"The deep breath before the plunge...."

First of all we both apologize for the long break between posts. A lot has happened so we'll catch you up. 

    We got our first day off last Monday! As soon as we found out on Sunday night we took off for Beaver to enjoy our day with the Stephenson's. We spent the day appreciating Memorial Day as we went to different activities and events in Beaver. It was nice to get away for a while. Family just makes life great!

    So at Candi's we decided to weigh ourselves.... we thought we'd loose weight on this job.... HAHAHAHAHAHA Mama Dawn makes way too much goodness for that. We may have gained a bit... We'll be attempting to work it off. They just started doing Zumba twice a week so that'll be Nykele's outlet. We have also been sharing our meal plates. We went from barely eating at school to three FULL meals a day, with desserts after Lunch and Dinner. 

Adam

I am now the official breakfast cook for the Rockin' R Ranch.  It means early mornings but it also has it's perks,  I get every other Monday off and I get off at three the other days.  Which means I get a lot of time to play on my Forge! :)  I have successfully made a few strikers (flint and steel fire strikers) and I'm almost finished with a set of tongs.  And I managed to get a second degree burn on my wrist... I decided it was a good idea to comb the coals while the billows were running... not such a good idea.... but it's healing and I'll be back to the anvil tomorrow. :) The only other super exciting thing that happened was that I helped fix a bridge that washed out last year. Simple rope bridge with concrete anchors, I won't get into the details of what the problems were... : )  but it was fun to analyze and execute.  

Nykele

      Man so much to go through. First of all I almost became the front desk person for the ranch... for the whole summer... : /  I said yes at first but then after a day on the job reconsidered. I didn't come to a ranch to be behind a desk all day. I am now back in the kitchen. Starting this week I'll be switching every other day with our new prep cook.  Did I mention our head cook quit? .... :D  yeye! I mean... : /   He and I didn't get a long very well. Now we have our beautiful Mama Dawn as the head of the kitchen. She is a doll! She teaches us rather than demands of us. As previously stated she was our baker or, as we say, pastry magician, now she has the full load. I am doing a lot more than dishes now because we have an extra set of hands in the kitchen each day to do the main brunt work of the dishes. It has been nice to get my hands on the bulk of the food not just the veggies. I am definitely perfecting my cutting skills and I've gotten good about keeping the tears away while cutting the onions. Did you know if you wet your knife down in cold water then chop it somehow stifles the fumes that cause you to cry? and then re-wet as you go along. :) Learned that in Meal Management woo. So I'm loving being in the kitchen now, I'm actually using the skills that I learned in my foods classes, of which I thought I would only use in my own home. Thank you FCS (family & consumer sciences)! Kitchen days can go long, I'm in the kitchen sometimes as early as six and in there until closing after dinner, around nine... ya count that up = 15 hour days! Dawn makes sure to let us have breaks to take a sit. I am enjoying the kitchen a lot more than I thought I would.

      On my days out of the kitchen I either do house keeping, random work projects, or activities. Break down of time we are supposed to spend on cleaning a room -> 5 minutes in the bathroom, 3 minutes making one bed (usually two in a room), then 4 minutes with the rest vacuuming, dusting, and placing towels -to a total of 15 minutes per room. Eeek! Not quite there yet. Bathroom I've got down to 6 minutes, bed... ha about 6 minutes, takes forever on your own and making everything crisp. And I haven't timed the rest. But luckily I've been in the kitchen for our last few big house keeping days. 


      This next week is going to be insane! Summer has officially started and with that in roll the family reunions and youth conferences. This week we have one of each, 109 guests from Monday till Thursday! And here we take the plunge! Our manager said that it'll be this heavy until August, we're ready for the crazy!
      Our new plan for our blog is to make our posts every Sunday, instead of taking our lovely long naps we have been enjoying. Daily blogs seemed to be a bit of a lofty goal with our long days. 
Well we love you all! You all being our moms that like to look at our blog, maybe there are a few more friends out there too :)