Flick? Flick Who?

Hello everyone!

I trust you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year, and I guess Thanksgiving, since I haven't updated since then. Ooops.

So, let me see if I can remember everything that has happened.

Mike and I had a very quiet and small Thanksgiving. My folks were planning on coming out to celebrate Thanksgiving with us, but my mom's cat got sick, and needed to stay there to take care of him. Since then, he's gotten much better and is now back to his old playful self.
Mike and I had continually forgotten to pull out the turkey days before Thanksgiving, so we had a semi-frozen bird. Because of this, and because of the oven having a safety feature that turns the oven off after so many hours, our bird wasn't burned, but it was pretty dry and tough. We didn't have much of it, nor could we salvage anything to use for leftovers.

My second craft show here in Craig went by much better than the first one. The first show, I was in the entrance wing, and hardly anyone came by. Granted, I made about $70 that show, but still. It was painfully slow. The second show, I was moved into the mall and away from the wing, so I wasn't cold from the snow and wind, and people stopped by my booth. I sold only one greeting card, and a lot of business cards went out. We shall see what happens with that.

My last craft show was a week later in Hayden at their assisted living center, The Haven. It was extremely slow, as the people who were supposed to advertise dropped the ball. We had a few people come in, but not many sales to anyone in the show. I think most of us vendors just bought or swapped each other's goods. I ended up buying a scarf and blanket. I also sold two greeting cards and talked to a girl who had just given birth and wanted to talk to me about doing some 3 month old pictures. I'll see what happens.

Snow has engulfed our little town! It started snowing around the second week of December, and continued sporadically for a while, but then dumped like no one's business. We currently have about 2-4 feet of snow, and at one point, Mike tried to leave, and the garage door was frozen. He ended up getting unstuck and made it into work, but now our garage door is acting funny. It doesn't like to go down, instead, it will go down a little, then try to go back up. After a few tries of stopping it before it goes up, and forcing it to try and go down, it will. I'm not sure how long he will tolerate this before getting someone in to take a look at it.

A day or two later, poor Mike looks out the window of the house and sees the snow. He sees that it doesn't look too deep and starts to head out to work. He backs out of the garage and his car gets stuck in the snow. He comes back into the house and grabs some gloves and his hat and tells me what happened. I get up, changed and head downstairs to take a look and possibly help where I can. The morning temperature was about -4* and windy. It was blowing snow, causing all of his shoveling moot.
I got my winter gear on, and grabbed one of our beach buckets and started to help get some of the snow out from under the car and around the wheels. Because of the weather and the blowing snow being tossed onto me, I stood inside of the garage, trying to keep a relatively positive Mike company. He called his boss and explained the situation, and tried to get to work. Once he was able to get his car back into the garage, he started to shovel as much of the heavy wet and deep snow off of our football length driveway. He walked up it a little ways and thought that he could make it out, but almost got stuck halfway down. He called his boss again, and it ended up as a snow day for Mike.
Later in the day, our friend KC came to our house with his snow blower and cleared our driveway. That weekend, we took him and his wife, Errica out to dinner. (For those of you who recognize the names, Errica used to work with Mike and we have made friends with them).

Mike digging his way out of the 4 foot drifts.

Now that the car is safe inside, time to go to work!

 

 

 

I couldn't help but feel sorry for Mike that week. Whatever could go work, did. Not only did he have to contend with the weather twice, but his scheduled massage was cancelled due to a migraine on her part and then the snow day cancelled his make up massage. He was able to get one later, but still. I was laughing, but trying hard not to. All things considered though, he was a good sport about it and didn't let the problems get to him. Now, had we been in the Springs in his old job, I don't know if he would have kept it together as well as he did here.  From what we've been told, this is the worst that it has been in a couple years.

