Labor Day weekend...or the big blow!

Every Labor Day weekend clan Daniel loads up the travel trailer and heads east to the Mrs. families farm and camps, gets ready for deer season and leaves our travel trailer until after the new year. This year we decided to forgo our long weekend trip and stay home to re-floor the whipper-snappers rooms. We intended to pull up the carpet and stain the floors, after removing the carpet we determined that that was not an option so we decided to tile both floors.
The Mrs. does the bulk of the artistic type work like laying tiles to be square and uniform.

Dad man's the saw and does the bulk of the tile cutting.

Bub got in on the act helping to lay tile in his room.

We went to bed Monday night feeling quite proud of our accomplishments with the tile until Tuesday morning when we awoke to this...

Seems a huge windstorm came thru and played havoc on the homestead. We knew that there was a storm but had no idea that this had happened.

The next morning Nannie called asking what was in our garden. When we went out to see we found our barn.

Apparently it had slammed into our travel trailer (that should have been 2 hours away!) totaling it and then lifted up, crashed onto one of the storage sheds (totaling it) and then breaking it in two landing in the garden.

Thankfully no one was injured and we have insurance to cover the losses.

Unfortunately for the Mrs. this barn was her 10Th wedding anniversary present so she was really tore up about it. The re-building process should make for good blogging!

Easter in the Pearl

Sunday we celebrated the Resurrection of our Savior!

Thank you God for all of Your Provision, Mercy and Love

Birthday Girl

Saturday was my oldest daughter's 10Th birthday on Saturday. We had spent the whole week at the Ft. Worth Stock Show freezing to death so the Mrs. let Sissy pick what she wanted for breakfast. Sister chose monkey bread!
She has received quite a few birthday cards with cold hard cash so she decided to by...

A new bike!!!

Ain't she a beauty?

Christmas 2010

Christmas is a special time here at the clan Daniel homestead. Not because of how crazy kids get about this holiday, though it is fun having young ones, but more importantly because we get to spend time with family and friends and celebrate the beginning of Gods plan of redemption for mankind. The Mrs. and I try to stress to the whipper-snappers what it is that we are truly celebrating. The birth of Christ is not as relevant as what took place on the cross but it did set the plan into motion and there are a lot of miracles to point out to the little ones of Gods mercy and control. Christmas Eve dinner is always a different event as far as food goes. In years passed we have done appetizers only or made homemade pizza among other things. This year it was tamale's!
Since Mimi and Papa usually spend Christmas Eve with us the whipper-snappers get to open gifts on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

Of course that is no problem for them as they are all up to the task.

Christmas is special to all whipper-snappers but the younger ones really seem to enjoy it the most.

Sister was having quite a good time!

Young and old(er) alike have a good time. Funny, you give Papa a goofy hat and he's always ready to go. (see earlier posts)

Everyone enjoyed their gifts!

Christmas day we had a more traditional meal.

Reindeer food left out for Santa's herd. All gone Christmas morning!

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We all had a wonderful time and hope that your families did as well!

The last of the Thanksgiving holiday!

These are the last of our Thanksgiving holiday pics. Just some shots of some of the fun activities we do while at Bakersfield. Mimi and Papa were married on Thanksgiving some time around the turn of the last century. I think they are in their 1o2ND year of marriage or something. A great model of all a marriage really can be. You just need a tractor.
Sister is finally getting her turn to be the lead tractor driver. In clan Daniel proficiency in tractor driving is required by your 8Th birthday.

She's getting the hang of it and looking cute while doing so.

Crossword puzzles were a big player this year. It was a community effort.

Our new puppy Buster was on hand for the festivities this week. He's all tied up (both figuratively and literally).

Mimi and Papa's dog was there as well so the girlie-girls had plenty of outdoor dogie fun.

I think the puppies were pretty tired by the end of the week.

The BIL makes his own chain mail. He was making this one for my pesky sister-in-law.

BIL spent a lot of his free time in this position.

My pesky sister-in-law in new battle ready metal shirt. Dorks!

Since the pesky sister-in-law is an avid biker (both pedal and motor) she tried to help Bub fix his ride.

I think it's still broke.

We also broke out a couple of puzzles this year for some wholesome family fun.

We had 2. One 500 piece and one 1000 piece.

500 piece done in 2 days. We brought the 1000 piece home in the box! Maybe next year.

Man do we eat!

Every year we spend at Bakersfield we cook and eat a lot! Probably too much. Every year in January or February (after the holidays) we will discuss how next year we're not gonna cook as much. We will say that all we do is cook and clean up and that next year will be different. Then September rolls around and everyone has broken their New Years resolution and we start planning another menu that is full of lots of cooking, cleaning and calories!
I don't understand why we complain about it. Almost everyone of us likes to cook and I know that we all like to eat. We don't eat a lot of the foods we prepare at Bakersfield any other time of the year so it is a special event. Clean up is never much fun but we are together while it happens.

Plus we get to cook outside quite a bit which is a different experience from kitchen cooking and you get to make a bigger mess.

There is also usually some sort of flame involved.

The whipper-snappers get in on the action at Bakersfield and that gives them a sense of self-reliance.

And they can impart their wisdom on others.

Everyone gets a chance to show off their specialty...

...and eat things that they don't normally get a chance to eat.

I love dutch oven cooking!

Sometimes tricks are played or food fights break out, but it's all in good fun.

We didn't even eat this turkey Thanksgiving week.

The Mrs. and me are seeing how many meals we can get out of a $10.00 turkey. Up to 6 so far!

We also get a chance to relive some childhood memories...

...and do things that we have never had a chance to do before.