black friday

We're not really all about the black Friday sales. Well, maybe that's not true we all LOVE a good sale, just not as much the whole getting up before the sun, waiting outside, and mass amounts of people aspect of it. We did of course scour the adds and determine there was nothing worth enduring all that pain for. I did have a small urge to go purchase the $2 crock pot that was available, since Angela has decided in the last couple of months that I really need one. But alas a $2 purchase was just not enough to get me out of bed.

We instead took to the crafting table on Friday. Then men (if you look real hard in the background) were watching back to back to back football games, while the women went to town mess, I mean wreath making.

When we were finished the whole table and surrounding area was covered with a thick blanket of paper scraps...and hot glue drippings.

We used book pages to make some pretty decorations. It was fun to see how the progressed with six of us, some even making the same type of wreath they all came out looking very different. And it was quite entertaining to read random lines from the books as we went along. They were all purchased from the dollar store, so naturally the were the MOST quality writing ever.

My beauty made from paper flowers. Oh my talk about dedication, this baby took SO many hours to finish......I think it was probably worth it in the end, but there were times when I nearly gave up.

Mom and her finished product, nice and ruffly looking!

Hannah opted for the color version and made hers out of magazine pages instead of book pages.

And finally Lindsey's monster (monster meaning large, not ugly).

Cameron dubbed our adventures EXTREME crafting, as Monique and I ended it with rather large blisters. I like to think that makes my wreath all the more valuable, I suffered a great amount of pain to finish that puppy.

{oh look Lindsey and I have matching chairs....it looks like I am sitting in my room, I am not - this photo was taken and Lindsey's house.......although my blister is still here, making typing a bit difficult}

gobble gobble

This the was the first Thanksgiving in probably about 10 years that all of the Floch's have been together. We're making history here. Out of fourteen people, five cameras and who knows how many camera phones we didn't take any photos of everyone at dinner (I don't think). Slightly tragic, as the spread was superb. We had SO much food, and surprisingly not a humongous amount of left overs. Here we are the day after and we have eaten up nearly everything that was left.

The rolls that may have been the overall favorite food of the day took some double muscle to roll out. One to hold down the cutting-board and one to do the rolling. There was some great sadness from all when we discovered the last one had been eaten.

The lovely ladies spend the morning in the kitchen, cooking up tons of goodness, all I can say is we were all thankful for Lindsey and Kevin's new house, I can not imagine what it would have been like to have us trying to cook in their previous ity bity kitchen.

Kevin with his masterpiece. The famous BBQ Dr. Pepper turkey.

DELICIOUS! Kevin was great and ran out the store late Wednesday evening to pick up some more potatoes, after I presented everyone with my [legitimate] concerns that the mere 5lbs bag that they had purchased previously would not suffice.

Cameron told us he didn't care what his place card said......so you know we gave him a new one. Because really,  what Thanksgiving meal would be complete without a guest appearance by Buddy The Elf? 

Turkey Trot

A couple of months ago I convinced dad and Lindsey to participate in a little Thanksgiving day Turkey Trot 5k. It all sounded so good and fun when it was far off in the future, then 6:45am on Thanksgiving it was no longer looking quite as great. But up we went, out to check in and pick up our race packets. Now when I packed for this trip I packed with heat in mind. We are in Arizona after all, but oh boy was it cold out. The shorts and T shirt that I brought to run in were just NOT cutting it. I know that Spokane is under a couple feet of snow and Yosemite too so to say it was cold sounds quite silly, but this wind that was happening, well lets just say it had to be coming in from the far off caverns of the Arctic because it was absolutely FRIGID!

All the racers were checking in and then climbing back into their cars to wait for the start because it was just too cold to be outside. As it was I do believe I got frost bite on my left foot just from the 10 minute wait at the starting line.

We got to wear these uber classy ankle bands that kept out time for us. At first I thought it was silly, and a little annoying, but after a few cold blasts of wind I realized that my left ankle was by far the warmest part of my body.

Lindsey and I decided to run the race together........dad when asked if he was going to run with us replied with this: "If you keep up with me, sure we can run together." Yeah he beat us by a good ten minutes.

FINISH LINE!!!! We made it.......no I did not get first place, that #1 I am holding up represents the 168th place.

Mashed Potatoes

Kirspy Kreme and I have had quite the relationship. It was love at first bite, and from there, well I was a goner. I may have written a persuasive letter to the company when I thought I would die because there were no stores in our fine city. Then I may have taken said letter, and a hat with me to my job interview when they did build one in Spokane..........and I may have eaten more doughnuts in the two years that I worked their than most families eat in a lifetime. The only downfall of working there was that my car ALWAYS smelled like doughnuts......and myself for that matter.

