Thanksgiving Weekend

It was a busy weekend. I had Wednesday off, and spent the day taking care of household chores. I also made Lemon Angel bars for Thanksgiving dinner before heading to my parents'.

We had a really nice Thanksgiving even though about one-third of the family was just getting over being sick, sick, or headed toward being sick. Luckily, I've managed to avoid getting sick so far. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of the day to share. They all came out really bad.

My mother, sister and I braved the Black Friday shopping spree again. We pulled an all-nighter and finished quite a bit of shopping. I bought myself a new camera to avoid future missed holidays.

Friday afternoon we cut Christmas trees at the home of my 8th grade math teacher. He's retired now and grows a few on his property. Usually, I have a Nordmann fir. This year, I went with a grand fir.

It looks good in my new house. I spent the rest of the weekend working on decorating my house. Some things haven't been out of storage in years, so it was fun to unpack and display them. 

Happy Halloween!

Happy Birthday!

With the guys away, the girls (and kids) will play...Happy Birthday Mama!

Sunny Fall Days

We just had to enjoy the incredibly beautiful weather.

The Pumpkin Patch

Today was not a school day, so we headed out the pumpkin patch at E-Z Orchards for some fun and games. The were slides and peddle tractors, funny cut-outs and farm animals, donuts and cider, and of course, pumpkins. It was a good way to spend a Friday.

A Short Rant....

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."

This is the oath of office taken by our elected congressional representatives. Today marked Day 5 of the Government Shutdown, and I personally do not believe that our representatives are doing their job. I sincerely hope each and every one of them, regardless of political affiliation, is voted out of office at the earliest opportunity!

September....

Went by very quickly. I've spent the last month moving out of my apartment and into my new house. Of course that meant cleaning the old apartment very thoroughly. My family helped, and I have to say some of them are much pickier about scrubbing those mostly unseen corners than I am!

So, everything from the old place is now in the new place. Most of the boxes are sitting in the garage waiting to be unpacked. I need to get it done, but I'm not really enthusiastic about it. I'm so over the whole moving thing.

And since every weekend has been packed busy, I took most of this past weekend off from my very long to-do list. I headed to Corvallis to hang with my family and watch (on TV) the Beavers beat Colorado on Saturday. With predictions of severe weather and flooding, nobody felt like doing much. With the threat of impending weather doom, I headed home before dark. It's kind of hard to see tree limbs falling when you can't see much. Luckily we avoided the worst of the weather.  Portland was hit very hard in some places. Thousands of people were out of power. And my drive to work this morning did encounter some broken trees. Double luckily, none of them were in front of my house.