Weekend at Cabin

Luke finished the last day of his third rotation. I am happy to report that we only have 5 more rotations left until graduation. (Can you tell we are counting down?) To celebrate his "last" Christmas break we headed up to Palisades with my parents to their cabin. We had a great weekend of relaxing and playing in the snow. We were excited to see all the snow that came down. It snowed consistently the two days that we were up there. We did a lot of playing in the snow and Brynlee enjoyed riding the snowmobile again. She also did a little skiing with her Sad and Papa Allred.

The biggest excitement/work came when my dad's truck got stuck in the snow and then slipped down to the side of the mountain. The snow gods must have been mad at us for driving the truck to the cabin on the 11th of December and got back at us. It took 4-5 hours of work, along with a chain wench, and lots of digging to get the darn thing off the mountain, but at least we are all home safe and will be driving the snowmobiles to the cabin through the rest of winter.

Trying to pull the truck off the side of the road. There is a steep slope on the right side of the truck.

This is my dad's truck stuck on the side of the road leaning down the mountain.

Luke throwing Brynlee up.

Papa Allred, Luke, and Brynlee getting ready to go skiing

Brynlee pulling funny faces on the "kitty cat"

Brynlee getting rides on the sled. Lucky girl.

SNOW

We here happy and a little surprised to wake up to snow on Saturday morning. Brynlee and I decided that we would go out and have a little fun. We went over to my brother Jake's house and played in the snow. He has a little artic cat snowmobile. Last year Brynlee wanted nothing to do with it, but this year she was fine. Here are a few photos of us in the snow. Brynlee liked eating it as much as playing in it. She also attempted a snow angel, which was funny to watch.

Happy Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we spent with the Nelson's. Luke's parents drove up from New Mexico and then his sisters met us at our house for Thanksgiving. We had 12 family members over for Thanksgiving in our little house. I was afraid that it would be tight, but it actually worked out very well. We moved our couches out to the garage and set up the tables in the living room. Our guests included Luke's parents, his two sisters Nakita and Sasha along with her fiance Dave. Luke's grandparents, my parents, and younger brother Casey. It was fun to have everyone together.

Prior to Thanksgiving DAY, Luke made an announcement that if our family wanted to come to thanksgiving at our house then they would all need to participate in the Turkey Trot 5K race. Everyone agreed, minus grandma and grandpa Nelson. We had runners, walkers, and a little of both. It was a lot of fun to wake up and go out for a run/walk on a beautiful brisk morning. After the race we hurried home and began getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner. We ended up soaking the turkey in a Brine sauce overnight, it was from a recipe that I found from the pioneer woman. I love her website and have never gone wrong with any of her suggestions. I was a little worried about the turkey because it was the first time I had really cooked one, but it turned out tasting great. The dinner turned out well, but it seemed to be over so quickly that I was kind of sad when it was done.

We had a great time visiting with family and having so many in a small space, but not that everyone has gone home, it is a little too quite around here.

Bonfire for SNOW

Last night we went to the annual Bonfire for Snow at Luke's Bosse's house. It was a lot of fun, and we were happy to have snow already on the ground. We warmed up by eating good chili and then headed outside to enjoy a large bonefire. This bonfire does have an unusual twist, so don't tell your enviromentalist friends, but there are many old skis, snowboards, boots, and a few bikes that get burned. They are an offering to the snow gods to help give us lots of snow this winter.

Staying warm by the fire.

Group gathered around the fire

Several skis and boots.

If you look real close you can see the back of a bike.

Fall Photos

I was playing around with my brother's camera the other day and got some cute photo with Brynlee. It was one of the last nice sunny days we had before a little bit of snow came.

Meeting Pioneer Woman- Ree Drummond

One of my favorite websites is thepioneerwoman.com. She has 5 different sections to her website and my favorite is the cooking section. She has great recipes and photos with each step. I highly recommend visiting her site.

She came out with a cookbook and had a book tour, but the closest she came to Idaho was SLC. Erica, a good friend of mine, and I decided to take a trip to SLC for a afternoon of window shopping and book signing. We should have know that people in Utah seem to be obsessed with people and that we should have gotten to the book signing venu hours and hours before it started, but we did not. We arrived at 6 and did not get our cookbooks signed untill 11:00 at night. Yes, we were a little crazy considering we got back into Pocatello at 2:00 A.M. and had to be to work by 8:00. All and all it was nice to get out and have girl time...and not to mention it was neat meeting Ree.

New Shutters

Luke put new shutters on our house this weekend. It is hard to tell from the photo,but they are ceder shutters. It dresses it up a bit more, and I think we will also be adding them to the other windows.