New snow!

We've had at least 8 inches of new snow in the last few days! I splurged on new snowshoes on Boxing Day and can't wait to try them but now it's way too cold outside. I'm not into outdoor sports when it's -15C.
Travis is out on a fire call, saving lives and breaking hearts as usual. You can now read all about his adventures on his blog http://fireboytrav.blogger.com. Now that he's got a blog and doing posts all the time I have to keep up with him. So anyways, I'm having a lazy morning home alone. I slept in till noon which I obviously needed after only sleeping 4hrs after getting off nights yesterday. I cleaned the house a bit cause Travis is having the boys over for poker tonight.
Back in a minute...Travis is on his way home and starving from being out in the cold all morning...I'd better get some lunch ready for him....be right back.......
We had a great Christmas at my mom's. It was nice to get away for a few days and see my mom and Grandma. We took mom's snowmobile out on a field and I gave cross country skiing a try. Apparently I'm not going to be in the Olympics anytime soon. Travis got out on his snowshoes and attempted to take the crazy carpet for a ride but the snow was too deep. Christmas Day was quiet, as it usually is for us. Sue woke us up at 6:45am to open presents. At least it wasn't 4:30am like it was when we were kids. We made a big breakfast, snacked all day while working on the puzzle and playing games (I kicked butt at Scrabble) and then made a huge dinner feast and crashed on the couch for the rest of the evening. It was a perfect, typical Christmas Day. We had to come home on Boxing Day cause both Sue and I had to work. Travis drove and Sue and I both slept the whole way home.
Yesterday we went to Costco to load up on healthy food since we've been eating nothing but junk the last few weeks. We got lots of good stuff. I love Costco. Today is likely going to be a lazy day. We have to take out the recycling and a coffee at Starbucks is high on my list. We'll probably take down the Christmas tree tomorrow :0( so sad, I hate taking it down. I'm working nights over the weekend so Travis is on his own for New Years Eve :0(

Happy Christmas!

We're heading to Sicamous in the morning!!! I'm spending today packing and trying to get everything ready as much as I can. I'm working nights tonight so Travis is going to pick me up from work and we're leaving town. I'm so excited. Hobo is coming with us so I hope that he's going to be ok in the truck and at my mom's with Cocoa and Paddy. He might be a little traumatized at first but Cocoa and Paddy are used to having other cats around. I have to finish wrapping all my Christmas gifts and do a ton of laundry today so I'd better get cracking! Happy Christmas everyone!

Christmas Party

Pictures from the Town of Canmore christmas party last Saturday night.

My birthday lillies

Travis got me the most beautiful lillies for my birthday.

Introducing.....

The newest member of our little family.....Hobo! We got him on Saturday from the vet clinic. He's 5 months old and the cutest kitty ever! He was brought into the vet clinic after someone found him in a box on the side of the street with another cat so we rescued him and brought him home. He's totally black which for us is good luck considering we met on Friday the 13th it only makes sense to have a black cat. We named him Hobo because he was found in a cardboard box on the side of the street so he was kind of a hobo. He purrs constantly and is super cuddly, it's awesome. So far all he does is sit and watch the birds. He hasn't made any attempt to kill them yet.

Our Tree!

Christmas countdown

Only 10 more days till Christmas Eve! I am now off work for a week! Although I might take the opportunity to pick up a shift or two in Calgary since I havn't worked there in 6 weeks. But then again I might just take the week off! I go back to work for one shift and then I'm off again for 4 days over Christmas. We leave for Sicamous on Friday morning when I get off work and I'm soooo excited. I havn't had Christmas off work in the entire 4 years I've been nursing. Oh and by the way, I passed my 4 year nursing anniversary on the 12th! Time flies cause it sure doesn't feel like I've been working 4 years. Anyways, I've finished my Christmas shopping already, I've never finished this early and the problem with finishing early is that I now have more time to find all sorts of things that I wish I had bought instead so now I buy them too! Being organized isn't really helping my bank account so I think next year I'll go back to the 'last minute scramble' My problem now is that I bought gifts weeks ago that needed to be sent away and of course they're still sitting at home waiting to be mailed and now it's getting crunch time to get them in the mail so they'll be there in time for Christmas, even though I bought them and could have mailed them weeks ago!! I guess I'm not all that organized afterall. This weekend is going to be another busy one for us. We have the big Town of Canmore Christmas Party on Saturday night. I even got to buy a new dress for it!! Although every woman needs to have a little black dress and I didn't have one so it's an investment rather than an extravagant purchase on myself when I'm supposed to be buying for other people! Oh well, it promises to be a fun party and at least I have a pretty dress to wear. Happy weekend everyone!

