Gaming Night

Last night The Guitar Picker and I went to a family gaming night in Sierra Vista. It turned out to be sort of a game STORE (these guys) that had all these wonderful games for sale that we got to play with for 4 hours.

We spent about an hour playing this:

It was really fun. It was easy enough to learn that even little kids could do it, but interesting enough for 3 adults and one teen to have fun trying to beat each other. And I WON. *grins*

We spent the rest of the night playing Shadows over Camelot:



This was so fun! It took a while to set up and figure out the rules, but once we got through that it moved pretty fast. Five of us played, and what was cool is that it was us against the game. We had to work together to finish quests before the game won. Unfortunately, one player at the beginning of the game gets dealt a "traitor" card, and he works AGAINST the rest of us with the game to try to sabotage our efforts.

There wasn't a very big turnout. I actually think The Guitar Picker and I were the only ones there that weren't already connected with the gaming group, but we had a lot of fun, and I hope there will be more people there next month.

Thanksgiving

This is the Thanksgiving Post that's probably only interesting to family or the guests that were actually there.

We had lots of meat (there seems to be a turkey missing):

I had to make bags to cook the meat in because when you cook it in a big pot underground, it all falls off the bone. If you don't have one of these roller cutters and a mat, GET ONE! They are wonderful!

Cooked to perfection in the ground:

Here's the feast:

Don't forget pie!

The second shift cleaning crew (nothing like a houseful of kids to do the cleanup after the adults have done all the cooking!):

We killed a LOT of clay pigeons. See all the shell casings? Pay no attention to that pile of horse poo:

Time to get ready for Christmas!

Cozy Day

Well! It's been over a week since I blogged. I KNOW you all missed me.

This morning I woke up to this:

A beautiful rainy morning! It's so cozy! You can just barely see my beautiful yellow rose that bloomed just in time for Thanksgiving through the rainy window. I had to go out in the rain and take a picture of it:

I had these for breakfast:

They put little stickers on them that remind me of those sweethearts candy you get for Valentines day. They ARE super sweet, but not QUITE candy.

Here's Mia, recovering from her surgery. She got spayed on Tuesday. Don't let that sad look fool you. I have had to keep her in the house for two days to try to keep her from bursting her stitches. She doesn't act like anything happened at all!

I have enough of this darling flannel to make a pair of pajama pants for both my girls:
This morning I caught Butler eating crackers out of this box, one by one:

Can't you just hear him saying, "What? I was hungry!"

It's really only going to be a cozy day this morning. This afternoon I have to take The Guitar Picker to the orthodontist AGAIN. Retainers are a bigger pain than braces.

Oh! I actually DID do a Maintenance Monday. The filter on the furnace got cleaned!

The End of my disjointed crazy post.

Works for Me Wednesday

I had a really great tip for today to add to Shannon's list at Rocks in my Dryer, but I totally lost it in the flurry of getting ready for Thanksgiving. So, my tip is this:

Whatever you DIDN'T get done? Don't worry about it. Enjoy your family and friends and great meal (even if you forgot to buy rolls). tomorrow is about giving thanks for all your blessings. Not about how perfect the food or your house is. If your mother-in-law peeks in a hall closet or sees the pile of papers you didn't get filed (ahem), well, there was probably a time when she wasn't perfect either. And if she SAYS anything? Ask her for a housecleaning service for Christmas.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Do you know what today is?

I just found out, via the wonder of the internet, that today is Air Your Dirty Laundry Day! So, here it is:



This is not even all of it. *sigh*

BUT! After a long day and lots of soap and water, I give you my CLEAN LAUNDRY!


That's probably not the dirty laundry they are talking about, but that's all you'll get from me! *grins*

P.S. Let me draw your attention to the list to your right that has ALMOST everything crossed off! Woot!

Maintenance Monday

Time to do another maintenance project!

Well, this week I cleaned my refrigerators (plural, you notice. WHY do we need TWO refrigerators?!) and pantry (which has been a happy fall hunting grounds for some field mice, so this included washing all the food storage buckets and canned goods), scrubbed the hard water stains out of my shower, and, yes, WASHED MY COMPUTER SCREEN, thanks to Bev reminding me that it needed to be done. Today I'm doing Major Corner Cleaning, hoping I can get it done before my brother decides to come over to visit, since he's down from Washington with my newest Nephew:



Don't you just want to grab him and smooch those little cheeks?

I suppose it's cheating because I'm doing all these things in preparation for Thanksgiving, but I'll be back to the normal maintenance projects next week. I think.

Did you do your maintenance project? If you did, please post a link in the replies for the rest of us to get inspired!

My Sister

Champion

Confidant

Cheerleader

Prayer Warrior

Good Example

Bad Example

My Best Friend

Happy Birthday, Danielle!

