Oh dear.

He's gonna be a lady killer I tell ya.

Note

Well, I was raving about Sabra Hummus a few posts back.  So far we've tried the regular flavor, DELICIOUS, the roasted garlic, YUM and now the Spinach Artichoke.  Now, I LOVE both those things.  Spinach and artichokes, together, separate, with other things.  But this hummus, uh, not a fan.  AT ALL. 

Sabra, I think you need to go back to the drawing board on this one.  Stat.

I'm listening to The Cure's Album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me today.  Dang, it's so good.

Thankful

Alright, here is the Thanksgiving post.  I know, it's almost Christmas, but sheesh, it sneaks up on you.

After snopocalipse 2010 we braved the roads to Oregon.  After leaving the peninsula the roads were great!  However, trying to travel the day before Thanksgiving on the I-5 corridor was a mistake.  What usually takes 4 1/2 hours took us 8 hours!!!  Everybody and their brother had the same idea as us.  Oh the terror of 8 hours in the car with 2 teenagers, a tween, and an ALMOST 5 year old!  Plus you throw me in the mix, the one who has a bladder smaller than an acorn and whose husband bought her a red bull and a cup of coffee.  Well let's just say the drive was, uh, interesting.

Isn't Thanksgiving all about the food?  I think so.  Well not really, but mostly.  Needless to say a good portion of the photos I took were of food.  I must be obsessed or something.

The bird before she went in the oven.



We had a huge spread of hors d'oeuvres. I'm surprised we could actually eat dinner!







Meanwhile, as my Mom and I prepared food, this guy ransacked the bird feeder.



We fed the ladies leftover veggie scraps and cracked corn.



I love this photo Marty took!



We got to visit with my Brother and Sister-in-Law and our nephews!








We had a wonderful time, ate until we almost burst, played Bingo and Mafia, and were crazy enough to brave Black Friday.  With kids in tow! 

I am so thankful to have my Family!

Note: there are no pictures of the actual meal because, apparently I was so ravenous with hunger I didn't take any.  Oops.

A trip to the city...

Shopping at Alderwood Mall....

Eating just about everywhere...

Carousel ride in Westlake...

A Christmas Carol Play at the Act Theater...

-marty

Sarah took the picture above, and i made the video below.

Hot water heaters, and HD tv

So about three weeks ago, on a Thursday, we discovered something kinda terrible.  Our hot water heater was leaking.  Say it with me, "Oh farg!"

Let me preface.
A week or two before then we received a special offer from our television provider to upgrade to high definition tv for free! WAIT, hold the phone, FREE you say.  I'm down with free; we're like homies you know.  So being the good wife I am I called our television provider and made the appointment. 

Fast forward to three Thursdays ago, the day of our appointment.  Marty was getting everything ready for the technician, pulling out the old box, binding wires together, getting the console cabinet cleaned up and ready for that shinny new HD receiver box when he discovered the leak.  I was actually at the mall (the new wal-mart, the kids have resorted to calling it the mall because it's the biggest thing we have in our dinky little town) when I got the text.

"Guess what we get to buy?"

Was this good, was this bad, I didn't know, so I replied, "what?"

"A new hot water  heater."

Okay, it wasn't good, in-fact it was bad.    

I came home from the mall regretting the money I'd just spent.  I knew a hot water heater wouldn't be cheap.  Marty showed me the leak and while it wasn't gushing there was a definite leak.  A trip to the big box store was in the plans for that weekend.

Friday after work we headed to the box store and several hundred dollars later we were driving home with a new 80 gallon tank.  Now, I am usually a glass half full kinda gal, and determined to make lemonade out of this lemon I was pretty happy we were getting a bigger tank.  This also gave us the opportunity to relocate the tank down into the garage instead of under the stairs, something we'd been talking about for well, years.  The only down side to this was I was going to have to get under the house to help Marty.  Cue screaming.  "THERE ARE SPIDERS DOWN THERE!"

Here is the old tank, in the closet under the stairs. You can see the under house access here. Yes I had to crawl down in that little hole. Shudders. Marty actually spend more time down there than me, but still I'm kinda a baby when it comes to spiders. They really freak me out.



Here is all the lovely corrosion on the pipes of the old heater. Our house was built in 1955 and all of the plumbing in galvanized. Nice, I know. I'm actually surprised we didn't have to replace this thing sooner than we did.



Together, it only took us 4 hours to drain the old tank, move it out of the closet, re-plumb the water lines to where the new tank would go, move the electrical, hook up the old tank, check for leaks, and fill her up! Oh, and two more trips to the local hardware store for fittings and crap.

Here she is in all her glory!



Ah, glorious HOT water. I mean wow! It's been almost three weeks since we put this baby in and I have yet to run out of hot water in the shower. I LOVE THIS THING! How we lived with a 50 gallon tank and 5.5 people in our house I'll never know.

Things I love right now.....