Christmas Tree Adventures

We got a Christmas tree last weekend! It's the first ever real Christmas tree for Travis and so far it's been an adventure. We got it from Sobeys and the guy selling them subjected us to 'high pressure Christmas tree sales." He picked out the best one for us and it's a good thing he did cause they were all tied up so we had no idea what we were looking for. Apparently when they're all tied you have to pick a tree according to it's height and weight, heavy trees are fuller than light trees. So we got home to realize that my tree stand wasn't in the box with the decorations so instead of going back to my storage space to search for the stand we went to Home Hardware and bought a new one. The guy who sold us the tree cut off the end for us so all we had to do now was get it into the stand and decorated....easier said than done. Well actually we did get it into the stand and cut off the ties and decorated without incident...the trouble came afterwards. We had just finished decorating it and getting dressed up to go out for dinner and were sitting on the couch admiring how perfect it was, well Travis had his computer in his lap and I was sitting on the couch beside him admiring the tree and it's obvious lean.....when 30 seconds later it started to fall towards us! Travis jumped up, threw the computer in my lap and in his dress shirt and tie, caught the tree before it fell. Nevertheless water was spilled all over the floor and all our perfectly placed decorations were now not so perfect. So I'm holding the tree and Travis is up on a stool, 10 minutes before we were supposed to be at dinner, in his shirt and tie hammering a nail into the windowsill and tying the tree to the nail with fishing line. Thank goodness it was still standing when we got home. I've been getting the speech about keeping it well watered since before we got it. I guess that's the 'advantage' of dating a firefighter (just kidding honey!). I've been forgetting to check the tree anyways, good thing I'm dating a firefighter. It's drinking an unbelievable amount of water but it seems to have slowed down over the last two days. I'll post pictures when I remember to get my camera out of the car. Remember how Travis was aka Scrooge last week? Well on Sunday we went to the Christmas store in Banff and he was the one buying ornaments for the tree. Aha! So much for Scrooge!!

Yummy recipe

My mom got me a gift card at Chapter for my birthday and I put it to good use and bought a new cookbook. It's by Rachael Ray and it's called 365:No Repeats. I think she has a show on the Food Network too but you should really check out this cookbook it's great. We tried our first recipe last night and it was soooo good I have to pass it on.

Smokey Chipotle Mac-N-Cheddar

1 lb elbow macaroni or cavatappi
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 small onion (of course I omitted that, ew onions!)
3 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp paprika
3 cups whole milk
1 cup chicken stock
3 cups smoked cheddar cheese
1 tbsp dijon mustard
2 chipotle peppers in adobo, chopped or 1 tbsp ground chipotle powder (that's what I used)
3/4 to 1 lb chorizo, diced
1 15oz can fire roasted tomatoes

Cook noodles. While the noodles cook, heat in a medium sauce pot over medium low heat. Add the EVOO and heat with the butter until it melts. Add the onions and chipotle and cook for 3 to 5 minutes to sweat them out and turn the juices sweet. Raise the heat a bit, then whisk in the flour, cayenne, and paprika. Whisk together until the roux bubbles up, then cook for one minute more. Whisk in the milk and stock and raise the heat a bit higher to bring the sauce to a quick boil. Once it bubbles, drop the heat back to a simmer and cook until the sauce thickens, 3 to 5 minutes. While the sauce cooks in a nonstick skillet over medium high heat brown the chorizo. Then add the tomatoes and cook briefly, just to heat them through. Add the cheese to the thickened sauce and stir to melt it. Stir in the mustard and season with salt and pepper. Pour the sauce over the noodles, add the chorizo and tomatoes and mix!
Serves 4 (with leftovers!)

Enjoy! and let me know if you try it!

Happy birthday to ME!

Thanks everyone for your birthday wishes. I survived the day although it wasn't pretty. Travis and I stayed home and ordered birthday pizza and I got to spend the day in my pj's!
I've been working far too much lately but now I have the next 4 days off!! It's going to be a busy 4 days though. We have two parties to go to this weekend. Birthday party on Friday and then the nurses Christmas party on Saturday night. We're getting a tree this weekend too!!!!! I convinced Scrooge (aka Travis) to get a real tree. He wanted to take out his fake tree but I said no way, fake trees are totally unacceptable. I love Christmas and everything about it but I have some work to do in convincing Travis that Christmas is the best time of year. Wish me luck!

Happy Belated Birthday!

Happy belated bithday wishes to Niki, Liz and Candace! I'm only one day late, well two days for Niki, not too bad. I really need to work on punctuality when it comes to birthdays. Maybe it will be my New Years resolution. Be better with birthdays.
I hope you all had great birthdays!!!