St. Nicholas Day

What better way to celebrate than by eating his hat?

(We had this Wednesday, by request.)

Later on I'll show you some pictures of today's new project. The Wiz is going to be so thrilled!

Making the Wiz's Day

The Wiz had a very good day. He earned 14/15 on his spelling test (and considering how many zeroes he's gotten, this is great news), he earned a new book from his reading, and he didn't get in trouble for talking or for getting out of his seat in school.

We're having pork chops and sauerkraut for dinner (which he LOVES) and then I made him these:
monkey pajama pants, for my monkey boy. He's so thrilled (even if he is watching tv in this picture). They are a bright yellow (top picture has the best color) and he just loves all of the cheerful monkeys.

PJ pants are really, really easy.

Palouse Falls

Usually on the Friday after Thanksgiving, we go to the Cathedral Domain and spend the night. Since that's about 2300 miles away, we decided not to go this year. We'd thought about seeing Mt. Rainier, but that's a three hour drive and it gets dark early here (about 4:30 right now).

So we decided to go look at some geology. The landscape of eastern Washington is heavily influenced by the ice ages and ice dams breaking and reforming, flooding and so on. Of course, volcanic activity played a huge role too.

The little Palouse Falls (rapids!)Game BoyPalouse River and a View of the Canyon.

A walk along the path

The Palouse Falls (you can hear them from pretty much everywhere)

I'll be the first to admit that these aren't the best pictures, but it was a grey, grey day. We'll try and go in the summer when it doesn't rain. We are in the desert, after all.

Quiet Thanksgiving

It was just the four of us, but sometimes a quiet holiday is what we need.We used the china, the crystal, and the Turkish table cloth.

Here is our feast:
We mixed it up this year. Game Boy requested cornish hens for dinner instead of turkey. The Collar smoked them. It was really good. We had the ubiquitious peas with pearl onions, roasted vegetables, and cranberry sauce, too.
The Wiz decided to "murder" his hen.
Later on, we had pie. There were three kinds, one of which was homemade, g/f apple pie. The crust was good, the apples were good, but it was kind of soupy. Here I am thankful for:

• settling in well in our new home.
  
• Game Boy is doing extremely well in school.
• The Wiz is improving at school.
• we are doing okay financially, even though we "own" two houses.
• that The Collar and I are a good team.
  

I am sure there are more--but those are the most important.

I Make Stuff

and finish things too.

Yesterday, I made another mini sweater. This one is a bit different, because I wanted to make it like a sports jersey. (Remember those baseball t-shirts?) I adapted the pattern so that the sleeves would entirely be one color. Then I clumsily embroidered '08 for this year. The boys think that I need to make one with an R for our last name, and several '08 ones for our tree. The ones that I made with each of our initials on them apparently aren't enough. (Count for mini-sweaters is now 14! See them hanging all in a row?)I've also finally finished the Spey Valley socks. Here is a closeup of the cuff:and here is a picture of the finished pair. They are certainly bright and cheerful. I've never knit a pair of socks on size 0 needles before. I'm not certain if I'll do it again, because it really hurt my hands. (I've been diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my hands. Another left over from gymnastics.) The yarn was yarn my mom gave me. Someone gave it to her, but she doesn't knit socks.
Finally, this last picture is of the boys' project this morning. Extreme Brio trains--Game boy and Wiz style. It kept them busy for a few hours this morning. It was nice.