Nacho cheese, please

Our Memorial Day festivities included a little bbq-ing of our own. We have a special place in our heart, and bellies, for Hebrew National 97% fat free hot dogs. They're our favorite and made even better slathered in nacho cheese sauce from Harry & David. I also put together a small pasta salad this morning that could marinate in it's tasty juices all day. Little man's salad with pasta, cherry tomatoes, olives, marinated artichoke hearts and cubed cheddar cheese coated in a lite olive oil vinaigrette.

Besides some chores around the house, I spent the rest of my time in my craft room and finally did more than sort through paper.

I found a layout in my latest issue of Creating Keepsakes to use for my home and garden show pictures. Now I've got to check my supply of printed pictures to see what unbelievably mind-blowing event of mystery and intrigue is next.

Memorial Day: Medford Style

Since we've got stuff going on for the next couple of weekends we decided that this was the perfect weekend to head up to Medford and say 'hi' to the 'rents and bring them the rest of their stuff that didn't make it in the initial move. We were originally going to leave on Friday, but my trip to Enloe put a damper on those plans so we left first thing Saturday morning. We had a family BBQ on Saturday evening and spent the rest of the time hanging out with the 'rents.

The view of Mt. Shasta from Mt. Shasta City

 Mum wearing her Mother's Day gift; a silver Silpada necklace.

W

Wall o' chocolate at Harry & David. I resisted and bought some salsas and beer instead.

 Friends and family over for Saturday evening BBQ. 

 Chris: Master of the meat.

 Watching a little Indy 500 Sunday morning.

We packed up and headed home after lunch today. That way we still have tomorrow (a holiday) to do laundry and shopping. We had a great visit and are hoping that weather, and my recovery from my second surgery, allow us to go back for Christmas.

Goiterama

Today was my biopsy at Enloe for the cyst on my thyroid. 1.5 hours later I was released with a nice size lump on my throat and dull ache as the drugs wear off.

Three biopsies worth of fun! And I don't even find out the results for another two weeks.

Girls gone wild

Today we celebrated Curtis' 50th birthday by covering his desk in elder paraphernalia. We wouldn't want any of the customers missing out on the fact that they were talking to a real, live antique.

I made Dubbie bring donuts and I brought a lemon cream pie for his birthday cake. As if Curtis wasn't happy enough, my gift to him was a half pound box of disgusting rum nougat from See's. They're chocolate covered walnuts and cherries in a raisin nougat. Harf. But they're his favorite so I sucked it up and bought some. The kid packaging them for me agreed that they were indeed the devils candy.

After work, some of my lady co-workers got together at Dina's house (from the clerk's office) for drinks and gossip. They'd converted their original garage into a game room and bar. Every house needs one of these!

While Dina served us up drinks we snacked on a dinner platter from Meehos.

In the crock pot in the corner was hot and delicious Que Bueno to slather all over our chips. Yuuuuummm!!
I stuck around until about 8:15 pm, sharing super juicy work stories. We should totally do this more often!

The hostess, Dina, and I. And then me with Sherry and Sheila.

See how nice we can all get along when we're all liquored up!

Exciting and new

One of my co-workers at the garbage company had a Pampered Chef party a couple of weeks ago that I couldn't go to so I ordered online instead and just got my new toy delivered today.

It's a bbq grill basket for all kinds of tasty treats. This way my food doesn't have to touch the 'never been cleaned' bbq. Now I really can put another shrimp on the barbie!

Happy belated Mother's Day

After waiting weeks for schedules to work out and various people to be in town, we finally took Mom out for Mother's Day in P-town. We met her and Wilson at Sophia's for a 1:00 pm lunch date.

Wrapped in annoying wrapping paper that leaves a trail of glitter everywhere it goes, we finally let Mom have her present.

Peeps salt and pepper shakers from her favorite kids, us.

 Alright, enough about Mom, let's eat!

Movie mania

We've been to the movies more times in the last three weeks then we have all year. First we saw The Losers, then I saw Iron Man 2 and this morning we went and caught the first showing of 140 minutes of Robin Hood. We both really enjoyed it, even though it got the crunchy corn face in the News & Review, and didn't even notice it was such a long movie. After the movie we walked across the street to the Almond Orchard and had lunch at Ginger's.

Kung Pao beef for the boy and veggies with tofu for me. They have a perfectly sized $4.95 lunch special with soup, fried wontons, choice of rice and main dish.

Once home we each got busy on our independent craft projects. I knocked out two more scrapbook pages;

Third wedding anniversary and St. Patty's Day.

Chris is working on his own special version of art which I'm sure he'll post about when he's done. While out last night in search of painting supplies for him we stopped at Wendy's where he could practice his artistic talents.

Don't try that at home, he's a trained professional.

Testing, 1, 2, testies, 1, 2....3??

Yeah! I think I finally figured out the problem with my photos! I read about some problems other people were having with their photos merging in sideways, too, and one of the problems stemmed from a setting on their Canon camera, which is what I have. I adjusted the setting as suggested, re-shot the pic, and voila! The photo merged in correctly. Let's try this one more time...

Finally...a blogging experience that doesn't make me want to scream. BTW, those are the last two events I scrapbooked; Valentine's Day and The Chieftains concert.

Other than solving the mystery of the blog photo extravaganza today, I went and saw Iron Man 2 this morning.By myself. Yes, I movie cheated on Chris. I knew if given the choice he'd rather see Robin Hood (which we're going to tomorrow morning) and I had nothing else going on and happened to have $5 burning a whole in my wallet. It was okay. No plot to get in the way of the special effects, just the way I like it!