Anyways, yesterday a coworker brought in a dozen original glazed. I died. Maybe  I should have become a police man because really there is not much better to me than a cup of coffee and a doughnut. So I got my coffee, picked up my doughnut and headed back to my desk. In my excitement to eat the yummy goodness in my hand I just could not wait the 47 seconds that it would take me to walk back to my desk. I dug right in. Taking a bite while walking.

I am no multi tasker, usually I have a hard time simply carrying my coffee back to my desk without spilling, so why I thought I could walk, carry coffee and eat at the same time, I don't know. I ended up getting a nice bite of paper towel with my doughnut. Gross! Not quite the taste and texture I remembered.

On a different although food related note. I am SO excited to eat mashed potatoes tomorrow. Oh my, I love Mashed Potatoes probably even more than I love Krispy Kreme, where ever the potatoes are placed on the table is where I will be sitting, don't even try to stop me. I took RADS, don't mess.

changed

Something has happened to me this year, I have gone soft. I am already in Christmas mode, and LOVING it. Usually I am a firm believer in not enjoying Christmas until after Thanksgiving, no music, no wrapping gifts, no decorations. So much so that I freaked out when I saw other people with their trees up before turkey day.

As part of embracing the holidays early Angela and I have begun watching lots of Christmas movies. There are of course our favorites that we watch every year [The Holiday, While You Were Sleeping, Elf and many more] but we also, call us crazy, are total suckers for cheesy (also known as made for TV) holiday films. Usually they do not involve the best acting, or plots, but they have Christmas music, pretty decorations, and usually some pretty sappy/cheesy romance. Yep that is why we love them.

Last year however we had a string of exceptionally bad movie choices. Many of them were extra boring, lacking in the love story and really not Christmasy at all except maybe a tree in the background. It was quite tragic. We learned the important lesson that when a movie being sold for $5, it is for a good reason, don't buy it.

Now that we have the sweet luxury of cable we can enjoy the 25 days of Christmas on ABC Family, which is chalk full of holiday movies, but in the mean time we had to take matters into our own hands. We have to find some great movies this year, to make up for all the disappointments of last year. Off to the redbox we went, in search of Mrs. Miracle. Of course it was such a popular title that it was not available, we opted instead for The Christmas Clause. No Christmas movie would be complete without a holiday beverage from Starbucks (which we walked to, my idea, but let me tell you I thought we lived a WHOLE lot closer than we actually do, whew I barely survived).

It is safe to say that The Christmas Clause is definitely not an instant holiday classic, but it was also no Christmas Child. The search for our new favorite Christmas movie continues...........

*And I should probably warn any and all people that may stop by our house any time in the next month or so, you may be subjected to short viewings of our favorite moments from bad Christmas movies, just because we like to torture people with scenes we think are funny and no one else does.

something there that wasn't there before

That would be of course my fav Beauty and the Beast song. Which I/we got to see on Saturday night. Uh can you say FUN FUN FUN? Because yeah that's what it was. And really what would an evening out with Mandy and Angela without a moment or 10 of misdirection while driving? Not complete that's what. Only a car load of girls could get lost in a mall parking lot. hehe Angela actually got part of it on video, we found it quite entertaining.

So anyways enough about our misdirection. Before we left Rachel kindly took our photo in front of the fireplace, which made me feel like we were going to prom. Which is strange since I never posed in front of a fireplace with a prom date.........but still growing up the fireplace was the photo backdrop of choice. And as you can see it is such a good backdrop [......right because you can see it and all]

After taking a completely unnecessary U-Turn, doing two McDonald's drive by's, a tour of the left half of the South Coast Plaza parking lot, the lower level of a parking structure and a phone call later we made it to Maggianos for dinner.

Tasty!

Dinner took a little long/it took a while to wind around to the complete upper most back corner of the parking garage and walk down to the box office and get in to our seats. So we unfortunately missed the first song. Sorry Tori I know it was one of your favs. But once allowed to enter it was so lovely.

[did you happen to notice that Elizabeth and I are nearly twins? we just have such exceptional taste.]

Polly wolly doodle all day

Ever since moving into our house in June Angela has talked of going to Polly's pies. It is literally right around the corner from us, and many people have told how much they like it. In rolls November and we still have not gone. So naturally when our friend Timmy came up from the far off land of Costa Mesa it was decided we would make magic happen and get us some pie.

Our reactions to Polly's

Angela: It's so clean.......and quiet

Mandy: They have free WiFi here? WOW!

Tim: Hey I can friend them on facebook.

After putting this picture on here I realized it kind of makes it look gross. Which it was not. The pie was tasty, and we were big fans of the multi colored mugs. Mine was turquoise [YAY!]

