Canada Curling A New Experience!

Since the Winter Olympics are over, Keith and I have had a major curling withdraw! That is one of our favorite sports to watch in the Olympics and the American sibling duo had us rooting for them from the start. Keith even has future plans to be on the Olympic team eventually. He claims, due to age, it is one of the only sports he has a chance to compete in. I think there is a little more too it then just pushing a rock down the ice and knowing how to sweep. After our trip to the Canadian Under 18 curling championship, Keith might think there is more to it too. It was intense! And cold! Very cold! If you are ever planning on going to any curling match , make sure you dress warm, like Parka and blanket warm! Thankfully we still had blankets and heavy jackets in the car from winter.  Anyway, curling.... the Lane was way bigger then I thought! Getting a smooth, 44 pound rock down 150 feet takes strength. Getting that rock to slide that length and turn at just the right moment takes skill. Knowing how and when to sweep vigorously or not also takes skill! (The sweeping part might be the part Keith needs practice on! So anytime you want, Keith, my kitchen is available for practice!) It amazed me that just a little push could go so far!

Did you know that, before a match, they smooth the ice with a mini Zamboni, then they sprinkle water on the ice to create small bubbles that help reduce friction. Then the whole point of the sweeping is to heat up those bubbles just enough to melt it a tad, so the rock will glide over them very smooth. When they sweep hard, the more heat is produced and the more speed the rock will glide with. The less they sweep it will slow the rock down.  Interesting right?!?

It was very hard not to get caught up in the excitement of the game. For one, yelling and cheering kept you warm and kept your teeth from chattering. But this was the under 18 Championships, all the parents and fans knew these kids. All the horns, moose calls, and cow bells just added to the excitement. We were adopted into the Alberta cheering section, mainly because that is where we could find seats. Our family cheered loud for kids we didn't even know, but we now know their parents, so cheering it was! Go Alberta! We apparently became their good luck charms, because they asked if we would come to all the matches. Fun stuff! 

It was fun to learn a new game and a new to us culture. It also helped us get a fix on our Curling withdraw! Here are some pictures of our day!

Easter 2018

"Tradition".. "Tradition" .... I feel like i must sing the song from Fiddler on the Roof when I talk about tradition.

Normally Easter at my family's would be full of tradition. We would go to church together with family and then we would head to my Meema's house for lunch. She would have a huge spread, enough to feed an army. Ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, deviled eggs(that my cousins and I would count, double count to make sure everyone got 2, any extras would be swallowed... instantly) there would be coconut cream pie and of course Jello salad.... My favorite jello salad. The jello salad that I asked her to make as my wedding cake (she didn't think that was a good idea so we had normal cake) The jello salad that cousins, uncles and aunts and I all would fight over, some, and I won't mention names would attempt to even hide it!....But that was till I moved to Alaska. When I would come to Texas for visits, I would call Meema and ask her to make Jello salad.... Being her favorite (shhhh don't tell anyone) she would secretly make a bowl of jello salad just for me. After  lunch and everyone left, she would say " Your jello is hiding in the back of the fridge" Yes! Score! My Meema was the best! After lunch we would have a Easter egg hunt. I always remember these as being scorching hot egg hunts. If we used raw eggs, they may cook before being found, Hot... But hey that's South Texas for you!  What would Easter be like with no burning, steaming, sweaty, fun right? Tradition! That's what we would have done.

This year there was no tradition. Many times, I feel a pain in my heart because there isn't. Mostly because I feel like my boys miss it. But they don't know any of those traditions.  I just don't like people to feel lonely. Kind of like at Christmas, when I drive by homes where I don't see tree lights in the window or no wreath on the door. It saddens me a bit. Holidays are hard when you live far far from family. I should be used to it, I've done it my whole life. But it never gets easier! EVER! So like most years, we make a wonderful holiday great anyways! When a holiday comes around, Keith and I tend to listen for other people that have no family to share with, no traditions to keep, and invite them to join us.

