Winter Wonderland

Happy Thanksgiving 2008!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Chloe has a wonderful Kindergarten teacher this year. They make all kinds of really neat stuff for the holidays. You can see her here in an original, paper bag crafted indian vest with her matching custom head dress and period necklace. She was very proud of her fashion designs. I'd never seen a

grocery bag vest before....I thought it was brilliant!

We spent Thanksgiving day this year at Colin's parent's house. I feel so spoiled going over there.......Cherrie and Jaime cooked pretty much all the "real" food.....and did an excellent job by the way. Although, in my opinion, Cherrie needs to break out her "special" homemade pickles a little earlier in the meal so we have room to still eat them. Everything was so yummy! My only assignment was to bake the pies.....it is the one part of the meal I feel confident about doing!

And, thanks to Cherrie's fancy pie crust cutter

(it was a "just because I like you" gift...hee, hee)

I made a really pretty apple pie this year.
It was a really nice Thanksgiving spent with

family we love (although we were missing two

of our four rug rats), and it was so great to have

Colin home for four days. It's been pretty hard

on him and all of us having him away during the week. However, his job is only one of the things we have to be VERY thankful for this year.

GOD BLESS,

THE END.

My Babies!

Oops Simba!

Well Simba discovered the new fall arrangement I put together the other day while trying not to have an anxiety attack at JoAnn's Fabric Store. All the Fall stuff was some ridiculous 65% off or something like that....and of course, being my favorite time of year, I couldn't resist atleast a few "extras". Simba, in his ongoing quest to reach the "high" ground to avoid capture and certainly a torturous fate at the hands (paws) of the local wild life, discovered the musicality of the little round handles on each side of the bucket. Completely entranced by his newly found discovery he was totally unaware of the dangerous reaction he was tempting with each clank of the handle. No sooner had I returned with the camera to capture his brilliant seven toed instrumentation when his luck ran out......I pressed the button hoping to capture my talented feline and instead I managed to capture the panic and fear Simba felt all hell broke loose. He barely escaped a crushing injury to his pride as he scrambled to safety. I am happy to report all is well and no animals were harmed in the making of this picture!

Halloween'08

Halloween Day........

Colin made it home just in time from Benton City to grab a few zzzz's and wake up to a drizzly, depressing, yet somehow appropriate, Halloween day. We started our day off by dressing the girls in their finest of black clothes and shuttling them off to school. Colin and I then treated ourselves to a nice big breakfast of cinnamon roll french toast at Elmer's.....which, by the way, turns out to be a fabulous combination!! Chloe returned at 11:30 and after a Halloween "kitty cat" peanut butter and jelly sandwich we made orange cupcakes with bats and spiders and all that scary stuff on top. Actually the cupcake project took up all afternoon and there were still pumpkins to be carved and pizza to be made. Colin helped the girls get started on the pumpkins while I finished off the green eyes on the cupcakes.....I joined in the pumpkin slaughter about the time we discovered the power tools. We ended up with a path of hole-y pumpkins this year leading to the front door. I goofed up by not taking any "post-slaughter" pictures though but it looked really cool.....kind of "Martha-ish". Then we scrambled to light the candles, make pizza, scarf down pizza, throw some costumes on, go trick or treating, eat some candy, watch a scary movie, and drag ourselves to bed....Chloe was smart and just passed out in the recliner! I wouldn't have changed a thing. We wished, however, Courtney and Kyle could have been here too. Kyle spent the night with a friend in Newberg and went trick-or-treating. Courtney had to cheer at a football game against Tigard. Turns out they won their game and the win gave them a first place seat for the play offs. Go Tualitan!