We were a bit dissapointed to see that the history of Polly's pies was not written out on the menus. Although after asking a worker, we did learn that this was in fact the original Polly's.

false alarm

Were you wondering if there was any way to get every single person in the office to drop everything and come running? Well lucky for you I have discovered what will do exactly that, even give you some gaping mouths, and strange looks. Of course it would not be something simple like yelling "fire" because well, people would never believe that. It would instead, be yelling the word "naked."

Yesterday when I walked into work I was greeted with these words, pretty much yelled in shock, by a coworker. "YOUR PRACTICALLY NAKED!" With that, things were dropped people came running, all eyes were on me. As I am sure you can guess I was NOT in fact any where close to being naked. I was dressed like usual for work, in a skirt and sweater. My legs however were bare, as they are everyday, but I guess today this coworker was especially cold, so she was shocked that I would dare wear nothing on my legs to keep me warm. It was 75, not really what I would call frostbite inducing weather. My legs were fine.

After some calming words from me, reassuring everyone that I was fine, not freezing and not in need of a blanket, everyone found their way back to their desks.

senior moments

The ladies of our house, well we don't always act our age. Some days that means taking in a showing of the Hannah Montana movie, watching Disney Channel Original movies, reading young adult books, or sometimes even checking out children's books from the library.

Last night however it looked a little different.

It was slippers, a blanket, books, snacking on dried fruit and a viewing of Jeopardy.

(for the record I would never make it on that show......I didn't even know how to spell Jeopardy)

Probably not the evening activities of your average 25 year olds. Naturally that means that all those non jeopardy watching dried fruit eating mid twenties are totally missing out. Our evening rocked.

It has happened

That's right after five months living in our house it has finally happened. The very thing we used to joke, in the oh wouldn't that be funny but only because it is SO pathetic kind of way, that it would happen to us. And really I thought we would make it, I mean five months is a long time. We were doing good. Then, something happened. I don't know what, but we had two incidents within five days. YIKES!

The first incident was Saturday. Rachel called me, just to chat, see what I was doing and ask me a question. Nothing bad on it's own, but she was in her room. Sitting at her desk. She called me, thinking I was in my room, 20 feet down the hall [I was actually at the store, but she didnt' know that]. Then last night, it happened again. I was laying in bed, reading when I got a text message. I thought to myself who could be texting me at this hour? I look down and guess who? Angela, from the next room.

After writing this I have used my killer Nancy Drew sleuth skills to draw a conclusion as to the cause of the sudden increase in "incidents." I think it's the weather. It is finally cooler here, and I LOVE it. But due to the coolness once bundled in a toasty environment weather it be a bed or a desk chair, we don't want to leave it, even to chat with one another. Therefore instead of resorting to yelling, which would, cause an initial feeling of panic as yelling does not often occur in our house, we have resorted to the phone.

On a different funny note, this morning as I was getting ready for work my boss called me. Which is quite abnormal, I had no idea what he was going to tell/ask me. Well, he needed a ride. HA! He rides his bike to work most days, he had gotten a flat. SO............... I was given the task of picking him up from the side of the road and taking him in to work.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY K-DAWG

tic toc the tricky clock

From my desk at work I can easily see five clocks, the radio, the phone, the computer the one hanging on the wall and my cell phone. All but the phone are on the same time. For some reason the phone has always been about five minutes fast - and I have no idea how it got that way. I have never set the clock on it - some magical phone clock ferry's did that. So naturally that is the clock I prefer. I'll even let you in on a little secret, sometimes I take a 35 minute lunch. I start when the phone clock says 12:00, but then don't end my break until the other clocks say 12:30. Pretty sneaky if you ask me.

So this week my phone clock, and the magical phone clock ferries decided to play some tricks on me. Which for the record was not very nice of them. They decided to have daylight savings a week early. After many time telling misshapes I saw that it was 55 minutes behind. Which most people would not find to be a big deal, but I am forgetful, so it has been rather troubling. Monday, the first day of the change I was convinced I some how managed to come in to work an hour early........even though I didn't get up or leave my house any earlier. Yes I realize that logically it makes no sense, but when your clock is an hour off and you are the only person in the office for the first 20 minutes your mind will begin to play tricks on you. AND then yesterday I stayed in the office an extra 7 minutes! What?! Can you believe that? 7 whole minutes, I looked at the clock and saw that it said 3:57 and thought to myself "man today is going by kind of slow, only one more hour." Thankfully not too long later I looked at one of other clocks and was saved from working a 9th hour.

I am looking forward to Monday when all the clocks are in sync again, my life will be so much easier.

[writing the words in sync of course made me think of Nsync......and this commercial - that you may not think is funny........but I do "something about a sink" hahahaha]