Almost All of the Davison's at Norris Dam State Park, Tennessee

Jon's parents celebrated their 40th anniversary. Their request was that we all go with them to Tennessee to one of their favorite campgrounds. Glenn, Tristan and Ryan were not able to go but Jeff, Lisa and their kids along with Jon, Josiah and I and Jordan with Keegan. We totaled 13 people and had a lot of fun!

Jeff and Lisa aren't big tent campers so they rented a cabin for their family. It would have been rather difficult to camp with the little kids, especially Keegan was almost 8 months at the time. Larry, Piper, Jon, Josiah and I all tent camped. The temperature got down into the upper 30's at night and it never really got warm during the day so it was a bit of a challenge but a lot of fun! Here are some pictures! I would like to add that it was freezing and we are all wearing MANY layers so none of us look particularly beautiful or happy for that matter but we did have fun.

left to right: Jeff, Josiah holding Mason

Jordyn holding Keegan, Lisa

Trinity, Jacob

Piper, Jon

Chelsea

Keegan was quite a trooper. The cold didn't really seem to phase him.

Sammy never seemed to get cold either but he doesn't have quite a fur coat.

Winnie took every opportunity to lay in the sun!

We split up the meals between Lisa, Piper and I. We went to the cabin to eat lunch both days. It was nice to be warm and play some games and the kids got to take naps. Mason brought his Halloween costume to show us since we wouldn't get to see him in it. He was so cute. Jon has finally started to recognize him as a person as he is now 3 so he spent some time with him. It was cute.

If you could just hear the roar that went with this costume!

Jon: "so you see, you are still little so what you want doesn't matter"

Mason: "huhhhh? said with a big smile!!!!

We went to the dam and took a small trail and then went to the Lenoir Museum which is a museum of Appalachian history as well as an 18th century Grist Mill. I did a terrible job taking pictures on this trip so this is the only picture I took but you can see the dam a little in the background. Oops.....

It was a great time! I feel blessed to have in-laws that I enjoy spending time with and who after 40 years of marriage choose to love each other every day! What a great example for Jon and I and our future children!

Jon's Crazy Idea: Mashed Potato Pizza

I must admit when I watched "Pizza Outside the Box" on the Food Network Channel I wasn't excited. Who wants prosciutto and sweet corn on a pizza or grapes? Jon however was intrigued by the Mashed Potato Pizza made by Otto Pizza of Portland, Maine. I thought he was a bit crazy but who I am to discourage Jon from trying new foods? He and Josiah pestered me until I decided to try it yesterday.

I watched the episode and wrote down what they did. I have never actually written down a recipe that someone else didn't already do the bulk of the work on so there may be missing parts to this or I may not be specific enough in parts but I did my best. Just ask a question in the comment part if you aren't sure and I'll answer as quickly as possible.

The recipe looks a bit daunting in length but it really isn't so bad. Make the mashed potatoes a day ahead, cook your bacon ahead too and the whole process would go a lot faster. You could also buy two pizza crust mixes and that would simplify it as well. Let me know if you end up giving this recipe a try!

Mashed Potato Pizza

2 Crusts:

2 ½ cups flour

1 pkg yeast

1 c warm water

1 t salt

1 t sugar

2 T canola oil

Directions:

1.      Dissolve yeast in warm water.

2.      Add ½ the flour and beat well with a fork.

3.      Add sugar, salt, oil and stir well to blend.

4.      Add remaining flour and beat in well with a fork. If it is still sticky add flour until it is pliable without being sticky.

5.      Kneed dough on a well floured surface or bread board about 20 times.

6.      Place dough in an oiled bowl and cover in a warm location to let rise until doubled. Since it makes 2 crusts I split the dough before letting it rise.

Mashed Potatoes:

Ingredients:

6-7 medium/large Idaho Potatoes

Butter (I used 8 T or one stick- gasp in horror here but it was good)

Kosher Salt (or table salt if you don’t have kosher) to taste.

Heavy Cream

Directions: If you already know how to make mashed potatoes feel free to do it your way. In case you don’t though……

1.      Wash potatoes thoroughly or peel if you like.

2.      Chop into pieces and boil around 20 minutes or until you stick a fork in the potato and it splits in half easily.

3.      Add butter and incorporate thoroughly before adding cream or salt.

4.   Add Heavy Cream until desired consistency. For this recipe you don’t want them to be whipped but rather slightly chunky.

