December 4, 2011 - Catching up Part 2 - Idaho and Washington

I know it's no where near Nov 19 but life has just gotten too hectic and I wanted to go ahead and try to catch up a little.  Maybe it's a good thing that I haven't had so much time to spend on the computer but who knows.

I left Arizona on Oct 28th and flew to Idaho to spend Halloween with the granddaughters.  It's a hard place to get to so I had to criss cross the western states to get there.  I left Phoenix early in the morning and flew to Seattle and then after hanging around the airport for 3 hours, I flew down to Boise, rented a car and drove 2 1/2 hours to Burley. I got there just in time to go with the family to the Halloween carnival at MS's school.

The kids each got to play a specific number of games - and each of them won a small pumpkin.  After the carnival we went home and both of the older girls slept with Nana.  We told a bedtime story - the Gingerbread man of course with a few twists and turns.  Then it was time to go to sleep.  It's a little hard to sleep between 2 girls in a queen size bed and way too hot so after they went to sleep, I curled up at the bottom of the bed to finish the night.

On Saturday morning, we got up and ate breakfast then went to JM's last soccer game of the year.  It was the first youth soccer game I had gone to where the person I was watching wasn't sitting near the goal pretending to be the goal keeper.  Sadly, it was the first game her team had lost all year so maybe I'm a jinx.

Go JM 

 We went home and ate lunch and then the parents went to Salt Lake to the ballet and a night out.  As soon as they left, the girls decided they needed to carve their little pumpkins.

JM scooping out the guts.

ST trying to poke a hole in her pumpkin.

MS concentrating on how to cut out her jack o'lantern's face.

After we got the little one to bed, us older three pulled out blankets and sleeping bags so we could have a slumber party.  Surprisingly enough we did not eat a lot of junk food but we did stay up a little too late.

On the morning of October 30, the girls decided they should clean out their big pumpkins so that Daddy could help them carve them when he got home.  Since he does such a great job, I didn't even want to try to do that - however, he was so tired when he got home, that I was wishing we had gone ahead and carved them.   Because we had stayed up so late, I made the mature decision that both girls had to sleep in their own beds so they would be well rested for Halloween.

Everyone raise their pumpkin lid.

MS decided she wanted her pumpkin carved on two sides.

On Monday, I had to work and the two older girls had to go to school.  ST spent quite a bit of time upstairs playing with my i-phone while I worked.  In the afternoon, I got to  go to JM's halloween party and after that, we went to her piano lessons.

Then home to eat dinner and get ready to go trick or treating.

Daddy put MS's makeup on so she could be a vampire.

Mom had to fix JM's hair so it would stay under her wizard hat.  JM sewed her own wizard costume.

Little ST wanted makeup on like big sister so daddy added a little to her eyes.

Having to add a little blood to our vampire.

We are ready to go

Say cheese for Nana

Then Daddy put his prosthetic leg on backwards and headed out to go trick or treating with the girls for the first time in 5 years.  A few people were alarmed when they saw his backward foot.

That night, both girls slept with me and we again told the story about the Gingerbread man.  So Tuesday morning when we got up, MS said she wanted to make a gingerbread man.  The older girls went off to school and I went to work.  I spent my lunch hour trying to find an allergy free recipe for a gingerbread man - one with no wheat, eggs, butter or milk.  I finally found one made with rice flour.

As soon as MS got home from school, she put on her apron and measured all of the ingredients into a bowl and mixed them up.  We then patted the dough onto a baking pan since we wanted to make a big gingerbread man and it's pretty hard to roll out rice flour dough.  I told MS that she needed to get a piece of blank paper and draw the biggest gingerbread man she could.  After whining a little and telling me she couldn't do that, she finally finished the picture and cut it out.  Then we laid it on the dough and cut around it.

After it finished baking, she decorated it a little with Good Life chocolate chips (since they are soy free, the are a little difficult to work with as they melt very quickly) then she used a cherry for the nose and mouth.
She was very proud of the gingerbread man she made.  Great job MS!

Little sister really wanted to get her hands on the gingerbread man.

It was date night with Nana for MS so with the gingerbread man cooling on the counter, we headed out for dinner.  There aren't a lot of options so MS decided she wanted to go to Wendy's.  There she wanted a hamburger which basically means she gets a hamburger patty with mustard, lettuce and onions and some apple slices.  It took 3 times before they finally got the hamburger patty correct.  The first one they brought out had ketchup on (she's allergic to tomatoes which I had told them).  I told them again that she couldn't have ketchup and she had asked for lettuce and onion. They took it back and brought out a different one - or at least I thought it was different but it turned out they had just covered the ketchup with lettuce and onion.  Third time they finally got me what  I wanted.

