Elizabeth goes to COURT!  

The COURTHOUSE THAT IS!

Every year the city of Prescott puts on a Christmas and Lighting
program at the courthouse. Someone reads the
"traditional Christmas story" of Jesus's birth.
This year Elizabeth, along with her class, sang at the lighting...

Here are the girls getting ready to head on down the hill to the courthouse.
You can see it in the background.


Papa Al(Krissy's dad from Paulden) and Uncle Bryan
(bryan and debbie were vistiting from San Diego)
waiting for the program to get started.

The girls with Aunt Debbie, all bundled up...even though
it was pretty warm that night. We overdressed, better safe than sorry :)

Auddie with her daddy.

As the lights came on...

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GINGERBREAD VILLAGE  

Every year the Prescott Resort here in Prescott, AZ does a gingerbread village.
Money raised goes to Boys and Girls Club. So it is a good cause...and we (from
the xray department at the hospital) join in the competition.
It is a ton of fun & lots of work.
Click here

This is just a few of us who worked on the project!
back:Carla, Amanda, Nicole, Krissy
front: Christy, Kathi

"Santa Sleigh parking only"

Santa in the Cat-scan is my favorite. You will notice that
he dropped his bag of toys next to the table.

Here is the Heli-pad for the helicopter and our "North Pole". Our hospital
has an East and West campus, but now we have added the North Campus. :)

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Thanksgiving 08  


Quick and dirty run down on Thanksgiving, well I should say the day after thanksgiving. Thanksgiving day we had dinner with Krissys side of the family out in Dewey, I know I took some pics so as soon as I find them I will add them but after dinner that night we headed to San Diego for the rest of the weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving with my side of the family and Brian, Krissy little Bro.

This year was a year of firsts. Smoked ham on the WSM, Smoked turkey on the brand new ProQ!



We have never smoked a ham or a turkey so we decided to do both this year...no practice, no try outs...just jump right in, let it all hang out. Get the family together and try something new!

The ham we did was a precooked ham we simply heated up in the WSM. We placed it in a pan to keep the glaze from running off into the water pan and smoked over Kingsford hickory charcoal. After the ham reached about 140 internal I started opening the WSM and re-glazing the ham every 20-30 minutes. The glaze was something my mom put together so I am not sure what was in it but it was very good. The ham turned out AWESOME!! I have now used the hickory charcoal twice and can say I do like it...it has surprised me both times just how much good smoke flavor it imparts.


Now to the really important stuff...Turkey on the new Excel 20. At the Pulte event my dad picked up a ProQ Excel 20 for a very good price. He wanted something bigger than the WSM to cook the turkey on, the Excel 20 fits the bill and for the price, who can ask for anything more. We have cooked on the WSM enough times to know what to expect from this style of smoker but as with anything new you just can never really know for sure how well things are going to work....


Well as you can see here it works very well!


Smoked Ham, Smoked turkey, BIGEASY turkey


Love those fall colors!

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VETERANS DAY!  


Just a quick THANK YOU to all of those who serve, have served or have fallen preserving our freedom!

Thank you!

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Lynx Lake:Prescott, AZ Oct 9th-Oct 14th  

The girls had two weeks off of school this past October. The first week Samantha and Elizabeth spent with Grandma and Grandpa Staehnke in Superstition Mountain OHV. (after Ralph and I left-they stayed another 4 days or so-see previous post) I took a week off to take them camping for the rest of their time off. But we need to stay close by...Ralph had to go to work. We had fun. During the days the weather was great, T-shirt weather. The first 2 nights were great as well, you could run around in a sweatshirt. The next night, WOW. 18 degrees. We ended up going into town to buy a propane heater, which will be nice to have around in case of an emergency.

Here we are playing Yatzee and Audrey
trying to mess with the camera on the tri-pod. :)

Here is Audrey and the trail marker for the trail we hiked. One day we went up the trail and down the another day. We also took this trail down to a side road that took us up into the lake recreation area. We saw wildlife on our hikes...a tarantula one day, three deer came running between us and a fellow camper (so fast that we were all breathless-they were beautiful!!)

sorry, didn't catch the deer!





This was a fellow camper the girls befriended, named Carl and his dog Misty. The girls of course fell in love with Misty. He also had a cat named Dude, he is in the bushes behind Carl. Carl is a veteran that lives in his motorhome and travels between Tucson and Utah, camping anywhere in between.

Samantha worked hard during our days there and is now on the road to riding her bike without training wheels!!

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Superstition Mountain OHV Area  



Here are Debbie and Auddie playing DS during the SANDSTORM...

The SANDSTORM that proceeded to knock down our tent.

Auddie and Ralph riding on our last day in the desert.

Grandma and Grandpa agreed to watch everyone's kids while we (krissy&ralph, Jason&Laura, Bryan&Debbie) went on a ride.
It took us 1 1/2 to get to the top of the mountain (thanks bryan!!)
and only 1/2 hour to get back(thanks jason!!).
We could see the Salton Sea. It was gorgeous.

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True Holy Smoke!!  

I think this is one of things I like most about most good BBQ joints...just down to earth good people! Anyone up for a trip to texas??

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Dutch oven camping.  

The girls were on vacation for the last few weeks so Krissy decided to do some camping. They camped Thurs-Tues with the night time temps dropping into the low 20s! I camped with them from Fri-Sun and then I went home because I had to work on Monday, but I will let Krissy tell you how/what they did. All I know is that when I was driving away Sunday night at 9pm the temp gauge in the van read 22 degrees. :(


Let me get back on track... I will let Krissy post later on the camping trip this post will be about the food we cooked in the dutch ovens. Along with BBQ I really enjoy dutch oven cooking. I guess if I had been born a few hundred years ago I might have turned out to be a "cooky" on the cattle drives running the chuck wagon. Who knows? :)




Mountain Man breakfast!


STEW!


Me wondering why I did not get a final photo of the stew...


Pineapple upside down cake.


Cobbler...I use foil because I have seen the pie filling eat the seasoning off the pan or at least weaken it.


Making???...


Biscuits.


and gravy...




PIZZA in the Dutch Oven is awesome...almost like wood fired!!

We also heated up some Italian sandwiches but no pics...imagine hoggie roll sandwiches in the bottom of the DU!

OK OK Here are a few phots of the girls!



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Desert Q.  

Woke up to this desert sunrise...


Getting ready...




If you look you can see me holding up the chimney starter, man was it windy.


Dorks are us!



If you're peeking it ain't cooking.


Some of the kids got in a few holes of golf before we ate!


Brisket


Pork



It was a windy, windy day. I had MUCHO trouble keeping the temps where I wanted them. The wind was blowing so hard it was pushing the smoke down and out the intakes, not to mention the tents down!! I was duct taping holes, stacking wood for a wind break but it was all to no avail :( The brisket cooked very quickly but amazingly was pretty darn good, probably due to the Texas crutch (foil). The pork cooked faster than I would have liked and did not want to pull very well but it was still pretty good.

All in all not too bad for trying to cook out in the desert and dealing with more wind then I ever have before. It was a great learning experience. The pork shoulders we got were bone in and I think I like them better that way.

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