Lockdown - what have we been up to?

With the two older ones starting school this week, I thought it might be fun to document what we have managed to do while in 'lockdown' which in my head means all the time since they stopped going to school on March 13th. 

Jeff - put in a front garden; painted the house; re-stuccoed the wall around the back garden; and lost 10lbs doing it all.

Before

After

Alex - started running again (in fact for the first 8 weeks of lockdown I said that on Saturdays I would run a mile for every week of lockdown. This lasted until week 8, when I did an 8 mile run and realized that I never want to do to that ever again. Actually it was just the thought of having to do 9 miles that broke me. I'm glad I stopped when I did, I'd have run more than a marathon by now. No thank you); finished a quilt; 

started another quilt (the top is finished but it's not put together. This will live next to the bookshelves as a reading blanket); 

canned 80lbs of tomatoes; read a lot of books; learned how to cut Jeff's hair (aargh!);  tried to stay sane; and has not lost 10lbs (grrrr).

Adam - spent weeks in the garage building and painting models; expanded his leather working repertoire to include leather carving; has written or arranged a fair amount of music; got a new clarinet; refurbished about half the family's bikes; and is working on growing out his lockdown haircut (ask him about it sometime). 

Ellie - got a new flute; took next year's math class over 6 weeks in the summer and passed with 96%; made voodoo dolls of herself and Kate; 

 

made multiple very cute crochet animals for friends or baby shower gifts;  

finished sewing herself a skirt (we'd started this almost a year before and honestly I was surprised it still fit!), and read a lot of books. 

Kate -  learned to cook - there's a few things she can be trusted with all by herself now; turned into a teenager by stealing my phone all the time; watched vast amounts of cartoons; and is contemplating donating her hair (the lack of available hair cuts over the last six months means it's almost down to her waist!) 

Nicholas - refurbished his bike with Jeff; played more Minecraft than should be humanly possible and survived with his good humour intact. 

He's really looking forward to going back to school - and we finally have a date! November 16th. It can't come soon enough. When school ended they were told it would be shut for two weeks. It's been a long, long two weeks!

Wild West Vacation - Canyonlands

On Thursday morning Ellie had to take an online math test. She's been taking next year's math class over the summer, and we couldn't move the placement test for next year's classes. So in the morning Jeff took Adam and the littles off to visit the Moab movie museum; there are differing accounts of what happened next. If you ask Jeff it was really interesting and well worth a visit; if you ask Adam it was the most boring morning of his life. I was home keeping Ellie company so I cannot arbitrate either way.

After lunch we headed out to Canyonlands National Park. It is not as well known as Arches; and not as easy to get to or get around. Canyonlands is divided into six sections, none of which are accessible from each other. We could pick one; so we picked 'Island in the Sky' which is as it sounds - a huge mesa surrounded by giant canyons.

Canyonlands was clearly the poor relation of the Utah national parks. The visitors centre was minimal, the one bathroom didn't have flush toilets, and you felt like you were on the edge of the world. We had picked a hike that we wanted to do, recommended by our rafting guide, but when we got there that hike was closed because they were doing search and rescue on that trail. It was clear that we were out in the wilds - out in the kind of nature that can kill you if you're not careful! 

The hike we chose we chose because it was rated 'easy' - and it was fairly level. But it was literally along the edge of a cliff, out to the farthest most point and back. The views were spectacular. If you could forget that you were walking along the top of a cliff. At one point Ellie's hat blew off her head and she started to go after it before she remembered where she was, thank goodness, and stopped. Jeff rescued it just a couple of feet from the edge, in the face of me yelling at him to let it go because it was only cheap and to just please please stop! 

We finished the day with a little short hike to Mesa Arch. There was at least a 1000 foot sheer drop right behind this rock that the kids are sitting on. Canyonlands was on the edge, literally. 

The very last thing we did as we were driving out of town on the way home the next day was stop at Matrimony Spring and fill our trusty water bottles. The pioneers that settled the area would send their kids out to get fresh water. The spring is about half a mile out of town and it was the only time the kids spent unsupervised time together... hence, Matrimony Spring. Unless you know where to look you'd never know it was there but the water was cold, clean and plentiful. 

They say if you drink from it you come back, so let's hope! 

Wild West Vacation - Arches

I've wanted to go to Arches for years, and it was well worth a visit! In fact I think I'd like to go back, maybe on a day when it's not 105, and do some of the longer trails. We definitely did not see everything. 

Balancing Rock

We started the day at Double Arch, and honestly I think that was everyone's favourite. Adam was like a mountain goat; he just climbed up rocks fast and perched on high things. And then of course Kate wanted to follow him, but she was less goat-like about getting up and down! But everyone played hard at Double Arch. 

We decided that the hike to Delicate Arch was going to be too much for us; it was rated as 'strenuous' and over 3 miles and we were pretty sure that we didn't want to. (I think maybe I do, another time). But we went to the viewpoint and took pictures. 

Then we headed up to Landscape Arch - where the girls and I called it and said we were turning back, while the boys decided to carry on around the trail. I wasn't sure that all of the boys could do it - Nicholas has good enthusiasm at the start of a trail and is a total nightmare on the last mile, typically - but he said he wanted to go and so off they went. Apparently he lasted about another quarter of a mile before he was begging to go back - so instead of seeing all the arches on that loop they only saw another one. But that's ok, it meant the girls and I only had to wait a few minutes at the trailhead before they came trailing back behind us.

 

We spent pretty much all day at Arches and it was spectacular everywhere you looked. I do want to go back. We couldn't stay until the park closed because in a moment of madness Jeff had booked a trail ride for us, and we had to get over to the ranch. I was not too sure that this would be fun.... but I was game!

