until three houses later that we were able to convince her that we didn't have to open each piece immediately.

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Paige

Since we started having kids, we have taken almost no pictures of the dogs. I wonder how they feel about that. I'll bet they do a lot of grumbling when I'm not looking about getting the bum end of the stick. So here's a picture of Paige that Lori took recently. Personally, I think she looks very cute. In pictures, at least, she's not showing her age yet.

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Farm Trip

Lori and Grandma King took the kiddos to the farm one day last week. They got to feed the chickens, see lots of animals, ride in a wagon. My sources tell me that they had a great time!


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Hacker-in-Training

Sean has really taken to the computer lately. He plays games on pbskids.org. He especially loves the Curious George games. He's learned how to navigate all around the site himself, and has taught himself how to play almost all of the games. His precision with the mouse is getting quite impressive. I remember when he tried to use the computer a year or so ago, while we were living in Texas. He was trying real hard, but his fine motor skills just weren't there yet. Now he's a pro. The other thing he does is look at our blog. He likes to look through all of the pictures, and tell me all about each one. He actually remembers a lot of detail about when some of them were taken, and not just the recent ones either. It actually surprises me that he has any memory of some of the things that happened so long ago.


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