Where did all our furniture go?

I awoke on Sunday morning to find our front room like this...


And our family room like this...

And then I walked into the porch and realized that my new feng shui decorating was not such a good idea....

Bringing Home The Christmas Tree

Last Saturday we finally went out to pick up the tree we picked out so long ago.

From a distance we saw our red flag marking our tree...but when we got closer we found our trees decorated with the strangest ornaments: Ducks, Hearts and TROPHIES!

Evidently Jacques had gone out a few weeks ago with Daisy and had a ball decorating our trees.

Brian with the ornaments:

Removing the ornaments so we could take the trees home just to re-decorate them :)


Brian cutting down our tree, it would have been a lot easier if our stump wasn't 4-5 inches in diameter.


Most people only go home with one Christmas tree, whereas we go home with THREE:


The finished product:

Thanksgiving Squared + Crab

The week of thanksgiving came quickly and went just as fast.

We spent Thanksgiving day with the Ohs side - we enjoyed a wonderful dinner and had a lovely time. I also bribed Tom with a piece of Banana Cream pie and he came over and took this picture of the 5 of us...well technically 6.

The day after Thanksgiving I woke up at 3:37 am - it was suppose to be 3:30 but I really need the extra 7 minutes. So you would think that with waking up in plenty of time I would have scored some great Black Friday deals. Well, if you call $5 fleece pants, Crest Toothpaste and a York Peppermint patty a great score - then I win!

One I regained some sleep we decided to have crab legs for dinner. So we headed to Costco and bought 4 lbs. of 'Alaskan King Crab' (as Brian likes to proclaim). It was a delicious dinner!


As you can see there was not much left of the crab after Brian and Steve were done...

Then Saturday we revisted Thanksgiving at my brother James' house. I'm pretty sure there were close to 40 of us there - but I always forget to count because by the time I should remember I'm already in a food coma.

Things I am thankful for...

Seeing as it is Thanksgiving I thought it was right to post what I believe I am most thankful for this year....really it's at this moment - but I'll let it pass for the year...

Memories - whether stored in photos, in our minds or in our hearts. The way they remind of the time - good or bad. They keep those we've lost in our lives and they also serve as reminders of the fun and the love we have shared with our family and friends.

Fun, Love and Life - to me these three attributes should always just go together. One because we should always love those we care for unconditionally - even when people make mistakes and while sharing that love we should always remember that life should be fun. Even in the darkest of times I always try to reminds myself that I only have one life and if I had to choose how to live it I'd choose to live it full of love and fun.

And with out any explanation at all these are a few other things I'm thankful for: family, friends, banana cream pie, kitties, Sassy, internet, warm days, snow, cake, photography, randomness, and more.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Dad's Heart

A little late on updates, but on Friday Dennis and I met Ben and Elwood in St. Cloud for Elwood to have an angiogram at St. Cloud hospital. The angiogram went well, we found out he doesn't have major blockage so they don't have to do any surgery to correct blockage.

So that was good to hear, the unfortunate part is that for some reason Elwood's heart is only working at about 50 percent. And it seems like he may have abnormal heart rythm.

Blockage was one thing that could have explained the reduced capacity/heart rhythm, other things could be: excessive drinking (4-6 beers a day) - pretty sure that is NOT the issue, sleep apnea - so he's doing a sleep study in December to see if that might be causing it, a virus like Lyme disease or something that he might have gotten from a tick bite last year or even something else - for that they are testing his blood, or it may just be some other thing that they'll never be able to explain.

The next steps are to put him on some medication for the next 2-3 weeks and then try shocking his heart back into a normal rhythm. Which if they are able to get it back into a normal rhythm it should allow him to regain some capacity and hopefully prevent further damage.

New Moon Thursday Night at Midnight

Yet another mid-night movie! On Thursday I went to New Moon with Abby and Maggie along with two of Maggie's friends: Erin and Kim. Maggie and her crew arrived at the theater around 6:30 pm whereas Abby and I chose to show up around 9 pm. You can really tell the die hard fans from the people who just enjoy going to the movies. I was a bit surprised by the crowd, there wasn't quite the crowd for New Moon as there was for Harry Potter. There was however an overwhelming population of female teenagers with a quite a few adult females mixed in the crowd. I think there were only 10 males in our theater.

I enjoyed this movie more than I did the first, I can't decided if this is because I read the book before I watched the movie. With Twilight I saw the movie before I read the book and the movie wasn't good until I read the book. Either way I believe New Moon was a better movie even thought I enjoyed the book Twilight more than New Moon.

Pet Viewing Area Upgrade

Around a year ago we had a bench custom build by Jeanne's dad to fit in the area next to our front window, the whole purpose of the bench was basically to allow the animals to look out the front window...secondary purpose was of course to add some additional setting to our front room.

So for about a year the bench has sat in our house with random blankets to soften the bench for the pets. BUT NO MORE will the animals need to worry about a soft spot to lay while they stare down those who walk by our house. Finally I bought some foam and sewed a cover for it.

Here is the final product...ignore the fact that it looks like everything is overly yellow....perhaps tomorrow I'll try to take a photo and post what it looks like with natural light.