Gone Fishin'

Coming to the ranch we had no idea what a big deal fishing is. But it's a BIG deal. After a lot of begging our neighbors got us to go with them one night after they borrowed fishing reels for us. We ended up having a blast! 

While we weren't having much luck in the fish department, we were still having fun. I can't tell you how many times my line got caught in the weeds at the bottom of the river and at least half a dozen times Keith had to come save me. During one of those times he had already cast his line and asked me to hold his pole. After he finally got my line untangled I reeled in his line and much to our surprise we got a bite! Neither of us could take the glory of catching it by ourselves so we shared the limelight.

After another 20 minutes or so I was able to get one more bite before we called it a night.

I was okay with the catching bit but let Keith handle the release. I don't think either of us had been fishing since we were little. Going reminded me of when I used to go fishing with my dad as a little girl. Being the professional fishermen that he is I still like to tease him about the time we went and were even, fish count:10-10 so we decided to call it a day. We reeled in and I got one last bite bringing our final count 11-Maurie 10-Dad. Oh the bragging rights. Good times.

It was a lot of fun, we'll be going back and hopefully have a bit more luck next time!

Sea World

After a lot of research I finally found the best deal on Sea World tickets. Lucky for us the passes are good for the rest of 2012 and into Busch Garden's too. We were really excited, neither of us had been to either park. We packed up our lunch and frozen water bottles, applied a little SPF, and we were on our way! We got about 20 mins down the road when we both realized we forgot the cameras. We were pretty bummed but luckily in today's day we have cell phone cameras. While they aren't top quality they aren't too shabby either. So this post is brought to you via cell phone pictures.

Our visit started out small, and it's a good thing. We weren't exactly sure where we were going or where anything was. Luckily we have this mentality (thanks to our fun passes) that we don't have to stress about seeing it ALL this time, we'll see it next time, or some other time after that!  We stopped by a little dolphin nursery and got excited seeing a few dolphins swim around. Even the flamingos seemed exciting.

That was until we decided to go to see the dolphin and acrobat show. It was so neat! There were birds flying over the audience and people skiing on dolphins. It was a good thing we started small with the dolphin nursery because we would have been disappointed after seeing this! Then it was off to a 3D movie about a sea turtle and to see the manatees.

After a little persuasion we went on one of the roller coasters called The Manta. I love roller coasters but even I was a little nervous. I had never been on one quite like this. You sit in your seat and pull a chest harness over yourself while an ankle harness comes to keep your legs in the "sitting" position. The next thing you know they are tilting you forward so your back is now parallel to the ground, face looking down at the cement! The whole ride you are in this position through loops and twists. We LOVED it. After the first stomach-wrenching loop I heard Keith start to laugh, and he laughed until it stopped. There was NO line so we decided to go for round two. We finished just in time to make it to see the Shamu Show (as I like to call it). It wasn't a let down, that's for sure!

We were wise enough to sit above the first 15 rows dubbed "The Soak Zone". It was fun to watch everyone else get soaked though!

Who knew this little tail...

could make a splash like this?

All in all we had a really fun time and can't wait to go back. We still have 2/3 of the park to see! And this time we'll remember to bring our real camera.

The Commander's Club

When we got accepted for this internship dreams of fun weekends filled my mind.  Growing up my parents took us on vacation here (mostly to Disney World) pretty often. Often enough that when I think of Florida I instantly think of FUN. Knowing that Disney World is just a tinsy part of all the fun things to do here, I got really excited. Rigby Lake and the Riot zone just don't compare to the Atlantic ocean, and miles of endless beaches. Not to mention Universal Studios, Busch Gardens, Sea World, just to name a few... And the best part is we're about an hour or two from everything FUN. While we won't be able to do everything Florida has to offer ($$$) we are going to make the most of our stay. 

First up, The Kennedy Space Center. 

When we decided to go there was only a few dollar difference between a once time entry and an annual pass aka, The Commander's Club. Living close, we decided to become members of The Commander's Club and get neat badges, 20% off any food, 10% gift store stuff, get our free coins (totally worth it just for these bad boys), and revisit as often as we wanted. It was a blast! We watched one of the IMAX movies, saw about half of the sites, and ended with some Alien Vanilla Crunch Space Dots: the ice cream of the future! Yum. We'll be going back no doubt. 

There was a lot of facts and figures that I can't remember about all things space. One neat thing I do remember is the details about this building and flag:

The building is the tallest one story building ever built. It's where they build the space shuttles! The flag is painted on and it's HUGE. To give you an idea the blue area behind the stars is the size of a basketball court. Each star is the size of a king size bed, and you could drive a bus up each stripe. They repainted it about a year ago and it took over 700 gallons and almost a year to paint! 

This is one of the pads they launch space shuttles off. We're hoping to get to see one take off in August! We'll keep our distance though. Within 400' the heat of the take off will kill you and within 800' the sound will kill you! They pour 300,000 gallons of water on the pad during take off to help muffle the sound. Crazy. 