So this year may not have been traditional by any standard. It wasn't warm with summer dresses and bonnets. It was chilly! We wore coats and isolated socks inside my shoes. But the sun came out and was shining off the ice and snow with great brilliance. There was lots of food, fun and fellowship with dear friends, who also missed their family.  We had BBQ Pulled Pork, hot rolls, broccoli casserole, deviled eggs and Jello salad(Some traditions must remain because they are so tasty). There was banana pudding and I made a new recipe for Maple Cream Pie for dessert. My boys didn't get a real egg hunt but all the kids made their own scavenger hunt and it was quite good and comical with all their clues. We learned a new game that was extremely addictive, except part of it was a version of poker, and I am the worst Poker face person ever.... I just smile and grin. maybe I need sunglasses like the pros.

We did miss seeing our families but I am glad we could enjoy time with close friends and relax together. Our Easter was BLESSED!!! Tradition or not, we got to celebrate Jesus defeating death. Death lost the battle, lost the sting and Jesus arose! Hallelujah! I hope your Easter was blessed as well! Here are our family pictures of Easter 2018.

 Ramos Tribe 2018

Keith, Tabitha, Kaden(10) Isaiah (7) & Luke (2 Happy Birthday)

2018 Ramos Tribe Maple Makers

After a month and a half of continuous Maple sap harvesting, boiling down sap to the amber gold syrup, jarring syrup and making pancakes to test syrup, our season has come to a close. I am so glad Maple season is only about one month a year or I would probably go insane!  Keith built me my awesome evaporator that boiled down  about 4 times fast then the original turkey fryer. My arms are super strong from  hauling and chopping wood for the fires, does that count as a workout? If we go by the way my muscles feel then the answer is YES! Syrup making was fun, challenging and on many days down right annoying. Snow storms threw off my boiling schedule and then many days I was busying playing catch up.

Last year we had 12 taps and boiled over a turkey fryer. We bought our house in the fall when there were no leaves on the trees so last year was a guessing game of which trees were maple.  This last fall, before leaves fell, we were smart and went and painted our maple trees with a dab of paint so we would know which were maple. Smart huh? So now we have about 40 trees we can tap and most of those can be double tapped because of the size. This year we had 24 taps. Over the 5 weeks of the season, we collected 433 gallons of sap. With a ratio of about 40-1, we boiled down to about 10.8 GALLONS of syrup. yes GALLONS!!!!!

I am so pleased with the results and now that we are done, I can breathe a sigh of relief and be thankful for that hard work. Keith and I do love attempting to grow our own food to a point. We garden and harvest veggies, meat(if possible) fish, berries and anything else we find. I wouldn't say we are fully living off the land, since we don't raise chickens for eggs or anything like that but we mostly don't do that because we also like to travel, but it is nice to do what we can.  It will be nice to use all the maple for sugar instead of having to buy as much sugar, and it is healthy and about as organic as you can get. At least I tell myself that. I have found a hundred recipes for maple things, if you have any pass them my way. So far our favorite recipes have been Maple Pecan Pork chops, Maple Cream pie and crepes with maple.

 Last Batch

 Ramos Tribe Maple Syrup- Our label. I love Baobab Trees and I carved this stamp years ago in Galena. Keith used it to make a label. I love it! Bringing our African to Maine! 

Maple Sunday Road Trip

 Every year in Maine, on the 4th Sunday of March, All the Maple Sugar Houses open up to the public. It is a great way to see different techniques, methods, and sizes of sugar houses. This year we invited our Sunday School class to join the road trip. 2 families took us up on the offer and it was so much fun! We packed lunches and headed out after church. We all went to 3 Sugar houses and then our family went to one more that was a bit farther away.  It was a beautiful, sunshiny day and warmer then recent days.  The stops we took had so many samples of Maple products to try. Maple ice cream, maple cotton candy, maple bars, cookies, coffee, maple baked beans, maple cream on crackers, maple muffins, so much more. We had so much fun and learned a lot to add to our Maple making. We had so much fun we missed some pictures at Maxwell's. I love exploring around us and love taking friends with us! I must confess, i did have a bit of envy on many of these cool machines! Keith and I were told many times "Yep we just started with 10 taps and worked our way up" 10 taps one year over a turkey fryer, 20 the next over a homemade evaporator, 500 the next..... I see where this is going.... Not sure I'm up for 500 taps but I sure do enjoy having an abundance supply of syrup!