 

Because Mike and I were going to Oregon for Christmas this year, with the generosity of his parents, we had our little Christmas the day before we flew out. Mike was pretty surprised with what I gave him, and I was happy that he liked what I gave him. It was a little challenging for me this year, as he hadn't really mentioned much that he wanted, and what he did mention, he ended up buying later. I had been noticing that all of his wrist watches had been either having battery issues or some other problem, so I got him a really nice wrist watch for his birthday. I got it on a killer sale too! It was listed at about $600. I paid $130. It's a great model and it looks really good on him too! I got him a few games, cd and a cookbook based off of his favorite book series, Game of Thrones. I got to try some of the recipes yesterday, and I must say, this is a good cookbook too!

 

Early on Mike's birthday, we drove to the Hayden airport and got inside one of their little puddle jumper planes to Denver. Due to the cold and the storms, the turbulence was really bad. I'm prone to motion sickness as it is, but this was brutal. In combination of lack of sleep, food and the turbulence, I was struggling to keep from getting sick. Mike and I didn't think about packing any Benadryl, so I had to meditate for most of the flights to Oregon.

 

When we got to Oregon, it was raining, but the temperature wasn't terrible. I had forgotten how much I loved Oregon and the green! I think I missed the green more than anything! Because we had been up at 3am Oregon time, (4am Colorado time), we were hungry and tired. We got something to eat and headed to Mike's parents' house.

This Christmas was the first in a really long time that everyone was together in the Fahey house. Mike's sister Elizabeth, her husband and three kids were able to come after all, and it was the first time we got to meet their littlest addition, Evangeline. She is so adorable and is a year old, already walking and almost speaking in sentences. She's a tough kid too and super smart! I hope that our kids will be like that when they are that old!

This is also the first Christmas that I have spent with Mike's family. I had heard that their holiday gets kind of crazy, but I didn't truly realize until it happened! I think that if I didn't get a heads up beforehand, I might not have made it through as well as I did! =)



All in all, it was a great day spending it with the kids and the adults too. We played a long round of Apples to Apples and Wise or Otherwise.
On Christmas Eve, we had a little fire in the fireplace, but the smoke engulfed the house. Because I am allergic to smoke, I struggled for two days. My eyes burned and itched and I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was underwater. On Christmas, they didn't light their traditional fire and I was thankful! My senses needed a break for sure!

The day after Christmas, Mike and I headed to the coast. On the drive there, we had to drive through a mountain pass and there was snow there! I wanted to get away from the snow but we saw it a couple times on this trip. We went to a place that we had been before and really loved. It's right on the coastline and the room had a jacuzzi tub, and we were able to borrow movies from the front desk and had seen maybe 5 of them? We tried to walk along the beach, but the weather would have none of it. The wind had kicked up and was causing the rain to pelt us in the face hard, like sleet would, so our walk was short. Because our room overlooked a good portion of the ocean, we weren't too concerned about missing out on the walk.

Our view.

 

 

Our first dinner on the coast was right across the street at a seafood place called, Mo's. I think both of us overate there, but the food was so good! I ended up telling my mom about the food that we had, and my mom was relaying the message to my dad, who said to stop as he was already salivating over missing out of the seafood.

 

The next day, Mike and I spent the day shopping at the outlet mall for much needed clothes and shoes. We got there ten minutes after the place opened, and didn't leave for 7 hours. We had lunch at a small Chinese/Japanese place, and it was okay. It wasn't great, nor horrible. It's a convenient place in the mall, and it was what it was. We got a lot of clothes for both of us, and some shoes. We went into a game store and everything was half off. So, we picked up a couple of board games and played on of them with the family when we got back from the coast, and it was a huge hit! The game is called Bubble Talk. It's like Apples to Apples but with pictures. If you are ever looking for a fun group game, pick this one up! You won't regret it!

 

In one of the stores, I came across a sweater that was a disaster! I took a picture of it and sent it to my mom and told her that I was buying it for her. I called it the "Chewbacca" sweater. She told me that she wouldn't wish that ugly thing on anyone. I thought it was funny, and to be clear, I didn't buy it for her, nor did I buy it for me.

 

"They skinned Chewie!"

 





Both of us were incredibly wiped from our shopping day, but we got so many good deals! We ended up getting so much but saving so much too! In one store, we spent about $180 but saved $400! That was in one store alone!