The Thursday that keeps on giving

Small treat with our newspaper this morning:
Cereal samples. How random yet wonderful. Then at work I found these on my desk from Mom:
New fancy postage stamps. Then, in the mail when I got home was:
Travel brochures for B.C. Canada which I'd mentioned to the Canadian that I'd like to go for vacation. The only thing better would be if my f-ing pictures would merge in correctly.

Battle of the birthdays

Today was a big birthday party shindig up the hill for Andrew and Todd. Since their birthdays are so close together Susan just did one joint extravaganza for them. We specifically RSVP'd for when the party was scheduled to be over. Each of Susan's and Todd's families are so huge, that there's just too many people, especially little loud people, running around for our patience level. We arrived at 3:30, right when the last stragglers were packing it up. We found the party by following the sounds of stampeding herds overhead as we made our way through the downstairs of the Sunshine House. First thing out of Andrew's mouth when he saw us was 'Uncle Chris and Aunt Susan are here!' then ran over to tell Susan. He ripped into his present in about two seconds, after pushing aside that pesky birthday card, and was dazzled by the prospect of searching for bugs with his Backyard Explorer kit. Susan promptly loaded us up with plates of leftovers from the BBQ lunch of tri-tip (cooked to perfection by Todd), scalloped potatoes, salad, rolls and some sort of jello/mystery cream topping concoction while Andrew showed Uncle Chris the other gifts that he got.
After we finished our late lunch, Susan got us some of the birthday ice cream cake that Todd's sister, Polly, had made. I saw a photo of the fully assembled cake and it was a tower cake in shades of green (tinted cool whip) with a monster truck cake topper and the number 5 emblazoned on it. I'm sure that's exactly the cake Todd wanted!
By the end of cake time all the rugrats were getting their shoes on to go to Grandma Eileen's and run around in the sprinklers. But before he left, Connor wanted to show us his fancy light up kicks.
Once all the kids left there was heavenly silence and we could have a nice visit with Todd and Susan. Todd opened up his gift from us which was real black licorice from Joy Lyn's, and jalapeno brittle bits and habanero Sierra Nevada peanut brittle. He likes licorice, hot stuff and Joy Lyn's so it was a perfect combination since it was all from Joy Lyn's. He offered us a piece of the habanero brittle to try and I literally ate one peanut piece and thought I was going to die. That sh*t is HOT!! Hence why it says 'hot' on the bag...

When we got back into town we spent a little time over at Barnes & Noble reading and drinking and enjoying the quietness. We love being DINKs (dual income no kids) and being able to do that.

Other than that, I just spent a little time in my scrap room this morning and finished a page about my 5 year anniversary at the town.
Just imagine what it would look like rotated the right way. And then a close up so you can see the layers.
I used some Basic Grey paper from the combo pack I bought at Michael's this morning. None of my paper was calling my name and I had a 40% off coupon good for today so I went and picked a whole pack up so that I can get a couple of pages done in one sitting. Though I'm sure that's just wishing thinking.

Hot lunch date

For the first time in years, the stars aligned and Sarah, Poppy and I finally got together for lunch. We met at Hula's (by Target) for lunch this afternoon.
After lunch we dodged traffic to get across the street to have some coffee at Starbuck's and catch up. Three hours later we called it an afternoon and promised to get together again soon, but it won't be at Dawn's wedding since I bowed out because we're going to the brewfest!

Girls night out

Last night we went out to Thai food for b.s. to celebrate Joanna's 50th birthday.
Joanna on the left and Lulu on the right.
Kari and I. In addition to our delicious meal I treated myself to a sweet and creamy Thai iced coffee. The best!
After dinner we went back to Kari's for our study and for some birthday cake Lulu brought from Upper Crust. A chocolate truffle cake.
Today at work Joanna's dept decorated her office for birthday and had a luscious spread of delicious treats to snack on.
All over the walls were quotes from co-workers and famous people about aging.
A fun way to end the work week!

Do you have tickets to the gun show?

When we were at ARC the other day dropping off our donations, we picked up a silly little squeezy hand grip for 50 cents. It's just like a Suzanne Somers thigh master, but for your hand/arm. Now Chris is ready to bust out of his kids size baseball tees with his pythons.
He's going to pop those freckles right off with those muscles!

Thanks, but no thanks

As soon as the Canadian hears I'm making the bed he runs in to "help",
which just means jumping on the bed, and in this case, making snow angels. Such good help I don't know why I don't ask for it more often?!

Besides that, we spent our day going to the theater to watch The Losers, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I served dinner at the Salvation Army and we did a tag team effort making dinner at home. A new recipe from the Eating Well website.
Scallops and angel hair pasta in a lemon caper sauce. Good enough, but not so great we'll be making it again. I guess they can't all be winners.

Busy beavers

For some strange reason we had the inclination to actually get something done today. I spent time this morning downtown shopping at Bird in Hand for a birthday gift for Andrew next weekend. I found a backyard bug kit that he'll love. Boys and bugs, the perfect combo. I also swung by Peet's and refilled our french press coffee supply and picked up a sandwich from Upper Crust to share for lunch and snagged the last coconut cream scone for breakfast tomorrow. Score! When I got home I found Chris up on the roof installing new roof vents for the garage/summer sauna.
He's been talking about it for months, but today was the day. After safely descending from the roof, and relocating a ginormous frog out of the garage,
we went in and had the ham and swiss sammie from Upper Crust with a fruit salad.
After lunch the Canadian declared that we were going to make a run to ARC to get rid of some extra stuff around the house, both of our and the 'rents.
After putting away our nice little tax write-off form, we went inside to see if there was any treasures we couldn't live without. I was of course drawn to the tube top that said 'Paradise' on it.
New work uniform perhaps?? I settled on a gray sheath dress and a brown and bronze zip-up short sleeve hoodie. All for a tidy sum of $7.04. If only New York and Company was so cheap...