Birthday, thanksgiving,and not much else

My birthday was the past week, thanks to all who sent me birthday wishes. I didn't do much to celebrate the big day. I have learned long ago that having a birthday so close to a holiday makes it hard to celebrate since everyone is always off visiting relatives and such.

But anyway I did go out to dinner with my parents, my brother and his fiance and my nephew. It was a good dinner I treated myself to a steak which I never do and also got a free dessert since it was my b-day. Andrew picked it out and it was the weirdest one on the menu and wasn't the best but a free dessert is good no matter what. Later in the evening I went over to scott and steph's and hung out with them and a couple of their friends. Their dog Hank is my new favorite dog. He is so nice and soft and just wants to be petted.

Did anyone notice that I said my brother and his fiance....yep my brother got engaged on the day before my birthday. So now both my sister and brother are getting married. I am very happy for both my siblings.

Thanksgiving was spent at my mom and dad's house. My grandparents and their dog spud were there along with my brother, steph and andrew. The turkey was yummy although I thought that my parents were going to burn the house down. somehow the oven got really smokey and wouldn't stop. Andrew told everybody to get low to the ground and cover your mouths so that you don't enhale smoke. Glad he is learning what to do in case of a house fire


The rest of the weekend was pretty mellow, I think it is the first time since I have been home that I haven't had any plans on a weekend. It was nice to just chill at home.

Keys

Can anyone guess how many keys I have for my house?


When I bought my house I was given a lot of keys and for the past 2 years I have only really used a couple of them, so recently I finally decided that I was going to figure out how many of them actually worked and how many I really had.

I was suprised at the number of keys that belong to me.

Elaborate

Since it seems that everybody who reads this wants more info here ya go

Why Ecuador?
Well most of you that read this know that took a trip to South America a few years ago, and ever since then I wanted to go back and I have never been to Ecuador and have heard lots of good things about it. so know I dont know anyone there and am just going to go somewhere during the coldest part of the winter

How did I decide to go?
One day while I was on a helitack (helicopter) fire assignment we were bored out of minds...ok we shouldn't have been bored cuz it was early in the morning, but it had been many long boring days. anyway Ben and I were talking about traveling and he said that he had never really done any international traveling but he wanted to and he was asking me questions about how much spanish you need to know and where to go. And I said well you just need to go with someone that knows enough to get by and that I have wanted to go to ecuador. His reply....well lets go to Ecuador then.
I wasn't sure if he was serious, but then I asked him about it once we were back in AK and he said that he was game. so since then I have been keeping an eye on tickets and been playing phone tag with ben and well we decided to go. We are leaving Jan 11th and coming back Feb 2

Yes the plan is to backpack.....really we dont have much of a plan yet, because ben is still in Alaska and lives where his phone doesn't have access to the internet. But he is headed back to Montana sometime soon so we will have better plans after that


So it seem a lot of you want to know about Ben.

Yes some of you are right I have mentioned him on my blog before. I don't think he reads my blog. I work with Ben up in Alaska we pretty much ended up spending most of the fire season together. I have posted pictures of his plane on here but don't think that I have posted any of him not sure if I have any. We both ended up on most of the same fire assignments. He is a really nice guy and as of now he is nothing more than a friend. We both had the same days off when we were on the helitack assignment and we traveled to the California coast together, and then after we were laid off we took a trip down to Denali together. We have fun traveling together so I think we will have a really good time traveling in Ecuador.

No he is not who I have taken trips with before, that is nick and jake.

Hopefully this satisfies some of your curiosity.

Here is a picture that i have of the first fire assignment to California from this summer. The crew that we took out was making Ben and Dale play an eskimo game and I tried to get some pictures of Ben and Dale trying to outsmart a rope (they didn't exceed)

Edit: so these pictures were taken on day 14 of our assignment and we had maybe showered once during this fire...we were at a spike camp with no showers.......so yes they are dirty and hairy.......

Ecuador

I just bought a plane ticket to Ecuador.....

Thats right I am going to be spending most of January in Ecuador.

No I am not going alone!!

My friend Ben is coming with me....


Yippee!!!

Deer hunting

Well this weekend was the opening of deer season here in MN and since it is the first year that I haven't been working in a while on opener I decided to go up and try my luck


me=not so lucky

my brother on the other hand shot the two deer in the pictures within 5 minutes of each other...he is one happy camper

plus he was the only one of our hunting party to get a deer as of sunday afternoon.


I came home yesterday and picked up my nephew. he had been asking to have a sleepover at my house and he didn't have school today so I we hung out today....we even made a volcano!!!!

Not much new

with me at least.... Ive been quite busy though. my friend pat came to visit for a couple of days last week.......he is looking for a house in Ely.

Then was haloween.....what an interesting night

I met up with Randy down in Duluth on monday.......we had a nice dinner at the 0live G@rden..yummy yummy

Tuesday was election day, I voted and then was excited to see the results.....it was nice to see how much people believing in something can make it happen....I look forward to the next four years......technically the pres is my boss since I do work for the feds

Now its time to get ready to go deer hunting this weekend.

although I say not much is new with me there seem to be a lot of new with the rest of my family

my mom and dad just bought a new car...it is the 2009 version of my car

my sister has a new house and a new ring

my brother and steph have a new puppy dog...he is a very cute golden retriever/ lab mix.....picture a dog the has the same build and fur as a golden except that the fur is black

me well i got that is new is a couch...well I don't have it yet but I did buy one but it wont be here for a couple of weeks


That all I got