Happy Birthday Kelly!

Today was Kelly's birthday and this morning she politely informed me she that she was "Princess for the day." Brandon and Michelle we're still here, so we had a waffle feast for breakfast. Kelly got a few presents and then we were off to church.

This afternoon I made dinner for Kelly and her friend from Palmyra came over to help us eat it.
Since it was Kelly's b-day she dictated the menu and I made it. We had roasted halibut with grapefruit fennel salsa and salad, bread, and mashed potatoes (the potatoes had a consistency similar to glue).

And then there was dessert. Kelly requested a Hazelnut crunch cake with Mascarpone and Chocolate. I was a little afraid of the recipe but I think I pulled it off all right. What do you think?

All of these recipes were courtesy of Giada de Laurentis and her cook books (Kelly loves them and I refer to them as "cooking with cleavage" because of the pictures that go along with each recipe).

Our Thanksgiving was great. Hope you guys all had a good time off too.

*Happy Birthday yesterday Lisa! Sorry we forgot to call.

We're back!

We drove home from Seattle on Friday so that we could see Kevin and Lisa. Really, I just wanted to see Lisa and do vinyl with her. We didn't get too much time to play, but atleast we did a little. Lisa let me know how the vinyl works in your Cricut! Hope it provides loads of fun.
We didn't have too many adventures in Seattle this time, Seth learned what it's like to bake bagels at 2:00am with his dad's help. While we were there Dale was able to go to church for the first time in a long time and he went back to the Deli. We've all made many plans for the deli and when we go back in 2.5 weeks hopefully we'll all be able to clean and attack the deli with vinyl!!! I'm also hoping to put their logo on the delivery truck. Something new to try!
The best story from this last week happened yesterday. Seth took Weston out to the stables to pick up his last paycheck (he quit working there just before we left for Seattle) and then went to the bank to deposit it. They drove the Rodeo and it has been having some issues with the battery. Seth pulled up to the window to make the deposit and turned the car off like they ask you to do at US Bank. He pulled up close enough to the window so that he wouldn't have to stretch too far to put the deposit in the little drawer thing. Well, when he was done, the Rodeo wouldn't start. So, he had to shimmy out of the door and non-chalantly push the car out of the drive through. While waiting for Dad to come and give him a jump he shared some of his feelings to no one in particular about his "love" for the Rodeo. When Weston came home, he couldn't wait to tell me that Dad said, "Freakin'. Car's. A. Piece. of. Crap." A couple of those words are inappropriate in our house (atleast for the kids...) I couldn't help but laughing. And I thought to myself, "that's all he said..." I just wonder what the tellers at the bank were thinking...

20 hours of driving later...

We made it home this evening about 6ish. The roads were kind to us, just a tad bit of snow in the middle of Wyoming. But other than that we flew on through. We are all VERY tired of the car but as always, it's good to be home.
Thanks grandma and grandpa for hosting us. We had a great time! We'll post pictures as soon as we find it under the piles of everything else,

A Few More Pictures

Our backyard covey of quail Smores in the rain

The "Fort"

After dinner!!!!

Great Grandpa Zirker

Dominos on the kitchen floor

Thanksgiving at the Ranch

Here is a picture of our Thanksgiving guests

About a week before Thanksgiving Kevin called and asked if it would be OK if they came home for the Holiday. Mom and I thought about it for a while (maybe a millisecond or two) and said we'd love to have them. They arrived Monday night and stayed until Saturday morning. We had fairly good weather Tuesday and Wednesday and then the fog and mist rolled in and stayed until about two hours ago. Thursday and Friday we all got a little cabin fever but we still had fun. Their family went to Coeur d'Alene on Tuesday to look around and then on Wednesday Kevin went back to visit with several companies he had contacted about employment. I'll let him tell it but just to say they were cordial but weren't hiring. While he was gone on Wednesday I took Braxton and Kanyon in the company pickup and we went to Lewiston to do some office work. We went to the scout office, crossed three bridges, got a candy bar at the gas station, rolled the windows up and down all the way home and just had a good time. Oh, and before we left we went down to the pond and fed the ducks. Grandpa came over for dinner on Thursday and Seth, Lacey and family came back from Seattle on Friday and we had a good visit that evening. Saturday we also lit the charcoal on the deck to make smores and just as we lit it, it started to rain. We put tin foil over the fire pit and roasted a couple of marshmallows and that was it. At least we tried.

Last night we went to Darin Walker's reception. He got married about a month ago but they waited until all the family came home for Thanksgiving to have the open house. It was nice to see all the ward members and all five Walker boys and their families.

Erik and Jamie - we hope you enjoyed your trip to Florida. Tell us about it when you get a chance.

Those of you who might have forgotten your mother's birthday last Wednesday might give her a quick call.

Tomorrow we all head back to work. Hope you all had a nice holiday.

What's This?

I came up with a game where you take a picture of something close up and then people guess what it is. Here's a starter.

Tyler Z.