Homemade bread dough

I found a really good deal on flour last week, so I bought a bunch. I have never baked my own bread or anything so I decided to give it a try. I also found a great recipe for pizza dough. I thought that if it turns out ok I would start making part of our bread each week. As you can see I will need to make smaller loafs. My kids think they look like heads. Even though the recipe it made 1 loaf I think it would work better making two. We also made homemade pizza last night. So long Pizza Hut. Now I need to go shopping for more bread pans. I found a bread recipe for dough that you make and keep in the fridge and just use enough to make a loaf or 2. It lasts for 2 weeks in hte fridge. I am going to try that one next.

Oregon Winter

Well it have been snowing off and on here for the last week. The kids missed all last week because of the snow. When it snows alot here we get ice. Yesterday it snowed all day. And then overnigh it rained. So this is what we woke up to. This normally happens about every 5 years or so. There is about 1/2 to 1 inch of ice on everything. They don't salt so the roads have a very thick layer of ice. They usually plow the roads just enough to leave the ice. And people here don't know how to drive in snow and ice. Hence why the state closes when it snows. Hopefully the roads will be open for us to drive back to Utah next week. At this point we may not be able to make it. They are saying it is going to warm up by christmas and melt it. I pray for snow every year and the one year I did not want snow it snows. Praying for warmer weather. I have my fingers crossed.

This is the backyard. There is about 2 inches of ice on top of the snow

These trees are across the street. The branches are so heavy

with ice that they are bent over touching the ground. I really hope

they don't break

This is the tree in my front yard.

Gery's car. You can't really tell in the picture but it is cover

with a 1 inch layer of ice. Good we are off work til Jan.

Needing some Christmas cheer

I have been finding it hard to get into the christmas spirit this year. This is normally my favorite time of the year. We did get some snow. Which is very unusually for us, So the kids have been out of school for the last 3 days. Snow here normally turns to ice. The roads are to icy to go anywhere without a 4 wheel drive. I wish they would put down salt instead of the pea gravel they put down. I have currently off work until Jan 4. Gery's last work day is today until Jan 4 so he has the truck. It just hasn't seem much like christmas this year. We have yet to get our tree up. The kids don't seem to care. We are going to put it up tomorrow. Having 5 cats and 3 dogs in the house makes it hard to keep them out of the tree. We are planning a trip back to Utah on the 26th. Hopefully it warms up a bit the route we normally take is currently closed. If anything we can go through California. Just makes the trip a little longer of a drive. Both of our jobs have announced that we will be doing shut downs every quarter. My company will be doing a 3 week shut down and Gery's will be 1 week. At least we can claim unemployment. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas.

Busy

I have not posted in a while. It has been so busy since the kids started school. To recap what has been going with us. Stephanie turned 15 on the 10th of Sept. She's on the dance team and also plays with the band so just about every friday she is performing with one or the other. Cody and Kaitlyn are busy with homework and playing with their friends. We are hoping to get into some sort of routine soon. Right now it seems like we are always on the go.

Bandon Animal Safari

We decided to take the family on one last trip before the summer was over. We went down to Bandon Animal safari. It is about 5 hours away quite a drive but well worth it. We had such a good time playing with animals we would normally never get to touch. We got to play with a 9 week lion cub, a 10 week black leapard cub and a 4 week siberian lynx. We got to hold /play with a few other you can see from the pictures.

Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

For the past 2 1/2 weeks I have been a coupon clipper. I have never really go out of my way to clip coupons, but with our grocery bill of $350 every 2 weeks it was getting out of control. I found this site www.thegrocerygame.com and have started stockpiling a 3 month supply of food. There is a fee but it has paid for itself already. We almost have our stockpile good for 3 months. My freezer if full which it has never been. The kids are doing cold lunch this year. So with all the sales on snacks, juice boxes, peanut butter I am stocked up for almost the whole school year. My goal is to get our grocery bill down to $70-80 dollars a week. Boy I wish I had found this site years ago. Check it out you migh find it useful too.

Silver Falls State Park hike

Today we decided to go for hike at Silver Falls State park. It is a 7 mile hike with 25 waterfalls along the path. When we got there it was slightly misting, typical day in Oregon. We started out our hike. By the time we hit the 1st mile into it, it was raining quite hard. We all looked like drowned rats. It took us a hour to hit the first mile mark, we made stops along the way to look at the waterfalls and take pictures. We were so wet that we decided to call it a day. Unfortunetly we had to hike back. I got a few good pictures. Will definetly have to go back on a dry day and finish the whole hike. I could have spent hours there taking pictures.

South Falls

It was raining so hard by the time we got to the North Falls

that it looked like it was foggy.

Lower south falls