New Year, New Stuff

Wow, I haven't updated in weeks. I took a break from Etsy, Twitter and the blog over Christmas. We did our usual Christmas morning at home with the kids. Jon created scavenger hunts for the them (and me!) which was really fun. He makes up the cutest hints and each hint carries a letter- put all the letters together and unscramble them to find the location of the gift. Examples of his hints: 'Touch this drawer and the dogs will bark like crazy' (drawer we keep the dogs' leashes in) and 'Jon spent a long time under this lately with not much progress being made' (leaky bathroom sink) It draws out the gift opening for a while and makes the morning more fun. We had our (now traditional) baked breakfast casserole and baked french toast. Then we made our way over to my Mom's place in Langley for Christmas dinner. My aunt (my mom's older sister who is 91) was here from California over Christmas and my sister, her husband and daughter came from Campbell River, as well as the rest of the local family members. It was so nice to have everyone together.
Jon and I spent Boxing Day in our traditional way: in our pajamas watching movies. We had a nice fire in the fireplace and nibbles and drinks while we watched "Wall-E" (loved it) and "The Dark Knight" (I was lost half-way through).

New Years Eve was spent having a fondue dinner with the kids, who both ran off to parties afterwards. I think Devon and I might have poisoned ourselves by eating the chicken. I do remember touching the raw chicken with my fingers when putting it onto my fodue fork to cook it. Probably cross contaminated....I started to feel quite ill a few hours later. Jon and I watched "Slumdog Millionaire" and I had to go to bed before it finished (at 11:30!) because I felt so sick. We finished watching the rest of the movie the next night. Great film if you get the chance-- see it! I haven't seen many good movies lately, so this was a treat.
Backing up a bit, I think it was right around Christmas time; our clothes dryer stopped working. The drum wasn't turning. Jon took it apart but it wasn't obvious what was wrong. We did a search online and found that the dryer is about 30 years old. Here's how our laundry room looked before we moved in:


I think we both realized it was time to take advantage of some Boxing Week sales (I hate that term, it's BOXING DAY, there is no Boxing WEEK!) Anyway, we bought a set of front loaders at a deep discount, no PST and a hydro rebate of $50 on the washer, no payments till April on our Sears card. We even got the delivery thrown in free of charge. I found someone on Craigslist to come and pick up the old machines, which saved us another $40 Sears was going to charge to take them away. We waited 10 days for them to be delivered and then spent 2 whole days washing and drying everything we could find. The clothes come out of the washer so dry already from the high speed spin, that the drying takes no time at all. We love our new laundry team! Jon even got a new vent pipe and exhaust for it. Now he is constructing some shelving and a work surface to go over top of the machines for me. (Yeay, Ikea) I love order and organization:-)