Tis the season...to be thankful!

How do I begin to name everything I'm thankful for? There are so many things.

I'm thankful for my husband. He is truly my best friend and I cannot imagine my life without him.

I'm thankful for my family. It's really wonderful to have my mom and dad here in MT. I'm not sure I would have stayed out here if they weren't here. I wish we could get Ben and Nate's families out here, but I just don't think that will happen :)

I'm thankful that we get to spend Thanksgiving with both our families. Having Larry, Carol and Sam here will be so much fun.

I'm thankful that even though we feel that "money is tight" some weeks, we are still able to invite 9 other people to our house for a FEAST. We are more fortunate than a lot people.

I'm thankful that Daniel and I have good jobs. They may not be our dream jobs, but again, we are more fortunate than a lot people because we can say we have good jobs.

I'm thankful that I don't have to go shopping on Friday...what can I say? I just wish I liked it a little more, but I just don't!

I'm thankful that our furnace it working this Thanksgiving. Last year we had single digit temperatures and our furnace went out...BRR!

I'm thankful that Daniel and I have the ability to remodel our home and for sure by next year at this time, we'll have our master bedroom completed. I can't wait!

I think I could go on and on, but I won't. I touched on the biggest things at this time.

I asked Daniel what he is thankful for and his response was, "I'm thankful for family...everything...there isn't anything I'm not thankful for." Amen to that!

Happy Thanksgiving! I pray for safe travels for all, and fun gatherings!

The Hunt

It feels so awesome to have it be Tuesday and my work week is done! I'm always relieved that I've reserved a few vacation days for the holidays, and that I've always had a job where I CAN do that, too.

Our elk hunting on Sunday was so fun. Neither Daniel or I filled our tags, but we had a great day anyway. My brother Dan, his wife, Audria, 2 other guys I don't know, as well as my mom and dad all went hunting together. We were in a beautiful area and I just really enjoyed the day. We walked so much...up hill, down hill, on slants, in snow...uffda. It was tough work. I feel like I got one of the best workouts ever. Unfortunately I only saw 3 cows and they were running away from me.

At one point I was walking with my dad and he told me to stay put and he was going to go ahead about 50-100 yards. I was okay with it...for about 3 minutes. I got spooked. Have you seen the movie "The Happening"? I don't want to ruin the movie, but I'll just say, everytime the wind blew, I held my breath. If you've seen that movie, you'll understand what I'm saying. That's not what really freaked me out though. Earlier in the day my mom and dad saw a bull elk right in front of them. (We only have cow tags, so we can't shoot bulls) I didn't know how I'd respond if I saw a frickin' bull elk standing in front of me! I was scared to be alone and that's all there is to it. So, after 3 minutes of standing alone, I started meandering closer to my dad. Dan and Audria were about 150-200 yards below us on the mountain and I heard Audria yell that she's just gotten one. I got nervous. I got back into my dad's line of sight and felt better. Pretty soon he started walking away from me again. This time I decided I'd be brave. I watched my dad start to disappear around a bend. He stayed out of my sight for a solid 15-20 minutes. Then, he appeared again. He was moving kind of slow. When he got up to me he started to tell that he saw elk and started running towards them. He got 3 steps into his run and he fell. He thought he'd broken something, but he was able to get up and we walked very slowly back to camp. I was worried about him. He's not nearly as nimble as he was before his 2 back surgeries. However I did laugh at him, too. (After I knew he was going to be okay) As we were walking back he said, "I just don't know why I thought I could run after them!" He looked like a deflated kid. I couldn't help but laugh. He's doing fine today. We were all a little sore on Monday morning, but we're all feeling good now.

We are hunting again on Friday and we're really hoping to fill our tags then. I can't wait to get back up there. If I think of it, I'll try to take a few pictures to post.

Daniel's parents and little brother will be here tomorrow night for the holiday weekend. We haven't seen Sam since July and we just briefly saw Larry and Carol about a month ago, so we're very anxious to have them here for 4.5 days. I'm serving Thanksgiving dinner sometime between 2-3pm. (Does anyone else have trouble getting all the food ready at the same time?) There will be 11 of us including Dan and his family, my mom and dad and Daniel's brother and parents. I'm looking forward to it! Thursday will have to be an early night though, since we'll be up again by about 3:30am to go hunting. We probably won't get home until 8pm. I'm hoping to sleep in on Saturday. We're pretty much ready for everything though. Tomorrow I'll give the bathrooms one last clean-up and vacuum the whole house and we should be set. I am just so happy to not be working :)

Hopefully I'll have a good update after the weekend!

Bread

Today was the first time in my life that I've made bread all by myself. No bread machine, no mom standing next to me, no help at all (unless you call Daniel eating the buns as they're done, helping!). I'm proud of myself. It's really not that hard to make bread, but it certainly requires a lot of time. I'm not sure I have the patience to do this too often. I can't make the buns like my mom or my grandma, but I figure I'll get better as the years pass. My grandma T was really good at making her buns all exactly the same size...seriously, she had them nearly perfect. I don't know how she did it! Mine are all different shapes and sizes. The important thing is that they do taste like my mom's, they just don't look like my mom's.

It's odd to think that my mom and grandma used to make bread EVERY Saturday. I cannot imagine that. Oh the time spent waiting for the dough to rise 3 times! And, they did it with kids running around them. I just have my dog at my side, just waiting for something to drop. She gets bored easily though and did escape to the living room a couple times for a nap. She was laying on the kitchen floor, in the sunshine, just looking at me and she looked so tired. I'm sure it's weird for her to be awake all day long while I'm home.

It's been a fun day though. I plugged in my ipod and went to my Christmas music play list and I've just been singing away. I love Christmas music. It helps that it snowed last night and the ground is covered. It just made everything worth it. I love the holidays!

