It's not just April Fools day

Gpa with his pal Willie (taken a few years back).

Today was my grandpa's 89th birthday. My Gpa has been one of my heroes my entire life. My first 5 years were spent in his house while my parents worked. He (and my Gma and Auntie Marge) helped shape my formative years. We did garage projects - I was a fan of crushing the cans for recycle, and painting ANYthing, we went to Costco - my gpa's favorite store EVER, and he's the reason I got involved with the Iditarod.

He loves his box wine, John Wayne (dad now has his John Wayne Memorabilia collection), and his friends and family. He's quick with a pun - seriously that's all we Reitter's have in our "big bag of jokes" - or a funny story from days gone by. He's a big fan of Blue Bloods and Walker Texas Ranger (says Arrow is my generations version of that show... um... no. Ha ha). Don't get in between him and his ice cream (or any sweets) he will not be denied!

It's hard not to look back on my childhood without seeing a lot of time with Gpa. Some of my favorite memories are when we went on adventures in the motor-home (though the time that I slammed my thumb in the door and he told me we'd have to cut it off to get the door to open was traumatic! LOL). He and Gma went on all sorts of adventures outside of Alaska in their Recreational Vehicle, and I was always so jealous. I get my trip planning skills from him, as while going through the memory albums recently I found his itinerary list... it looks identical to some of mine. I can't deny we're related, that's for sure.

My grandfather held many different jobs in his life, farmer, Navy Signalman... he worked for Aerojet (including some stuff for the space program!). When they moved to Alaska he was a Servepro man. Spent many years working for them, and I remember his van well. Lime Green with Sammy on the side. I loved that van. It had the best smell to it - it was definitely a grandpa smell, but not something gross like old man smell. It just smelled like servepro, cigar, and motoroil. I miss that smell.

Gpa was my go to for Iditarod everything. He gave me the book "Danger the Dog Yard Cat" when I was 5 and I was hooked. He was so excited when I took both jobs with the Seavey's (Gpa is a fan of all the teams). He had a coat he wore to the Iditarod every year - with patches from each race he attended. I have that jacket now. I love it. It's so Grandpa.

He's now in Oregon with my Uncle Bob. He needed the change. It's weird to think he isn't in the house that I spent so many hours of my childhood in, but I know he's where he needs to be. And he is just a phone call away. I hear he went for a walk and had a great bday meal. No doubt finished with ice cream.

Happy Birthday Gpa, you are one of the best ever. <3 br="" love="" you="">

Farewell January!

Kassy and Delaney treated me to birthday doughnuts before
we headed into the sanctuary to paint the walls.

Can it be the end of January already? Wasn't it just a week or so ago that we rang in the new year? It was a somewhat busy month. Between photos and helping with Church renovations I definitely was out of the house more than [my] normal.

The painting of the sanctuary was fast, took us 5 half days and it got done. It was thanks to a great group of people (I was terrified that it would just be Kassy and me). It's a lot less WHITE and has a little color and warmth in the walls now.

Our next project is to organize the church offices. We've already had a lot of fun with the shredder. And it's neat finding all of the old church photos and such. So much history. It will be interesting to put it all together.

My birthday was good. We celebrated a night early because it was MLK day and originally my mom's bff and her hubby were coming over. They couldn't make it, but we still had Kassy and Delaney over and we had prime rib and my favorite sides. And pumpkin pie for dessert. Delaney spent most of the evening in my room watching Disney Jr. but came out every now and again to entertain. She's a hoot.

On my actual birthday I was at the church painting, but Delaney made sure to sing me happy birthday and had me blow out my candles. It was low-key and that made it better than most. Oh, yeah, and they treated me to McDonald's for lunch. LOL

The rest of the month I've just been doing stuff online and photos. I'm hoping things pick up soon or I will be seriously job hunting. Don't really like that sound of it, but I have to do something to get the bank account back up to where I like it.

This is just a little random update into my life. Next comes dog mushing and Olympics posts I'm sure.

A Tasteful Countdown: Toy Story

Pizza, Cake, and a movie, what could be better?

January 31st marked Duane's 18th birthday. It also landed on a Thursday, so we mixed the two together. Duane's big party would happen that weekend, so we did a small deal with just us and his best friend. It worked out great because Toy Story was one of his favorites when he was small - and it has that "army man" element so we could still do the "Go Army" so it wasn't totally cheesey.