 Here is the group on our last stop Maine-Lee

 Chandlers is the biggest producer that we went to, and I mean it as huge.

 So shiny and sweet in their building

 Maine-Lee

 Samples

 Jeremy photo bombed me

Game Wardens Dinner

One evening we got to go to a wonderful dinner at the Gun Club up in Princeton. the food was fantastic and we got to enjoy the time with some of Maine's great Game Wardens. A few of them were on the show North Wood Law, which you know me, made me giddy! I didn't get their autographs but I did get the boys pictures with a few and I get to add them to my list of "famous" people I have met. They were all great and some gave some great stories. It was a wonderful evening to get to know the local Law enforcement that help around here!

The guy standing right next to Isaiah was the K-9 Unit on the show. 

The other guys appeared in other episodes.

A Good Reason to Eat Pie

I'm sure I have posted about our Pie day quite a few times. Every year this day is much anticipated in our family. And the older my boys get and the more advanced in math they get, the more excited they get. Who wouldn't you get to eat pie! 3.14 is a wonderful number and we sure love when it falls on the calendar. For the last 2 years, our Pi day have been interrupted by huge snow storms. Schools were shut down and people stayed home. Keith even got to stay home, which was fun when he got to help make pies for dinner. We have friends that live just down the street so they braved the weather, or I should say their driveway to come over. And that is no small feat... trust me. its steep and when covered with ice, it could be a training hill for the next Winter Bobsled events! But they made it and we had a lovely variety of delicious pies. Brittany made amazing Chicken Pot pie and a berry pie, while I made our traditional Tomato pie, along with blueberry and a Apple pie. All were amazing and it was a great night to enjoy pie and dream of spring coming soon?..... we were hopeful!

 Deliciousness!

Not Just Another Snowman

A few weeks ago now, we had a big snowstorm that dump a lot of heavy sticky snow on us! While all schools had off, home-school did not, much to the kids dismay! But after getting school done in a flash we all headed out to play in the perfect snowball weather.  Since this was like our 4th snowman this year we decided to be different. We created a awesome BB-8 snowman. Using Food color in water in a ketchup type bottle worked great!  Luke even helped and at night would yell out the window "Night Night BB!" But BB-8 lasted about 3 days till we were hammered again with a snow storm and he was buried but he was fun while he lasted. 

Ramos Tribe Maple Sappers

Since we have double the amount of maple trees tapped this year, using our turkey fryer to boil down was taking to long. So we looked for a evaporator to buy. They aren’t cheap! So we watched all the YouTube videos on building our own and Last night my sweet hubby, built me a maple syrup evaporator. Yep, Keith is proving to me that he is quite handy with power tools. I think I’ll keep him. Hahaha. Our friend Clayton came and helped Keith with the project. It went rather smooth and it turned out great! I’m so excited! This morning I finished off the project by filling it with sand and setting the bricks and wood rack all together. I couldn’t have Keith do the WHOLE project with out my help. Today was a boiling day before our next big snowstorm arrives. I got about 40 gallons boiled compared to my usual 10 to 15 with the turkey fryer. It was a learning curve of placement of fire, keeping the heat and keeping it boiled. I smell like smoke and I’m tired but man I love this evaporator! Having fun living off the land I have!

 

 

 Working on the chimney

 Looking good

I finished off the inside the next morning. 

I  put bricks on the walls sand in the floor and then a log grate.