11-30-12

Here’s a scary photo!

Anastasia passed her test and now has her license!  She is allowed to drive around siblings for her probationary period, so we let her drive Xander to dinner and dessert tonight.

Another milestone in the Fischer household…

11-29-12

Today brought…

… Anastasia’s first drive through the drive-thru.  Gingerbread shake, ewww!

… Naked shower Thursday, according to swim boy.  There’s even a song…

… forcing applicants to get rid of their kittens.  Evidently the house is cuter!

… gift wrapping for the Weyerhaeuser Christmas party.  A roomful of ladies had a roomful of gifts wrapped in a snap!

… but still no decorated tree!

11-28-12

I really need to stop spending my days off at Ikea!

We thought today would be a quick trip down to pick up the rest of the rental kitchen cabinets, but evidently nothing is fast at Ikea.

They don’t know how to deal with speedy Bruce.  When we arrived a the warehouse, they informed us that we got there way too fast and there would be a long wait.  So we went to coffee.

11-27-12

Here’s the view from our house.  We got some new neighbors, and they seem to have much more holiday spirit.  Wonder if they are disappointed by our quiet yard and house.  I love the festive lights, but I guess this year priorities are on health, rentals, and adopt-a-block.  Maybe next year we can dust off our outdoor lights…

11-26-12

Can you spot both Fischer kids?  Anastasia, team manager, is easier to spot.  The boys all look alike!  I had to have Anastasia point Xander out.

And jumping right back into the routine… 

11-25-12

I hate photos at meals, but this is a cute pre-meal photo of the girl cousins being entertained by “Uncle Bif”.  It was quite a silly second Thanksgiving meal...

11-24-12

Highlights of Saturday included seeing the Life of Pi movie (great!) and taking a Pike Place Market food tour.  Food tours have kind of become a thing we seek out and enjoy.  It was fun learning more about the market and sampling some new places: tea, cheese & salami, mini donuts, cheeses, dried fruit, gelato, crumpets, pickles, smoked salmon, and chowder, and salmon cakes.  Yum!  This is a photo our tour guide snapped of us at the chowder stop.

11-23-12

Our cozy weekend in Seattle kicked off with a geocaching scavenger hunt.  We went around town capturing photos of well known sights, and some new ones.  We were on the look-out for pets in costume, tree toppers (retail places don’t have toppers, betcha), and stockings all weekend.    

It was easy to get the Seattle Center items since that was so close to our hotel.  A great find was a new spot in the food court called Beansprout that serves chocolate hummus in a cone with sliced strawberries and graham cracker bears. Also enjoyed walking through an Etsy bazaar. This photo is scoping out our favorite miniature building in the train display.

11-22-12

Happy Thanksgiving!

Some families sit down and pass the food.  Some do it buffet style, scattering after the blessing.  And some head to a restaurant feast.

Thankful for the variety, the company, the traditions, and so many blessings.

For those of you who know the McNeil family, R to L: Seth, Aunt M, U Keith, U Pat, Aleta (I still haven’t figured out how to spell Ryan’s girlfriends name!) and Shanna (oops, cut off).

11-21-12

As soon as we got the kids off to school, we zoomed down to Portland to “buy a kitchen” at Ikea for the rentals, with plans to be back in time to get the kids to afternoon activities.

Silly us, Ikea, doesn’t even open until 10am!  We had a very leisurely trip to Target tax free, but still had an hour to kill.

We detoured to Jim & Patty’s coffee shop.  Pictured here is Bruce’s caramel fudge mocha (with smiley face whipped cream), nutella scone, my peanut butter fudge mocha (real peanut butter sludge at the bottom), and their signature sour cream coffee cake.  Nothing like that much sugar to kick start the day!

Ikea ticked off Bruce, as usual.  Barely had time to get a houseful of boys to swim practice.  Sure like the kitchen cabinets we chose, wish they were for our house!

11-20-12

Busy day.  Dentist, work, power outage, prepping for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Anastasia’s band concert.  The kids don’t seem to care for their uniforms, but they look very festive and appropriate for this time of year.

11-19-12

Bruce has been working on stripping and repainting the trim work in the house.  I don’t care for the noise, smell, or mess, but am guessing the end result will be worth it.  Another advantage of never hosting a holiday at our house – the house can be torn apart and nobody is the wiser.

11-18-12

Sunday routines… meal planning, family dessert, and ironing clothes for the coming week.

We had a quiet day today; Xander never even left the house.  Happy day.

11-17-12

There is no way I’d want to repeat high school, but it would be interesting to do a re-do given today’s wisdom and perspective.  For example, choosing the formal dresses for the dances.  Turns out we don’t wear many formals after prom in middle America, so maybe I should have cared more.

This morning I volunteered at Angel Closet, a formal dress giveaway ministry.  So many pretty dresses…

11-16-12

Got nuts?!?

Grampa and I cracked open a lot of walnuts for the first part of our visit.

Then I dominated several rounds of Skipbo.

