McAlister Matters

It was a week packed with food preserving. Our garden has been in full swing with peppers, peaches, apples, cucumbers, beans and tomatoes. We made peach jam for the first time and it came out really sweet. We also made our first apple pie from our little apple tree! Saturday's product In one week we did:  7 batches of peach jam,  2 batches of jalapeno peach jam,  1 batch of lime pickles,  1 batch of pickled peppers,  a double batch of tomato sauce with meatballs, and 1 apple pie Of course we had little helpers ;)

It's grape season again and we are just getting started with our new steam juicer. So far so good! And we got a new helper this year for picking.

It was too perfect a day to pass up another bike ride. Sarah, Kahlan and I set out on the Legacy trail again. It was sunny and cool out. Kahlan sported her pink shades.

After four years, Sarah and I decided it was time to conquer Mt. Timpanogos again. It was a tough hike but I think we did pretty good. The weather was perfect and we had most of the trail to ourselves with the exception of some mountain goats.

We went to the Days of '47 parade in Salt Lake City for the 24th of July. It was a fun event and Kahlan loved dancing to the bands.

Kahlan has become our little helper. She likes to help fold cloths, vacuum, garden and do dishes. We picked some peas from the garden this week and she helped de-pod the peas. She's going to be asking for an allowance pretty soon I'm sure. :)

It was a relatively cool Saturday for July here so we went for another bike ride on the legacy trail. There were surprisingly few people on the trail and we had a good ride pulling Kahlan along. Here are some recent pics...

We've moved our family blog to Blogger ! I've spent the last few days migrating it over from our self-hosted WordPress site. Why? Security WordPress sites have lots of vulnerabilities if you are not super careful. Our site had been hacked! Ease of maintenance We don't need to have a dedicated up-to-date server running all the time. Speed Our internet service isn't designed to host content so our site was really slow. Google has amazing bandwidth. Free Blogger is completely free and has no ads. You get up to 15 gigs of space which is quite generous and will likely grow in the coming years. Please bookmark our new site and enjoy!

Sarah's family put on an Easter egg hunt for the kids yesterday. Kahlan had fun outside finding eggs with her cousins. She also found many rocks and dandelions. :)

We went on our first bike ride of the year today. We took Kahlan out to the Legacy trail which is just a few miles from our house. It was a gorgeous day. Kahlan saw horses, goats and a cow. We rode through several swampy areas with thousands of croaking frogs. Kahlan was mostly interested in collecting rocks.

Sarah and I have been having more fun with Blender. For our latest projects we did some architectural modeling. We made short videos to show off our work with music! Sarah created a sweet castle tower with a spiral staircase. Check it out!  I modeled the naive of a cathedral. I took advantage of a lot of symmetry. I think it's a good start.

We've been excited for Christmas this year with Kahlan! Sarah and I made some Christmas images using Blender. Merry Christmas Everyone! Sarah's Christmas Penguin Ryan's Nativity Scene

Sarah and I completed our 3rd solo projects for our Blender course. We had to made an exploded view animation of some object made of several parts. Sarah chose to model a roller blade. I recreated my childhood skateboard. As always it was a lot of fun and I think we both learned a lot.

We had a fun trip to California for Thanksgiving! Here are some recent pictures of Kahlan.  

We took Kahlan to the zoo today. It was a little chilly going in November but we had fun with Kahlan. She got excited seeing the animals especially the lions, tigers and peacocks.

Tinker Bell Kahlan's Tinker Bell costume. Sarah and I carved 3D pumpkins last night using Blender. It was not as messy as carving real pumpkins but still lots of fun! The scary results:

Sarah and I have completed our second projects for our Blender online course. We had fun making our own robots! Here are some resulting images: Here is Sarah's awesome 'companion' robot: Here is my 'farmer' robot:

Sarah and I have been taking a free online course to learn how to make 3D art in Blender . It's been a LOT of fun. Here are the finished products of our first solo projects. We were supposed to make some kind of jewelry. Sarah made this cool ring. I made this celtic crown.