In no particular order:

• Peppermint Tea
• HD T.V. (shhhhh, don't tell anyone I said that).  We finally upgraded our service and I can't believe we watched such a bad picture for so long.  Food Network has never been better!
• The Chicago Bears!  We whooped the Eagles and it was AWESOME, even though it wasn't televised, we listened to Bears radio and cheered!
• Sabra Hummus.  The original flavor, although while looking at their website I discovered they have JALAPENO!  My grocery store doesn't carry this flavor.  I may have to make a phone call.
• The snow melting!  It's almost gone!
• Wool socks.
• My bird friends.  I've had the following visitors, Varied Thrush, Black-capped Chickadee, Steller's Jay, Evening Grosbeak, Eurasian Collared-Dove (this guy is a fatty!), Northern Flicker, and a few others.

We're back to work and school this week after the snow.  The kids had a nice long Thanksgiving break.  We survived our trip to Oregon and had a great Thanksgiving.  More on that later!

Uhm? Really.

So in the last two days we've received (much to our dismay) 12 inches of snow. I took these photos around 1pm yesterday and it was still coming down. As you can tell by how blizzard like the pictures are.

School has been canceled two days in a row. When it snows here it cripples our little town. We don't have the equipment to keep up with this much snow. The roads are covered with compact snow and ice. This has put our Thanksgiving travel plans up in the air. Oh poo. If we wake up tomorrow and the roads are looking okay, we'll drive to Oregon. If the roads are still looking like Antarctica, then we stay home and have mexican Thanksgiving. I'm afraid of the latter because my children will stage a mutiny if I don't cook turkey.

It's currently 22 degrees. The sun is shining. The snow has stopped. But, DANG, is it cold!

In other news, much better news in fact, I won a contest! ME! Isn't that awesome! My dear, darling Husband showed me this really cool blog called BOOOOOOOM.com and I entered a drawing for a pair of Interpol tickets, AND won!

Going to Vancouver in January YO! to see Interpol! Epic date night!

Sarah's Bird Friends...

Nezzbick vs. the salad

"OH man, salad," he said and let out a big sigh.


"I have to do this, for my country," he stated as he stared down at the mound of green smothered in ranch.


He looked up with a fierce determination in his eyes.


"Crunch, crunch, take that salad!" He declared as he shoveled it in his mouth.


"MUST. GO. ON." He couldn't let the salad win.


"Victory," he declared!

The whirlwind of suprise

The weekend before last I received quite a surprise.  This is no small feat.  I am not an easy person to fool.  I am incredibly static and any time there is the slightest difference in the routine I'm aware.

I knew my Husband was up to something for the past few weeks.  I was growing exceedingly suspicious, and nervous, and anxious.  See, my birthday was around the corner.  He was planning something, but I could never quite put my finger on it.

Two things I knew, or I should say I thought I knew, were my best girl friend and her husband were coming for the weekend after my birthday and we were all going out to dinner to celebrate.

That Saturday started like most, sleeping in, sipping coffee, watching DIY network to get pumped up about remodeling, you know the usual.  We made our grocery list, home depot list, and wal-mart list.  What can I say, I like lists.

After tackling Home Depot and Wal-Mart we made our way back into PA and proceeded to dink around.  A stop at a new quilting store I'd wanted to check out and a stop at the antique store, Marty had a chair he wanted to show me.  We found a few used records and I thought we were then heading to the grocery store, after all it was getting late in the afternoon and I needed to get home to get dinner started.

One more stop he assured me.  "I need to look at the menu for next weekends dinner," he said calmly.

Down the street we walked, hand in hand.  We ascended the dark stairs in to the restaurant, turned the corner to the back room and proceeded down the long hall.  It wasn't until we nearly entered the back room I realized what was going on.

All my closest friends and family were there patiently waiting for my arrival.  Waiting to surprise me.  And every one of them was dressed up like someone from the 80's!  Even the kids!  Madonna, Maverick from Top Gun, Claire from The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller twice!  There was Marty McFly, Magnum PI, Prince, Cyndi Lauper, Axl Rose and his "I'm with the band" girl.  It was like going back to 1985!  

I can honestly say I was COMPLETELY surprised.  All this time I was suspicious of the wrong weekend!  He had me so mixed up.  I really have to give him credit because I'm so nosy and apprehensive.  I imagine it wasn't easy for him.

Marty donned his Dr. Venkman (a la Ghost Busters) costume and informed me my costume was waiting in the bathroom.  About 20 minutes later I re-appeared as Jem, pink wig and all.

It was a perfect way to turn 30.  Thank you Marty for the amazing party, for the wonderful cake, and the great memories I'll keep from that night!  You completely and wholly outdid yourself.  It was the best party I've ever had and ever been to (except for our wedding, that was a pretty kick ass party)!  You are simply the most amazing, wonderful Husband a girl could ask for.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PEANUT!!!!

30 years young today...and still so beautiful and amazing!

Summer recap in photos, part III

We went to Philadelphia.


























We had an 18th birthday.










We did some hiking.







AND thank goodness, school started.

Summer recap in photos, part II

We attended a very special wedding and then had a kick ass wedding reception in our back yard.




























We went to Hawaii.




















Stayed tuned for the last installment, part III!