What a busy Christmas

We hope you all had a very wonderful holiday. We spent time in Colville, Vancouver, and here in Spokane. Thank you all for the wonderful gifts and cards. I think we most enjoyed the time we were able to spend with everyone over this Christmas. Here are a few of the photos from our outings.

Here is Kim, Hadley, and Ethan after they stamped each other with some stamps from Christmas (Notice how red Hadley's cheeks are). Andy and I got quite a laugh out of this, the mom's on the other hand did not find the same humor in it.

Brinkley stayed in with us while Andy and I opened gifts. We put all the ribbons on her.

Anna and Kim being funny girls.

My cute parents.

Beautiful Sarah.

Christmas Cookies

I have spent the last two days baking and I love it in my new kitchen. There is so much more room for doing this sort of thing. I make cookies for each of the hospitals I work at. This year I made sugar cookies, fudge, peppermints, cornflake wreaths, Irish cream brownies, and raspberry ribbons. Andy even helped a little when I needed help pouring and etc. What was great was that on Sunday as I was finishing it started to snow again. I hope they like it all.

Crazy Snow

We woke up Sunday morning to these lovely tracks in our GRASS...not to mention they were only feet from Andy's truck. Looks like someone got a little carried away in the new snow or simply misjudged the corner. Well I guess it gives me something to look forward to in the Spring.

We thought Oscar should join in the fun as we were clearing snow. We usually take him out once a Winter so this was it. We have gotten about 3 more inches since the first snow fall and this one was perfect snow for building snowmen and etc. Oscar enjoyed it for about 10 seconds and than off he ran to the house.

The Aftermath

Our first snowfall of the year. You can see Brinkley's footprints everywhere; she was enjoying the snow as I scooped it off the walk.

LET IT SNOW

We are getting our first snow storm of the year tonight. Here is a photo of the start to the snow and I will try to get one tomorrow to show the accumulation. Welcome to Winter in Spokane.

Ready for Christmas

I am READY. I love Christmas and as you can see the house is decorated. I actually did this last weekend...I know before Thanksgiving...but we were having company after Thanksgiving and I wanted the house to look nice. I had a great time doing it and Andy really likes it. Now...I should get on to that shopping thing; I am not finished with that. I thought I would share with those of you what the house looks like for Christmas since I know we will not all be together over the holidays.

Happy Thanksgiving

Family and Friends:
Andy and I just wanted to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving. We hope you are filled to the brim by the end of it all and that you have many wonderful moments with those you spend the day with.

In Sweet Loving Memory

"I sometimes feel I'm so alone and though we now are far apart you hold a big piece of my heart. I never knew how much I'd grieve when it was time for you to leave, or just how much my heart would ache from that one fragment you would take. God lets this tender hole remain reminding me we'll meet again, and one day all the pain will cease when He restores the missing piece."

We love and miss you dad more than you will ever know. Mom, please know our thoughts are with you always...today now more than ever. We love you so very much.

Happy 4th Birthday Brinkley

Today is Brinkley's 4th Birthday, which we always celebrate with a big chew bone. As you can see from the bottom photo she was quite excited (sorry about the crazy eyes). I think she enjoyed her gift.

A beautiful day with my hubby

I have been wanting to take some pictures with Andy and we have not had any "professional" photos done since our wedding. I have a good friend who is starting to do photography and we met up with her today. Here are some of the photos. She has an amazing talent.

Confused Kitty

Okay, first I know this is a little gross, but I could not just let go by. Since we do not have kids yet we have "animal stories." For those of you who have not met our 18 lb. cat Oscar here is a photo. He is so lovable and has one amazing purr. Tonight I walked into our bathroom and was stunned to see.....well you will just have to see the photo. I think he is a little confused as to what really is the litter box.

I hope this gave you all a great laugh. Would you like to wash clothes at our house (yes, it is the laundry soap)?

Football

Adam (Andy's younger brother) is in Junior High now and is playing football. We were able to see him play at one of the games on a beautiful Saturday.

Go Adam...

One deer down

The boys were out on opening day and Lucas brought home a deer. A group of deer came in and Lucas got first shot and here he is. The first photo is of the guys hiking down to the deer and the second if of course the deer. One thing is for sure is that this means great jerky will be made by Andy. Andy continued to hunt the next day and the following weekend; he passed up on one deer and than did not see any more 3 point of better bucks (required in order to shot one in this area) so now he is waiting until the late season. Congrats Lucas.

Hunting Season

Andy and I were up at 4:30 a.m. to go out and look for deer for opening season next week. We had a great time. We got out and situated before sunrise and saw tons of deer. The best were these two spikes that walked within 10 feet of us without noticing us (see photo). As you can tell they eventually did notice us and decided to investigate a little more, which meant snorting at us and staring. One even tried getting closer to us, but decided we were to scary and they ran off. It was a beautiful morning and we had a great time being together. As we were headed back to the truck we ran into this very interesting cricket. We both had never seen one before so of course we brought it home. After some research we think it is a Jerusalem cricket that is native to this area so we let him go. Hunting and science makes for a great time.

Gotta love a pick up man

Well as I sit here creating this blog Andy is on his way back from Montana with this. Yep, after his two Mazda's that he fixed up and sold we had enough for this. It is a 2001 Dodge Dakota. Our little white mazda was great, but could fit no more than three people and everything had to go in the bed of the truck. Now he can haul the dirt bike and all his other needs no problem.

For the love of the dog

Did you ever know how much a dog could cost you =). We added onto (and by we I mean I handed Andy the nails and etc. while he built) our house. Our backyard is treeless and we thought that Brinkley might like to have some cover this winter so we covered the cement area in back for her. As you can tell in the photo it was raining; yep Andy worked right through it. It turned out very nice. I also had to post a photo of her so you could see why we would do this. She really is an amazing dog.

A wonderful day for hiking

Andy and I spent one of the beautiful

summer days of '07 on top of Mt. Spokane.

You can see all the lakes around the area. We had a

wonderful day together. This was a great way to

beat the city heat.

Picking Peaches

We Love Greenbluff...

The family went up and picked peaches for canning again this year. I think we had more fun eating the wonderful peaches (Andy) than picking them. It was a beautiful day as you can see. We picked about four boxes worth. The peaches were canned, made into jam, cobbler, and amazing homemade peach icecream.

Belly Dancing

So I took a belly dancing class with my friend Jill from work. Needless to say people at work found out and asked us to perform our dance at Christy and Paul's summer party. We had a great time doing our Candle Dance. Thank you everyone for you support.

New Year

Our 2007 started off with selling our home on Rowan and moving to a different house in a much quieter area of town. We are loving this place. We will no longer have to cover the windows with plastic in the winter =) and it is so nice to not have one little bathroom. We now have room for visitors (hint hint).

Time to start blogging

Hey friends and family...after seeing many of your own blogs I decided I should start one to. It is so nice to see how everyone is and what they are doing. So here I go....