Our new cat

We FINALLY took bowser to the groomer today to get a haircut. She’s got a few mats that I can’t get at because her hair is so long and she HATES to be brushed so I can only do a little bit each time I try.
She has got so fuzzy over the past few months she’s long overdue for a haircut. Notice that she has no neck, and not really any legs either, her feet just stick out from under the fur. Her tail cracks me up too, it’s like a candy cane, I’ve never seen it straight, it curls over on the end and is a big ball of fluff.

I thought it had only been a few months since we took her in but looking back at this blog, I see “a few” has been 10…. oops.

Fluff with ear tips, eyes, a nose, cranky mouth and feets….

Sleepy fluff


And here she is back at home again. I can’t believe they shaved off her entire tail! She doesn’t look anything like the same cat! She looks like a baby sheep that just got sheared..

With a face, a neck, legs and a little stick tail


Here you can sort of see the “sheared’ness” of her, the little chunks of unevenly shaved fur…

And the pathetic stick tail… this is so sad… ha, Poor thing. She seems fine though, not hiding out for days like she did last time, she’s been hanging out with me tonight.

Christmas #3

We had our 3rd Christmas celebration at my parents (kari) house. My camera wasn’t working so I was just making faces as Bo tried to get a decent picture. Oops…

Bows didn’t go to my parents with us but somehow this picture of her was imported with the pics so here’s another insideout picture of her. She didn’t get anything for Christmas. :(

mom opening presents

Dad going to bed because he was sick. I got a smile out of him on his way out though.

Trina, Joe & Chloe. I swear I’ve never taken a picture of them that wasn’t gorgeous, it’s ridiculous how cute they ALWAYS look in pictures.

And an actual smile when the camera was working again.

We hope you had as Merry a Christmas as we had all 3 times!

Christmas Eve Church

Our Christmas Eve church service was awesome! Pastor Nancy chose a handful of unsuspecting kids to help show the Christmas story live. We even had a live baby Jesus in the manger (bouncy seat). It was adorable.

Pastor Lee came out dressed like…….. well, you can see. He was the angel Gabriel telling us the Christmas story from his point of view, it was quite entertaining and touching.

Then they did the candle lighting. It starts with 1 candle lit up front, from that 1 person, the entire church gets their candles lit and the church goes from pitch black to warmly glowing from everyone holding their lit candles. It’s beautiful. The pictures don’t do it justice, I was having a hard time with no flash.

Christmas #2

We spent Christmas Eve at Kati & Dan’s house with the family. Again, we had food, fellowship and presents. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves since I’m falling asleep on my computer now.

Christmas #1

Since we didn’t have bible study Wednesday night and Bo’s mom comes to that with us, we decided to get together anyways for dinner/Christmas. We had breakfast for dinner (eggs & toast – not separate – it’s an actual dish they make), put on “Mickeys Magical Christmas” in the background on tv and opened presents together. Of course Bows had to be the center of attention….

We had fun opening presents trying to guess what was inside. Lots of flat ponies, dead ponies, squished ponies, square ponies (it’s only funny if you’ve ever opened presents with me before… think along the lines of KiT-Ten).

“Home Sweet Home” has always been my favorite Yankee candle fragrance but I got “Sparkling Cinnamon” this year which outsmells that by far! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Yummy and warm! And yes, I’m STILL wearing my scrubs from work.. off work at 430, home at 5, had company over already, made food for our christmas eve dinner, company left at 645, started wednesday night dinner, bo’s mom arrived at 7, she left at 930 and I had a chance to change from my work clothes straight into my jammees!

Bo actually enjoyed his gifts quite a bit, you just can’t tell :/

Yup…. STILL there

Then she got tired and flipped insideout. It’s a newer thing for her to hang out insideout but I catch her doing it all the time now. She’s a fluffy nut.

Alaska daycation

Bo and I got the opportunity to take a day trip to Alaska yesterday with his mom to celebrate his brothers birthday and Christmas with him. Normally I wouldn’t really want to spend 8 hours on a plane in 1 day just to spend 8 hours somewhere and come back home, but for this snow…. totally worth it! I love snow, but you can probably tell from the pictures below I took out the car window driving around town yesterday so I’ll stop talking about it and let you see it. (keep scrolling though, there’s a good story below with the next set of pictures after the snow) …..

I wanted to see snow, so pretty much landing the plane in the Anchorage airport, I was happy already and got to see snow, then I got really excited when we got out of the airport to see it for real. I could have come home at that point having had a great day seeing some real snow! (Washington snow is NOT snow)

But Bo’s mom really wanted to see a Moose. So we took off on a wild moose chase to find one! We’re driving up this hillside in a residential area on the search for moose and Bo’s mom yells “BACK UP!” So we stopped the car, backed up and I was looking for a dog or a log or a pile of rocks in someones yard figuring she saw SOMETHING that wasn’t white and figured it was a moose. So we backed up… and saw a MOOSE!!!!!!

This is not just a moose wandering through someones yard, this thing is curled up in a little ball ON THE WELCOME MAT on the back porch! Are you kidding me!!?!?! There is a moose curled up like a dog on the mat on the porch of a house in a residential neighborhood!!!

We weren’t even sure if it was alive so Bo got out and jumped around and it MOVED! It’s a real life moose … a wild moose… this is a MOOSE thinking it’s a dog or something curled up on the porch.. NO WAY!!!! Obviously I can’t comprehend this… it’s a moose, on a porch… !?!?!?! This thing would stand up taller than the truck in the driveway and it’s just chillin on the porch?? Wow.

Anyways, we went out for breakfast (I got to try reindeer sausage), went moose chasing, took lots of pictures on the drive and went back to Chris’s house to relax. I ALMOST took a nap during the football game but managed to stay awake.

