Thanksgiving

Paige, Doug, and kids made their way to Oregon for the Thanksgiving holiday. We had a great visit with tons of yummy Thanksgiving food.

Here is Jack preparing the 2 turkeys for frying. YUM!!!















Then Jack putting the 1st turkey in the fryer. The fried turkeys are great. They take no time to cook and are really yummy and moist. And also frees your oven up for other cooking.

Here are the kids ready to eat our feast. We had fried turkey, ham...both because the 2 turkeys were small...fryer can only hold a 10 lb turkey, along with funeral potatoes, sweet potato cassarole, Paige's homemade rolls, raspberry preztel salad (it was my favorite...and the kids too...it was the only thing I didn't have leftovers of on friday), cranberry sauce...from scratch..no canned stuff at our house...stuffing, and broccoli. All SO good!!!

We were greatful that Paige & Doug could come visit. We had a fun time & were so glad to have them.

Another Four-Wheeling Trip

Yesterday, we went four-wheeling in the Tillamonk State Forest with 3 of Jack's co-workers. We have had some pretty wet days over the last 2 weeks so it was a muddy trip but luckily it didn't really rain too much yesterday. Mostly just drizzled. And it wasn't really too cold either.

As we were driving down one of the trails we came across this little off shoot of a trail that was super muddy with lots of big holes but no rocks. Jack decided that he wanted to try it. I was in the truck the first time he tried and then got out to video the next 5 or 6 attempts. He ended up not making it up. It was so muddy and there was this huge hole he couldn't get past. By the last try the tires were so caked with mud you couldn't hardly see the tread on the tire and it was so slick that the tires were just sliding along the ground when he put it in reverse. We had chunks of mud flying all over when we got back on the gravel trail.





After lunch, we tried to find the Rock Garden trail (see the first video of The Beast) but we had a hard time finding it but we did come across a trail called "The Waterfall". The trails are each assigned a difficulty rating, like snow sking trails, with blue being the easist and triple black diamond being the hardest. Well, The Waterfall is a double black diamond. At the top of the trail we stopped to check it out (we didn't know what trail it was and the difficulty level because the maker was at the bottom and we were at the top) mostly to see if 2 of the stock rigs we were with could make it down. We quickly figured out that those 2 rigs would NEVER make it down but Jack thought "The Beast" could and that his buddy John could make it down in his Toyota. So they took a shot at it. I opted to be the vidoegrapher for this run. I think I would have wet my pants if I had been in the truck!!! It scared me just to watch. Maybe next time I will be brave enough to ride along. Jack of course had a BLAST!!!


Waterfall Part 1




Waterfall Part 2

We ended the day with lots of mud on The Beast and a couple new dents...can you see the new ones? It was a good day!

Jack's Mosaic

I decided Jack needed a mosaic also. Same questions...some different answers, a couple the same. Can you guess which ones?

Melanie's Mosaic

My creation
Originally uploaded by blazer713

I saw this Mosaic idea on another blog. I thought it was fun so I did one for myself.

Each box answers a question about myself. Do you know the answer?

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What high school did you attend?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Favorite drink?

7. Dream vacation?

8. Favorite desert?

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. One word to descibe you?

12. Your flickr name?

Milo has always had this thing for flying bugs. When he is outside he loves to chase them and catch them in his mouth. The problem w/ this is he doesn't know that some bugs "bit" back. He has gotten stung on a few occasions. We like to tease him when he is in the house and ask him where the bug is. He always searchs for it flying above his head and gets frustrated when he can't find it..thus the whining. He is a funny dog!

My lastest project

So I spent all summer doing crafts to sell at the local farmers market. Now that I am done w/ that I decided I wanted to do something for myself. I bought material almost a year ago to make a new scripture bag so I decided that it was about time I got it done. I spent the last 3 evenings cutting, pinning, and sewing it together. When I haven't sewn for a long time, I forget how much I enjoy it. And I am sure I would be much better at it if I did it more often. Anyway, I think my bag turned out pretty cute. I can't wait to take it to church tomorrow!!

well vacation wasn't a total bust

We were all excited to going to Moab for the Blazer Bash but the new old car aka "The Beast" had different plans. We got to mom & dad's and discovered transmission fluid all over the back of our car due to a leak. One night at mom & dads turned into 3 nights...thanks for letting us stay longer then planned. Four days & $600 later we headed back home. We weren't going to chance getting stuck in the middle of nowhere on the way to Utah, as much as Keith wanted us to still come down, we just couldn't do it. There will be other Blazer Bashes.

So we adjusted our vacation plans. We spent a few days at home staying up late & sleeping in.

Then we went to the beach for a couple of days. It ended up being beautiful in Lincoln City...it was sunny, a little windy with just a bit of a chill in the air. We took a walk on the beach and then watched the sun set from the balcony of our room. While the sun was setting we watched a kid surfing...you don't see much of that in Oregon!!

I took this picture on my morning walk on the beach. It was another beatiful day and since it is now off season there weren't too many people around.

On our way home from the beach, we stopped at the oldest covered bridge in Oregon. It is located on private property but the owners welcome people to see it. The owners saved the bridge from be destroyed by the county. The county gave them the disassembled bridge and then they rebuilt it on an exsisting concrete bridge that crossed a creek on their property. It was a beatiful piece of Oregon history.

After the beach, Jack spent a couple of days working on the beast so that we could take it out 4-wheeling. We went out to Browns Camp which in the coastal range on the way to Tillamonk. We got lucky with the weather again and had another beautiful day in Oregon. It was sunny and warm!! And with the beautiful weather we got breathtaking views of the mountains. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful state and live so close to the mountains and the beach. We had a GREAT time!!! I can't wait to go again.We totally didn't fit under this tree, lucky for us there was a alternate trail that took us around the fall tree, although that wasn't always the case.

As you can see here, we added a few new scraps to the truck...you can almost see the orignal red paint... and even brought some tree along w/ us.

We got the truck in couple of really tight spots. There were a couple of times that I really thought that we were not going to get through the maze of trees. At one point Jack told me to get out and guide him through a tough spot on the trail. I was really bad at it. I couldn't see anyway of getting the truck past these 2 trees. Thank goodness we had a couple of guys w/ us that knew how to get big trucks out of tight spots.

We decided that our vacation started out bad but it ended with a great time together with friends out in the wilderness of the beautiful state that we live in. It was all GOOD!!