You can never have enough olives, but...

......3 gallons approaches enough.

This year I got my act together and cured olives.
I meant to do it last year but I was all busy popping out a kid. Whatever.
Brian was really nice and helped me pick olives near my lab.
In the rain. I know, he's awesome.
We thought we pulled a pretty good haul... until about a week later.
When I squeezed an olive and a tiny worm shot out
and hit me in the cheek.
That experience counted as one of the top 5
grossest things that has ever happened to me.

So I threw all those olives away, and talked to
El Machinist de la Chemistry Dept.
He told me about this secret little street, lined with mature
olive trees, untrimmed so that the low lying branches
are laden with blushing olives.
Sound pretty good huh? He motioned off to the west... "I think it's off of Cowell... it's on the left, you'll know it when you see it."
So I load my car up with an ice bucket from my lab, a stool I stole from El Machine Shop,
and I head off. West, towards West Cowell. West.
And I don't find it. Driving, driving, nothing, driving.
I have an epiphany... an olive epiphany. I get the idea that it seems like the type of place that would be off South, on Hutchinson.... which is parallel to West Cowell. An easy mistake to make. So I drive my stolen bucket and stool south, over to Hutchinson.
And I find it! It's a secret little one lane street with big olive trees and tons of olives on low lying branches and....it's called Olive Tree Lane.
I only spent about an hour, but I filled my bucket. After throwing away the leaves and crap, it turned out to be about 3 gallons. 3 glorious gallons:

We've cured them, marinated them, eaten them, shared them.... and we still have about a gallon. Anyone want olives for Christmas?

Incidentally, this olive issue caused me to get a library card. So that I could check out books about how to can olives. So that we wouldn't have to eat them all now. FYI: the library has no books with recipes for pressure canning olives. I think it's a conspiracy.

Casualties of War... er... I mean the holidays

It's hard work being so cute.

Christmas Child Labor

Our little elf has been helping wrap presents this year:

Mostly this consists of her playing with the wrapping paper, but hey, we'll take what we can get.

Ba Humbug

So, on our way to get a Christmas Tree, we decided not to get one. Here's the reasoning.
We talked about whether we really want to ever get one.
We decided that it kinda depended on how Miss M felt about it. We're leaving it at that for now.

Belated Thanksgiving....

I didn't really get to say much about thanksgiving. It was pretty nice.
It made me think about the last year; it's been a ride.
I'd like to run down a couple things that I am particularly thankful for.
First of all, these people. And the fact that we can all be together.
Really, there isn't any substitution for 8 great parents.

And this gal, who has been along for the ride despite being on quite a ride herself.

Then there are these two, who still like us
even though we are three now.
Plus they have the abalone, we have the abalone mallet.
We make a great team.

For these people, and the fact
that they think that playing
boccie ball in a funny hat is ok:

I'm kinda fond of this monkey too. On a scale from

0 to awesome, he's pretty awesome.

And finally for this one.
She's only about the best thing out there.