Kids Are Here

Carli, Josh, and Siena got here early Monday morning for a week long visit.  They arrived very early in the morning and everybody slept for a few hours.  Then later in the day we took a little drive to the Bowman Dam area and had a little picnic at one of the camping areas just below the dam on the Crooked River.

 Crackers, cheese, salami, and Scottish shortbread for desert.

Yummy!

Later on I got a pumpkin and the girls carved it.

It's a little early for Halloween but they are only here for a week.

Looking good!

Oh, Deer! Where Are You?

The guys left Friday afternoon to spend the night in the woods.  Their idea was to get as early a start as possible for the opening of deer season.

They found a nice area to set up camp.

The "two man" tent wasn't really big enough for these two men, so they set up the tarp over the back of the truck for the second bedroom.  :-)

They had a good time but the most they saw was a couple other hunters in the distance.  So they came home Saturday afternoon. They'll try again later. 

Meanwhile I had asked Wil what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday on Sunday and he said one of those kind of cakes we used to buy in Bakersfield from Albertson's. I think they called it a Strawberry Boston.  You've probably seen them in your Vons/Safeway/Albertson's/etc bakery department.  It's a white cake with vanilla pudding between the layers and whipped cream and glazed strawberries on top.

I went to a couple of grocery stores and their fresh strawberries looked awful. I made a homemade white cake and I thought I might be able to make some sort of concoction to put on top and hold it in with the whipped cream. 

Well...  Okay, it didn't turn out how I had hoped or imagined, but it still tasted wonderful.

Remember, I've never claimed to be a great cake maker!  

Yes, my cakes don't look pretty, but at least they taste pretty good.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WIL!

Painting Again And Happy News

These couple of days off I decided to get cracking on the painting again.  This time it was time to tackle the stair case walls and the office area.  First the purple stair case wall.

This is two coats of primer. I'll see what it looks like tomorrow to see if it needs one more primer coat or if I can just go ahead and put the color on.

Such an improvement already!  I would like to get some sort of new sconces too.  The ones there are cheap looking and look like they've been painted over.  Ugh!

My happy news is after a horrible weekend at work, on Monday I was informed that I am now a permanent part-timer!  YAY!  I wonder if the fact that one guy quit, one guy was either fired or quit, another guy was fired, and a girl quit has anything to do with me finally getting on as a permanent employee.  I'm sorry for those other people but I'm not going to turn it down.  I need to work for about four more years or so (unless I hit the Lotto just right! LOL). 

And today our son had two interviews for jobs.  Both had very positive outcomes, with one calling for a second interview in a couple of days and the other waiting on the drug test.  Now to just figure out which position to go for...  

Splitting Our Pile

We rented a log splitter today.  We had our work cut out for us!  

 

The split pile started out small.

We each took turns with the different chores.  One person operated the splitter.  Another got the pieces to put on the splitter.  And the third person stacked the split logs against the wall.

About 2/3 of the way through we dispensed with the stacking and just concentrated on the splitting.

After all, the splitter had to be returned by 6pm and we could always stack later.

Plus I kind of pooped out about 2/3 of the way through!

Done!

Done splitting, that is.  We have a lot of stacking to do, but that can wait for another day!