Happy Birthday, Birthday Boy!

Another year older and another lopsided German chocolate cake!  (Note: next year I will pay better attention to the recipe, as I didn't note the quantity of evaporated milk in the recipe and dumped in the whole can!  It was easy enough to double the rest of the ingredients, but we'll be eating coconut frosting on everything for weeks.)

For Tom's birthday weekend, we celebrated with family Saturday night, which was a lot of fun.  It was terribly amusing listening to the little one ask over and over again if she could go downstairs if she was careful.  Literally, when she reached the bottom, she would come back up and ask again. 

Part of his present was a weekend void of house projects.  We still did some chores, but he spent a good amount of time tinkering and lounging.  While splitting wood Saturday morning, some "bad" hunters caught our attention.  They were shooting towards the road into a herd of about 50 elk cows.  The property is catty-corner from ours along the highway.

It sure was interesting watching them run this way and that. 

As we were watching, another hunter came into view, though we later realized she was just a scavenger.  A mountain lion got into our neighbor's coop earlier in the week and cleaned them out.  Evidently Felix found an abandoned casualty and brought it over to share with her four kittens.  The circle of life continues...  I will miss seeing all the chickens wandering around and clucking about. 

Welcome to 2015

Whether it is a sign of times to come - more fun and friends and down time than work time, I am not sure, but we did start the year off with a three day party!  After driving home from Oregon, we crammed a few more working hours into 2014. 

 Did you even see the door?  It blends in so nicely?

In an effort to create a den downstairs, we installed the door Tom built and used up some more T&G in the craft room, not to mention sucking up a couple buckets full of sawdust and setting up the house for company.  The old futons and TV went downstairs, and the guest bed was moved over from the trailer and set up in the guest room.  After many loads of laundry and a bit more house cleaning, we eagerly awaited friends from Colorado to celebrate the new year with us.  All the family got together for some delicious food, a belated Christmas exchange, several rounds of poker and many toasts to a great 2015.  Actually, there was good food, poker, and more toasts for a couple more nights after, too.

 The pond froze over, so there were a few trips out to "skate", until the sun warmed up enough to start bubbling up the water through the cracks.  It was a solid three inches thick.  The water itself wasn't more than 5 inches deep to start with, so "falling through" wasn't really much of a threat.

 Our snow isn't always great for packing, but Tom made this little snowman.  

Many more snowballs were made - for lobbing at each other.

We also had a private cooking lesson on tortilla making - delicious and kudos to Marie! 

We enjoyed time in the sun and around the dinner table and in front of the fire.  We weren't ready to see our friends go on Saturday afternoon after all the fun.  Probably the best Christmas present to Tom was not asking to get back to work after they left - we enjoyed some games and dvds and a puzzle.  But the holidays aren't over - next up, Tom's birthday!

Christmas 2014

What a privilege to spend another Christmas with my parents and siblings!  It was a wonderful trip with great eats, drinks, and entertainment.  What we lacked in sleep, we made up for in movies, cocktails, and cookies.

Keeping up with the four nephews and one niece was much fun - wrestling, reading, and goofing off.  Unfortunately, I got those boys all riled up on more than one occasion, raising the volume at my parents' home a few dozen decibels.  It sure was great to spend time with everyone, plus aunts and uncles and cousins and friends.  And for a quiet treat out, we even got to nibble on Voodoo Donuts.

Road Trip!

Christmas is a great excuse for spending time with my hubby!  Sure we've been spending most our non-work hours either sleeping, eating, or working on the house together, but traveling affords us all sorts of time for conversation and dreaming and having fun.  Rather than sit next to one hundred plus strangers on a short flight to Oregon, we loaded up our car with gear and gifts and sat next to each other.

The roads weren't terrible.  Tom got to do all the driving in the snow through Idaho and Washington

 Washington??  Yes, it isn't exactly on the way to Oregon, but we had to stop by to meet baby Benny - well worth it!  Met up with friends in Wenatchee for dinner and Bellingham for lunch, and then off to the Pacific Coast for some "vacation" before Christmas.

We could hear and smell the ocean, but arrived in the dark.  In the morning these two (plus a third) were waiting outside our window to welcome us.  Or they wanted breakfast.

After our own breakfast, we walked the beach.

 

I was thrilled to say I went in the ocean (thanks, rubber boots!) until the ocean went in my rubber boots...

Then Thomas pulled a sly move and scared up all the birdies on the beach - so grateful they kept moving south and didn't come back to poop on me!

Yeah for friends and seafood and hot tubbing and more seafood and a beautiful scenic drive 

(and for North Plains - otherwise, we would have run out of gas before Portland).