Thanksgiving....only a month later!

Thanksgiving my wonderful family drove to Spokane to spend the weekend with us! Little did they know we would put them to work fixing sewing machines, cooking, and shopping!



Daddo catching up on some reading while not hard at work

Decorating the table...rocking the "no-makeup-because-I-was-busy-cooking" look

Mom hard at work...
Dad all ready to eat

The fixins

Nick keeping everyone entertained

Pie making the night before

taking a break on the couch!

The girls baking pies




Unfortunately Kyle was the photographer for the weekend, so we didn't end up with any pictures to document that he was there too! We had a wonderful time and were so glad we got to have our family here. Thanks for making the trip everyone!

Home Alone VII (I think there are at least that many of those movies!)

Nick went to Pasco for a day so I spent my night alone catching up on things like house cleaning and blogging! I discovered that I don't really cook for myself anymore...I spent the evening snacking on junk food and when I decided to finally eat something for real, I ended up opening a can of ravioli. Real nutritious, I know. Not only that, but I ate it straight from the can. No need to dirty another dish! Thank goodness for Nick being around on most days so I can make a decent meal! While looking through old pictures, I found this one of my lil bro, Gregory. He is on his mission in Atlanta, GA. Here's a tribute to you, Grego. What a hottie! :)

(I wish those retainers still fit!)

Saturday is a special day...

it's the day we get ready for Sunday!

And sometimes those things include cleaning guns and painting dressers! A few weeks ago we went out for breakfast with Nat and Kev, then the girls painted one of Deb's old dressers while the boys cleaned guns. It made for a fun and productive Saturday!

Nice view of our food storage in our messy garage!

Nick's sweet gun-cleaning skills in action...

!

Winterizing..... :-/

I am sure those of you who have been to our house will roll your eyes at how cheap we are, but in efforts to save some money on our heating bills this winter, we "winterized" our house. Our brilliant ideas included added weather stripping to our doors so that they are air and light tight, and covering our windows off with thick foam-board insulation. Oh and it's sealed off with the ever fashionable duct tape! As you can see, the results really add to the aesthetics of our home. Just kidding. Actually we put the blinds back up where we could, and I put up some curtains to hide the window in our room since the blinds wouldn't fit over the foam. So call us tight wads, but it is amazing how much warmer our house is without turning on the heaters. With the temperature dropping below zero this week, we have been using the heater more often. But here's to lower bills! We all could use some of those.....

Here's Nick with the finished product in our room...


He was pretty excited that he got to use one of his knives to cut the boards!


And here he is with the fabulous mess that dang foam makes ALL over the house! Those little styrofoam pieces float everywhere, and just fly away when you try to catch them with the vacuum!