Birthday Celebration

Today we celebrated Evie's 3rd birhday! I can't believe she is so big already. We had some of our friends and family over for pizza and cake. We also had all of the kids dress up and reenact the Christmas story. I may be biased, but I thought it was pretty darn cute.

Trash Can Turkey

Next Thanksgiving cook your turkey in a trash can. Its 11.3 times more interesting and it cooks twice as fast, although the prep time may be a little bit more. This is my third time to do it, and every time has yielded great results. The bird is so tender and moist it just falls off the bone. With a turkey cooked this way you never have to worry about choking to death trying to swallow that dry bird your mom always cooks in the oven. I feel it is my civil duty to disseminate this great secret so here is how you do it.

Preparation time: 0.5-1.0 hours
Total cook time for 13 lb turkey: 1.5 hours

Supplies:

• 1 metal trash can with lid (about the size of your two year old daugther or a little bigger than the turkey you plan to cook)
• 1 shovel
• 1 wooden stake
• 1 roll of heavy aluminum foil
• 18 lb bag of charcoal
• 1 bottle of lighter fluid
• 1 turkey (any size as long as it fits in the trash can)
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 Awesome wife who agrees to eat turkey out of a rusted trash can

• 1 two year old daughter to "help out"

First things first, make sure your trash can is "clean". I am sure that "clean" as I interpret the word is much different than how my wife interprets it. What I mean is make sure you have flipped it over, and beat the sides of the can a couple of time with your hand so that all of the dust from last years turkey cooking and any dead bugs (or live ones) are no longer inhabiting the can. It is also a pretty good idea to remove any spider webs.

Now find a site to roast your duck. I prefer sites with dry grass around so that the fire spreads where it should not. This provides a little extra fun and keeps you on your toes. Might be a good idea to have a hose nearby.

Pound or push a wooden stake/tree branch into the ground that you will use to support the turkey. The stake needs to be a height such that the turkey can rest upon the stake without touching the top of the can when placed upside down over the turkey and the turkey's legs will not be touching the ground. After all, you do not want the turkey to run away.

Now that you have a stake in the ground, cover the surrounding area with foil. I like to fold the edges of connecting pieces together but it does not really matter. If you are a little bit of a germ-a-phobe you may also want to cover the wooden stake in foil also. However, if you are a germ-a-phobe you will probably not be eating turkey out of a rusty old trash can so stop reading this article now and go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysophobia
The article informs us that germaphobia should not be confused with Germanophobia.

Place the can over the stake and do your best to center it. When you have it where you want it, push down on the can to mark a ring in the foil. Make sure that there is extra foil around the sides.

Fill the lid of the trash can with the charcoal from the 18 lb bag of charcoal. Heap it up in a mound on the lid faster than your two year old daughter who should have been in bed hours ago can throw it back off. You can not win this struggle, so wait for her to burn herself on the lantern instead, at which point you can take her inside to your awesome wife. It is true that she should have been in bed hours ago but she took a late nap and was no longer tired. She also has a dad that is wrapped around her finger; besides, it was Thanksgivings and I was very grateful to have one of my little angels' companionship.

Drench the charcoal in lighter fluid, but save a little to play with. While you let the charcoal soak, get inside and prep the goose. The parrot should should have been left in the fridge a few days before cook time so that it is no longer an ice block. It should still be plenty cold and have ice crystals in the cavity. Empty the cavity and neck of all the sacks of junk they stuff in their so that you have to pay more.

Now thoroughly salt and pepper the bird inside and out. Be generous.

Mount your parrot on the wooden stake you drove into the ground and make sure the can fits over the turkey correctly. I have always heard of people putting beer can under their roasting chickens and thougth I out to try it. I have never purchased alcohol, nor have I ever drunk any and so I went with Ginger Ale. I thought it might add a little extra moisture. This was my first time to try this and I did not notice a difference in the end.

Light the charcoal and wait for it to turn grey. This usually takes about 0.5 hours. During this wait time, play with the little bit of lighter fluid you saved by spraying it on the charcoal and making big flames. It helps to pass the time. Stomp out the grass that catches fire also. Take pictures.

When the charcoal is ready, shovel a layer 1.5 charcoal briscuits thick onto the top of the trash can that is upside down over your turkey. Shovel the rest around the base and afterwards fold the foil up around the charcoal to keep the heat directed toward the can. You have effectively created a giant dutch over. During this process, charcoal biscuits will start forest fires as they fall onto your dry grass. Stomp these out unless your are attempting to "accidentally" burn your house down.

Now wait a while. The amount of the weight depends upon the size of the bird. I cooked a 13 lb parrot this year and it only took about 1.5 hours.

You now have the most delicious turkey you will ever eat in your life. Sometimes the bird is so tender that parts of it will fall right off the wooden stake onto the foil below (hence the need for the foil). My peacock was not quite that soft this time, but the meat did just slide right off the legs while carving it.

All that is left is to enjoy your turkey, enjoy the dressing your awesome wife made, enjoy the company of your precious little daughters, enjoy the holiday season, enjoy life, and thank God for it all.

Happy Thanksgiving.

