Thanksgiving 2012

Hi all!!! Sorry I've been a little quiet. We've been busy with family stuff.

We went over to my mom's house on Tuesday afternoon after Carver got out of school. It was a day earlier than I thought so I was scrambling to get everything ready and not forget something. It was also the day that we needed to pick up all the wreaths people bought from Carver for his school's fundraiser. They were hoping to get $3,000 to fund a new playground set (it's a non-profit Christian preschool) and they got over $11,000!!! How awesome! So anyways, we got everything loaded - in the POURING rain - and headed out of town. I think that extra day made everything more relaxing. Chris was able to duck/goose hunt almost every day.

We had Thanksgiving at my Mom's on Thursday. Then after Carver fell asleep my mom and I got in the car and headed to Yakima (45min away) to go to Walmart and Target. I wouldn't have gone that night if I didn't have a choice. Carver has been talking about how he wants a camo jeep just like Noah's and we just tell him to keep saving his money and he'll be able to get it. Well... I saw that Walmart had a battery operated camo SUV that in all actuality looks like a jeep! So we had to go. Then we got in line for Target. We were only in line for about 20-30min before we got inside the store. We opted not to get a cart, which was a perfect idea. After getting the few things we wanted, we waited in line to pay for AN HOUR AND A HALF!!!! It was crazy. We were both tired and our feet were killing us by the time we paid. We got home around 11:30pm and then Carver woke everyone up at 5:30am. Yay! So we went to Fred Meyer to get socks, mainly. Then we picked up my brother, Jake, and went back down to Yakima to go to Cabelas and the mall.

While we were at the mall, we ran into Carver's preschool teacher! It turns out she grows up in Naches (another small town close to Yakima). Carver got a little confused when he saw her and started crying but got over it quickly. He thought it was pretty cool that Nana and Pops got to meet Miss Erin. :)

After the mall, we came back to Ellensburg and Chris, Carver, Jake and I went to my grandma's for another Thanksgiving with my dad and his wife. We were a little late but it was a good time. After we left there, Chris dropped me off at Starbucks to have coffee with a friend and talk logistics about her baby shower I'm hosting, and Chris and Carver went out to Chris's uncle's house to deliver his wreath. Oh! I totally forgot to give my grandma and dad their wreaths! I got all the way home and realized they were still in my mom's garage. Thanks mom for dropping them off! :) Anyways, it was great catching up with Colleen and we've got a starting point for her baby shower. She's having a little boy in May. :)

Saturday morning, we helped my mom set up their Christmas tree and headed home. We had about 45min at home before we had to be at Chris's parents house for yet another Thanksgiving. Surprisingly, I didn't eat turkey at any of the meals we had. Guess I haven't fully recovered my meat eating from being pregnant. Sunday turned out to be a lazy, relaxing day. We were supposed to set up our Christmas decorations but never got around to it (or today, either, for that matter). Hopefully tomorrow we'll get some of it done.

That's what we did. It was a whirlwind and we're still recovering a little but it was a lot of fun. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up more on other things sometime soon. These dark evenings make me tired way too early.

Halloween 2012

 Finally getting the Halloween pictures up! It was raining this year so we skipped trick-or-treating and just went to the Harvest party at church. It was a lot of fun and Carver loved doing all the games. 

Carver and I came up with the idea of him being a hunter for Halloween this year. It was super easy to put his costume together and it was pretty practical since he can wear everything for a long time. He loved it and he didn't seem to mind that he couldn't bring a gun or bow.

 I think this was Carver's favorite. He was pretty happy that he actually got to eat the donut. We didn't let him eat any of the candy that night - but he didn't even really ask, so that's nice.

 Throwing the wrecking ball.

 

Of course, we had to get a picture of Carver and Said together. Sadie was a cupcake this year.

Deer Hunting 2012

 **WARNING: Graphic pictures ahead**

Chris started bow hunting this year and he really wanted to get a buck with his bow. So he would take his bow to work with him every day and would scout while he worked. He saw a large 4x4 (four points on each side) so he asked the owner of the property if he could hunt and he said yes. So Chris and his friend went out after work one night and Chris got him!!! He thought it was the 4x4 but after he shot him, he looked and it was a FIVE by SIX!!!!! He was enormous too. 

