Fall Into Thanksgiving

Before I describe our recent travels, here are a couple of photos we took about 2 weeks ago when the leaves began to fall in the back yard. Alex really enjoyed playing in the crinkly, colorful leaves, and he had fun trying to eat them too.




Shortly after these pictures were taken, I invested in a high-powered Toro leaf blower/vac. I used it to great effect to collect most of the leaves here and mulch them for use in the garden this Spring.

Last week, we all traveled to San Francisco for a Patent Bar exam review class that Dana took to prepare for the Patent Bar. She was in class for 8-10 hours each day from Wednesday through Sunday. I worked from my parents' house in Benicia on Wednesday, Thursday and part of Friday. On Thursday I drove down to the corporate campus in Cupertino to work for the day and meet with one of my teammates who I hadn't had a chance to meet yet. My Dad was just wrapping up a 2-month stint working the graveyard shift at the plant. Fortunately his project wrapped up on Friday and he was able to spend the rest of the weekend with us, albeit a little groggy.

Three generations of (sleepy) Stangel men.

Here's the latest picture of the airplane project, a Glasair IIS-RG my Dad is building. Next up: windows!

We returned to Colorado on Monday evening. On Wednesday our Thanksgiving visitors arrived. We have my sister Alison and her husband Eric here at our house. My Mom and Dad and Dana's Mom and step-Dad are staying at the Bed and Breakfast just down the street, enjoying lavish breakfasts from the proprietor Mark -- every breakfast is topped off with an ice cream-based dessert.

Grandpa Herb, Susan, Carla and Dana working on Thanksgiving dinner in the kitchen

This year for Thanksgiving we prepared a deep-fried turkey out in the back yard. This is the second time I've fried a turkey, and I'm more convinced than ever that it's the way to go. Cooking time of 3 minutes per pound means that the entire afternoon of cooking can be done in 2 hours or less. We used a mixture of canola and corn oils. The 15-pound bird was brined overnight with extra seasoning.

It was a pretty chilly Thanksgiving here. We gave our native Californian families a run for their money!

Of course, it's no good heating up 3 gallons of oil if you're just going to cook a bird. So before the turkey, we deep fried some doughnuts, then we made authentic sweet potato french fries with about 8 sweet potatoes and yams. Both made for excellent appetizers (despite everyone's initial uncertainty). Will the deep-fryer become the new barbecue?

The finished product!

Kupuna kane Herb with the little keiki

The high Thursday in Berthoud was about 30F, and once the sun began to set below the fence in the back yard, it started to drop quickly. I think by the time we took an evening walk it was about 15.

After dinner, Grandpa Herb and Uncle Eric favored us with a guitar duet. We had fun singing along with several tunes we sort of knew the words to.

I joined in playing Alex's alligator for accompaniment.

And here's a brief video of the hit of the evening:

Our evening walk, with Alex in his snow suit!

This morning I got up early to head over to the ACE hardware store for their usual post-holiday rebate sale. I picked up some awesome Stanley tools for a song, plus free Christmas lights and a free cordless electric screwdriver set. Hard to beat that! They even let you file for rebates online now, so I don't have to spend $0.41 on postage or cut out any UPC labels!