Well, there was cheese - I made homemade pizzas. Thanks to my awesome new KitchenAid pizza dough was so easy! I loved how simple it was, and for the first time of me making the dough I have to say it was excellent. I used a recipe a friend gave me, but didn't put in the total amount of yeast that it called for. It still rose well, and it didn't taste yeasty. A win-win for me as I hate the taste of yeast!

I forgot to save some white frosting for stars on the blue.

I also baked a cake from scratch - the first one I did the night before and it didn't go very well. I tried another recipe the day of and it came out better than the first, but I think I'm over mixing with the KitchenAid. I will have to keep working on it. However, I loved how the camo effect came out. That's right, I made a camo cake! The cake was green, brown, and black inside. It was frosted red white and blue and had toy army men in honor of both the movie and Duane's love of the Army.

The cake was two layers and had a chocolate mousse filling. It was pretty good and I'm not a cake fan.

You might be asking what my mom ate with all of this gluten loaded food - for the cake she had the mousse only (we had a lot more mousse than we did cake. It was not what we planned. Not sure what happened there. For the pizza we tried the pinterest craze of the cauliflower crust. It really works and it tastes great -and I hate cauliflower! Mom was happy enough with it - she still misses the regular crust, but at least she's found something that she not only can stomach but likes! Just a tip - use a ricer not a grater. The ricer looks to give you more cauli-meal for the crust.

With two 18 year old boys plus the three adults, we ate all but a couple of slices of pizza (we made four plus moms!) and ate half a cake. All in all a success even with the cake issues.

Very proud of how the camo came out! AWESOME!

Pizza Crust recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/basic-pizza-dough-recipe/index.html
Cauliflower crust recipe: http://whatsfordinner-momwhatsfordinner.blogspot.com/2012/06/cheesy-garlic-cauliflower-bread-sticks.html

Oh! The week of Toy Story also brought our first bit of DISNEY MAIL! We all know how much I LOVE Disney Mail. And it was Toy Story themed mail at that! How awesome!

Disney Mail is almost as good as being there!

Settled In...

Well, it's official, I love living on my own. Parents aren't too far away, so it's nice. I've got a routine, Yuka's adjusted easily enough, and it's feeling homey. I'm leaning more towards not getting a roomie and just having my rent knocked down to one person instead of two living here. It'll still be tight, but it is what it is.

The studio is all set up in one of the spare bedrooms and I have my first clients coming over on Sunday in the afternoon. Gaylord and my dad have both helped me to set it up (dad doing the heavy lifting and construction, Gaylord set up the lights!). Mom is sewing together some new backdrops and I'm getting excited to get into the action.

Work is going a bit better, but I'm still pretty sure this isn't something I want to do forever. I don't like the hours, nor do I like coming home smelling like all kinds of gross due to the money handling. I'm not a huge fan of customer service type jobs where you have to be actually in the line of fire when someone decides they want to be pissed off at the company so they take it out on the poor little defenseless peon. I can only hold my tongue so much before I want to truly rip them a new one.

Next week (actually a week from last night) we head out to California. One week in Grass Valley, another week in Disneyland. I'm excited, but I really don't want Haille to turn 5. I've found all of these photos of when she was small (well... small for her) and I miss those times. I miss that girl. That's the one thing that is really tough (that and getting used to sales tax again) about being down here. I really, honestly, miss knowing I can see Haille by just picking up the phone or the keys and setting a play date. Now it's gotta be planned out well enough in advance that our schedules match. It'll be even harder when she starts "real" school. My heart hurts thinking about it.

I got my new to me vehicle this past weekend. Gaylord drove it down while Judy drove down in the Saturn. It's more of a plum color to me, and so I'm in the process of deciding what to name him/her (not sure gender yet) and getting a set of custom plates. It runs really well, my only real complaint is the seatbelt is hard to secure... it pops on me all the time as I'm driving down the road. Not a good thing to have happen.

Well I need to get moving. Got lots to do this afternoon, and I need to get my house presentable for when I have company/clients on Sunday. Today is, obviously, my day off, and so my parents are coming over tonight for an early bday meal as my birthday is tomorrow and I have to work till 6:30ish... another low key bday, but I'm okay with that. I get steak and noodles, I'm all about that.