A busy, busy week in review...

As many of you know, a couple weeks ago we observed the Thanksgiving holiday-a time to celebrate family, food and shopping. It was a busy week for me-you already know about my court experience-plus my family was coming out to do Turkey Day at my house! You may not know that for the last week I've been without working Internet at my house-so, I'm going to give an overview of all (well, almost all) of the happenings in that week and hopefully have a more current update to come.


Wednesday, November 26th

Court-see previous post


My sister Bethany arrived at about 7pm (her bus was supposed to be in at 5-gotta love Greyhound!). We went out with a friend of mine and snuck her in to the Kennedy school (she's only 19) to watch a movie-good times.


Thursday, November 27th

Start cooking our turkey feast.


Cranberry sauce:

1 bag cranberries
1/2 cup apricot/pineapple preserves
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup water



Heat until cranberries pop and then thicken. Very easy, very impressive :)


I cut open this apple for my apple pie and found a little surprise. Maybe someone mistook me for Snow White.




Here is a shot of the banquet laid out on our bar.





And here is the perfect Thanksgiving plate-a little bit of everything.



I love my sisters (and my brother, too). Since we moved around a lot as a kid, I don't have any childhood friends that I'm still in touch with, but my siblings are quickly becoming my best friends and my favorite people.


















My youngest sister, Shelby, trying to figure out one of those ab rocker things.








Friday, November 28th

The beach! My mom said that she wanted to smell the ocean while they were out to visit, so we did. My mom and step-dad went for their own little walk down the beach with Abby the dog. (Sidenote: everyone kept confusing me and Abby. When Mark scolded her for jumping on the seat he said "Ashley, get down from there." When my mom wanted to ask me a question she would call me Abby. Now, Abby was never my dog, so I don't really like her very much-especially when she stinks up my house-but I have to admit she's pretty cute and it was fun having her around) While we were in Canon Beach, we happened to walk in to a glass gallery and see the glass blowers doing their thing. It was very cool-I wish I was a glass blower.











An emo beach shot of Bethany







We got back that evening and went out for sushi. It was my step-dad's first time, so I had to pick out all the non-spicy things for him. My mom had gone for the first time this last summer when she came to visit, and now she loves it. After sushi, my sisters and I dropped off the parents and then went shopping. It's really funny to see the different styles we each have. Bethany is very eclectic and hippy-ish. Shelby is much more classic and streamlined. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. At one store, we were looking at vests for Shelby and Bethany pointed out the one she liked best; when Shelby came over to check them out she pointed to the one she thought was ugliest...they were the same one!!



Saturday, November 29th

We went out to Shari's for breakfast and then Mom, Mark, Shelby and Abby took off for Montana. Beth and I went to get manicures & pedicures and then went home to watch a few movies. That night I went out on a little date, which was a lot of fun, but didn't help break my cycle of long nights and early mornings.

Sunday, November 30th

I woke up late for choir-oops. Went just to Sacrament meeting and then left for a concert in Seattle. Traffic was HORRIBLE, but we made it just in time. Now, I wasn't a huge Decemberists fan before this concert. I listened to their music and enjoyed it, but after seeing them live, I'm pretty impressed. The show was a lot of fun and I had a great time. We left Seattle that evening and arrived home around 3am. (Pictures will be added later)

Monday, December 1st
So, I got about four hours of sleep before dropping my sister off at the train station and heading in to work. At work, our phones were messed up, we were crazy busy and I was very spent by the time I was able to head home. After FHE I went to karaoke-we had a smaller crowd, but it was still enjoyable. Spent some quality time with a quality friend and then went home to try to catch up on sleep.

Tuesday, December 2nd
Nothing too exciting-did some good Visiting Teaching stuff with Karina (we dropped cinnamon rolls off for one of our girls who has finals this week). I made a few attempts to tidy up the house and then went to bed relatively early.

Again, let me say that I love my sisters. They are two of the funniest people I know. To prove this I have a couple quotes from this week that still make me smile:

Shelby (after sneezing): Eww, I think I just spit a loogie somewhere...oh wait, it's in my mouth.


Bethany/Me to Shelby: So, have you had any first kisses yet?
Shelby: No...but I've had a lot of second kisses :)

Shelby (as we drove past a site of a forest fire-I'm guessing-there were just a lot of bare trees/stumps): It's so sad, it's like the Holocaust.
(I just really liked this one, because it was a great mental connection between the image of the dead trees covering this wide expanse and what happened in the Holocaust-my sisters are beautiful and smart)

More to come...as I remember them.