MS quickly devoured her hamburger patty and wanted another one.  I went up and ordered a 2nd one and waited.  This time when they brought it out, they had decided to add a cheese slice.  Back it went.

We finally finished and decided to go to Kiwi Loco for some sorbet.  Strawberry Kiwi.  MS decided she wanted to just get some to take home so we got a large cup of sorbet and one of cookie dough frozen yogurt which some of the rest of them like and headed for home.

We had family home evening when we got there.  And after talking about the Ten Commandments and playing a game that involved flour and a penny, we had our refreshments of gingerbread man and sorbet.

Since MS got to spend the evening with me, JM got to sleep with me.  We listened to a couple of podcasts - Vinyl Cafe stories about Sam.  Then went to sleep.

Wednesday morning I got up early to work.  The girls got up and went to school.  ST again spent most of the morning playing  with my i-phone.  By now she had downloaded the Baby Hippo talking app and had deleted a couple of things off my phone.  That evening JM and I went to Dairy Queen for a hamburger and dessert - I had a Peanut Butter Bash.  Then we went to Walmart to buy her a watch "so she could be home on time".  She picked out a simple one but when we got home, we found out it had a button to light it up and the light was a bright magenta color.

After Walmart we went to another store so she could pick out something for each of her sisters.  A unicorn for MS and a dog for ST.

Thursday was my last day in Idaho and it was a pretty quiet day.  All too soon, I had come to the end of my visit.

Friday morning, I left early to get to Boise for my flight to Portland to spend the weekend with alexshuman.  My flight was at 11:00 so with the time change, I would be in Portland by 11:30. Then I would rent a car and head to alexshuman's house to spend the weekend.   First bad news was that the flight was a half hour late.  Then when that half hour passed, they told us that the plane was still coming in and every one should stick around so we could get boarded and get to Portland before too late  Next, they announced that  the plane was in but they were going to have to do some repairs to it before we could leave.

Finally they said they were going to have to fly a part in to fix the plane so it would be 4:00 before we would be going anywhere.

I got into Portland about 5:00 and then took the shuttle to Budget to pick up my car.  What I hadn't noticed was that Budget is way off airport so it took about 15 minutes to get to the car.  Then they decided  they were going to rent me a Mustang instead of the little Ford car I had reserved so that was pretty cool - it was a pain to get in and out of though and the back seat just wasn't there.

Val and I went for sushi for dinner.  They have a happy hour 1/2 off sushi thing if you order before 6:00 PM so we had some delicious sushi.  I think that place is my favorite place to eat and the sushi chefs are just amazing artists.

Seared ahi tuna salad appetizer

Various rolls - they were all delicious - i just don't know which was which.

A little orange dessert

 After pigging out and since it had been a long day for both of us (Val had had to work and I spent way too long traveling), we headed on home to get some sleep.

The next morning, we got up a little late and just messed around.  Then we decided to head out for breakfast.  Val said we should go the bakery.  Sounded like a good idea to me.  Then she told me really we were just going to go to get breakfast and would bring it back since they didn't have any place to eat there.  I sure wish I had got a picture of the bakery because mainly it was just a store front called the Bleu Door.  The variety in that little place was pretty amazing.

We picked out a few things including some dog cookies for Alex and headed back to Val's to eat.

I don't remember what that center thing was but the quiche was good.  My favorite was the monkey bread (lower right).  It was absolutely delicious with lots of cinnamon.

Since I had told Val that snapfish.com had a wonderful offer but only till Nov 8 that if I bought one photo book, I could get 2 free.  I had not gotten the 2011 Alaska Vacation done yet so she decided I wasn't going to do anything on Saturday except for working on that book.  So I spent most of the day on the computer.  We did go across the bridge into Oregon long enough for me to pick up a new camera since mine was acting up a bit.

For dinner, we went to New Jerusalem and had another delicious meal.  I think for small towns, Vancouver is tops for variety and quality of food.  We had talked about going to a movie but since we were stuffed and what is a movie without popcorn, we decided instead to go back to Val's place and watch an old movie on Netflix. (Besides, I had more work to do on the book or I wouldn't be able to do anything fun the next day).

Sunday morning, Nov 6, we met Carter at Tommy O's for breakfast.  I guess it was more for brunch since we met up about 9:30.  The first thing we had were malasadas - these are kind of like little doughnut holes and are served with raspberry jam.

After a filling breakfast we headed back to Val's to decide what to do for the day.