-Jude

Slackers

I know we are such slackers! It has been over two months since we've written anything. And as adorable (and I am sure annoying by now to some of you) as Evie's "twinkle twinkle little star" might be it is time for an update.

Most of you know by now that Jude graduated in August and is working for a really great company here in Huntsville. In September we closed on our very first house! Before we moved in we painted all of the rooms and Jude tiled the kitchen floor. It looks great. I was a little disappointed with the color for our main living area ( I didn't think it would be so yellow), but it works. The only rooms left to be painted are the kitchen and utility room. We are absolutely loving having our own place now. The girls love their purple room and the huge back yard. We have some of the best neighbors ever. Last Saturday I think about ten of the neighbor kids were over here jumping on our love sac.
Here is a picure of part of our living room...I don't know what that line above the picture is all about. We have a fireplace in here also!
Here is our dining room. Jude had just built a fort for the girls using the table and some blankets.
The unfinished kitchen. Didn't Jude do an awesome job on the floor! I was very impressed.This is the girl's bathroom. My sister has this exact same shower curtain in her bathroom. I liked it so much I copied her.
Here is our beautiful big back yard. The trees have been so pretty this year. This one was taken when they first started changing colors.

We are also enjoying being in the Fayetteville, TN ward now. Jude was called a couple of weeks ago to be the ward mission leader. I will let you guys know Sunday what my calling is =). We are both very excited to be able to serve in the ward and get to know everyone.

The girls had a great Halloween. Evie was Hermione Granger from Harry Potter. She was so cute. She even learned to say "wingardium leviosa" and swish her wand. Lisi was supposed to be Princess Leia from Star Wars. I got the cutest outfit. It even had the cap with two huge buns on it, but she wouldn't have anything to do with it. They had a blast going trick or treating with their cousins though. And they are still enjoying the candy.

American Idol

Evie performs Twinkle Twinkle Little Star:

Bumpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall...

Evie was riding on my shoulders this evening while I washed a sippi-cup and heated some milk for her to drink. In our kitchen there is a low hanging light. Maybe I should say "there was a low hanging light." I really added this line in for the suspense because nothing happened to the light, but maybe it is not appropriate to switch tense when telling a story. Anyways....Evie almost bumped her head on the light and said something along the lines of "Almost bump my head." She then surprised me with her rendition of "the intsy wintsy bumpy bumpy."
She sung something like:
Bumpy Bumpy sat on the wall;
Bumpy Bumpy had a fall;
Bumpy Bumpy up the wall again;
Kings horses, kings men, put bumpy together again.

I do not know if she really thinks the word "humpty" is "bumpy" in this nusery rhyme or if she was mixing in her own words. Singing incorrect words to a song is something we all do. For instance that song by Def Leppard (I was about to write Deaf Leopard, but luckily I looked up the name to make sure I spelled it correctly): Pour Some Sugar on Me. I could never understand the lyrics when they sang the line "Pour Some Sugar on Meeee." For years, in the fear of public social ridicule, I would quietly sing those lines to myself as I thought they went (mainly unrecognized consonants grouped in non-sensical ways). My fear was substantiated when I married into my new family. The story is frequently recounted how one of my in-law relatives used to sing "Horse down, shoot me like a ray" while pretending that his/her cupped hands were a hand gun. I will not mention the name or give further hints to the identity of said in-law to protect her from further embarassment. Ooops.

Jude Collins

Hey big head!

Toddlers do not lie. Well maybe they do lie about being tired or needing to go to the potty, but never about physical appearance. I have always known that my upper body was large...no, not my overly muscular chest and arms, but my head. Well today I was sitting down at the table eating some apple sauce with Evie. Evie was studying me with this curious look on her face and she finally says, "Your face is big. [she pauses] and your head is big. [she takes a longer pause] Your chin is big too." I am just glad she left my nose out; or maybe she realized it was just to obvious and did not require verbal enumeration. I have come to accept this truth as self-evident: my skull is large and at the age of 43 and one-half I will be doomed to spend the rest of my days staring at the ground because my neck muscles will have given up. All in good humor.
Jude Collins

I degree

I had my last final on 30 July 2008 Wednesday. My undergraduate education is finally over! I thought that it would be some sort of overwhelmingly thrilling feeling, and I think that it would have been except I had a presentation to give at work the next day that I was stressing over. It still has not really sunk in and I admit that I feel somewhat disappointed in the way I am feeling because I was expecting something way cooler. Oh well. This next week is our "vacation" and I start back to work the following Monday. Vacation - this really means that we will be busy all week doing everything we normally do and everything else that we are behind on, and my job/school will not be interfering. We will however be taking a family trip to the Chattanooga Aquarium during the week. We had originally planned to go to Nauvoo for a couple of days, but after a few more 1-2 hour car rides to places like Birmingham and Florence, we realized that a 10 hour car ride with the girls was the most ridiculous thing we had ever thought of. So we canceled our hotel reservations and decided instead to make a short day trip to Chattanooga. I do not know if our girls will like it or not, but I am very excited to see it (http://www.tennis.org/).
That is all that I really have to say right now.
- Jude