Hot Peppers Strike Again

As you may recall, I felt the wrath of our inferno peppers over the weekend. This evening, we traded infernos for Luis' more mild jalapenos. As I cored one pepper, some of the juice squirted into my eyes and I really never felt the heat. Elena normally helps me slice vegetables (and eats most of them before they make it into a bowl), but I was able to keep her at bay. Well, mostly anyway. As I started to clean up, I heard her say,"Daddy, you forgot to get these seeds." By the time I turned around, I was faced with this for the next hour or so.

I remember a similar experience when I was about Elena's age. My dad dried hot peppers near their fireplace, strung on a thread like candy canes. He took great pride in his peppers, but he refused to share them with me. One day, when nobody was looking, I took a huge bite. I'm guessing the resulting scene resembled the video posted above. It was over a decade before I tried a hot pepper again.

Camping with Horses

Last weekend we decided that our family of four and two of our horses should all go camping together. Karen was nice enough to let me choose the location. It just happened to be in the same area where I drew a deer tag.

Karen decided that this would be the camping trip defined by camp food. Using the cook book I picked up last year, she planned a fantastic menu, consisting of mainly dutch oven dishes . We would have taken photos of the wonderful meals we prepared, but mealtime was generally preceded by something like this:

I didn't realize it at the time, but after looking back at the pictures I noticed that Marcus is a food hoarder. Notice that the drink holder of the chair in the first photo has a "stray" chip in it. Once you follow the sequence of photos, I think his intentions are clear. He has also begun using his first word, "Noooo!" He uses it often. Absence of a response indicates an affirmative answer.

 

 

So, back to the meal preparation. Karen made some jalapeno poppers from our garden. As it turns out, our variety of jalapeno peppers this year could be described as 'inferno.' I didn't take part in popper preparation. The next day, we timed our drive to coincide with the kids' nap. At one point, Karen was sleeping as well. As I was driving through a construction zone on the freeway (with traffic going both ways on one side of the freeway), I found myself fighting off the yawns as well. I rubbed my eye with my thumb and was suddenly blinded. I stuck my thumb in my mouth and discovered that the inferno peppers had somehow made their way onto the point of my thumb. I quickly assessed my situation: Two-way traffic on one side of the freeway; traffic cones prevented pulling off on the shoulder; wife is snoring; a long line of cars followed behind me. I chose to suffer in silence with my good eye half-open (I didn't dare touch it) as tears streamed down my face. At one point I looked back to see the person behind me pick up their phone and dial intently. I was sure he was calling the law to report a drunk driver. Luckily the pain subsided and we successfully made it to our destination.

Our camp site turned out to be really nice. There were corrals for the horses and flat areas for the kids to run around. The hornets made it impossible to eat outdoors, but overall it wasn't bad. There was that night when Elena puked on me at 3 am, woke Marcus up and they both screamed for about an hour, but other than that it was a nice trip.

On Saturday we took the kids for a ride on the horses. Elena was really looking forward to it. She stood safely on the opposite side of the horse trailer tongue while I got the horses ready.

Our ride went very well really. There was one snafu when a deer spooked my horse, but I played it off and Elena hardly noticed the ensuing 360 we did. She then explained that Rat likes deer on the right side of the trail but deer on the left side were scary. I'm not sure where that came from because there was only one deer and it was on the right side of the trail, but I chose not to argue. We made several stops along the way to have snacks and enjoyed the surroundings.

While we were riding along the trail, Elena kept us entertained with songs, questions and her observations. In general though, both kids did their best impressions of bobble-head dolls.

 

 

Towards the end of the ride, I gave Karen a break and did double-duty. She noted that having the entire saddle to herself never seemed like such a luxury in the past..