December, Here We Come!

Our fridge is still packed with Thanksgiving leftovers, but that doesn't stop us from moving straight into the Christmas season. There is some serious holiday spirit going around our neighborhood. Several of our neighbors were outside this weekend putting up their holiday decorations. We started inside the house with our Christmas tree....

Our 8.5' artificial tree is a pain to put together, but this year we happened to have a few extra family members around to help make the job a lot easier.

Max thought it came out nice and it makes a pretty good perch too!

This is how our tree looks so far, decorated with Disney ornaments. We still need to flatten out the branches near the top of the tree and fill it in with the rest of our ornaments.

On to the outside of the house....Rick put up some white LED icicles, with a little help from Tyler of course.

How does it look? It may not be the most festive house on our block, but it sure beats the heck out of last year when we did nothing!

Happy Thanksgiving

It's all about the food around here. Yesterday I got a head start and made the stuffing and pies. This morning Rick and I got up at 6:30 to put the turkey in the oven...all 25 lbs.

We got the turkey from Costco this year and followed the recipe on the package for a rub that made the turkey smell wonderful while it was cooking.

Here are the sides that I made...mashed sweet potatoes (the real thing) with marshmallows on top, mashed red potatoes, and stuffing (no Stove Top here).

I found a recipe for Dutch Apple Pie on allrecipes that had a really high rating, but nobody has tried it yet so we'll still have to wait and see.

I used my usual pumpkin pie recipe. Yikes...who made that giant slit in the middle...don't look at me!

Say "cheese" everybody! We put the camera on the tripod and set up the timer so we could get everyone in the picture. We had a great dinner, but I think I'm ready to start digging into the pies!

Bad News

I found out this afternoon that Marceau died last night. Apparently she took a turn for the worse and was completely unable to tolerate food anymore. She hung in there for eight days, but wasn't able to pull through in the end. The doctor said that he has never seen a case where the bird improved so dramatically and then didn't make it. And here I am second guessing myself...maybe if she had been able to see the vet on Sunday and start her treatment earlier this wouldn't have happened....maybe if we hadn't gotten cats this wouldn't have happened...I guess I'll never know.

Psst...Marceau, Get Better Already!

The doctor called this evening with an update on Marceau. He said that she was making dramatic improvements on Thursday and had even started eating seeds. However, she was unable to keep the food down and vomited it all back up. Today, she took a step backwards and is back to feeling down and droopy and doesn't want to eat. She has been under the doctor's care for 5 days now, and he feels confident that she will make a recovery. That's good news. Hopefully she'll be able to come back home in a few more days...we all miss her around here.

Besides worrying like crazy about Marceau, I haven't really done much at all this week. The weather has been kind of dismal, dark and gloomy, highs maybe reaching 50 degrees. Not the kind of weather I need to improve my mood, that's for sure. I've had Tyler cooped up in the house for the majority of the week. But I was looking in the paper this morning for upcoming events I could do with him and I read about a Christmas train event at the train museum in Toppenish that he might like. Also, the Parade of Lights is coming up the first week of December and that sounds like fun too. We've got to get out and do what we can before it starts snowing...there's nothing I hate worse than driving around in the snow and ice.

The Dr. Said....

The vet called this afternoon with an update on Marceau. After her blood work came back, it looks like she has a disease called Psittacosis, which is caused by the Chlamydia bacteria. He is going to run another test to confirm that she has the bacteria in her system, which would rule out other possible causes for her illness. He has been giving her the proper antibiotic for 3 days already, but she has still not shown much signs of improvement. It's also hard to diagnose how she came in contact with the bacteria, as birds can carry it for years without showing any signs or symptoms. So it looks like Marceau will remain under the doctor's care until Friday at least or until she starts eating again on her own.

