We survived the tree hunt

Last Friday we pulled the kids out of school early to take them tree hunting. Mike was headed out of town this week, so I talked him into working from home of Friday to spend some time with us before he left. We went out to Melchers Tree Farm in Gervais. We were met at the van by the owner with candy canes for everyone. He gave us a tag to tie around our tree when we found it and we were off. They have all of their "lanes" named for reindeer. It was damp, but not raining. The kids had a blast running through the trees trying to find the "perfect" one. We probably looked for 15 minutes before we found it. It stood about 8 feet high and was beautiful. Mr. Melcher came and cut down the tree for us and then hauled it (and a couple girls) away with his golf cart pulled trailer. He shook out all of the dead needles and bundled it up for us. Helped Mike tie it onto the van and then we headed inside for free hot cocoa. All in all it was a really fun experience. I'm looking forward to going again next year.

An early Christmas gift

We decided to buy ourselves an early Christmas present this year. We bought a new Nikon camera. It is really cool. It has lenses and everything. Mike could tell you all the specs, but I just think it looks good and takes awesome pictures. I'll post a few. Of course, the reason we bought a new camera is just in case Santa does decided to bring us a trip for Christmas, we really need a camera that works. We have a small Canon power shot, but the batteries don't hold charges. Both of them. Crazy. Anyway, I can only take about 5 pictures before it dies. So instead of buying new batteries, we would just buy a new camera. Makes sense. Spend $700.00 instead of $50.00. That's totally MY logic! Anyway, we order the new camera because it's on sale at Costco. Then Mike tells me to go ahead and buy the new battery for the Canon too. He he, so now we have a really cool new camera and 2 new batteries for the old one!!! Merry Christmas to me!

Ann-Elise has started her holiday performances for tap dance. She had her first one last Saturday at the Woodburn Library. It was fun. Alia and I went to watch her. She did really well. She's pretty shy, but she did great. As parents, we love that kind of stuff, but I'm not so sure I would enjoy it that much if I was just watching. But it was nice to see her outside her element and do so well.

We are planning on getting our Christmas tree this Saturday. That should be fun. In theory. Reality is that it will be freezing cold and/or raining. We'll have 3 kids that refuse to go and at least 1 running around like a mad (wo)man. But, we're gonna try it anyway! My friend, Niki, told me of this place that they go, and it sounds pretty fun. Hopefully it won't be miserable. Oh, who am I kidding, I know it's not going to go well...

Let's see, the hamster cage: Tommy is still in his cage. He hasn't figured out a way to get out of the new one (yet!). Although, a few days after we got it, Alia opened the top of the cage to give him some food, and forgot to close the lid. It's about 4 inches square. Anyway, Ann-Elise comes running downstairs saying that Matisse is going to eat Tommy. I run up there and Matisse has climbed into the cage and is curled up inside. Just resting. Tommy was smart and stayed hidden in his little house. Heck, he probably didn't even realize what was going on! Needless to say, Alia is VERY careful about closing the door!

Once again...

That stupid hamster...Yes, him again. So, I put him in the cupboard in the bathroom because he was so loud. On Saturday, Alia is getting ready to take her shower and happens to look down, and there is Tommy. He has torn his new cage apart and somehow opened the cupboard door and is literally a peeping Tom! UGH! He has now gone through 3 cages. And I'm out. Ok, so I'll buy him an aquarium and shove him in that. Put a mesh cover on it, and if he gets out of that one, he's fair game for the cats. Head to Petsmart. Cool, an aquarium is only 9.99. However, they don't have a mesh cover for it. The nice sales associate informs me that I could buy a "ready to go" aquarium for 35.00, or I could buy an over sized mesh lid for 15.00. Hello. The stupid hamster only cost 8.99 to begin with! Now I've invested 100.00 already just on cages. No, we're going cheap! Then I find a metal cage with a plastic bottom. Looks sturdy enough. He can't really get to the edges of the plastic to eat it. Should be good. Oh my goodness, it's only 19.99! I hit pay dirt! So, it's been 3 days, and other than the fact that the kitten likes to lay right next to him (still in the bathroom) and try to swat at him through the metal wires, it's going good. NEVER AGAIN will I fall for the "can I please have a pet? I promise I'll take care of it!"

