Black Friday and the Snow Plow

Tom and I were not going to go shopping on Black Friday this year.  But there was something on sale that Winston has been wanting for a while, so we decided to make a quick run into town.  We got up at 4:00 a.m. and were out the door by 4:30.  Then we were back in the door by 4:45.  We got about a half-mile down the road and were faced with an army of snow drifts, so we turned back around and crawled back in bed.

At about 6:00 a.m. the snow plow went by.  Tom woke me up and said "Should we go ahead and go?"  We decided to try it again - one last time.  If this time didn't work, that would be it.  The snow drifts were filling in pretty fast after the plow.  When we got to the top of the hill, there was a very long six-foot high snow drift.  We definitely wouldn't have made  it through that without the plow going before us.  We made it into town and got what we wanted to get.  The nice thing about living where we do is that there are no crowds for the shopping - and there usually is plenty of sale items to go around.

Then we got more than we went for.  That's the danger of Black Friday - you usually come home with more than you planned on.  I am grateful for that this time, though.  I got to buy a nice new laptop PC.  (Yes Brother Nels, you heard that right - a PC, (giggle-giggle + happy dance!))  It's an HP.  My favorite is Sony, but the HP was at a great price so I couldn't resist.  It's my early birthday present + whatever else I will celebrate in the next year (or three) - but it was worth  it.  So I am typing from it now.  I can store all of my photos and do my scrapbooking on it and not have to worry about everyone else needing the computer.  Woo-Hoo!

On our way back home we were able to follow a truck back up the hill.  He blazed a trail through the new snow drifts for us, so we didn't get stuck. I don't know what we'd do every winter without Mr. Snow Plow.  We'd all have cabin fever for sure!

We're looking forward to having Preston back home tomorrow.  We miss him, but his Grandma Chick and Grandma Moore have enjoyed having him with them.   I just hope we can get into town when it's time to pick him up from the depot.  We're supposed to get a lot more snow tonight! 

Here's What We Did On Thanksgiving Day...

Koko Dog watched the back yard for deer from her outside house

Did some bowling on the WII

Winston really got into it!

Tom kept winning... Keaton taking a break

Keaton had a lot of 'Age of Empires' happening on the computer

Worked on putting together a Thomas Kinkade Puzzle

Checked out the Thanksgiving Day online shopping deals

Winston found a giant icicle growing on our house

I spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen - for some reason

AND... dinner, of course.

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Home Sweet Home - for the Holiday

Got up this morning, had a nice hot cup of coffee with Tom as we perused the Black Friday Ads.  Didn't see much in the way of what we needed, though.  It's going to be a quiet holiday for us.  Got the Turkey breast in the crockpot.  Stuffing's all mixed - ready to go in the oven when it's time.  Tom offered to peel potatos... I'm cool with that!  We're all lounging around in our PJ's  near the fire and enjoying the snow falling outside.  It wasn't quite the Thanksgiving we were expecting, but it is quite nice.  We miss getting to see our families for this holiday.  BUT - we're thankful to have our family and love them and miss them.  Thankful to have a nice warm home - thankful for good health - thankful for a telephone so we can talk to those we miss.

Yesterday as we were deciding whether to stay home or not, we looked out the back window and caught some action going on in the back yard...

The deer were standing on their hind feet to eat the leaves on our apple trees.  It looked so funny.  They even walked on their hind feet for a few seconds.

We had such a mild Autumn that a lot of the trees still have some leaves on them.  It's really strange to see leaves falling from the trees in the snow.

You can only see two Does here, but there were actually four.  And then two Bucks followed them into the yard.

This one was a little forked horn.  There was a Three-Point Buck closer to the house but the angle was too hard to take a picture of.  It was neat watching them.  They can be enjoyable to view when you don't have a planted garden for them to massacre. 

Tom has promised Winston that they will go sledding sometime this weekend.  That's to soften the blow of not getting to go see his Grandparents and Cousins.  It's snowing here again.  We have 10 inches, and the report is that we may get 8 to 10 inches more by Saturday.  Just another good reason to be bundled up at home.

Do we or Don't we? The Question of The Hour

We (ahem, Tom) can't seem to decide whether to go visit family for Thanksgiving or stay home.  One day it's yes, the next it's no, the next it's yes, the next it's no... I guess we'll wait and see what the final answer is.  (The boys and I are pulling for 'yes').

UPDATE:  Well, now I have to be the bad guy.  We'll be staying home.  I went out to check my chickens and they were pretty cold.  their water had frozen solid and their eggs were frozen and cracked.  They were all huddled around the heat lamp, and very thirsty.  So we need to be here to carry water to them every day and get more heat lamps installed.  They won't survive if we leave them now.   Our furnace has been having trouble starting, too.  So it would be just our luck that it won't kick on if we were gone and we'd come home to frozen pipes.  Gotta keep the pellet stove stoked to keep this house warm.  Sometimes the chips are all stacked against ya!  Now we just have to figure out how to get Preston home since he decided to go down earlier.  I guess he'll get to experience the Great Greyhound Adventure.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 

Wish we could be there! 