And Now We Wait

I called Dr. Stueckle this morning, who is apparently the only vet in town that sees birds. He mostly does house calls, so he came to our house to take a look at Marceau. It reminded me of All Creatures Great and Small, the way that he makes house calls, has a traditional black doctor bag and his practice is called "All Small Creatures" Veterinary Clinic. Marceau was doing much better this morning, her strength is up and she is able to walk much better. However, she still will not eat. The Doctor said that birds need to eat about every three hours, so an entire day and a half without food is bad news. Marceau is now hospitalized under the Doctor's care, and will be tube fed until she is able to eat again on her own. He will be running blood work today to try to identify the problem. Poor Max, you would have thought our house was on fire, the way he screamed when Marceau left. He has calmed down a little bit, and now we just have to wait until the doctor calls with an update on Marceau. Let me tell you what....it had better be good news!

Dr. Mom Is In

This morning, I found Marceau lying of the floor of the cage. I don't know why or what happened, but she is sick. She's really weak and just wants to sleep, I can't get her to eat or drink. Right now, I have her in the small airplane carrier with a towel and a heating pad underneath.

It's Sunday today, and of course there are no veterinarians that are open....Murphy's Law, right. The best doctor in town for birds will only do emergency visits for regular clients (which we are not) and charge a rate of $163 just to walk in the door, Sheesh! So I am babying Marceau the best I can, until the morning when we can take her in. Max is doing his part, serenading Marceau with only his best whistles in every combination imaginable...anything to make her feel better.

A Hit With My Guinea Pigs

A made another new recipe last night and everybody loved it. It's called Five Spice Coconut Chicken and the recipe is here. The chicken is marinated in a combination of coconut milk, lime juice, garlic, soy sauce, and five spice powder. I've been putting the recipe off for a few weeks because I was nervous about how the five spice powder flavor was going to go over, it being kind of sweet smelling and strong on the cinnamon. It came out great though. I used a grill pan to cook up the chicken on the stove and served it with jasmine rice and hericot vert (skinny french green beans).

I bought a can of Thai Coconut Milk to use for this recipe and now I have a good 2/3 of the can remaining. Anyone have any ideas what I can do with it? I recently had a Green Coconut Curry Chicken dish at a restaurant in Seattle that was fantastic, maybe I should try something like that. My only problem, finding green curry paste in Yakima!

Two page spread

Here is the layout that I was working on this week, I'm amazed that I even got anything accomplished considering the fact that everyone in the house was sick.

I used the ZooBalloo cricut cartridge for the title and some sizzix dies for the swirly decorations in the corner of the pages.

Rick has the day off, so I might head back upstairs and spend some more time scrapbooking. But then, I also have to go to Costco. I bought some jackets there the other week and since they don't have mirrors, I had to go on Rick's word that they looked nice on me. Well, once I got home I saw that they were almost comically too large...now I have to go see if I can find them in a smaller size before they run out.

One Word....Ugh!

I've been sick for a few days now, I can thank Tyler for graciously sharing his germs with the rest of the class. Tyler has been sick for a solid seven days and even Rick is sick now too (and that's saying a lot, because he never gets sick).

For dinner tonight I made Turkey Thyme Meatloaf Patties with Mashed Sweet Potatoes from Rachael Ray's November issue. Way more complicated than I cared for though, being sick and all, but I needed to cook the fresh turkey meat I had in the fridge.


As for the new cats, I still don't know what to say. These are Rick's pets, but somehow I think I will be the one burdened with taking care of them, training them, cleaning up after them and such....nothing I signed up for at all. The worst part for me is having the birds locked up in their cage all day, while the cats endlessly roam the house. Marceau usually spends several hours each day hanging out on top of the cage, but that's not safe anymore. The cats are as fascinated with the birds as Tyler is with the television, you know, stuck like glue. When they are not sitting in front of the bird cage, I can usually find them curled up on the dining room chairs, kitchen table chairs, or the leather office chairs. They've already started nicking the leather on the seat of the office chairs, and you know I'm loving that. Other than that, the cats are calm for the most part and really lovey-dovey....they even let Tyler pet them without much of a problem.