And on a strange note. Conner was supposed to put his football away. He decided to kick it up the stairs. It promptly came back down, knocking over one of the pictures as it came down. The picture frame, glass, pictures and backing all came apart (nothing broke, mind you, just disassembled itself). I don't know if Conner was trying to catch all that was coming down at him, or just got "lucky", but the glass came down and sliced him right between 2 fingers. Like in the "web" part. It was crazy! I looked at him and saw the oncoming look of panic (did I mention, not to long ago, his fear of anything red, like blood?). He waited about 30 seconds. And to his credit, he didn't scream like a pansy this time. He had this shocked, panic, fear in his voice. I came over and looked at it. And do you know what? If you cut yourself right there where the skin connects in between your fingers, and it's deep enough, there is a whole pocket you can look down into. I know this. First hand! So I took Conner to Mike and told him he needed to check it out. Then mouthed to him that he probably needed stitches (I wouldn't recommend this if you are standing in front of a mirror and the person you are trying to avoid knowing this information is watching you in the mirror). Oh crap, now he's flipping out. Mike looked at it and we weren't sure what to do. Can you even stitch that? Now, over our time with Conner we have gotten pretty darn good with butterfly stitches. By necessity. He is deathly afraid of stitches (I tell you, one bad experience when he was 2, and he's crazy about it now!). But there is NO way to butterfly that one, I can't even get a band aid around it. So I called a friend of mine, who's a nurse and took him over to her place. She looked at it. Well, it could use a stitch, but I don't know how they'll be able to do it. Do you really want to go and wait at the hospital? Ummm, no! So we decided to go home and lube it up with neosporin and stick some gauze in between his fingers, then tape 2 of them together so it can stay clean. After I finished chatting with her and her 2 girls (oh, about 45 minutes...) we headed back home. On the way home Conner said "I wish I could turn back time." Now we had talked about a ton of stuff while we were over at my friends house, so I wasn't sure what he was talking about. Um ok, what would you change? His reply "I think I would WALK my football up to my room instead of kicking it." At that moment in time angels sang "Alleluia". Yes, my job here is done. I never said a word about what he did. He figured it out all on his own. Who says that natural consequences don't work?

Christmas is when???

So, we survived Thanksgiving. It was actually really nice. Well, other than the fact that I was sick. That's a sure way to lose weight during the holiday season! I think I lost 5 pounds in the past 4 days. But other than that, it was a fun visit with family. My sister and her family came up from Bend. Although we don't really get to spend much time "chatting" with everything going on, it was fun to see her and her kids (even her husband too!). Both my brothers came and my parents too. So, lots of kids and good food. It was nice.

I was feeling better by Friday. I had dreams all Thursday night about shopping. I usually ALWAYS go shopping on black Friday. For the past couple years I've gone with a friend from church. Because I hadn't been feeling well, I didn't even call her and plan anything. However, at 2:45am I felt ok, so I go up and did all my "cyber shopping". Walmart offers the same deals on line at 5pm est as they do at 5 at my local store, so I like to shop from home. Got that stuff done and fell back to sleep. I woke up at 7 and felt really good, so I woke up Ann-Elise and we headed out for the last couple hours of early bird shopping. We only got as far as Target before we called it good and headed for a fun breakfast at Shari's. Then home. We are shopping light this year for Christmas. Hoping that Santa will bring us something big (like maybe a Disneyland trip...). Anyway, I pretty much got everything done. Well, for now anyway! The problem with shopping early is that I tend to spend more because I never think I have enough.

So yesterday, we got up and dressed warm. Headed into the garage for some "fall cleaning". We were able to get the garage cleaned out and swept out in a couple hours. Now we are ready to build some storage shelves for our food storage. I'm really excited about stocking our "store" shelves. My inside pantry is really tiny, so it's just a mess. Everything is crammed in there and you can't find anything! So, by putting our year supply of food out in the garage, I can "shop" in my garage weekly, then move the week supply into the pantry. Then I only need to replace what I've used and I should only have to do that once or twice a month. Oh my, that is HUGE! Not grocery shopping with, at the very least, 2 babies will be amazing! I'll only need to run to the store for perishables based on our weekly menu. Piece of cake!!! How cool is that? I am hoping to have that done by the end of next week. However, we'll see what Mikes plans are!

Speaking of Mike, he's on this "energy conservation" kick. It's kind of cool. We are really interested in solar energy. He bought this meter that he is using to test EVERYTHING that uses power. It's very interesting. I don't know why I always feel the need to say this but...It's not for the global warming craze. It's because we have a large family and would like to save money! Anyway, there are some really cool things out there. And the plus side is that he wants to get all new appliances because ours aren't "energy star". Cool aye! The down side to that is that he feels the need to cut power to everything at night. Not a big deal except when I get up and have a screaming 2 year old wanting to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse that we have recorded on the dvr and it takes about an hour for the dvr system to "warm up" and load our saved data. Oh, and we can't even watch the tv if the remote is missing (like now!) because it's all password protected. Again, the system doesn't connect with the main menu to display what shows are on, so it all registers as "to be announced", therefore, it doesn't have a kid friendly rating, so there is no tv either. Not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination, just inconvenient. An inconvenient truth, you might say!