Spike the Incredi-Hamster

How lame am I? I took no pictures on Thanksgiving....I must head over to my hubby's blog to steal some.....here I go.


And here you go.....a shot of the lovely dutch oven stuffing.....something must be cooked in the dutch oven in honor of my dad, "Burn it again Kenn", the dutch oven master. (Really, he was excellent!) It also helps free up the single oven in our home, which helps immensely. :)


To go along with the photo...a little twitvid:


So, what do we use our oven for if not the stuffing? The turkey you ask?

Absotively not.

My hubby taught himself the fine art of Deep-frying the Thanksgiving Bird before we met. Our 1st Thanksgiving together, he shared this delicacy with us, and we've kept him busy since! (Okay, I did roast the turkey the last couple of years, but missed our deep fried wonder too much, so this year, Ron got put back to work!) For any of you that are wondering, yes, it is easy, no, it isn't at all greasy, and the added bonus is your turkey is cooked in an hour!

Another twitvid:


Now, I'm sure you are all asking, what the heck does this post have to do with a hamster?


After our tasty meal, shared with my mom, Aunt Carol, niece Cali, her hubby Danny, and his brother Eric (say that 12 times fast....) we headed out to spend some holiday time with Ron's family at his sister Shirlene's home. We played Bingo (for PRIZES!), Apples to Apples Jr., and the kids played Twister. We also met Shirlene's (or should I say the kids) hamster. She is a fairly new hamster to their family. Got her at the pet store just a few weeks ago. Imagine their surprise when two weeks after they brought the little jewel home that she dropped a load of 6 baby hamsters into her cage! Lucky us that the hamsters were the cutest little furballs the night that we met them and Shirlene announced that they were ready to go to their new homes.....we tried to arrange a trade for the dog, but they wouldn't go for that. Too bad I'm a sucker, and we happened to have an empty aquarium at home, so a couple days later, after purchasing a mesh top, wheel, water bottle, food and bedding, we brought home our new pet. Ellie kept calling it a raccoon, so we were thinking of "Bandit" for a name. One of the kids suggested Kevin, and Jared asked, "What about Carl?".....we aren't sure where that came from! In the end we went with "Spike".....a tough name for our little fuzzball.

Without further adieu, meet "Spike", hamster extraordinaire:



He's already a lot bigger, as he wasn't quite 4 weeks old when we brought him home. The kids think he's fun. Jared doesn't like to hold him. The first time he did, J had something on his hand that apparently smelled quite tasty so Spike tried to eat it....gave J a pretty hard nibble/chomp to the palm, so J likes to watch him best in his hamster ball. I swear the thing is more than nocturnal though, he sleeps all. the. time.

Great weekend.....mostly!

Well, Thanksgiving is over, done, and put away. Here we go with Christmas! Thursday was nice. Family, fun, and okay food.....my rolls didn't work and it sorta ruined it for me....and Ron. I did go get him 2 dozen good rolls the next day though to make up for it. They are now gone! I think next year, a nice idea would be to go to Mimi's cafe or somewhere that serves up dinner for you....no work, no dishes, just good food and then come home for a nap.....but then there's the no leftover issue..... Oh well. I have a year until we do it again, so no worries yet!

Ron and I planned on going out bright and early Friday morning for some shopping, but Jared decided to change our plans by getting very sick beginning around 1:30 AM......poor kid kept nothing down until about 3 in the afternoon. So I went a couple places alone but it was not all too productive. But I got some done, and a little more Saturday, so we are getting there in terms of Christmas gifts. It is so strange, I feel like I just got Christmas put away from last year, so I don't feel like I should be doing this yet!

Saturday we made our little excursion to the tree farm....pictures here...
The quest begins for the perfect tree....anything bigger than the stick Jared has is game....

After considering a few, including a very blue Blue Spruce(maybe next time, I don't know if I'd get sick of a blue Christmas tree after the first couple of days!) we found the perfect tree. Good height, color, straight, and lots of open spaces for our ornament collection.

The cutest picture of Ellie....she is starting to look so much like a big kid, which makes her mommy very sad! I am still in denial that she'll be three in a month! I guess I should get her potty trained and perhaps moved out of her crib. Ellie chose this itty-bitty tree as her favorite.....we told her that maybe when she's about 16 that tree might by bigger than the stick!

When we got home, we discovered that of the three long strands of lights for the tree that we had, only 1 1/2 of them worked. Lowes had mini lights on sale, so we just decided it would be less of a headache to get new ones...while we were at it, we switched from clear mini lights to multi-colored. A little change is always fun. While at the store, the kids found these fun Santa hats and had to pose:


The finished product!


I stole all of these photos from Ron's blog. How sad is it that I didn't pull my camera out once? I let him do all the pictures with his iPhone, and then he blogged them the same day, practically the same hour, on his iPhone. He's doing a better job of documenting things than me, so if you ever wonder what is going on with us because I haven't posted in a while....check out my husbands blog!

We have a very busy week ahead.....Christmas prep, and then my sister and her hubby come up to help with some work on my mom's new house. She closes on Tuesday, and then Wednesday evening we will start ripping out vinyl flooring and carpet, tearing down wallpaper, laying tile, and painting the master bedroom and some shelves....all topped off with moving her out of her old house on Saturday. I'm really wondering how that day and saying goodbye to that house will go. It was home for me from age 10, up until I moved out on my own. Lot's of memories there. I'll make sure to take some pictures.