Halloween!

Hi, kids!

Here in the U.S we celebrate every October 31 an event called Halloween. I'm not sure all the history to it, and it's probably a dark history that probably isn't kid-friendly, but nowadays what it means is we get to walk door to door and ask for candy. We call it trick-or-treating. We usually end up with a whole back full of chocolate and other candies.

The kids obligation is to dress up in a costume. You can be scary or sweet. As you can see, me and my brother chose scary costumes.

I was a skeleton:

My brother Andrew was a werewolf:

Scary! (Don't) Come and Take It (my candy)!

Come and Take It flag

Hi, kids!

My family and I drove out to Wimberley yesterday to see their Market Days. Once a month they gather hundreds of vendors who sell all sorts of neat stuff. We picked up some cool stuff. I finally picked up a Come and Take It flag.

Here I am in my backyard with Andrew and a couple of neighbor friends. I think I described the story to the flag before. It refers to the Texas fight for independence from Mexico in the early 1800s. There is a town nearby Austin called Gonzalez where there was a Mexican army outpost, and included in part of the armory was a single cannon. Well the Texican (what they called the Texans back then) townspeople rebelled against the Mexican army, and actually dared the Mexican army to try to take back the town and it's cannon. The Texicans famously and defiantly said, "Come and Take It"!

Texas went on to successfully win its independence, and for a few years in the 1830s was actually an independent republic. Texas later joined the United States and in 1845 became the 28th U.S. state. There is still fierce price in the independence of Texas!

Tarantula!

Hi, kids --

Yesterday we were getting ready to go out on errands. My brother Andrew went out the front door, and a moment later came back inside, ominously saying, "you've got to see this!" We didn't know what to expect. Guess what it was?

A tarantula at our garage door!

My dad got out my hockey stick, and we picked it up and tossed over the backyard fence. Good riddance!

You can come and take that tarantula!

Great ribs & Peri Peri chicken

Hi, kids!

How was your weekend? Mine was pretty much a fun time. We had a party in our neighborhood on Friday night to celebrate a neighbor's birthday. There was a jumping castle and even Halloween movies. Basically we ran around the cul-de-sac with all our friends and exhausted ourselves!

Saturday my dad woke me and Andrew up real early. We had to leave for church at 6:30 am to help make breakfast for our All Pro Dad's event. It was great! I made some really crispy bacon again while my dad made the pancakes (with chocolate chips mixed in!). Pastor Ted organized some neat activities for us to do, focusing on putting together small bags stuffed with everyday supplies that we can give away to homeless people we meet here in Austin. That was pretty fun and a good learning lesson of finding ways to help out those not as fortunate as we are.

We got home from our All Pro Dad's breakfast and then turned out attention to preparing our barbecue. Some great friends were going to join us for supper! I had my neighbor Campbell come over to help me get the rub and ribs ready. Here we are prepping our supplies:

Campbell had never helped me before, so that was fun showing him how to get the ribs ready. He was a great help!

Then I had to go get my dad and get the charcoal and wood set for the grill. We waited for the grill to get good and hot, about 225 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the grill was ready for the ribs!

My dad kept an eye on the ribs for the afternoon while I went and ran around some more. After about six hours the ribs were ready to be pulled off the grill and eat! Here I am checking out the ribs. Notice my tiny grill. Tell me if you don't think me and my dad need to get a real pit about twice if not three times as big!

One of my longest friends, Marc, and his family came over for supper. Here we are appreciating the barbecue ready to eat! It was great inviting friends over to enjoy some of the most favorite barbecue I like to smoke.

We had those yummy ribs, and we also had some of my dad's favorite chicken, using that Peri Peri marinade recipe that he found while in Africa. The chicken turned out great too! We had so much for leftovers that Mom made a terrific soup with the chicken. I think she could be a restaurant chef with that soup. We'd call it: Smoked Peri Peri Chicken Tortilla soup. How does that sound? Come and Take it!

Coming into focus: weekend fun & bbq plans!

Hi, kids!

I hope you all are doing great! My week is going good. It's been a good few days at school, and the weather here in Texas is perfect. It's so nice we can keep playing outside after school until Mom calls us in for supper, and then again for night after that.

I think we're going to have a real fun weekend. Our neighborhood is planning a party on Friday night, and that's always so much fun running around with all my neighbor friends. Then on Saturday it looks to be full of even more fun. First, we have another All Pro Dad's breakfast set for Saturday morning at church, and I'll plan to help my dad cook up some pancakes and bacon just like last time. Then we're going to go to a church friend's ranch to gather some wood. We're almost out of firewood at home, and what with the weather cooling off and needing wood for our barbecue, my dad figured we better go get some soon.

Finally on Saturday we aim to have some friends come over for supper. It'll be a surprise what we'll cook for them, but I already have lots of bbq in mind. My dad has this tasty marinade recipe for chicken that he picked up during one of his trips to Africa. It's called peri-peri and it comes from a country in Africa called Mozambique. It's a really tangy and juicy marinade and I can't wait to barbecue some chicken with that. I also want to bbq some ribs again. They turned out great last time and I really want my friends to try that. I'd like to try to barbecue a brisket, but the last time I tried that with my dad, the brisket didn't turn out so good. It was pretty dried up. My mom says we need to try barbecuing a brisket again just for ourselves, making sure we can smoke it right, before we serve another not-so-tasty one to friends.

Ok friends have a great couple of coming days at school and I'll see you again this weekend!

Your friend,

--James

Huge rain in Austin!

Hi, kids --

We got so much rain this weekend in Austin that we had to come back from camping a night early. At least we stayed dry last night. It rained hard all night long!

We got up this morning to go to church and on the drive we passed by Slaughter creek in our neighborhood. We pulled the car over to check out the creek because the rain was collecting so much and powerfully it was almost scary. We had never seen the creek this flooded:

BBQ pit dreamin'

Hi, kids:

You've seen some pictures of my barbecue pit at home. It's not really a real pit, but instead a small grill that if we squeeze the meat around close enough, we are able to smoke up some barbecue. So my dad and I have been looking around to get a real barbecue pit -- something that has a lot of space to maneuver the meat, and something that has a smoker box attached to it. With the smoke box you can put your charcoal and wood separate from your meat, and it really helps to cook the meat away from the flame (so you don't burn it or overcook it) and more consistently.

We were driving through the town of Luling to get to our boy scouts camp, and we came across this barbecue pit for sale. There was a sign listing it for sale for $2,100 or best offer. It sure looked like a great pit -- it had two sections for meat, the offset smoker box, and a tall smokestack to draw the smoke through the pit. We're still thinking about it. My dad and I were only worried about Mom's reaction to spending that much money on a bbq pit!

You can see how great it looks! You could fit a whole pig into it!