They brought him back to the house and gut and skinned him. He was so big that he broke an industrial caribeener hook that they tried to hang him on in the shop. They had to use our Dingo (a stand behind digger) to hoist him up. Once they got the skin off, there was an inch or two of pure fat covering the meat. That's how big he was!

When Chris took him to the butcher, he weighed in at 195 without guts, skin, that extra fat and his head and hooves. That's a lot of meat. We got back about 100lbs. The butcher said that he had a trophy buck and he hadn't seen one that big in a long time. I had been telling Chris that he needed to get the shoulder mount done since it was his first buck with a bow and it was so big. Who knows if he'll ever get one that big again. So Chris went to the taxidermist to get an idea of how much it would be and he said it was a trophy! So there was no question about it. We got the shoulder mount and it's in our living room now. haha

Ok, onto the pictures. I won't be mad if you don't want to look at them. I tried to get the best of them but they still be a little graphic for some.

Eggs!

We got our first eggs on October 17th! We were so excited. :) My friend gave us her two hens that are about a year older than our older group. She warned me that only one of them laid eggs and to not worry about it. After about two weeks of getting introduced to our girls, we got eggs... from both of them!!! We think that they liked it here better because there's more nesting boxes (she had two, so they laid eggs in one and slept in the other).

We've been getting 3 eggs for the last couple weeks. But yesterday there were 6 and today there was 7!!! I think Zoe and CC (the two new ones) are teaching our how it's done. :) I wasn't expecting them to start laying eggs for another couple weeks. Yay girls!! So if anyone is local and wants eggs, we're going to start making a list of who wants them. If they keep up these numbers we'll start selling them. Carver's in charge of the selling and he's charging $3/dozen. So he'll tithe a dollar, save a dollar and be able to spend a dollar. The money for the chicken food will come out of his spending jar so he has to re-invest before he can buy something for himself.

Making Apple Pie Filling

The weekend we went to Ellensburg to get Onyx, we clean picked all of the apples off of our trees so that my mom and I could make apple pie filling. I was originally planning on canning it, but freezing was so much faster so that's what we did. 

We got two big boxes - this was the smaller of the two.

 

The Apple-Peeler-Corer-Slicer (by Pampered Chef but they have a knock-off at Target) made the work go by so much quicker. 

 I did the peeling/coring/slicing and mom did all the mixing. We used Cinnamin, Nutmeg, sugar and lemon juice. Don't ask for the amounts, my mom just wings it. :)

 Then we measured out how much for one pie, put it in a freezer bag and stuck it in the freezer. I think we made 6-7 bags! It'll be so nice to just pull out one of these and make a pie... like at Thanksgiving and Christmas ;)

Onyx

We got a new addition to our family at the end of September. My mom had a litter of purebred labs in August and my friend wanted one. So we decided to be in town the weekend she was coming over to get her Scout (a yellow girl) so that we could be there when she came... Then we started talking about how we wanted two more rottweilers around Christmas... Then we looked up how much rotts are (around $1000) and wrote that off... then we were talking about how mom had four boys left (two blacks, two yellows) and how they were only $350... and we were sunk! I definitely wanted a black so we gave them baths and played with them to figure out which one was more mellow and here he is. :)

 He's been so easy to train and integrate into the family. Rocky and Kenya tolerate him and are playing with him more and more. He's spent the last two weekends with my mom so he's been able to play with his sister, Ebony. Last weekend, I was on a MOMs group retreat in Seabrook, WA and Chris and Carver went to my Mom's so Chris could go elk hunting (no luck). Then this weekend, we went to Spokane for my best friend's daughter's 6th birthday party so my mom babysat.

 Did you catch that my mom kept a puppy? Out of the 10 puppies, 5 of them went to family!! My mom kept one, ours, my brother, Jake and his girlfriend got one (a yellow girl named Lola), my mom's cousin got a yellow boy (Tucker) and our old exchange student, Ayami, got a black girl that they named A Lady & a Gentleman and they call her Lady.

 Carver LOVES Onyx and wants him to sleep in his bed with him. It's so precious to see them both sleeping with Carver's arm wrapped around Onyx's neck! :)