Anytime we go on vacation I come home with lots of pictures of people's backs, and this was no different! 

We were out by Fisher Towers riding in the back country for a couple of hours. At one point the horse behind me got spooked by a crow so it took off and then my horse was off and away too - fortunately it didn't take too long to get under control!

By the time we were done I think everyone was a little bit sore but even so we had a good time!

Wild West Vacation - Rafting

Our second day in Moab was awesome; we went rafting! Jeff and Adam had been before, the rest of us never had. Jeff picked a mild run, it was mostly just a float down the Colorado river with a few small rapids here and there. It was a scorching hot day and we were out on the water for about three hours. The canyon was beautiful; big red and black cliffs on either side. It was so impressive. 

It was such a great day. When the water was calm we were allowed to flop out of the boat and swim around. I actually didn't - I could see that flopping out of the boat would be quite easy but I didn't think that getting back in again would be too dignified! But the kids loved getting in and swimming when they could. 

The rapids were fast enough to be fun - the boat in front of us dumped all its passengers on one rapid - and it was a great way to spend a day!

Wild West Vacation 2020 - Mesa Verde

 After the week in which everything blew up (Things that Broke: plumbing leak, water heater, car, microwave, oven; seriously a very very bad week), we booked a vacation. It was maybe a little bit crazy, in the middle of a pandemic, but we were both more than a little fed up and wanted out of the house. We ended up in Moab, Utah, because Nicholas is in 4th grade this year and gets in free to national parks, and Moab has three close by. As we were driving in to Moab the scenery was getting more and more spectacular, but it's an 11 hour drive away from us, and we eventually drove in in the dark, so we really had no idea what Moab was like until we woke up the next morning and saw the view from the window. It was just spectacular. A huge red cliff just over the road from the house, that seemed to go for miles.
Our first day was our only free day with no commitments, so we got in the car early and drove to Mesa Verde in Colorado, a couple of hours away. I am so glad we went! Even though some of the cave dwellings were closed, most of the park was open and I think we saw everything we would have seen had we come in non-Covid days.

We decided we wanted to hike to Petroglyph Point. We know that I am not good hiking at altitude - but unfortunately we never remember this until we are already a good ways out on a trail somewhere. So even though I was suffering a little there was not much point turning back, so we pushed on, on one of the craziest trails I've been on. Yes, the trail went through these rocks.

The petroglyphs were pretty cool! And we stopped and rested for a while before tackling the rest of the loop back to the car. 

It was extremely rugged countryside. We found out later that we were supposed to have registered at the museum before heading out on this particular trail - whoops. It was extreme. Cliff edges were never very far away! 

After our marathon hike we jumped in the car and drove around the rest of the park, stopping to look at whatever there was. It was honestly astonishing - the pictures do not do it justice. You really can't get a sense of how far up the cliff and how inaccessible these dwellings really are. 

After we were all done in Mesa Verde it was time to drive back to Moab - except we somehow decided that we were going to go another way home and visit Telluride on the way. So off we went, following our trusty paper map that lives in the dash of our car. All of our phones did not agree with our paper map, but we wanted to go the scenic route that we could very clearly see marked on the map. So off we went. Whoops. The road did not go to Telluride at all. The road went into the mountains, where it skirted where Telluride should have been, but didn't cut through. Our phones all knew what they were talking about. So we ended up on a mad mountain road (and we know how I feel about those). It was a nightmare. We got up to about 11,000 feet, and then of course we had to come down. And it took hours. We finally reached a town named Ouray where we should have stopped for dinner, and where we probably would have stopped had I not been a gibbering basket case at this point, I had been white knuckling it for about the last 60 miles and I insisted that we get DOWN out of the mountains before it got dark. So we didn't stop. And that turned out to the be the last food before Utah, literally. We went through several tiny towns, all so far out in the boonies that they didn't even have a stop light and certainly didn't have any restaurants. We finally crawled home at 11:30 pm and fed the kids petrol station cereal and pot noodles and called it a day!
Mesa Verde was great, I loved it. The parts of Colorado that we drove through were stunning. It will be a long time before I can be persuaded to go back though!

Salsa 2020

This weekend we picked tomatoes. Kate has been the curator of the garden since we planted it together so she was pretty excited to go out there and pick. I was only planning on picking enough to make pizza sauce (the pantry is out) but we ended up with loads, and I ended up in the kitchen all day doing pizza sauce and salsa.

I have a basic salsa recipe that has been tweaked a couple of times. It all depends on how many tomatoes you have. You want to keep the proportions somewhat similar... so essentially I am posting this year's recipe in an attempt to not do all the math again, should I ever have the same amount of tomatoes to start with! Got to save it somewhere.

I once spent a tedious afternoon working out that you need about 1/4 cup of acid (lemon juice, vinegar) per quart of tomatoes to make sure that it will can safely. Every time I make this I kick myself that I haven't yet bought any PH test strips to make sure... but I'm fairly confident that this is good!

Starting with 18lbs of tomatoes, which works out to 12lbs peeled and skinned, which works out to 5 3/4 quarts:

1 large red onion (4 cups)
1 large yellow onion (3 cups)
5 green bell peppers (4 1/2 cups)
8 jalapeños (2 cups)
3 serranos (1/2 cup)
1 green chili (1/2 cup)
4 6oz cans tomato paste
4 tbsp garlic powder
3 tbsp salt
2 tbsp cayenne pepper
3 tsp cumin
1/2 cup brown sugar (could probably get away with 1/3 actually)
3 tbsp fresh cilantro
1 3/4 cups lemon juice
1 cup white wine vinegar

It's not as hot as I was expecting. In fact it's been described as 'mild with a kick'. But it's still pretty good. I need to step up my jalapeño game I think, or find a fiery pepper or two to throw in there!