Happy 89th Grandma & Great-Grandma

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Salmon Fishing

Matt and I decided to leave the boys home for the weekend and go salmon fishing, they weren't real excited to go and it was homecoming weekend for them so they had more important things to do, besides the last time we went fishing we came home empty handed - they weren't looking forward to that experience again.
Here we are camped out along the Columbia River with a few other campers
This is not snow but bugs! There were a ton of bugs come evening time.
This was taken Sunday morning as the sun was coming up. We started fishing by 6:00am.
We did take the dogs with us, here's Jasper on guard (longing to be on shore).
Sparky loves to think he is the captain.
Try containing 2 Jack Russells on a 19 ft boat for 10 hours, we gave them two short potty breaks. They actually did very well.
We did not catch one until sunday morning - we really thought we were going to get skunked again, this was not that big of one but better then nothing. It was about 18 pounds, maybe next year we will catch more.
We cooked about 1/3 of the fish fresh with garden carrots, potatoes and onion - then froze the rest to share with family at a later date. Delicious!!

Hunting Camp

Deer season is open. We decide to try our luck for mule deer up past Kettle Falls. Matt's parents went with us - Us women stayed at the camp and kept the fire going - It was cooold!

The dogs occupied themselves with digging and squirrel watching.
Here's grandpa displaying his lovely orange hunting attire, and grandma too embarrassed to look.
The dogs have their own chairs and blankies (they really aren't spoiled at all). Sparky was so cold I had to put his camo hoody on him.

The guys getting their rhino's coordinated. Aaron, Matt & Logan.

No deer this weekend but we did get 7 grouse. Aaron got 5 of those with a 22 pistol. At least we got enough to make a meal. I like to de-bone the breast, dredge in flour, brown then bake in cream of mushroom soup.

Finally finished

I waited almost a year for my cookbook shelf, this finishes off the kitchen. Matt made it to match the rest of the cabinets. Notice the antique water cooler on top of it, this came from Matt's Grandmother Castle.

Oh no, I didn't realize I had that many cookbooks - I love cookbooks, I'll sit down and read them like it's a good novel. I haven't had any place to keep them since we moved out here so I didn't realize how many of them I had - not much room for any more unless I want to get rid of a few.

Happy 15th Aaron

Aaron turns 15!!
What else do you get a 15 year old that has everything........a 12lb shotput (had an 8lb for jr high but is now in highschool so needs to move up), a throwing axe (he loves axe throwing and is very good at it), some new hunting pants (outgrew the old ones, imagine that) and a metal detector.
I really don't know what Matt was talking about here.
Birthday dinner, Aaron wanted steak, mushrooms, baked potato and brocolli.
.....and Birthday cake, he wanted pineapple cake, a recipe I got from my Grandma Cabe -- it's very easy and very tasty.

1 vanilla cake mix, bake according to directions for a 9 x 13 pan. Cool for 10 minutes, poke holes into cake with end of wooden spoon, pore one can of crushed pineapple over cake, smooth out, let finish cooling in the fridge - for frosting mix 1 lg package vanilla pudding with 1 cup milk - beat until mixed then stir in 1 8oz container of cool whip. Yummy!!! I am not a chocolate fan, yes let me say that again, not a chocolate fan (even though I live with 3 of them), so I really like this cake.

And more projects......

The boat gets a layer of shark skin to protect it. The boys were so thrilled to help with this project.

The Bug - will she ever run? Well she runs but not off of the property. This would be really neat fixed up if we ever find the time.
The mustang still needs body work and a paint job -- hopefully this spring if we can all agree on a color - even though it is my car and I know what color I would want it to be.
And of course there is always firewood. We had our firewood in over Spring Break - thanks to the boys - then they got the Castle grandparents wood in. Here we are working on the Smiley grandparents wood, we still need to get over to Uncle Dave's and split and stack wood for him and check on Grandma Cabe's wood situation - Good thing we had ours done early. This is a picture of Matt chainsawing and Aaron splitting, well trying to split - we decided to haul them like that and split them on my dad's log splitter - much easier.

The Trailer gets a make-over

Matt built this trailer last summer to haul our 4 snowmobiles in. This fall he is painting it to match the truck and finishing the inside, he also uses this to hunt with as he can haul the jeep in it and the boys can use it to sleep in at Elk camp, much warmer and comfier then a tent and they have always been to big to sleep in the camper.