5.      Add salt to taste.

Set aside to cool

Pizza:

Ingredients:

2 unbaked Pizza Crusts

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Asiago Cheese

Mashed Potatoes

Mozzarella, shredded

Heavy Cream

Bacon, cooked, chopped

Green Onions, chopped

½ t dried Parsley

½ t dried Thyme

½ t dried Rosemary

Any of these spices can be fresh. Just use 2 T instead.

Directions:

1.      Move oven racks to the bottom of the oven.

2.      Preheat oven to 500. Make sure it is fully heated before beginning to bake.

3.      Cook 1 lb of bacon. I chop it into 1 inch pieces before cooking.

4.      While bacon is cooking: Roll out crusts on a well floured surface or bread board and place on pizza pans. 

    (Unless you have a baking stone and pizza peel. If you do…..cover pizza peel with corn meal liberally and build your pizza on the pizza peel. Then place pizza directly on baking stone from pizza peel. If you aren’t brave enough to use a pizza peel for transfer feel free to bake in a pan for about 5 minutes and then slide off pizza pan to baking stone. That is what I did. I used my pizza peel to remove the pizza then from the baking stone when it was done.)

5.      Brush dough with extra virgin olive oil.

6.      Sprinkle with fresh ground black pepper.

7.      Layer with Asiago Cheese (this is a very important flavor)

8.      Cover with mashed potatoes.

9.      Layer with Mozzarella Cheese

10.  Pour heavy cream over pizzas. Around ½ cup each pizza. Don’t let it get soupy but don’t cut it short either. Sorry folks I didn’t measure.

11.  Drain bacon and layer over cheese.

12.  Chop green onions and layer with bacon.

13.  Sprinkle each pizza with ¼ t parsley, thyme, rosemary.

Bake at 500 degrees for around 10 minutes. Time will really vary based on your true oven temp, type of baking pan or baking stone. Watch it carefully. You want the crust to be crunchy and the top to be golden brown. I could tell it was done when I could smell it without opening the oven door.

It turned out amazing! Trust me. I wouldn't blog it here unless I thought it was incredible. It may just become my next fancy "company meal". So if you are headed my way any time soon, you may just get a chance to try it without all the effort!

Josiah's 1st Family Visit

10 people is a lot to have in our house. It isn't tiny but it sure isn't 10 people big but that's what we had for Labor Day weekend. There were people everywhere but we made it work and even managed to have fun!

Their trip down didn't go exactly as expected. They ended up with a flat tire that needed replaced on their way down. It couldn't be fixed until the next morning so they didn't arrive on Thursday evening as originally planned but they got here on Friday morning before lunch. Chelsea wasn't able to come on this trip or we would have been 11 people strong.

Friday night we went to Josiah's first football game. He got a lot of playing time and the final score was 40 (Liberty HS!) -3 (Blacksburg). Everyone was dying to see him as they hadn't actually see him yet. It was also Keegan's first football game.

I got to hold him quite a bit during the game. He was so cute. When everyone would cheer after a good play he would open his eyes really huge and look around like he was shocked but he didn't cry at all. I was so impressed.

They finally got to see Josiah after the game and he gave out sweaty hugs. Yuck!

Saturday we went to Smith Mountain Lake to swim at what we call our private beach. You technically aren't suppose to swim there but we haven't ever been told to move. It was a beautiful day for swimming. We all had sooooo much fun. Trinity can swim like a fish and Mason really enjoyed swimming in his ring. Keegan LOVED the water. He actually started to fall asleep sitting in the water in Jordyn's arms right before we left. I wish I had taken a picture. I of course didn't take many pictures because I was swimming and Jon of course didn't take any. I swam with Jacob and Josiah mostly. They had fun swimming to the bottom of the lake.  It was super deep very quickly. 

Make sure to turn the volume up before you watch the video of Josiah and Jacob doing some stunts in the water. 

Here are some pictures of our time swimming.

Jordyn and Keegan

Sammy got in on the fun too. He will swim as far out as you throw his stick. 

That afternoon almost everyone took a nap and the adults rather enjoyed the quiet. That evening we were all craving something sweet and since I had just picked apples I decided to make apple crisp with some help from Trinity and Mason. We all picked out our aprons and started by peeling apples with the Apple Peeler, Corer and Slicer. They thought it was great fun.