Snow Day - It's a family affair

I was right.  Today ended up being a snow day.  The school closed down, and Tom stayed home because the highway between our place and Pullman was closed.  It's okay, EXCEPT - I had taken today off from work as a personal holiday.  So it just figures that the one day I decide to do that, the kids and husband are home for the entire day.  That entails cooking for them and cleaning up after them.  BAH!  On the flip-side, we did get to spend quality family time together because it's too cold to be anywhere except in the house, by the fire.  I did get a few chores out of the boys...

Winston is so excited about putting dishes away.  It doesn't help to have his brother antagonizing him as well.  But they did get the job done, after much argumentative discussion.

With snow days like these, I can't wait for summer!

Cocoa Flavored Blizzard...

IT'S SNOWING, SNOWING, SNOWING

AND

BLOWING, BLOWING, BLOWING...

Winston came home from school and thought it would be 'fun' to shovel the porch and patio.  I love it when the kids are young enough to think 'work' is 'fun'.

Today was crazy.  Keaton tried to drive in to town this morning but had to turn back.  I barely made it in to work and back in the Oldsmobile.  Tom confiscated the Mountaineer from us.  The bus even had a hard time getting the kids home.  The road is drifting over pretty badly with the high winds we are having.  I hope Tom can get home tonight.  It's looking like tomorrow will be a snowday for us - even for Tom.

The weather forcast has predicted a Blizzard for our area tonight.  We'll get six to eight more inches of snow.  Tomorrow night is supposed to be -6.  Winter seems to have hit with full force.  Guess we'll just sit by the fireplace with our cocoa and wait it out.

Bestest Friends Cousins!

This weekend we were privileged to have Kendall and Jeremy and their girls stay the night with us.  We really enjoyed seeing them and the kids had a great time.  They drew a big picture for Grandma and played lots of fun kid games with Winston's toys.

They also did some sledding on what we have for snow here.  Despite the cold hands, they had a lot of fun!

Koko really enjoyed having the kids to play with, too!

It's great to have cousins to have so much fun with!

Saving the Planet - One Mile at a Time

Since my last post, we are doing better.  Still a bit sad, but resigned.  Winston is doing great.  He's a real trooper.  So on a happier note...

Preston had to do a Community Service Project for one of his college classes.  He and Tom decided that it would be a good idea to walk along the road and pick up the garbage.  His professor said that would be fine.  So Tom and the boys walked a mile and picked up all kinds of trash - in the pouring rain - and gathered five large bags full of garbage.  Winston even helped out. 

I kept the home fires burning and made sure they had hot coffee and hot cocoa for their efforts.  They're talking about doing more of the road in the Spring.  I'm proud of them for wanting to do it.  And Keaton might have thought it would kill him to participate - but not quite...

See - he's still alive and gagging!

Missing Rosey...

Sorry about this long, sad post.  It's theraputic for me to get it all out.

We lost our Rosey girl today.  When I came home from work I noticed Koko hanging around, but no Rosey.  I looked all over the yard and called and called and called.  And every time I would pat Koko on the head she made a funny little sound. 

When Preston got home, I drove down the road looking for her.  No Rosey.  So I tried to drive up the back hill, but it was too muddy and I almost got the Mountaineer stuck.  Preston and I decided to climb the back hill instead, and see if we could 'see' anything.  We called and called and called again.  As we neared the top of the hill, Preston looked off in the distance past a couple of hills and noticed something 'big' in the field.  I thought it was just a piece of old farm equipment.  He thought it looked a little strange and decided to check it out - while I continued to climb to the top of the hill. 

When Preston got over there, I could barely hear him call "Mom!" because the wind was blowing hard.  I figured he must have found something, so I headed over there to see.  Let me just say that climbing up and down our hills is like an hour's worth of workout - I was whooped.  He found Rosey.  A power pole and line had been blown down and she happened to be exploring there and stepped on it.  We didn't get too close, because obviously it's a hot line.  So teary and frustrated, we walked back to the house.  At least I knew what happened and wouldn't be worrying about her being all night long, out in the cold. 

I called Tom and told him what happened.  He decided to come home and see if he could get the power company to come shut the line down so we could bury her.  That didn't work out so well.  There are so many downed lines that they've been pretty busy.  We've been having tremendous wind storms the past two days.  Hopefully they can come tomorrow and help us. 

