pet projects

We have a pet spider. Her name is Beatrice because we think that name suits a female black widow. Yes, I know you must be thinking - why does Heather have a pet black widow? It's a question that I have been asking myself too. It's because I got to rearrange and decorate the entire house while the boys sat quiet so when Derek wanted to cage one of the many black widows in the house, I went along. At least we can keep tabs on her and she's not roaming the house. A random beattle showed up in the house yesterday so we decided to feed it to Beatrice. It was amazing how fast she wound it up and ate it.

It finally dumped last night. It's a winter wonderland around Ashland. I'm glad I don't have to drive today because there are some serious yahoos on the road. I saw a guy in an F250 going down Vista sideways, that is until he turned all the way around and was sliding backwards. Luckily he used the curb to get himself stopped before smashing into any parked cars.

Winter Storm Warning...hmmm

There was a winter storm warning in effect until 10 pm last night. Apparently, it was the weather service screwing with us because we hardly got snow. It was cold though so we went for a hike up to Lamb Mine. It's a nice jaunt from the house. It was beautiful up there.

Derek wasn't impressed with my choice of trail to get there. This is what he had to say to the 2+ miles of straight up hill.

Christmas tree time

We cut a Christmas tree today. It's a pretty good deal. For $5. you can get a permit from the forest service to cut a tree. We found one that was perfect. We thought it was a bit taller than we wanted but it was skinny. Come to find out, it was a LOT taller than what we wanted. It's a perfect 7' tree now though :)

Lat night we all went to Jay's black tie party. Of course, I forgot to take pics of us all dressed up. I think it was because it was so cold in the house - I immediatly put my slippers on and wrapped myself in a blanket while we waited for the rest of the crew to arrive. Here's Derek scoping out the tree cutting areas. I wanted to cut a Christmas tree this year and he was a trooper and went on the adventure with me.

I spent a few hours this afternoon decorating so now it's festive in here for our Thanksgiving dinner. The house smells sooooo gooood.

Panama surf adventure

We are back from our Panamanian surf advenuture. It was a fun week loaded with good surf. We spent 6 days in Morro Negro at surf camp. We all had a great week in the water and were catching lots of waves by the end of the week. I was excited to catch my 1st real wave on the second day of the trip. I am excited about surfing now and may even brave the cold waters off the Oregon coast. We shall see...

At the end of the trip we spend a day in Panama City checking out this and that. We had lunch at the locks and watched a few large ships pass. It was very interesting and the museum there is quite informative.

We had a rather non-traditional Thanksgiving. Instead of the turkey dinner, football thing we had a pasties , moustache, sharpy tatoo party. Gabe had the English guy there convinced that all Americans do this on Thanksgiving. He's going to be disappointed if he ever makes it the states for the real deal. Most of the pictures from that night probably shouldn't be posted, but this one of Pete kind of sums it up.

We had a few nice susets. It usually rained in the afternoons and evenings but this particular day was beautiful and sunny. I am almost as pale as when I left but maybe it's better that way.

We all liked this low tide spot. It had nice, small, consistant waves. We didn't really have to work to get them either. Bonus! The morning spots were big and SCAREY. I didn't get any pics of those because we took the boats out to that area.