The Life and Times of the Watters Family

Snow

angels?

Sean and Caleb couldn’t be having more fun playing in the snow and being out of school!

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The Smartest Turkey, by Sean

One day there was a turkey. But not just any turkey, the smartest turkey in the world. One day before Thanksgiving he grew so plump and so beautiful everyone in the U.S.A. wanted to eat it. But the turkey did not know that quite yet. Until Thanksgiving when the men were hunting for him. But the turkey was smart so he dressed up like a Pilgrim boy. But when the men could not find the turkey they where very mad. All they wanted was to invite him to their Thanksgiving. But the turkey did not know that and he got scared and put on a disguise. When he found out he was sad for the men so he took off his disguise. They all had dinner together.

The End

By Sean Watters

Sean wrote this today after school. I am so proud of him! His new ambition is to be an author of children’s literature.

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Thanksgiving Recipes

Here’s a few of our family favorites:

Thanksgiving Turkey

1 Reyonld’s turkey size oven bag
1 tbs. flour
2 celery stalks, sliced
1 medium onion, sliced
12-24 lbs turkey, thawed

Preheat oven to 350˚F, shake flour in oven bag, place in roasting pan at least 2” deep. Spray outside of bag with a nonstick spray to reduce sticking.
After properly cleaning and drying turkey, add vegetables to oven bag, place turkey in bag on top of vegetables. Close oven bag. Cut 6, 1/2” slits in top of bag. Tuck ends of bag in pan.
Bake until meat thermometer reads 180ËšF (3-31/2 hours for a 20-24 lb turkey).

Sweet Potato Delight

3 C. mashed sweet potatoes
1 C. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 C. milk
1/2 C. butter

topping:
1 C. brown sugar
1/3 C. flour
1 C. chopped pecans
1/3 C. butter

Combine ingredients and pour into a casserole dish, top with pecan mixture. Bake at 350Ëš for 30 minutes.
Serves 6-8

Cranberry Sauce

1 C. sugar
1 C. water
2 C. fresh, whole cranberries

Bring sugar and water to boil until sugar is dissolved. Add cranberries and slowly boil until skins pop (3-4 minutes). yields 2 cups

Green Bean Casserole

1 can (10 3/4 oz.) cream of mushroom soup
1/2 C. milk
1 tsp. soy sauce
dash ground black pepper
4 cups cooked cut green beans
1 1/3 cups French’s® French Fried Onions

Mix soup, milk, soy, black pepper, beans and 2/3 cup onions in 1 1/2-qt. casserole.
Bake at 350°F. for 25 min. or until hot. Sprinkle with remaining onions. Bake 5 min.

Pumpkin Pie

3/4 C. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cloves

Mix in small bowl. In a large bowl combine the following ingredients.

2 eggs (lightly beaten)
1 3/4 C. pumpkin (15oz.)

Mix in other ingredients.

12 oz can evaporated milk (gradually add in)

Bake at 425Ëš for 15 minutes and 40-50 minutes at 350Ëš.

Apple Pie

5 -7 C. apples (sliced and peeled)
1 &1/2 C. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/3 C. flour

Pie Crust

3 C. flour
1 tsp. salt
1&1/3 C. butter Crisco
2/3 C. cold water

Sift flour and salt together. Add in butter Crisco until pea sized mixture. Add 1/3 C. cold water and continue to cut into mixture. Add additional water until consistency is moist but not sticky (add more flour if it gets sticky). Form 2 dough balls and pat with flour. Using 2 pieces of wax paper roll out both crusts until they are larger than your pie pan.

Gently add apples and apply small pats of butter to the top of the fruit. Place top crust on and flute edges. Using a fork, poke holes in the top crust. Cover edges of pie crust with foil while baking the pie. Place a cookie sheet below baking pie to avoid dripping.

Bake at 425Ëš for 50 minutes

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Cam’s New Blog

Just a quick heads up. I (Cam) launched a new blog, which I’m calling Cameron Avenue (you’ll see why when you get there) over at cameronwatters.com. It’s mostly focused around technology and consists largely of quotes/links to stuff other places. I’m looking to write something original around once a week, but none of it will be family-ish stuff. It’ll mostly be about the business of software and technology with some politics and religion thrown in if/when I run out of other stuff to say.

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Everything Old Is New Again

It’s incredible watching one’s kids grow up. I know this is a theme here lately, but it sure seems like it wasn’t long ago they were still chubby-cheeked toddlers, barely able to independently navigate terrain more treacherous than the living room floor.

Now, they’re full-fledged little people, with their own crazy ideas about how the world works. And now, they can read. This is a good, but scary thing. It’s a good thing because they can learn so many new things from books. It’s a scary thing because they can learn so many new things from books.

I was a voracious reader myself when I was young, and I learned about a whole host of things from books that I’m sure my parents would have preferred I didn’t including, among other things, vulgar vocabulary, semi-deviant sexual practices, methods of emotional and intellectual manipulation and detailed descriptions of drug use and associated lifestyles. Actually, that last one probably helped more than it hurt, as it basically caused me to be completely horrified by the consequences of illicit drug use, but I digress.

Of course, knowing the various things I learned from books, I can be vigilant as their reading tastes evolve. Fortunately, for now, the reading material they prefer is pretty tame. In fact, it’s been a nice little trip down memory lane as they’ve read (or had read to them) many of the books that I loved as a kid. We started last year with Where The Red Fern Grows, which we read to them. More recently, though, Sean has been reading the Value Tales. I’m sure they’re full of fictionalizations and white-washed accounts of historical events, but they’re a fun way to learn the basics about the lives of important historical figures. So far, I think he’s read about Columbus, Jackie Robinson, Will Rogers, Luis Pasteur, Orville & Wilbur Wright and Benjamin Franklin.

From my own childhood, I particularly remember the tales of Robinson and Pasteur. The only one I actually owned was the one about Pasteur; I think it was the one they gave out for free, hoping your parents would buy the rest. We didn’t buy the others, of course, so the others that I remember must’ve been from school. Fortunately, Betsy’s family had a sizable collection that managed to survive the years and is now available to our boys.

This past Saturday, because it was raining, and because Betsy had some projects of her own to work on, I took the boys to the library. While we were there, I stumbled across a series of books that I fell in love with around second or third grade — The Three Investigators. It’s a series of books in the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys tradition, but with younger pre/early-teen protagonists living in southern California. In hindsight, one of the things that probably lead me to prefer this over the Hardy Boys (which I also read extensively) was the fact that Jupiter Jones, the leader of the group, was a husky, precocious, well-spoken know-it-all that wasn’t intimidated by adults. Basically, me (or at least how I liked to think of myself).

We picked up a few of them and I’ve started reading the “first” of the three (it’s actually volume #2, but I couldn’t find volume #1). I’m amazed at how much of the story detail I still remember from 20 years ago.

I’m sure the boys will find their own pet books and stories as they continue to become better and better readers, but it sure is a ton of fun sharing with them the books that so amply fueled my imagination during the same time in my life.

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