Band Concert

Last Wednesday was our kids' Christmas band concert.  It's amazing how much they've improved from when they started!

Faith is in advanced band and has been playing the flute since September 2007.  She also can play the clarinet and piano, but not as well as flute.  She even played the flute for a wine and art night where she participated with her ballet studio.

Jared and Cody are in intermediate band and have been playing since September 2009.  Jared plays the trombone and Cody plays the saxophone.

All the kids started out with instruments that their grandparents had....Thank You Grandma's and Grandpa's!!  Faith now has a new flute, and Cody was given a saxophone.

Noah and Alex can hardly wait to join band when they get to fifth grade.  I am so thankful for a school system that offers band.  There is no way we could afford lessons for five kids!  The school is great about letting the kids participate, even though they are home schooled for the rest of their classes.

The rest of the Elk

Finally, Friday night we got the rest of the elk packaged.  About 150 pounds all together.  Cut up the last leg on Friday morning and then Tom took the scraps to be ground into hamburger (is it still called hamburger if it's not beef?  Or should I just call it ground elk?)

What do you call a cow that's missing it's two front legs?
Lean Ground Beef!
HaHaHa....sorry I got sidetracked.  We can do these jokes forever around here....even though we all know the answers to them!

Anyway, he came back with 88 pounds of ground elk.....or elk burger.....elk hamburger????
We set up an assembly line of wrapping.

Tom cut the paper (and ran up to the store twice for more), Jared weighed out one pound piles and pressed them into a rectangle container to make bricks and I wrapped.  Then whoever was free, labeled and stuck them in the freezer.

During this process, I had to remind Jared a time or two that the burger bricks needed to be somewhat level so the packages stacked nicely.  He was worried about it being a race and trying to keep me from catching up.  I told him that he had to do it my way because I was the wrapping boss.  Then I asked him what he would do if he was the boss (great conversations happen when you are working at mindless jobs!).  His first thought was that he would remove the time limits on video game playing (30 minutes per day is our rule).  Then he thought for a minute and decided that he had a better thing to do as boss......he would like to change football to be a year round sport.  Then he could play all the time and get really good to make it to the pro's!  Guess his life must be pretty good if those are the only things he can think of to change!

We cooked up some elk stew for dinner on Friday night and then elk steaks for dinner tonight.....mmmmm.....and still over 100 pounds left to enjoy! 

Elk Update

Yesterday, the boys helped Tom get the elk cleaned up and hung.  We got some pictures of Cody and Jared sawing off the feet....Cody said that was his favorite part!  Alex was delighted to watch and occasionally helped to hold the leg still.  Jared was very interested in the head.  He told me "I think she needed to spend more time brushing her teeth!"  He was also very interested in the Ivory teeth that are supposed to be sent in from any elk that you get.  I'd never heard of such a thing, but I've never been a hunter, so I guess I've never needed to know!  They also enjoyed playing with the tongue and spraying the eyeballs.....yes, they are definitely boys!  I heard all about where the head was attached and why the guts got left in the woods and the elk didn't come home whole.  We didn't get a lot of book school work done yesterday, but they learned about hunting, butchering, anatomy, and hard work....I'm glad they are home during the day and can take advantage of unexpected opportunities like this.  Faith didn't get as interested in the process as the boys.  Thursday we are going to cut up the meat and wrap it for the freezer....My funny husbands says "I don't do roasts, because inside every roast is a lot of little steaks just waiting to get out!"

Sawing off the feet

Hung and Waiting to be cut up

Jared and Cody

Noah and Alex

New Discovery!

Downloading my pictures from my camera can be a little bit of a chore.  I have to get out the external hard drive, find the cords, get it all arranged on my counter, and by that time I've usually used up all of my free time and don't have time to blog about whatever picture it was that I was trying to get.  But this morning, I made a discovery....I was hoping it would work, and it did!  Got out only my camera cord and was able to access the picture I wanted without downloading them to my hard drive!  Quick and easy and don't have to waste all that effort when there is only a couple of pictures in my camera.

Here is the picture I took this morning--the sight I awoke to:

For some reason I found dead elk feet to be strangely amusing.  Tom got his elk yesterday at about 10 am.  He made a quick trip home to get the wheelbarrows and his Dad to help and headed back out.  He finally got home with it at about 6:30....he was exhausted, but then had to stay up late to take care of it.  From what it looks like this morning, he had to put it to bed.  LOL  I have to admit this is the first time I've ever woken up to an elk sleeping on a table in my back yard!  The boys are going to help him wash and hang it today and later this week we'll cut it up and freeze it.  Mmmmm think of all the yummy meals waiting on that table!