The really hard part was telling Winston when he got home.  He took it pretty rough.  He and I shed a few tears while sitting together on the couch.  We talked and talked and talked.  Rosey was his best friend.  He is doing better tonight.  He's been giving Koko a little attention to soften the blow.  She's going to be a bit lonely, again.  I don't know if I want to get another dog.  I was pretty attached to her.  But we might have to, for Winston's sake.  We'll see. 

New Glasses!

Winston Got New Glasses!

And he is very proud of them!

We went to the new Walmart and saw that they had a vision center there - so we checked out how much it would be to get Winston some new glasses.  His wireframes were getting a bit tweekted.  So Tom checked it out and it was only $30 for frames and lenses.  WOW!  We paid almost $200 for the ones he's been wearing.  What a difference in price!  Then Tom asked them if they had frames that would fit the lenses in Winston's old wireframes.  They did - and Winston picked out the black frames - and those were only $10.  So Winston got two new pairs of glasses for $40.  Awesome!  Can't believe we paid so much for them before.  We keep teasing him that he looks like Clark Kent - our little Superman in disguise.  He just says "I'm not Clark Kent!  I'm Winston RAY Moore!"

Isn't he sooooo cute!

Smoke Detector Winston

This morning was Veterans' Day morning.  Tom has the day off.  The rest of us have the day off from school.  I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. working on a project.  I was looking forward to sleeping in.  At the crack of dawn Winston came in to wake us up.  The reason why:  Tom ordered a bunch of smoke detectors to install because our others were getting too old.  We have a lot of them in our house.  Last night Winston was soooo excited about putting them in, but Tom told him he had to wait until today.  So when he came in to wake us up, his first words to Tom were "You gotta wake up.  We gotta get those smoke detectors in, Dad".  He just couldn't wait any longer.  He probably dreamed all night long about it.

So after a couple of cups of coffee (for Tom) and breakfast (for them both) they got to work.  Winston was a great helper, and had lots of questions along the way.  He got very excited when it was time to test them - he ran through the whole house to make sure every one of them were working.

And of course, we can't throw the old ones away!

They are new toys for our little Smoke Detector Boy!

My Guy

I feel pretty lucky to have my sweetie.  He takes good care of me, and our family.  One thing I've been thankful for lately is that since I've started working again, he's been a big help around the house.  He takes over and gets things done.  It is so nice.  Tom is one of those guys that always likes to have something to do - and in a big way, I really appreciate that.  I love him, love him, love him!

He even does chores in his Sunday Best!

Housekeeping...

Today was 'Clean the House' day...

Winston decided he wanted to learn to use the vacume.

He did a pretty good job, too!

He even pulled out the hose and climbed under the desk

to vacume under there.

I think he could teach his brothers a thing or two!

What's Up Butter-Cup?

It's been a couple of days since I posted.  There hasn't been anything too exciting happening around here this week, so I'm not sure I should even post.  I have some pictures from Preston's Photo Essay that he did for Geology class.  There are some nice pictures and I want to post them - but Preston said I have to wait until his Professor grades it.  So who knows when that will happen. 

***

Tom took me out for lunch yesterday (Yay!) after I got off work.  We went to a Hawaiian BBQ place called 'LocoGrinzs'  It was pretty good.  I was hoping for more native Hawaiian food, like we had when we bought a plate lunch in Kauai.  This was more 'California' style Hawaiian food.  Their BBQ chicken was really good.  We also had coconut shrimp with Thai peanut sauce, mac salad, rice and veggies.  Then we went to the BRAND NEW Walmart (Yay! we have one close to home finally!) and bought some fruits and veggies for home.  That was a date... and I loved every minute of it.

***

Keaton has been busy with Jazz Band.  He went to a band competition at WSU the other day.  He also played at the volleyball game last night and now has to play for the football game tonight.  I'm glad he's finally driving himself to these functions.

***

Preston has been plugging away at school.  He's actually doing very well.  He ran out of work-study funds for his job, like most of the kids who worked on his shift.  But the athletic dept. decided to keep him on at minimum wage.  They laid a lot of the other guys off.  He's happy to have the work.  He'll be babysitting the stadium again tonight, and sleeping all day tomorrow.

***

Winston has been Winston.  We have parent teacher conferences next week.  It will be interesting to hear what his teachers have to say.  It will be particularly funny because one of his teachers is my supervisor at work.  He's been drawing a lot of bus pictures lately.  His biggest ambition for the future (as of lately) is that he wants to be a bus driver.  And not just any bus, but bus 24.  Hope it's still running by the time he can be hired.

***

Well, that's whats up with us - for now.

ELECTRIFYING!

This is my husbands idea of a good idea:

 Hmmmmm.....

Uh, Yeah, that looks safe.

I'm just waiting to see the sparks and flames

shoot out of their eyes.