got rid of all of that snow....and then got dumped on again!

we had several enjoyable days of watching all of the snow melt....and looking at this:

and then we got dumped on - AGAIN!!!!



 it is pretty to look at - look at all of the beautiful grosebeaks on the apple tree branches and in the sky. they are soooo pretty to watch when they are flying - they always travel in large groups and they swoop and sway and fly together as if they were dancing. we love to watch them first thing in the morning. when they are all out in the tree, and down on the ground, they look like little yellow flowers, especially with the snow as background. here's another pic of them:



i could sit and watch them for hours!

anyway, an update on the past 2 weekends - what a blast! the monday before last we had our friends E & D come over for some supper and a visit. these are our next-door-neighbours whose boys come over regularly to help work around the Manor. anyway, they are also the people that are letting us keep our atv in their big barn, firstly, to keep it out of all of this snowy weather, and secondly, so that jambaloney can go over there this weekend to try and fix it. he's got a new carb and stuff for it and should have it running lickedy-split. poor jam has been back out shoveling the driveway by hand - but man, is he getting good at it - poor guy!

back to our friends! they arrived bearing gifts!!! woohoo! E is such a sweetie and i don't know how she remembered that our 13th anniversary together was on the 19th, but she remembered!!! (we of course forgot, her gift reminded us, and then we forgot again!!! we celebrated on the 20th when we remembered. we celebrated by pretty much doing what we do everyday - spend time together, work on projects together, many hottub dips, good food and lots of hugs and kisses. it's our anniversary pretty much everyday!!!)

E gave us our new dining room table centrepiece - 3 ornate-looking candle stands with stones in the glass tumblers. and she put small candles in small dishes inside of the tumblers to catch the wax so it didn't drip on the stones. the card she chose was very thoughtful and the sentiments expressed were from the heart!

oh and one thing that i forgot to showcase on the blog was D's beautiful wreath that he made for us - isn't it gorgeous! it has been hanging in the plastic porch at our front door since Christmas. i am not taking it down until it completely falls apart - i love it sooo much!!! if it stays alive and together until august, then i will have a beautiful wreath on my porch all summer long!

so we spent a fantastic evening with our friends laughing and chatting about just about everything. we love E & D and love having them as our friends and our neighbours! the only downer of the night was i made an apple pie out of our friend D's apples for dessert and of course, used a new recipe that seemed good, but the filling didn't cook enough. i used large chunks of apple because i wanted the apples to be the stars of the pie but the dang filling wasn't quite cooked enough. oh well. win some and lose some eh? my friend D and jam still ate 2 pieces each - they didn't seem to care too much!

we had a hoot, a holler and much laughter was shared by all - we can't wait to have them over again!

then last saturday we had our friends C & B over - they are from our sister community of Fourchu and we love them to death! B always teases the crap out of jambaloney but it's always in good fun! we were having pizza night so after they arrived and we chatted a bit, i made a combination pizza for us all to share. then the plan was to make our own little individual pizzas but everyone was too full from the first pizza and snacks. so B made his own particular pizza - he was driving me nuts - bahahah! i had all of the ingredients prepped but he had to cut up the onions more and cut the bacon slices in half. he was mostly putting on a show because i was acting OCD about how he was making his pizza. he was driving me nuts though, putting pepperoni in some places, ham in others, chorizo on other places - then he had to cut up the green peppers - bahahahahahah! next time he's over I am making that pizza!!! he did make himself a nice little pizza that he took home. my friend C just took some dough and all of the ingredients to make herself a pizza the next day.

we had a hoot and a holler with them, too! C brought this incredible dessert - it's called banana split squares - it was soooo deelishous - and tasted just like a banana split!!! she makes the best desserts around here and i am not a "sweets" person but i always have some of her desserts! we spent the evening laughing together and jam making C some fancy kahlua and cream drinks. she, of course, brought me a bottle of wine that i had opened at her house last week - she knows that the wine only keeps for about a week and didn't want me to waste it. we had a bottle of her favourite shooter, baja rose, and i always have one with her but i can't usually do more than one. bleck - i hate that stuff. so jambaloney always has to do the shooters with her at dances and whatnot.

at this point it probably sounds like all of us are a bunch of lushes - bahahahahah! but we don't see each other too regularly so when we get together we like to celebrate! now that we have the chase the ace game every friday night, we get to see most of our friends weekly. and it is very nice to be able to socialize together weekly.

so, we had 2 really nice evenings with 2 sets of our friends and we plan to have them, and others, over more regularly. we finally feel that we have the Manor done well-enough to not scare people off - bahahaha! i can't wait for this summer as we will be able to have several of our friends over at a time, hanging out in the backyard and bbq'ing! it's gonna be awesome!

plans for the next few days are draining and refilling the hottub, then jam has some contract IT work to do and i plan on cooking up some lasagna, a meat pie and some bulgogi. until then, here's some teriyaki pork and stir-fried veggies:

i am not a big fan of pork but i love it with this recipe for the teriyaki sauce - it's even better on chicken - yummeh!

and here's some yummy all-veg quinoa salad - make sure to add crumbled feta cheese - it's to die for!

lastly, sorry for the sporadic posting lately - we have been getting dumped on with the snow, and snowed in regularly which is fine for us. but i find when we are snowed in and whatnot - i just enjoy doing little jobs around the house, curling up on the couch and reading or watching movies and whatnot. i don't know why but i just don't make it to the computer very often when we are having so many flumping days in a row  - strange, eh? anyway, i'll be popping in to your blogs and catching up on posts that i have missed and leaving comments.  it's only 1pm and we have put in a full day already - made a bunch of hummus, prepped veg to go with it and made the quinoa salad. played several hands of cards, many hottub dips, folded laundry and ran the dishwasher (you don't think running the dishwasher is a big job??? that's because your dishwasher is probably in your kitchen and not down in the basement. and you probably don't collect your dirty dishes in 3 big bins on your plastic-wrapped porch until you have enough dishes to run the dishwasher!!! and then getting those bins through the snow and down to the basement without killing yourself. told ya - it's a job!!!).

oh one last thing. jamie just made a beautiful shelf for our little cat, nudie-noo. he's getting up in years and can't jump as well as he used to. his little hidey-hole is the top shelf of our one closet! but he loves it up there and i just can't take it away from him, even though i have lost ALLLLLLL of that storage space!!! he has his blankets and one of my nightgowns and one of jambaloney's t-shirts up there and that's where he goes to sleep during the day. long story short, he jumps on a nighttable, then to a dresser and from the dresser, he jumps up to the shelf in the closet. a few days ago he was having a hard time just jumping up to the couch or table without slipping and we think he hurt himself as he was favouring one leg. he seems ok now, but jambaloney built him a little step out of the closet so that he doesn't have so far to jump from the dresser. jambaloney is always good for coming up with things like that.

speaking of jambaloney - he's outside right now making all kinds of racket and banging around. i have no idea what he is doing. time for me to go check on him!