Taking today off was worth it. My house smells wonderful. There is nothing like the smell of fresh-baked bread. MMM!

Tonight I'm working on laundry and trying to get all my Sunday chores done since Daniel and I will be elk hunting on Sunday...we pick up my mom and dad at 4:20 on Sunday MORNING! EEK! I haven't hunted in 2 years. All I know is that our freezer only has 6 packages of elk burger left, so duty calls. We need to get at least one elk this season. Wish us luck!

Here are 2 pans of the finished products.

Yeah!!! I know how to insert pictures!

Sidenote: This is how Daniel likes his bread buns baked. I'm used to making them individually. We did a 50/50 split. We have a couple batches like this and then I did a couple batches individually. See? Marriage is all about compromise :)

My parents

I stopped by my parent's house this afternoon to say hi. I had called ahead to tell them I'd be stopping by, so I thought they'd be expecting me. I knocked on the door and pushed it open. When I got into the kitchen, it was dark and so quiet. Because it was late afternoon, it occurred to me that they might be taking a nap. Then I heard the snoring. I walked back to their room and there was my mom on her side and she was "sigh snoring", which is how my mom snores all the time. Then there was my dad on his back snoring a typical "grandpa snore"...LOUD! Imagine this for a minute, my mom sighing while she exhaled and as soon as her exhale was complete, my dad would inhale with the loud typical snoring sound. It was so well orchestrated. I stood in the hallway and giggled. I couldn't believe they didn't hear me come in! I just didn't have the heart to wake them, so I went into my mom's office and checked my email, read a little people.com, checked the weather forecast and decided I'd better say hi, since I'd been there for 15 minutes already. When I went back into their room, my dad had rolled over and his snoring had ceased. First I touched my dad's leg and kind of shook it. Nothing. I giggled. How funny was this!?!? Then I shook my mom's foot and she just kept on sighing. I was giggling so hard I don't know how they couldn't hear me. Finally, I shook my mom's leg and said, "Ma!", rather quietly. She swung the covers off her and said, "I'm awake! Oh, you're here! Good. I was waiting for you." Sure you were, Mom! Of course my dad had awakened by then, too. He sat up so quickly I thought for sure he'd get light-headed. I was flat-out laughing my butt off at this point. I think I even had tears in my eyes! I told them everything I'd done and they didn't believe me. My mom insisted that she had just fallen asleep. Funny stuff!

The funnies didn't stop there though...it was very evident that my mom had awakened too quickly. My dad thought it was time for an afternoon coffee break, so my mom made a pot of coffee. About 3 minutes later, she looked over to the coffee maker and the coffee was all over the counter top. She had filled the coffee basin and turned on the maker. She just forgot to put the pot under the drip thingy...the coffee dripped all over the counter and down the side of the counter and under the fridge. Oh what a mess. My dad didn't think it was all bad though...they did get to clean out behind the fridge.

Moral of the story...don't tell anyone that my parents sleep so hard. I'd hate for them to be burglarized while they're sleeping in their own home. And don't let my mom make the coffee after being awakened so abruptly! I love my folks!

Blogging

I have to admit that the word "blog" has confused me in the past. I didn't get it. I'm still not sure I do. The way I look at it, I'm keeping a journal. All of my life, up until 3 years ago, I've kept a journal. It seems that once I got married, I stopped journaling. That seems odd to me. Daniel and I have created a lot of memories over the last year and 2.5 months, but I haven't written any of them down. That makes me sad. So, here, I will keep track of our goings on.

We don't have a lot of stuff to keep track of at this point in our life. We are remodeling and that is truly the biggest thing going on at this time. We only work on stuff on weekends, so the progress is slow. At this point in time, we are working on our soon-to-be master suite. We are making the 2 back bedrooms into a master bedroom and a master bathroom. It's all very exciting! So far we've just done some demo. You see, our house was built in 1969. No updates had been done up until we started. Really, the master suite should be the last major update we do for a while. The kitchen needs updated soon, but that will have to wait another 5-10 years!

Hotdish...do you know what that is? Most of my MN friends and family do know what a hotdish is. When I moved to Montana 6 years ago, (HOLY COW!) I was ridiculed every time I used the term, "hotdish". I remember talking about having a pot-luck at school and saying that I'd bring and tatertot hotdish. The response was, "A WHAT?" A tatertot hotdish, I said. Then I learned that in Montana, they call it a casserole. Okay, so time passed and I met a new group of people after teaching and I believe I said I'd make a tatertot hotdish (pretty sure it's the only hotdish I know how to make!) for something and I got the same thing..."A WHAT?!?!?" A friggin' hotdish, people! Come on! I'm not ready to give up my MN terminology!!! As the years have progressed, I've mentioned making hotdishes and I've gotten the same response. So, as I was discussing starting a blog, my manager at work told me I needed to include something about a hotdish. Hence, the name of my blog, Hot Dish by Melana. It seems like it could cover anything I want to cover at this point. You may not find all my news "hot", but dangit, it's my Hot Dish!

I wish I had something great to talk about tonight. All I can say tonight is that Daniel and I had great shrimp stir-fry and I had a couple great glasses of wine with it. Wine seems to be my new thing. I've been trying out wine for the last couple of weeks in preparation for Thanksgiving. We are hosting Daniel's parents and my parents for Thanksgiving. As a prepared host, I feel it is my duty to make sure that the wines are chosen perfectly. I've determined I will serve a Reisling, a bubbling wine (champagne) and a Fume Blanc. Yummy. I can't wait!

So, here's my blog. I can't wait to share some of the things that make my life so wonderful. The little things that Daniel say that make me melt. The "Bobisms" of my dad and how much I'm turning out like my mom. I also have many things to share about my nieces and nephews. I'm hoping to provide some entertainment at times.