Closet Clean Out

We went shopping on Thanksgiving and on Friday I spent the morning going through our closet and getting rid of clothes I don't wear. I've kept them because they fit, but I haven't worn them in 2+ years. I can't believe how much I got rid of! The white bag in the back is stuffed full and the extra pile on the floor got a little bigger.It felt good to purge the clothes and it'll help with tax write offs when we donate them to Goodwill.

Christmas Tree Farm

Saturday we went Christmas tree shopping with Bonnie and the kids. It was a fun day, but I forgot how much work it is....and I didn't do any of the manual labor :)GOAT!!! A llama llama with no red pajama:We ogled the precut trees, but most of them were $90. They were beautiful trees:I forgot to take marshmallows with us. Fired. HA, no pun intended.Time to net the tree:

I bought a few wreaths while we were there. After they make the wreaths they soak them in white goo that looks like milk:

They made a snowman wreath too; Bonnie suggested I put one on our front door:

After Doug cut some branches off and made a couple clean cuts on the bottom, the tree was up and ready to go. It was a really fun day.....TA-DAAA!!!!That is....until I got a text and a picture from Bonnie on Sunday morning - the picture was titled "Timber!"

I feel to bad! I can't believe it fell! She said it took 4 towels to clean up all the water. I have fired Doug and myself from tree stand duty!

Thanksgiving

We went to Kevin and Debbie's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Each family brought different items for dinner and I offered to make the turkey. I went over and over what I wanted to do with it, but I fell back on the same ol' thing. I put butter under the skin and smear it around and then salt, pepper and herb the top of the turkey. I'm a very big fan of the oven bags by Reynolds. They are so easy to use and help keep the turkey moist while browning the skin:Mmmmm fooooood:Then it was time to take the rest of the meat off the turkey. Doug's cousin, Lance, helped me and we ended up laughing pretty hard. As we were taking all the meat off the turkey and breaking it apart it started to look like a skull. Lance used his forearm as the lower jaw of our "wolf skull" and we were cracking ourselves up making roaring noises. Then we noticed another portion of the turkey looked like it could be the lower jaw. ****THIS IS A TURKEY SKELETON, NOT ADULT CONTENT**** I was laughing and saying we could turn the family into vegetarians if they were paying attention to us. Then Lance's daughter wanted to see what we were doing and we showed her the "roaring wolf skull". She made us laugh even harder when she said it looked like a pterodactyl. Yep, it's gross, but it was pretty funny.To end on a less disgusting and totally random note: Aren't fall leaves beautiful!!How was that for a total change of subject. LOL

We had a great Thanksgiving and even went shopping yesterday evening. Old Navy was open on turkey day, so we took advantage of it. It was actually pretty busy. I would have kept shopping if more stores were open. I bet more stores will be open on Thanksgiving next year. The outlet malls around our area started opening at 8pm and then a majority of the stores were open at midnight. I don't venture out on Black Friday because I avoid crowds, but it was nice to go shopping with Doug, Debbie, Bonnie and Paige yesterday.

Holiday Grocery Shopping

I try to avoid grocery stores right before a holiday. It's always a madhouse! I ended up at Safeway on Tuesday afternoon (to buy the Auto Zone guys some cookies) and it was pretty busy. I had to take a moment to get a picture of this cart because there were about 30 - 2 liter bottles of soda in one cart. I thought, "Holy crap!", but then I saw there was a total of 3 carts full of soda bottles. GEEZ, have a little soda!I swear I drive by ferris wheels all the time - there was one set up on my way back from the store:

Dead Smurf

My car broke down on Monday evening on my way to Toys R Us. I stopped in a parking lot to double check a map on my phone and the internet was taking a while, so I shut my car off for a couple minutes. When I tried to start it: Nothing.

I broke down right next door to an auto shop. I walked over to the shop...they wanted to charge me $50 to move my car to their shop (shoot, for $50 I would have pushed my car the 30 feet!!) and then $54 to diagnose the problem....$104 before they even fixed anything!!??

I knew it was just the battery or the alternator and I'm not willing to pay money where it isn't needed. The man at the shop told me Auto Zone was up the street, so I took a walk to the store. When I walked in I was greeted by Ron. I asked him about a battery jumper and he said it needed to be plugged in overnight, so I asked him how much a battery weighs (I know they're pretty heavy). He was concerned that I was by myself and that I was going to carry the heavy battery to my car and possibly get battery acid on my clothes too. I told him I was waiting for my husband and he would swap the batteries when he was done working. He told me their store was open until 10pm and we had plenty of time, so I didn’t need to carry the battery to my car. He suggested we wait until Doug was available to help and then even told me about the restaurants nearby; I teased about having time to help him stock shelves.

I left the store for a while, I figured I would walk down to Toys R Us. It was too cold and my ears were starting to hurt (my ears are sissy ears and they hurt when the air is cold or there's a wind), so I went back to ask if a jumper was available for me to walk back to my car. Ron gladly let me borrow their jumper (he told me not to shut my car off, so he could test my alternator). My car started without a problem using the jumper, I drove back to Auto Zone, Ron tested my alternator and Doug arrived at about the same time.

