Homemade Yogurt Experiment

I read on the internet the other day something about making yogurt at home. Since we have an abundance of free milk here at the ranch, I decided I would give it a try and I was surprisingly successful! It seemed a little intimidating as I was reading all of the directions, but it wasn't too bad. Basically you heat milk to 185 degrees, then you cool it down to 110, at which time you add some store bought yogurt for the live cultures and some nonfat dry milk to help it thicken. You pour it into your containers and then you have to keep it at 110 degrees for 4-6 hours. I put the containers in a cooler with water heated to 110 and just left it there when went over to a friend's house for a few hours. I checked it when we got back and added some more hot water, left it a few more hours and in 5 hours we had homemade plain yogurt. I wish I would have sweetened half of it with honey or something while it was still hot. I think that would have worked better than trying to sweeten the individual servings as you eat it. So far we've just used it in smoothies and flavored it with vanilla and had it with fruit. I'm hoping to try using it as a substitute for sour cream in some recipes and maybe using it as a dip with some seasonings in it. John is making fun of me by claiming that I am becoming Amish, but I thought it was fun.

Skiing!

We got to spend Christmas (or really the days following Christmas) with my family this year here in Montana. After spending all day in Missoula on Saturday waiting for flights to arrive, we got home and had "Christmas dinner" and opened presents. We went up to Whitefish to ski on Monday night and then skied Tuesday and Wednesday as well. That was the first time that we didn't have to drive home after skiing and it was great! It was so nice to just drive about 10 minutes to the house we were staying at and have a nice warm dinner waiting for us. We also played lots of Settlers of Catan which I loved!

Now we are back to school and back to the normal routine. Last weekend we found out that they were having free night skiing at Whitefish, so we took the youth group kids up. They had a great time. They are a fun group of kids to hang out with.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas....

We LOVE decorating for Christmas. We really enjoy having our house all warm and cozy and Christmasy this time of year. This year we got our Christmas lights hung outside, even though it was 9 degrees when we were doing it. I had to keep going inside to get my hands warmed up so that I could keep going.



We are even more excited this year about Christmas because we have family coming to visit. This will be the first time we've hosted Christmas in this apartment and only the second time my sisters and brothers-in-law have been out to visit us in Montana. We are going to Whitefish for a few days for some awesome skiing and we are all pumped about that. We have a cute little house rented in downtown Whitefish so that we can ski 2 or 3 days without having to drive back up there.

Christmas is a busy season here at the ranch. Sunday was the Christmas play which John and I fortunately did not have anything to with this year. No organizing a band, or playing Mary and Joseph- we just simply got to show up Sunday night and enjoy watching the show. The kids did a great job and had a fun time with it. We also have PH Christmas- when all of the staff go to all of the houses (6 this year) all on the same day, eat way too much food and watch the kids open their presents. That will be happening later this week, beginning at 7:30 am with breakfast and ending about 12 hours later with dinner. At some point we will be having a Christmas party at school, as well as a Christmas party with the youth group Sunday night, Caroling in the community on Wednesday, a staff Christmas party and Christmas Eve service at the church. Oh yeah, and another whole school Christmas party next week. After thinking about all of that, I'm kind of glad that my family isn't showing up until the 25th and 26th... Its going to be a busy and FUN few weeks.

Turkey Trot

We had a wonderful, much needed Thanksgiving break this year. It was great to have a 4 1/2 day weekend, and we were able to get a lot done and get caught up on some stuff. Thanksgiving morning, we went up to Polson with our friend Dave Moe who is a house dad at the ranch, and his daughter Katie and ran a 5K in some crazy dense fog. It was unbelievable how foggy it was because there was barely a cloud in the sky in St. Ignatius (about 40 minutes away). I was actually excited when I got up because it was about 47 degrees and clear skies, but when we got right outside of Polson it was like driving into a wall of fog. Anyway, the race was fun. There were lots of people we knew from the bike club running and it was fun to have friends from the ranch running with us. John finished in 20:30, somewhere around 5th or 6th place we think. There were probably over 100 participants. I finished in 25:45, which isn't great for me, but I was pretty happy considering I had basically stopped running in August until about 2 weeks ago. I am determined to do a better job training this winter.

John and Brande crossing the finish line- Brande almost caught him.

It was REALLY foggy!

Dave and Katie goofing off before the race.

The rest of Thanksgiving we spent hanging out at a couple of the houses. John played Wii and I played Monopoly with the kids. Friday we went shopping of course. We did get some Christmas presents, and we also got some great deals for stuff we needed, like a printer, new wireless mouse, and a coffee pot. Saturday we started putting up Christmas lights outside and decorating inside. We'll probably get a tree next weekend. Its been nice to relax and not have a ton of work to do all the time this weekend. Its a relief to know that Christmas break is only about 3 1/2 weeks away and those weeks usually fly by with all of the stuff going on.

Some Favorites from the Bison Range

The National Bison Range is one of our favorite places to go around here. Its about 20 minutes away and you almost always see lots of wildlife. I was just looking through pictures on the computer tonight and came across some of these pictures from various trips we've taken to the Bison Range.

Survival Mode

Lately things have just been incredibly busy around here and we have gone into survival mode. The end of the school quarter is always a really busy time (though not as busy as the end of the semester fortunately) and since our quarter ended today we've been busy finalizing grades and getting the dreaded book reports all graded. John is in the other room grading the last of his geography class assignments right now. I always look forward to the first week of a new quarter before there is any of this stuff to do, and then after about a week, book reports start being handed in and then there are papers to grade again and it goes on like that for the next 8 weeks. This time we have Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to interrupting the monotony of the school year. We are very excited that my family is coming to visit (and SKI!) at Christmas time, and John's parents are hopefully going to be here in a few weeks for Thanksgiving.

Last Wednesday night we were in charge of putting together the Harvest Party for our church again this year. We made caramel apples (ALL afternoon with some of the ranch girls) and spiced apple cider, and planned some fun activities in the gym. No bobbing for apples of course- we wouldn't want anyone to get the swine flu. :) It was fun and chaotic. The kids always have a good time. Its good to see all of them laughing and playing and just being kids. I didn't even take my camera, so I have no pictures. I haven't taken any pictures recently, so I don't have anything to share.

We are both hoping that the rest of the school year goes a little better than this first quarter did. The kids have not been doing very well in school, and at this rate, it looks like more than half of the students will be going to summer school. Not good! Usually first quarter is the best and then they start slacking after that, so maybe (hopefully!) they have started out slow, but they are going to finish strong. I guess we'll see. Anyway, we would appreciate your prayers for us, and especially for the kids and the rest of the staff here.

First Snow

It got cold here last week. We're not talking cold for October, like 40's, we're talking 14 degrees cold. It also snowed probably 4-5 inches and it stuck around for several days. I think we got the snow on Thursday night last week and it actually just melted today when it finally got above freezing and it rained all day. They're saying it is supposed to be 65 on Saturday so we are planning a big bike ride while we still can. I do love the winters here and really enjoy the snow, but I am definitely not ready for winter to come to stay yet.