Works for Me Wednesday

My WFMW tip this week is a heads up about hotel practices. DON'T USE THE GLASSES IN YOUR ROOM! Someone sent me this link to a news clip about how they clean the glasses. Apparently, at best they wash them in the bathroom sink, and at worst they spray them with some kind of chemical and wipe them with a dirty towel you have left on your floor. Blegh. People always assume they got sick on the airplane or from eating bad food when they get sick while traveling! I suggest bringing your own glasses, or stay in cheap hotels that put out disposable plastic glasses that are sealed in plastic.

To see much more pleasant Works For Me Wednesday tips, go to Shannon's blog, Rocks in my Dryer.

P.S. Isn't her new WFMW header pretty?

Maintenance Monday

I'm tentatively starting a new thing called "Maintenence Monday". With it, I'm hoping to create an incentive to remember to do all the odd maintenance jobs that go by the wayside in normal day to day stuff. Each week I'm going to try to do a job and post it on Mondays. Here's my first one:

The exhaust fan in my bathroom was covered with dust. Easy start for my new MM post! I'll just grab a broom, sweep it off, and I'm already covered for my first week!
It went from this:

To this:

Not so good. Wouldn't you think that cover would just pop off so you could wash it? No such luck. This IS a "manufactured home", after all. It's not going to be easy. The job ended up requiring this:

And this:

So, after at least 10 or 15 minutes of scraping dust bunnies out of the ceiling, then another 10 minutes or so sweeping them off of everything in the bathroom and out of my hair, the job was done and I was rewarded with a nice clean vent that actually is able to draw the toxic air out of the bathroom instead of wasting electricity laboring to suck dust bunnies up.

You are welcome to join me in my little quest to do the forgotten jobs. Possibly, I'm the only homemaker on the planet that DOESN'T remember to clean her bathroom vent for 2 years. In any case, I haven't time to make up a cute logo or figure out Mr. Linky, so until I do have time, if you want to play this game with me please post a reply with a link to your maintenance post so I can go see what you do. I seriously need help even knowing what needs to be done, so you could help give me ideas for what I need to do for future Maintenance Mondays.

Two Things Challenge

Nature and Civilization



To see more interpretations of this challenge, GO HERE

Because I totally love a good ego boost:

I'm playing this game from Sara at the Estrogen Files:

The Game is on!!! And you're it!!

Describe ME in one word.... just one single word. Put it in my comments.

Then post this message and see how many strange & interesting things they say about you.

You comment for me, post and I'll tell you YOUR one word.

Play with me!

Things To Do Before Thanksgiving

As you can see by the list on the right, I have a boatload of work to do in the next 2 weeks. I'm going to be crossing things off the list as I do them, and hopefully seeing it here will keep me from playing too much when there is WORK TO BE DONE, BY GOLLY!

There are 28 items on my list, and 23 days until Thanksgiving. I have to do AT LEAST 2 things a day, and allow for school and whatever activities there are coming up, as well as normal housekeeping stuff. The family still needs to be fed regular meals for two weeks before the Big Feast. Imagine! I may not do a whole lot of blogging. The Cowboy's list is not complete, but he's taking a couple of vacation days next week to get things done.

I LOVE Thanksgiving, and have so much fun getting together with my family and whatever friends end up getting invited. It also helps me get the lead out and do some major mucking that I let slide all too often. As I do this work, I will remember to thank the Lord for His many blessings that the work I have to do represents.

Happy Birthday, To The Cowboy

Yesterday was The Cowboy's birthday. How many candles do you see? We had to dig ALL our left-over candles out of the junk drawer to get enough to put on his cake. He was a good sport and blew them all out in one breath. See, I'm 4 years younger than he is, so I get to tease him the whole time he's in a different decade than me. *evil grins*

Even though I tortured him about his birthday, I DID get him a nice present. This: I think I surprised him for once! He actually told me he didn't think I'd be "brave enough" to buy a chain saw.

Huh?

I have NO idea what that means.

Anyway, even though it was his birthday weekend, he was being all sweet and bought me these on Friday for no good reason:

And this on Saturday, because I loved it:

In my mind, a bouquet of "just because" roses and a speckled blue tin dishpan trumps a chainsaw any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Girls are SO much easier to buy for than Boys!

90 Percent?!

I SCORED A 90%

Get a cash advance

How did this happen?! There was a time when I watched these movies so much with my kids that I could have easily spoken along with the dialog. Has it been so many years since my children wanted to watch a Disney cartoon every day that I have *gasp* forgotten the details of these movies? I should have sailed through this quiz with a 100%. They won't even tell me which questions I got wrong, though I think it was something to do with Aladdin. That one wasn't the girls' favorite, and Wheeler hasn't wanted to watch it in a very long time.

Well, the kids have moved on to more interesting things, like music, horses, dog training and rock collecting.

Stupid Disney quiz. How pathetic that I had to go back and redo the quiz until I found the 2 questions that I got wrong. Silly me! (It WAS an Aladdin question...AND a Little Mermaid question.)

Just for Fun: