Christmas 2010

Christmas Eve, we always go up to my Folks, for dinner and this year we just did stockings. This is Mom and Dads tree.

The table before it is filled with all the food!

The snack table.

We had and 18lb. Prime rib roast!!! Whick we ate the ribs from it Saturday, Mom and Dad came down to our house and brought the ribs, we heated them up and ate them with BBQ sauce, yum!!

My favorite holiday wine, it is white wine with huckleberry juice. It is a local Washington wine.

And the napkin trick that every newbie that comes to dinner gets tortured with LOL this year it was my nephews girlfriend. It is a chicken, do you see it? LOL LOL

And Christmas morning we had breakfast at our house, with my folks and Meg and her beau, and Bro #2 and his wife and  we brought Hubby and Bro #2's grandmother, Isabel over. She will be 98 years old in May!!! She is having a harder time now physically, but she is still in her house. She is a wonderful person!!!

We had a scaled back Christmas, didnt spend much money, spent a lot of time with family and friends, it was a good Christmas. I hope everyone out there had a great Holiday too!!!

The laugh factor.........

I am not saying anything. What do you all think?

Sunday stills....Holiday decorations....

I used to make tons of ornaments, with work and life I kinda quit for quite a few years now.

These are some of my very favorite Christmas tree decorations, and few that stay out all year too.

These Santa stars are made out of Fimo clay.

The bunny with the frog on its head is made out of Fimo and, the one on the right is a wooden ornament that I painted. All of the wooden ones that I show on here I cut out on the band saw, sanded, and painted myself.

Bird watchers ornament.

These next two ornaments are antiques, that were Hubbys Grandmothers, they are pretty old. There are three colors, red, yellow and blue, I didnt get a pic of the blue one.

It is hard to get good photos of ornaments, the lighting has to be right, and the flash always washes them out to much. I finally put the camera on the candlelight setting, and it helped a lot with the light, my moving while taking the pic, well thats another problem, LOL.

I love this snowflakes for sale one! Yes I cut all the snow flakes out on the band saw!

This is one of my very favorites, I love how it turned out!

These are some of my Santa Gnomes! LOL Fishing of course!

I made this moose out of felt and wood, it was fun, I made a few of them, and of course my Christmas candle.

Hope you enjoyed a few of my favorite decorations! For more Sunday stills take the link!!

Year end Guide Dogs Club potluck and awards....

We had a great potluck, lots of good food! I made cookies, shortbread dipped in chocolate, spiced shortbread dipped in chocolate and chocolate chip. The first time I dipped the shortbread and they are great! This is Mike our Guiding Eyes of Clark County club leader. He is handing out the awards.

Dublin on the left, meeting Sweeney on the top and saying Hi to little half-sister Luna on the bottom. Little Luna is a year old! and she is so tiny! She does meet the minimum size requirements! And my little friend Emma watching the dogs. LOL

Emma getting a body hug from Sweeny.

Dublin in front of one of the food tables. With those sad puppy eyes LOL. He was a perfect gentledog! I even dropped his leash in the middle of the room and told him to stay and he didnt move, until Meghan called him!

Meg petting Luna on another club members lap. These almost white dogs are so hard to take photos of, especially if they move.

Dublin and my, awards we received.

We got a nice certificate, pin and plaque with our names on it. The plaques are made so that you can add each new puppy that you raise to it.

Now I have to find a spot on a wall to hang it up!

Sunday stills....pets....

Wow its been a few months since I have done Sunday stills!! I need to get it going again! I do enjoy everyone elses photos and Ed works hard at coming up with the themes and such! He has been overseeing Sunday Stills for two years now!!! Cool! That is as long as I have been blogging now, Wow.

These two are endless entertainment LOL, they always make me laugh, and they have become best buds!
Dublin is now our pet, so I had to have them in this post. It is really hard to take photos of Dublin with the flash because it always washes him out so bad, and the red eye reduction doesnt work so well with the dogs either, they have so much reflective in the back of their eyes!

The tree is up!

Well we finally got the tree up! I forgot how bright the LED lights are! The first year we did it all by ourselves. I put it together and Hubby put the lights on, and I decorated it.

There is our fish tree topper again! I still love it! Have never seen another one! You can see our awesome kids to the left! Miss them. They are both home in the US now! Sara is out of the service, John is still serving in the Air Force. I am so proud of them!

Max already stole the stuffy I had under the tree, LOL. He likes to help! I had to put it elsewhere. He waited until I left the room, little brat LOL.

Buds, and nail trimming....

I really havnt been posting a whole lot, just not doing much I guess. When I do want my camera I have been forgetting it LOL

Dublin and Max are buddys, they play and play and play! Believe it or not our just shy of 10lbs Chaweenie bosses the 55lb Labrador around! LOL Usually when Max invades his "space" Dublin moves to another spot. I was able to get a few pics of them cuddling lately.

All of our dogs just love that crocheted blanket LOL Max takes it from Dublin all the time. It is easy to wash and I like that!

About the nail trimming! sheesh, Max has a big problem with having his nails trimmed. Someone must have really quicked him at one time! I finally got the tips cut off of his nails today! He has typical Dachshund nails and they grow long! This time I just kept him in my lap in the chair in the living room, let him lick the clippers and took my time. This little dog has a lot of "little dog" issues. I try to take my time with him and reward him with food and praise, he is slowly getting better! He is 10 mo. old now.

Dublin was being so funny about the camera and closing his eyes before the flash went off! LOL Our living room is covered with toys, it looks like a two year old has been playing! LOL One that does not pick up toys!

The Boys, Dublin has finally settled back in and is our beloved pet now. He has become Hubbys dog! LOL and Hubbys garage buddy. Max would rather stay in the house with me.

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season. I still have to put up the tree, and see how Max likes it LOL.(yes, we have a fake one, LOL) This will be Dublins second Xmas with us.

Innovative fun graduating class fundraiser!

LOL the Washougal High School Senior class has come up with a fun harmless way to raise money for their Senior class party! Check it out!

You've been flocked!!!!


I think this is a really fun idea, although some of the recipients havnt been as excited about their surprise! Just finding enough pink flamingos to do this is a feat in itself! LOL

OMG ROFL....

You have to check out this blog!!! Another blog I follow posted about it!
I have read the Dog posts so far, and laughed and laughed! This woman is
Great!!!   Hyperbole and a half.

Enjoy!
(the drawings of her slow dog look and act somewhat like Max!! LOL LOL

Hubby got a deer! and its snowing.....

Warning, if you dont think meat comes from live animals, dont read farther!

Hubby got a doe this morning! the last day of deer season! with his shotgun and a slug!

Yay! Meat in the freezer!

My dad, Hubby and Alan in this picture after they got home with the deer.

Of course, after you shoot it the work starts!! Dragging it out to the truck and gutting it and getting it home and hanging it, then skinning it and cleaning the hair off of the meat, etc.

We will probably cut it up on Friday, cant wait for some backstrap! Its been a couple years since we have gotten a deer! I love venison.

Its a long process, and you have to skin it pretty quickly so the meat cools down and doesnt spoil.
We do all our own cutting up of the meat, and debone everything. I think leaving the bone in is what makes it gamey tasting.

Dry and cold this morning! Snow this after noon!! I had to get hay today for the horses, go get bedding, and clean stalls. the bale I bought thurs. was supposed to last, but went quicker than I thought, so I ran out last night, so I had to get up and go get more before feeding time! Luckily we only live a mile from the dairy where I buy their hay. Got it home and unloaded, watched the NASCAR race and ran up to the little new feed store we have, only 3 miles away!!! I am getting spoiled! LOL Bought 6 bags of bedding pellets and came back home, cleaned stalls and now am resting! I am bushed!!!
I use bedding pellets, I really like them, its like picking a giant kitty litter box! and you have 1/3 of the manure pile that you do with shavings!!! I really dislike using shavings now! My mares have rubber mats in all their stalls so I only use 2 bags to start, and ad one every 3 days about. Soaks up the urine and smells good too!

The front yard the Lace leaf Maples still have their Fall leaves.

Emmas Island, from the other day! Now a colder island!!

Grandmas house across the street. I am so not ready for this cold weather!!! We really didnt have a Spring this year, and a very short Summer, sigh, 3-4 more months of wet and cold! Maybe we will have a good Spring in 2011 and I can plant a garden next year! This year it didnt dry out enough to till the ground until June! and that is way to late to plant around here, would only have had July and Aug. to grow, maybe Sept. we can get a freeze that early, but definitely in Oct. I usually like to plant in April or May. As pretty as it is I hope the snow doesnt stick around long. Hows the weather where you are??

Scenery....Winter is here

Hubby and I went for another drive up in the hills, hoping for an easy deer, LOL, this weekend is the end of Modern deer season, alas Bambi was very safe in the dark, dripping frozen woods this day. We stopped on a bridge over the Wind River, so I could snap a few photos. I always see good photo ops when we are driving, but the vision passes before I could tell Hubby to stop, so I have a lot of good photos in my head LOL. Where the point of shore comes out on the right side of the picture, there is a zip line of sorts, I believe the Boy Scouts do a river crossing exercise in the summer here, it is a double rope across the river. When we have been up there in the summer or early fall we have seen times when they have had Jamborees and camp outs.

There was a little snow down this low, it is about 1200ft in elevation in this area. We are being taunted by the weather people and we may have snow as low as the "valley floor" Sun. into Mon. Which is mostly below 500ft.

Leaves, moss, snow, and water.

Dublin and Max went along with us, Dublin had the whole back seat to himself, he is very happy to be home and doing really well, and getting very spoiled! He is sporting his new "camo" collar.

And Max, this first picture is blurry, but it was such a cute look! I couldnt resist.

And the possessed eyeball look! He has the funniest eyes. I had a balankie on the floor for him and he rode in my lap, and he had his coat on.

We had a great morning, didnt even hardly see a tweetie bird! With the snow coming down and the weather actually turning to winter for the first time, everything was hiding.

Isnt this pathetic!!!

LOL I grabbed my camera quick and caught Emma napping in the rain! LOL I may have to go out and get her with a rowboat! LOL I didnt think it rained that much, but it must have poured overnight! Our lower field always turns into a lake when there is a lot of rain, to much for the county ditch to handle!

I love that I caught her reflection too!