The staff that assisted us with the purchase was very helpful too! They made sure we had tools, gloves, brought out a flashlight and checked on us while we were changing the battery. When we were done they offered a sink to wash our hand as well. My night could have really sucked, but it didn't. Auto Zone's staff was great! I promised Ron I would bring them all cookies and I did and I wrote a letter to Auto Zone corporate to tell them about their great customer service.

I have a super amazing husband too. I know changing a battery isn't that big of a deal, but I can always count on Doug to help; he'll drop everything without giving a huff like I might.

When we got home I was so cold after being outside without a jacket for an hour, so I put on pajamas and then put on footed pajamas too. Doug laughed at me because I had 2 sets of pajamas on and then I curled under a blanket. Footed pajamas are AWESOME by the way :)Cars can be a realy pain sometimes, but I'm so thankful it was just a dead battery.

Greeting Card

I had to buy this card to give to someone. My work wife was the lucky recipient and she found it just as funny as I did :)

Why didn't I think of that!!???

Pre Thanksgiving Dinner

We had a fairly busy weekend. We went to watch UFC fights in honor of Brian; his friends are really funny (PS. UFC fighting is terrible!!). It was a great evening, but it made me sad that we didn't take advantage of the time we had while he was alive. I took a couple pictures with my phone, so maybe I'll post them later.

Then on Saturday, we went to my parent's house for dinner. My mom made a big dinner as usual. It ended up being a pre-Thanksgiving feast. Here's what was left of the ham we ate:And here are the critter pictures I took. I was so excited that I got pictures of the hummingbirds. You can even see it's tongue sticking out (when zoomed in) and I got a great picture of a bird with a berry and the buck that came down the hill to eat:

Time to Rearrange

It was time to re-pot some plants and rearrange others. I made a huge mess, but luckily I had a dollar store tablecloth, so it was easy to pick up the plastic and throw it all away. The 2 plants in the baskets are from Brian's passing and I'm going to try really hard to make them big and strong so we can keep them for a long time.The plant from the larger basket:I should have taken better pictures, oh well.



Our mandarin tree is a goner, but we haven't pulled it out of the ground yet. We noticed that the tree is sitting in a low spot in the middle of all the trees, so it probably drowned from watering all 4 trees. Poor tree. Sorry Karla, we killed the gift you gave us. The other 3 trees are doing great. That'll be a project for next Spring; we'll have to add dirt to even out that part of the yard and then get a new tree.

Dougie's Got Back

"I like big butts and I can not lie you other brothers can't deny that when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist and a round thing in your face, you get sprung.... baby's got back!" LOL

Yeah..., Doug doesn't have a big butt, BUT somehow he ripped the butt out of 2 pair of pants in one week.
One ripped while at home, but the other pair ripped while at work... out in public. Luckily the hole was small and low in the seam that he was able to keep working, but during the last part of his day it ripped further and it was noticeable. He thought it was pretty funny. He has lost about 10 pounds since his promotion and still somehow ripped his pants open. LOL

Toilets are Nasty

I was carrying my purse, a booklet and a box. I knew as soon as I put the box and booklet on top of the toilet paper roll holder that it wasn't going to end well. I tried really hard not to touch them, but I still bumped them. I felt them move and tried to push against them so they wouldn't fall into the toilet. They moved more so I threw my elbow back to hopefully deflect them from the toilet bowl. If they landed on the floor was still going to be disgusting in a public bathroom, but it's better than the toilet. The booklet hit the floor and the pen slid across the floor into the next stall and the box went into the toilet (my phone software upgrade came with a quick way to access the camera, so I had to take a picture): I have no idea how, but the box landed perfectly on the seat so it didn't fall in and wasn't even touching the water. WHEW!!!!! One centimeter farther back on the seat and it would have fallen in. GROSSSSSS.

Mailbox

Too bad we don't have a mailbox!! This one would be hysterical! I'm sure the HOA would just love this in our yard! LOL

Commuting is Fun

Nope, commuting is terrible. Sometimes I get some interesting pictures though. I sure love watching the sunrise or sunset.

One day I left work and saw this:Traffic is bad enough without adding an accident, but geez... a fire!?? My smart phone has a scanner application, so I was able to hear where the fire was and I heard what streets they were shutting down around the fire. It was pretty helpful to know what was going on before I got there, but it still took quite a while to get home on the surrounding streets.

Winterizing

It was time to winterize the backyard on Saturday. Doug was pulling weeds and checking on our trees: We put some ground cloth down over the existing cloth. This stuff is crappy. There are weeds and stuff growing underneath it and it's shredded in other areas. Lame. You can see green under it:

Time to cover the patio set:I don't know if you remember last winter, but cats were popping and peeing on our furniture. I read a website that mentioned cats don't like foil. I wrapped our chairs in foil, so hopefully if the cats come back they will hate the foil noise and feel and won't make our chairs their litter box.Time to clean and cover the barbecue; it was so gross:All clean and shiny:Okay winter, I think we're ready to go:

We finished just in time for rain to arrive on Saturday and Sunday.

Raid is Awesome

If you know me or have read our blog for a while, you probably know how scared of spiders I am and how much I love Raid. I even got some as a gift during my bridal shower at work. My brother-in-law, Andy, recently cracked some jokes about Raid and having kids. I said our kids would have to get used to it and learn to love it.

He sent me this picture on Saturday... Too funny!!! Poor SpiderMan! Shouldn't have been a spider!!!!!!! That's what you get! LOL