A Thanksgiving post

As we do each and every year, clan Daniel spent another wonderful Thanksgiving holiday at Mimi and Papa's farm in beautiful east Texas. My next few posts will be of what we did the week that we were all there. The usual cast of characters were in attendance, the clan, Nannie and Mimi and Papa. We were joined this year by my pesky sister-in-law and her husband all the way from Colorado. We had a great week and had many adventures and ate way too much food. I can't begin to describe how Blessed we are to have a place like Bakersfield to go and the ability to be with our family for such a wonderful visit. When I was a kid I had a great-uncle (my grandmothers little brother) who lived in Faulk Arkansas. For any 1970's "B" movie fans you may remember the movie, "The Legend of Boggy Creek" about a Bigfoot type creature sighted in that area. When my uncle would come and visit us I would always ask him if he had seen it he would always assure me that he had seen it many times and I would hang on every word. Anyway, when I was 10 or 11 years old we went to his house for the first time and he had a sit-n-spin tied to tree like a tire swing. I played on that thing all day and got as sick as a dog.

So this year I decided to rig one up for the whipper-snappers. We had it tied to a large red oak tree with a lot of space for swinging.

You can go back and forth like a swing or around in a circle.

I think the kids got a kick out of it.

I know I did!

In-laws

My sister-in-law gave us all a new family member last year for Christmas. He's my new brother-in-law , blog name Bil. He's from the west coast. He rides motorcycles and makes chain-mail and fights in battles as a knight. Then he falls in love and gets married and he's got this redneck brother-in-law. So they come to Texas for Thanksgiving and I take him deer hunting and the lucky sucker gets a 7 point deer in his first 3 hours of hunting in his life! A 7 point! This by the way is the same deer Bub didn't take a shot at a couple of weeks ago. Bub could have gone with me that morning but chose to sleep in, what a goober!

So I figure if he's this lucky than he can do all the work cleaning it as well.

I was pretty impressed, he didn't get sick or nothing. He was right there the whole time. After I showed him how to skin the deer he was off and running with little assistance.

The funny thing is everybody seemed pretty shocked that I let him take the shot at all. Guess they figured he should start on something a little smaller it being his first time out and all. Papa said I ruined him getting such a good deer his first time out.

Enjoy it while you can Bil, it's cull bucks or does for you from now on!!!

Old will be new again!

The Mrs. and I have had a tough time in our married lives when it comes to kitchen tables. Through the first 3 or 4 years of our married life we had several used, hand-me-down, or bachelor pad table and chair combo's. Then after that we were blessed to receive a "borrowed" table and chair combo from my mother that we had for several years. (It is a long story as to why my mother loaned a new table and chairs but that's what happened)
When we moved to the Pearl that table worked well in our small-ish eat-in kitchen area. When we built my mom a new house across the pasture she decided that she no longer wanted the table and chairs that we had been using as she wanted to get something new for her new digs. She purchased a large, very pretty mission style table and chairs that looked and worked great in her new house. Only one small problem...she H A T E D it! So she decides she wants her old one back and gives us the new one. Cool. Except it was way too large for our eat in space. Well we rocked along with that for a couple of years until we could stand it no more and decided to sale that table. That was about 4 months ago. We have been living with a card table and chairs ever since. Then we bought an old kitchen table from some friends from ours at church and I sanded and stained and poly-urethaned it. It came with 4 chairs and we found 4 chairs at a garage sale so we mixed and matched the 2 and now we have a table that we really like, really fits the space, and the 5 of us can now eat dinner again. Yea!!!
It is very rustic which goes great in our house (imagine 100 year old farm house) and we no longer have to push it against the wall when not in use and pull it out each time we use it.

I didn't really like it much when we got it but I knew the Mrs. did but after getting it in the house I am really digging it as well.

Deer Season is here!

Well, deer season is in full swing so Bub and me went to Bakersfield this weekend and had quite a time. We arrived late Friday night, unloaded and hit the hay for a 4:30 am start. I knew it was gonna be a wacky weekend since I was bunking with a miniature Elvis!
Saturday morning we hit the deer blind at about 5:00am and saw nothing but does from sun-up until 9:00am when this beauty walked up!

He was sniffing after a couple of does that had just left the area and made the fatal mistake of not bedding down early.

The sad part was Sunday morning Bub had an 8 point about this same size walk up on him. He was waiting for the "perfect" shot and unfortunately for him it never happened and the buck walked away. He was very disappointed in himself but also learned a valuable lesson, you have to sometimes take what's given to you and make the best of it.

Speaking of Bub, he was a big help in the cleaning of the deer. Here he is pulling it up so we can clean it....

...and then the rope broke. Sorry Bub.

After we finished with the deer we cooked burgers on buddy burners. Buddy burners are stoves we make in RA's. It's a #10 can as a stove and a tuna can with cardboard and wax under it as a burner. Bub had a great time cooking with this in class so I told him we would cook supper on it.

Here's Bub grilling a burger bun.

They were mighty tasty burgers!

The downside to buddy burners is that they are small, so you eat while you cook.

So good we did it again. The meat is only about 3 ounces, small buns, pickles, mustard and ketchup only! That's what we call man burgers!

We came home Sunday evening and the Mrs. and me completed processing the deer.

Neither she nor me are fans of taking deer to the processor so we do it ourselves. It's a little more work but we will eat great quality meat all year at a small price.

We cut it into small pieces, weigh it out and individually package it.

in one and two pound packs with a food saver.

We ended up putting 23 pounds of quality meat up for the winter. I'm sure we will get at least 2 more deer and that will generally last us through next deer season. A great weekend to be sure.

Oh, and a special Happy Birthday to the Mrs. She let me and Bub go hunting on her birthday! She's pretty awesome. Of course her daddy was a deer hunter all her life so she is kinda use to it!

What we've been up to

What has clan Daniel been up too? A bunch! We are so busy most of the time we can't keep it all straight. I don't have time to give this blog all I should but I will give what I can when I can. A couple of weeks ago Bub and I went deer hunting. It was youth weekend in Texas so only he could hunt. It was a rather chilly morning and we saw a lot of deer but mostly does. We saw nothing to shoot at all weekend but had a good time anyway.
We will be going back next weekend and I expect better luck.It should be colder and the bucks will be more sprightly I hope.

Bub was the only one who could hunt two weeks ago. We will both be packing this next time.

The weekend we were hunting also turned out to be my 42ND birthday. When I got home my youngest gave me a present that she wrapped herself.

Next came Halloween, the girlie girls dressed up as felines of some type. One was a leopard and one was a cheetah I think. We went to an activity at church and then around town for some trick or treating.

The boy was an axe murderer. I was not pleased but I assume this will be his last year w/ Halloween.

I'm also currently working on re-finishing a table we bought for our kitchen. We sold our other table and chairs (it was just too big for the space) and bought this table from some friends.

I think it will go really nice in our house when I'm done.

We have been eating off our card table for a couple of months so the idea of having a real table and chairs is rather appealing.

I'll post some finished pics when I'm done.

Meet Buster. He is the Mrs. new boxer given to her by a friend. We had to get a new boxer because we lost our first one, Butch.

Well we didn't actually lose Butch, we more like ran over him. Specifically I ran over him. It was bad luck all around. But now we have Buster! Ain't he cute?

We went to the Cowboy Stadium Today for a tour of said stadium with Bub's RA group at church.

We got to see the field from a luxury suite,

see the Cowboys locker room,

and go onto the field. It was a really good time!

After we got home from the stadium we had some popcorn for dinner. Sister fell asleep so it must have been a busy weekend for her too.