The Apple Crisp was quite good. We all enjoyed it that evening.

They got up and left on Sunday morning. It was a short trip but a lot of fun. Who knows what we will do next time.

Malcolm and Julie Visit - Summer '11 (pt. 3) The End

So Malcolm really enjoyed one special thing about this trip although I believe he enjoyed the whole thing. He really liked having Josiah here. He commented to me that  "it is just nice to have another boy around to play with". Josiah did a great job playing with Malcolm. He had to go to football every afternoon so he wasn't able to participate in everything we did but whenever he could go he was right there having fun with Malcolm.

On the last day we (Julie, Josiah, Malcolm, Sammy and I) went swimming/fishing again to Smith Mountain Lake. We went to another one of our special spots that you can swim privately. Technically you aren't allowed to swim there but no one has said anything to us yet so we'll keep going until we get told otherwise. We arrived rather early when it was still a little chilly so they planned to fish for awhile. Malcolm had gotten a new fishing pole and was enjoying learning how to cast out.

But the fishing didn't last very long. He just kept getting in more and more until he decided he was done fishing and was ready to swim. And swim they did!

We left in time to come home for lunch and then later that evening Josiah and Malcolm played a whole bunch more!

Malcolm was having trouble eating his dinner and Josiah promised him (all on his own) that if he would eat it he would wrestle with him and that Josiah would get him Dairy Queen with his own money. I was pretty impressed. As was Malcolm. He ate right away and they left for DQ almost immediately.

Then the wrestling began.

Malcolm enjoyed participating when Josiah attacked Uncle Jon and Uncle Jon attacked Josiah. Let's just say there was a lot of testosterone in the house!

Then Aunt Julie and I did what any good aunts would do in this situation. We began the calm down process by playing a nice calm game. 

We had an absolutely awesome time. I find myself eagerly anticipating the next time Malcolm comes to visit (just as long as Julie comes along too). It was nice to be able to share the fun and the responsibility with Julie!

Malcolm and Julie Visit - Summer '11 (pt. 2)

On Monday we visited to Virginia Museum of Transportation. It dealt with planes, trains, and automobiles. Malcolm was in heaven. We weren’t sure if we would even see anything after he saw the layout (which is like a model train city with several lines and all sorts of scenes). He spent a lot of time running around finding out which train ran on which line.

After that we moved on to the train area. This was where he was most excited. He had trouble actually looking at anything because he just ran excitedly from one engine to another. Julie and I were both surprise at how much he actually knew and truly understood about the different types of trains.

Arguably one of his highlights was getting to see a train go by while we were looking at all of these trains in the yard. He is of course sharing what he knows about the train going by.

He got to sit in the drivers seat of one and really enjoyed looking at all of the parts.

We stopped after looking at all of the trains and ate a quick lunch and learned that the airplane section was closed because it was damaged in a large storm and the car section wasn’t all that big but did feature some famous cars like the Love Bug, General Lee along with Boss Hog’s car from the Dukes of Hazard, and Jeff Gordon’s car.

The next day Malcolm and I went hiking all by ourselves. We drove up to the Blue Ridge Parkway and hiked the Falling Water Cascades Trail. It is a loop trail that is 1.5 miles long. 

This was really Malcolm’s first real hiking experience. I was interested that the things he noticed the most were the different smells. He kept commenting that it didn’t smell like gas or oil but that it smelled sort of fresh. He enjoyed the sounds of the waterfalls before we could see them and asked a ton of questions along the way. Needless to say I was much less worried about a bear run-in when I realized how much he talked even while hiking.

When we got to the waterfall I realized it was going to be difficult to keep him moving. He LOVED re-routing the water by building dams and digging gullies. He was thrilled to be playing in the water.

I knew however that we had a LONG way to go uphill and that we needed to keep moving so we moved from this wonderful location and stopped a few other places on the way. I didn’t want to be stuck on a trail with a starving Malcolm. We had to get home for lunch. He did surprisingly well on the way up (straight up). Toward the end he kept wanting to stop to “look at things” and kept telling me he needed to stop because he wasn’t getting “any oxygen”. He did soooooo well though. We made it home in time for lunch and while Aunt Julie was finishing lunch preparations he laid down on the couch and ……….

We spent the rest of the day around the house. He rode his bike and we played together. This was the end of a GREAT but tiring day.