Not My Idea, Believe Me!!

We adopted two new cats from PetSmart/Humane Society last night. Rick has been wanting a cat for a long time now and had even bought the litter box and food dishes over a year ago. He was just waiting until he could find a calm cat that might get along with the birds. Birds are my first choice as a pet, followed by dogs and then maybe a fish or two, but I don't really have much interest in cats. So let me point my finger and say, this was all his idea, I had nothing to do with it!

They are both female cats, about 8 months old and they have already been spayed. They are sisters and Rick (bless his heart...I'm kidding) couldn't bear to separate them. They came with the names Trixie and Dixie, but we don't know who is who, so we'll probably come up with some new names (got any ideas, send them my way). They were described as "timid, but sweet". Maybe timid around people, but they sure as heck weren't scared of the birds. Last night I saw one of them standing on their hind legs in front of the bird cage and make a giant gulping/swallowing motion. They better not have been imagining what it would be like to swallow Marceau or Max whole! Today, one of them jumped onto the cage and was hanging from the bars.....ummm, yeah I don't know how this situation is going to work out. Trust me, I have my squirt bottle ready.

Two new pages

I haven't been able to scrapbook as much as I'd like too, because I've had a hard time finding the time. Tyler won't take naps anymore unless he accidentally falls asleep while riding in the car, so I've lost that time that I used to use to work on my scrapbooking pages. For the whole month of October, I finished maybe 3 or 4 pages....I guess that's better than nothing, right?

This layout I copied from a past issue of Scrapbooks, Etc magazine, don't go thinking I was clever enough to think up this one on my own. I love that magazine because it always includes patterns for paper piecing projects. For this page, I used their patterns to make the tree branches, mushrooms and birds.

The idea for this layout came from Page Maps (a book that I use all the time). With this page I at least came up with my own paper and color scheme, so it wasn't quite as bad as tracing directly out of a magazine.

Tyler is still sick and I ended up with a few of germy bugs, so my throat has been killing me. It looks like we're in for another day of being cooped up in the house. It's been raining all week anyway, which is actually kind of weird. In the past couple of years it has never really precipitated much at all, so a whole week of rain is certainly out of the ordinary.

Banana Gingerbread

I love this bread! I made a batch this morning and the house smells so good I can't even believe it. The best part about it is that it uses two bananas, but doesn't taste at all like any normal banana bread. I always have a couple of overripe bananas sitting on the counter, and sometimes I get tired of the same old banana bread.

I discovered the recipe last year while visiting the Baking Bites Blog and I've made it several times since then. The recipe is here. Mmmmm, It's so good....now go make some of your own!!

A Quick Update

Last weekend we took Tyler to do the monthly craft at Ace Hardware...it was a super cute turkey spoon. It had five wooden feathers to paint and with only four paint colors to choose from, Tyler ended up making a new shade of orange by mixing the red and yellow together. He was ultra proud of himself for successfully making a new paint color....light orange, as he called it.

Believe me, Tyler was way more pleased with his turkey than this picture implies. I don't know what it is, but he has the hardest time looking at the camera and smiling at the same time. I never get any pictures of him looking straight into the camera anymore....I just have to settle for a set of non blinking eyes!

So today was election day and I voted. For the most part, the state of Washington does mail in ballots only, so Rick and I actually sent in our votes yesterday. I heard on the news this morning that Starbucks was giving away free coffee for anyone who came in and said that they voted, so I headed over there today and got my free cup. I had big plans to take Tyler with me to a few more stores, namely the scrapbooking store, but he is sick once again, so we pretty much had to come straight home. He has a nasty habit of chewing his nails, so of course, he has been getting sick just about every other week....I'm so tired of it, I could just scream. I've threatened him before, but I might actually stick to my word and make him wear mittens whenever we leave the house.