Thanksgiving Weekend

Wow, has it really only been 4 days since Thanksgiving? It feels so much longer than that.

As hectic as our Thanksgiving was, the following weekend was the complete opposite. When I got off work on Wednesday at 6 pm, we immediately jumped into the car and headed to Burns, where my parents are now living. We stopped off in Ontario to run a few errands...I forgot about the hour time change and ended up only have 15 minutes in JoAnn Fabrics, which is NOT enough time to pick out fabric. We didn't get to Mom and Dad's until about 10:30 pm, and geeze was that a boring drive! The only thing that kept it even mildly exciting was the threat of a deer (or herd of deer) jumping in front of our car at any moment. The closest we came to that was a 4 point buck on the edge of the road...yeesh.

After getting to Mom and Dad's, we had a glass of wine and socialized with my grandparents for about half an hour before all of us collapsed. The next morning, the boys got up and went goose hunting while I slept in and then helped Mom and Nanna get Thanksgiving dinner ready. My mom cooked an 18 lb turkey for 6 people, which translated into to a LOT of leftovers...the best part of Thanksgiving dinner, in my opinion. After dinner, Nathan and I immediately got back in the car and drove home, getting back at around 10:45 pm, because both Nathan and I had to work on Friday. I think both of us were bored to death on Friday...no one called into dispatch because they were all still recovering from their turkey comas, and the paper was dead because they had already gotten most of their work for the Friday paper done.

On Friday night, we had a bunch of people over to our house for a mini-reunion. Seriously, the majority of the people there were people that I went to high school with, and who hadn't been at the same place at the same time for about a year, if not longer. Let's see, the guest list included: Nathan and myself (of course, it was our house), Anna and Matt, Corey and Emily (and their son Ian for about 5 minutes), Josh Bailey, Aaron Bailey and his wife Melissa, Chris and Lily, Carly and her baby Stella (thanks for stopping by Carly!), Brandie, Kenyon, Anders, Dom, Steve, Dana and Cale, Will H...if I forgot anyone, I am so sorry! So yeah, we had quite the crowd, and it was way too much fun to have at least part of the old BHS group there! Carly's baby, Stella, was way too adorable and so well behaved...when I took her down to the basement where there were about 15 people talking over music playing, she didn't wake up even once. Carly, next time you come to Baker, you should come by for an afternoon and we'll just relax without having so many people around!

At around 9:30 Friday night, I got a call from our lead dispatcher asking if I could come in the next day to cover for a dispatcher who was sick with the flu. This completely bummed me out because I was so looking forward to having a full 2 days to spend with Nathan, which never happens! I told her that if she couldn't find anyone else, I could come in from noon until 6 pm, but that I'd rather not. I don't envy her the job of asking people to come in on their days off! The next morning, we finally got it worked out so that I got to sleep in, and ended up not having to go into work. So instead, Nathan and I went out for brunch at the Oregon Trail restaurant (yum!), then went to Aaron and Melissa's wedding reception. After that, we rented two movies, crawled into bed, and were very very lazy. In fact, we even took a nap.

On Sunday, we slept in, were lazy again, had beer pancakes (SOOO good), I ran some errands, Nathan brewed some beer, had pizza from Paizanos and watched Die Hard 1, then went to bed. It was so nice to have such a lazy weekend at home with Nathan!

In other news, Nathan put a doggy door in our back door, so that Bandit can come and go as he pleases. Mostly we got it so that he can get into the back landing area (which we're going to close off with baby gates) and out of the below freezing weather we're consistantly having. But there are other perks to this doggy door. Before the doggy door, this was Bandit and my morning routine:

Lindy gets up sometime between 5:30 am and 6:00 am, gets in the shower, gets out of the shower, gets dressed, dries hair, curls hair, puts on make up, lets Bandit out of his crate, feeds Bandit, goes outside with Bandit and freezes her butt off while Bandit does his business, puts Bandit back in his crate, makes lunch, puts together snacks for the day, runs out of the door to work a little late because Bandit took his own sweet time eating and doing his business.

Post doggy door, this is now our routine:

Lindy gets up sometime between 5:30 am and 6:00 am, gets in the shower, gets out of the shower, gets dressed, dries hair, curls hair, puts on make up, lets Bandit out of his crate, feeds Bandit, tells Bandit to go outside, Bandit takes himself outside while Lindy stays inside the warm house and makes lunch, puts together snacks for the day, walks calmly out of the door to work while putting Bandit back in his crate, enroute to work on time.

Now we just need to teach him to go immediately into his crate after going outside and to close the crate door behind him. Ha ha ha! It's amazing the difference one little hole in the door can make!

And that, in a very large nut shell, was our Thanksgiving weekend.