I won't bore you with anymore details but you should come visit us and we'll take you! We'll even get you $10 off your admission (perks of being apart of the Commander's Club!)

We had a really fun time and can't wait until our next visit.

I heart my crockpot

I fell in love with my crockpot when I got married. We make dinner in it at least once a week so when we moved and there wasn't one here I was distressed. Thankfully we found one at walmart for $15 and got it. Best purchase yet. Now that we're here I have a new motto: If it can be made in the crockpot, I'm going to try it. Anything to save me from turning on my oven in this kind of heat is a serious life saver. There are a few baked goods we miss though..bread being one of them. I have a SUPER easy no-fail bread in one hour recipe I make all the time at home (thanks to my sister Jeniece for sharing). Well, we move here without a bread pan and it's 90+ degrees and things were looking grim. Cue pintrist. That place has so many good ideas (like these crockpot "baked" potatoes) That's where I saw crockpot bread. I was a little hesitant, but like I said before if it can be made in the crockpot and I don't have to use my oven, I'm going to try it. I took ideas from these websites and I ran with it. :
http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2012/05/29/crock-pot-bread-baking-fast-bread-in-a-slow-cooker (the idea)
http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2010/02/09/back-to-basics-tips-and-techniques-to-create-a-great-loaf-in-5-minutes-a-day (the recipe..but I halved it)

Here's how I worked it...
1 1/2 cups of warm water
1 1/2 teaspoons of yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
3 1/4 cups of flour

Mix all the ingredients above with a wooden spoon (remember, we're kitchenaid and bosch-less) and let it rise for 2 hours room temp. After it's risen, add flour to your counter (be generous, it's a sticky dough) and form a loaf. Then I sprayed some pam in my crock, floured it (or use parchment paper), and tossed in the dough. Turned it on hi and let it do it's thing. It took about 2 hours and the top still wasn't crusty (or brown) so I took the almost-done loaf out, flipped it over, and let the top cook for another 30. This bread was pretty forgiving. I kept checking it and poking it throughout the process and it still turned out great. The top never did brown, but that's just the way it is and I'm not going to complain. The results were delish. This recipe is half of the original. I only wanted to make one loaf, however, you can mix up the full recipe and stick the rest of the dough in the fridge for another day and it works just fine. Just put the dough right in the crockpot from the fridge.

Fresh Squeezed

Some of you may not know that we're actually living on the Deseret Cattle and Citrus Ranch. 

While Keith's internship has nothing to do with the citrus side of things, I was hoping we could still reap the benefits of it. Much to our dismay when we got here we had missed the season picking by a week. They leave a row of orange trees for the employees but being the newbies we didn't know about it until it was too late! I was bummed when I found out. Dreams of juicy oranges and fresh squeezed OJ went out the window...

But, not all hope was lost! There's couple that lives two cowboy houses down from us who are also doing internships. He is doing an accounting internship in the office while she's doing the citrus one. She told us how she'd grab handfuls of the missed oranges while she was working and was kind enough to pick us some! Somehow free oranges made this humidity a little more worth surviving.

Come to find out, the ranch grows mostly juice oranges. They're certainly not known for their good looks and if you try to peel it you're sure to get more on you than in you..but the juice! YUM.

It only took about 5 oranges to get two full glasses of the sweet stuff. So good.

 

Our Florida Home

Welcome to our new home in Florida!

Here's a little tour of our abode. We live in what the ranch calls the Cowboy Houses. There are four of them. It's a shame I didn't take any before pictures but these afters show you we've made some lemonade out of our lemons. A few bottles of bleach later, and here you have it...

Welcome home.

The Kitchen

Our place came "furnished" (one lid-less pot and 1 sharp knife kind of 'furnished'). One thing they didn't forget is the plates! There's no ranch home complete without cow plates.

Our sitting "room"

We're very happy we have our own washer and dryer. And A/C.

Through that door is the bathroom. It's currently out of commission but I'll spare you the details of our septic-tank woes.

Don't get too excited about the TV. It doesn't work.. But the A/C is bliss. Our window is also the home of a few small green tree frogs. They keep us up at all hours of the night and sometimes join us in our room. Keith caught and released one yesterday but his buddy was lonely last night and we heard him all. night. long. One of us was grateful for some ear plugs.... Next time, we'll pack two pair.

The view from our front door.

And what kind of welcome to Florida would be gator-less? We were walking out the front door when our neighbors called us over. Under their car a 2.5' baby gator who found some shade

While it's taken a little adjusting I think we're getting along just fine. Keith has been enjoying his work but comes home pretty tired. He spends a good portion of his time on the saddle moving cattle. I'm trying to find things to keep me busy like cleaning, and re-cleaning everything. I'm grateful for netflix, Kaisha's kindle (thanks!!!), indexing, and a few craft projects that keep me busy. We're glad we've finally settled in. I'm sure we won't have any shortage of memories made here!