That night, we ate at steakhouse and had some good food, and I told my mom about some of the food that we had, which some was seafood and she told me that my dad was heading out to Oregon now. I laughed and told Mike about it. I think I foresee a trip to Oregon with my folks! =) haha.

When we got back to his family's house, we went to the zoo and spent the afternoon there. When we got there, I started taking pictures of the bears playing and my camera tells me that my battery was low. I switched it out for the other battery, but it was already dead. I was pretty upset over it, but we were able to leave it charging in the gift shop, and continued to go through the zoo with his family. After one run through with his family, I grabbed my battery and we headed back in to do another run through. It turned out that I didn't need the battery after all, but it was nice to have just in case.

We had a good time out in Oregon, and had to head back to our little corner of the world. The flights home with the three hour layover in Denver was better than the flights out to Oregon. When we landed in Hayden, it was snowing and already icy. As we waited for our bags to come on the belt, a family standing next to us was watching a little video on the monitors overhead. The video showed a family dog sledding and tubing. I overheard the mother exclaim, "Oh kids look! This is what tubing is! Honey, we should take them tubing, I think they'd like it." I wanted to ask where these people were from. There was no accent, so they were American, so I have to assume they were from California or a place with no snow for this kind of reaction to it.

We got our bags, snow covered and all, and started to head out to pay for our week of parking. It was pretty expensive. More so that the Springs, but just a dollar less than Denver. After we got out ticket to prove that we paid for parking, we marched ourselves to the car. Mike's car was covered in ice and snow, and he had to scrap the car down for a while. As I waited, I grabbed this shot of the snow that had accumulated since we had been gone.

Wanna build an igloo?

 

 

Mike drove slowly home, through the ice, snow and wind. As we were driving home, we saw something on the side of the road, and saw as we carefully passed that it was indeed a cow, sleeping on the shoulder. No, it wasn't dead, as I was already asked that. It was still alive, as it looked at us as we passed it by. We laughed about how we had to brave the weather, keep a look out for kamikaze deer and now sleeping cows.

 

We got home, and the cats were happy to see us! We arrived home at a bit past midnight, and we were to the point that we were too tired to sleep. We let the cats in with us to cuddle and they behaved most of the night. I woke up the next morning, completely surrounded by them. They sure did miss us!

 

The next day, Mike starts to clear out the snow to the hot tub so that he could use it. As he was shoveling, he pops his head back inside to tell me that he is sharing the scenery with a friend. I got up as he closed the door to continue his task, and I see that we have two deer, next to the fence, watching Mike work.

 

"Whatchya doing?" - Deer

 

 

Mike and I had to make our shopping list for groceries, since the house was barren of food. We went on New Years Eve, completely exhausted from having come home the night before, and not feeling all that well, since we had just spent a week with his family, and all the kids had some sort of ailment. We were invited to go to our friends' house for New Years Eve party they were throwing, but we had to tell them that we weren't going after all. They were pretty understanding, and were not expecting us to come, so that made us feel better.

 

Today was Mike's first day back since the trip. I spent my morning cleaning and doing the mountain of laundry. I had some time to update the blog, and as I sat here working on it, I could hear Mike come home, and of course, the garage door acted up, and it is the final straw. He is fed up with the door and was looking for reasons as to why it's doing what it is doing. He also mentioned that he has gotten his first jury summons and then he rolls over his toe with my computer chair. Poor guy. I think he deserves a drink! =)

 

My new computer is coming tomorrow, (thank you Mike for your very generous gift) and I am anxiously awaiting it! I still needed to shovel off the deck and stairs to our front door, to ensure that they can deliver it, but other than that! I'm so looking forward to being able to play the games that we have bought for each other, and play without the lag and rubber banding.

 

I've got a few new recipes that I am looking forward to trying, so be on the look out for the recipes!

 

I'm not sure when, but I believe there is a boot camp starting up here in Craig, and I am trying to get all of the information on it so that I can participate. I've been needing to workout again, and I met my best friend at a boot camp, so I am hoping to make some new friends, if possible, at this camp. Guess we shall see what happens!

 

I think that I have successfully updated you on everything!

Until next time!