Then we shopped a bit, went out to dinner (still being full from breakfast) and headed back home. Here’s Chris at the restaurant… so festive is he! :) (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!)

This was a huge chocolate factory at Wildberry, one of the stores we visited.

And we got to see the sunset on the way out. Beautiful!

I realized later I didn’t get ANY pictures of us together or even any pictures of Bo’s mom so I stole one from her FB page to give credit here :)

Christmas Tidings

We got our Christmas tree Thanksgiving weekend. We just now (last weekend) got around to putting lights and decorations on it. Come to find out, our christmas tree topper is gone so I had to go buy a new one this year. So here’s our tree…. it makes me smile.

Bo and I have both been collecting ornaments since we were little and have a TON of ornaments, we put less than half on the tree and it’s full already.

I also got around to baking a little. I make pizzelles every year and have been craving Chex mix for months now and wanted to do that as well and Bo has his favorite cookies that his mom makes every year and I said I’d try to make this year for the first time. It’s not going very well so far….

This is the first of my chex mix… 4 pans in the oven going on their 2nd hour of baking now (supposed to be 1) and I ran out of Worshestershire sauce which apparently is what gives it the bold taste so I’m bummed about the flavor of how this might turn out…. if it ever finishes cooking (i doubled the butter so it wouldn’t get dry but now it won’t cook out!)

My mother in law makes these perfect little mini muffin shaped frosted cookies every year. They are Bo’s favorite. Hers are generally perfectly shaped with cute red and green frosting and sprinkles on top. I wanted to do purple but ended up with a plumy-gray color and bo won’t let me sprinkle them so i guess that’s it. They also didn’t turn out in the perfect little mini muffin shape as they stuck in the pans and ripped apart when i dumped them out. They also sunk in the middle. Oh well…

The pizzelles are the flat waffle looking cookies in the back tupperware in the picture above. These are PERFECT! I have been making them for many years and adjust the recipe a LOT every year and finally got it figured out this year and written down. They are JUST how my great grandma used to make them (or at least how I remember them tasting). They were a hit at our bible study party last night as many who have had them before said they tasted authentic or like they had tried before.

I’m done. Ha. Bo and I hung empty picture frames on the wall tonight as well in anticipation of receiving family pictures from all our family members this year for Christmas so we can have a “family wall” in the house with all our families hung on the wall for us to see. This is probably what I am most excited about. I HATE HATE HATE hanging picture frames on the wall for some reason but I NEED pictures to be happy so we got a bunch done tonight and have a bunch more to do tomorrow then we’ll have about 10-12 empty picture frames hung and just waiting for pictures! YAY!

Here’s more of our tree so you can see some of the ornaments…

Santa pooped in my jacket….

I told Bo that I wanted to have a “date night” with him because I feel like we haven’t spent much time together lately. We decided on dinner and a movie. We were heading to the movie theater after dinner when I asked if he wanted an early Christmas present… he said “of course!” and looked to see what it was. I spread my arms apart and told him to get it (mind you it’s 20 degrees outside and I’m wearing about 3 layers of clothes topped with my HUGE puffy jet puffed marshmallow looking jacket). He reaches into my jacket pockets and they were empty. He unzips the jacket and a wrapped box fell out. I said “WOW! Santa pooped in my jacket!!!” He unwrapped the box and found Toby Mac concert tickets I had purchased about a month ago.

We both love Toby Mac and had a blast at the show tonight! And it’s so fun to surprise Bo with stuff like this, it’s so easy! He had NO IDEA at all until I gave him the box. In fact, he spent the entire drive to the restaurant on the phone with FREE-411 and the movie theater checking on movies and times. I didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop wasting his time with that because I wanted it to be a surprise. Then at dinner, he barely touched his food because he knew he was going to the theater afterwords to have Nachos and a huge soda. He did end up getting nachos and a soda but with a much better show!

We had a blast, Toby Mac put on yet again, an amazing concert. I’d go see him every time he’s in town! And his opener B. Reith was pretty good too, I’ll have to check out some of his music!

LSCC Christmas Dinner

Lake Sawyer Christian Church has an annual Christmas dinner for the ladies of the church and their guests. It’s a beautiful event and now sells out usually by the end of the first service on the first day tickets are on sale. I think there are about 240 women or so at the event. I’ve been going to this since I started attending the church about 6 years ago and absolutely love it. 1 woman will host a table bringing out her finest china and decorations and be in charge of decorating the table. Below is the table I sat at. (The 2 trees light up and change colors)

And here is another beautiful favorite as well. These tables are elaborately and beautifully decorated (hence the reason I don’t host a table… not sure my pure white corelle everyday dishes and a plastic table cloth would cut it in this venue).

One of the really neat things about the evening is that the men volunteer and sign up to serve us. These are spouses, family members, friends, etc who volunteer their time, get all dressed up in their white shirts and Christmas ties and wait tables serving the women all night, it’s really cool to see them all gathered together in prayer before the dinner starts and all lined up ready to go when the evening is getting under way. Sadly I don’t have pictures of them here.

I do however, have pictures of the group singing a capella which was beautiful. They did a wonderful job and were great entertainment.

We also had the pleasure of hearing Sarah Taylor from Spirit 105.3 speak about “The gift worth giving” and some of her own personal stories which were a great encouragement.

The ladies who led our worship (Christmas style) were wonderful as well.

And here’s mom & I at our table (thanks Chuck!)

And mom looking perfect in front of the Christmas Tree in the lobby.

Me and Anna (it was her table I sat at)

And mom and I.

We had a great time at this event as usual. I’d love to just buy out a whole table so I can invite friends and family to come with me next year….. we’ll see!