Gobble Gobble

Very fun cookies to make and decorate. Happy Turkey Day!

Power Trench

I drove out to our property yesterday to take a few pictures of the trench our contractor dug for the power. This is a picture of the cement vault and the trench running to our power box. In the background, my car is just inside where our gate will be located.


This is the cement vault.

From the vault, the trench goes under our neighbors fence and across his back yard to the nearest power pole. It would have been much more expensive if he had not let us cut across his land.

Once the trench is inspected, the power will be ordered.
I also went to the post office yesterday to find out how we get a mailbox. There are so many more things to do when you start from land as opposed to buying an existing house. It is very interesting and sometimes frustrating, but I sure have learned a lot.

Taking a Nap Together

When I went looking for Toby and Tillie this morning, I found them in my room taking a nap together on the bed. They looked so cute that I went and got the camera. Perhaps Toby is sticking his tongue out at me for waking them up!

Cute Turkeys

We have been very busy lately finalizing the plans for our new house. Last week we finished selecting the flooring, countertops and back splashes. The product options available is staggering, which makes it hard to select what you want and even harder to picture the products all together and installed.
Our contractor begins digging the ditch for the power on Wednesday. The cable company will also be putting their cable into the same ditch, which is great for us because it keeps the cost down. In the next week we should be receiving a quote for bringing natural gas onto the property.
Susan took these cute little turkeys to work today. We found the idea in a Pillsbury cookbook. Next weekend we are decorating sugar cookies for Thanksgiving.

Yakima Chamber Orchestra

On Sunday afternoon Susan and I went to the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) concert at The Seasons Performance Hall. The guest musician was Oscar Esqueda, a Marimbist. The marimba, shown below, is a wooden percussion instrument. Mallets are used to strike the keys. Before Sunday I had not had the pleasure of listening to someone play the marimba, and Oscar was fabulous. For several minutes at a time he would hold 4 mallets, two in each hand and the multiple notes resonating from the instrument was just beautiful. He received a well-earned standing ovation from the crowd. I am so glad that he came to Yakima and that we decided to get tickets!

Happy Halloween 2009

We had so much fun last night! Over 200 kids came to our house this year. This is the best picture I could get of all 3 graves in our graveyard. We were sitting outside, like we did last year, except this time there wasn't a burn ban, so we had the fire pit going. With the fire, haunting music playing and a couple of White Russians we were set for the evening. It was so funny watching kids walking up the sidewalk and then just stopping when they got closer to the house.

The two outside graves had beating hearts and the hands coming out of the ground really did look spooky. Cousin Huet has a crow sitting on his grave, but unfortunately the crow is so black that he didn't show up in the picture.

Check out the eyes on the spider. They were bright red and sparkled until it got too dark. Our chairs were just on the other side of this tree and some of the kids, or their parents, would turn around after getting their candy and walk right into one of the two spiders hanging from the tree.

We got a lot of comments on the decorations, the fire pit and the wonderful smell of the fire on a cold evening. Some of the parents took pictures or videos of the yard. I have to admit, it is a little sad that we won't have trick-or-treater's at our new place, but this was great fun while it lasted.

Halloween Treats

Today I made some treats for Susan to take to work for Halloween. Making goodies for work is one of the biggest things I miss about not having a job. I wanted to try something new this year and I found these cute mice and spiders in a book Susan bought. They sure sounded easier to make than they were, but aren't they cute?

In addition to the spiders and mice, I made a batch of cupcakes that I had intended to decorate like spiderwebs and eyeballs, but I ran out of frosting before I could finish them.

Next year I want to find some small edible black spiders to put in the webs.

SOLD!

That's right - Can you believe it? Just when I was coming to terms with having to put the house back up on the market again next year, I finally got an offer worth accepting. The sale closes on December 31. It is too late in the year to get our lot prepared so Susan and I will be moving next Spring. YEA!

Adam's First Visit to Epcot

I know it is easy to forget to check Julie and Tommy's blog, so I took these pictures off their page so you could see Adam during his first visit to EPCOT.

How cute! His very first ride was Journey into Imagination with Figment! Figment is one of my favorite Disney characters. I have the same Figment that Adam is holding and I also have a Figment antenna ball for my car.

The entire family.

Decorating for Halloween

I absolutely love Halloween! These are just some of the window decorations I have put up so far.

These spiders are actually kind of creepy. They are in the front picture window, which is directly across the room from the TV. When the light is just right, it looks like spiders are on the TV screen.

This year we are going to have a graveyard outside, with tombstones, skeletons and a huge spider web crawling with scary spiders. I would love to have one of those fog machines!

One of our neighbors told Susan how much she liked this spider web. There are actually two spiders on the web, but they do not show up in the dark.

Oh, what fun!