11-15-12

Of all my plans and running around this afternoon, Anastasia’s swim banquet was the only thing that went as planned.  The Highlands decided to pack Thanksgiving food baskets Saturday rather than this afternoon, and the church meeting was just an empty parking lot.   The fourth trip this week to the Electric Bean was nice, hearing about the girls’ accomplishments with a hazelnut soy mocha.  

11-14-12

I didn't even realize that I was taking a picture of Bruce taking a picture.  He is now official weekly supply shopper for the Electric Bean, so he has to know what they use.  The whole Reese’s have to go back, they use already crumbled ones in their candy bar drink.  We had no idea you could buy them that way!

11-13-12

Nope, this is not me chowing down on a coconut cream bismark.  It can’t be me, because I don’t eat sugar on weekdays.

Right!

Had a lovely day off work, sugar and all.  I can tell that Awesome Donuts moving into town is going to be bad for my waistline…

11-12-12

The guys went out in the dead of night (well, in the dark at least) and collected leaves around the neighborhood.  For crazy mom who won’t give up on her annoying ideas.  They are a cheap and easy way to improve clay soil, and they help fill big massive holes in the alley…

“Listen. . . .
With faint dry sound
Likes steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisped, break from the trees
And fall.”
- Adelaide Crapsey

11-11-12

We did a day trip today, to a place we've never explored, Portland Meadows.  The last time we squeezed in a day trip was labor day weekend, so guess holiday weekends are the key.

The track is low key compared to Emerald Downs, and we had a pleasant day.  Turns out Xander has a knack for picking the ponies.  After a slow start, we ended up almost breaking even on our (mostly) $2 bets.  Our collective horse picks finished top 3 about 60% of the time.  Anastasia and I choose almost purely based on the name of the horse (we should have known that Dashin’ Baby Boy would take the win), the guys look at odds and how the horse looks.

11-10-12

I didn’t photo document my day very well.

I decided to take it easy today, but maybe should have tried harder.  No exercise, but still lots of time on my feet.  Good weather, so hit the garden for a bit.  Went shopping for a myriad of items (love one stop shopping at Freddies), then cooked stuffed mushrooms, stuffed jalapeños, cranberry-orange puff pastry and lemon coconut muffins.  All just for the heck of it.  We had Anastasia drive us all the way to Kelso and we walked through the new Wilco store, just for the heck of it.  Sure glad we don’t have a horse, that stuff is spendy!

Church, dinner, and now bed is sounding good…

11-09-12

Here’s a peek at my new do!

TGIF.  Enjoyed the Footloose play with Anastasia tonight.  Even with perm fumes choking me and maybe those around me…

11-08-12

This was our first family dinner together in a long time, so Bruce thought it would be fitting to have a family photo.  Insert 20 minutes of craziness to get one mostly good shot.  And tomorrow night we all run our different directions again…

11-07-12

I saw a rainbow and big fluffy clouds on the way home from Pell today, between rain squalls.  I also saw piles and piles of leaves.  Leaves that I want for the garden.

Last weekend I started tearing down the straw bales.  The partially decomposed material peels right off in thin mats, it’s wonderful!  Adding a weed barrier and soil enricher, and have enough to do the whole yard.

The team at PeEll, strongly republican with one boisterous democrat, grieved the election results with hilarity.  Happy to live in a country with the freedom to joke, share opinions, and vote.

11-06-12

Me: What does it mean that my triglycerides were marked as too low on the lab results?

Dr.: It means that you can eat whatever you want at McDonalds!

Thanks, Doc.

Also, thanks ridiculous TV personalities as you try to analyze the election results that aren’t coming in fast enough.  Should we even talk about it if they are only 4% counted?

Kids think I'm crazy for pointing the camera at the TV for so long.

11-05-12

It’s hard to capture all the colors!

Here’s an attempt.  I met a friend to walk the lake after work.  The sun was shining, there were so many leaves that it is hard to make out the trail, and it’s getting dark so much faster!

Loving the lake…

11-04-12

Pastor said he didn’t want any of these photos on Facebook or other sites, but he didn’t say anything about photo blogs, so here goes.

Tonight was our Hawaiian themed pastor appreciation dinner.  It doesn’t feel like we should be, but we were included in those being honored because of our site shepherd role.  But we didn’t have to get on stage and hula with the Baptist Babes!

Feeling blessed, and on a big sugar high from all the lava cake.

11-03-12

Today we attended the opening ceremonies for the trail in the Highlands.  Well, we really participated around the edges, since we were crossing guards at various intersections along the trail.  I was at the busy street with my Cub Scout buddies Alex and Kylar.  They have been learning about the roles of mayor and president at school, so they were very impressed when the mayor gave them some extra attention when he passed by.  It comes in handy to know the mayor!

11-02-12

One kid is at districts today wrapping up her swim season, and the other kid is shopping for swim gear for the start of his swim season.  Here we go again!

Happy Friday!

11-01-12

Woo—hoo, family shoebox shop!  We filled 10 shoeboxes for $175.00, so we stayed under budget!  But, we might not really be done yet - the guys focus so much on finding compact things that will fit in the shoeboxes that they end up with lots of extra space and go out for another “filler” trip.  They think the fastest shopper wins, but Anastasia and I like the hunt.

Next year I want to shop in a costume!