Thanksgiving Dinner at David's
My family enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving this year at my brother David’s house in Brooklyn, WA. There were 22 people all together, if I am remembering right. Dinner was pretty good too. BTW, have you ever thought about the strange foods that are traditionally part of Thanksgiving? You know, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing…I don’t like any of that stuff. I filled my plate with mashed potatoes, turkey, and rolls. And then to top it off, I had a nice big slice of pumpkin pie. Then I went out hunting with Dad and David. When I got back from hunting, I had another nice piece of pumpkin pie.
And even though I made my own pumpkin pie about a week before thanksgiving (and ate most of it by myself) I still haven’t had enough pumpkin pie for the year. I need to go buy myself a can of Libby’s pumpkin and make myself at least one more pie.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving we went skiing at Mt. Hood Meadows. I got to try out my new skis and was sadly disappointed. I was expecting great things from those skis…and they let me down. I didn’t really notice a significant improvement over my ancient skis. Perhaps it is just because I need someone to teach me how to use them properly. From my understanding, you’re supposed to ski a little differently with shaped skis. So I’ll give them a couple more tries, and hopefully have someone teach me how to carve, and then I’ll make a final decision as to whether or not the skis were worth my money. On the other hand, I think I enjoyed skiing more before I had money invested in it. Too bad I didn’t figure that out before I purchased the new skis. I suppose I could probably sell them if I wanted to, but like I said, I should probably wait until someone teaches me how to carve before I make a decision.
Matthew recently got a new top rack. Yay, now we don’t have to ride home with wet skis dripping melted snow on us while we’re trying to warm up from a day of skiing. 
Suzanne
The sunset was pretty neat from the top of the mountain. If my camera had been easier to get to I would have taken a lot more pictures.
Matthew and Mariya
Matthew taught Mariya how to snowboard for the first half of the night while my nephew Jeremiah and I skiied. They joined us at the top of the mountain later on so Mariya could try out her new skis. I challenged Matthew (on his snowboard) to a race and he accepted. That was a lot of fun! We really flew down the mountain! But we ended up tieing.
Pastor Shanks and Marshall Hatfield
And then it was hunting season again. Dad and I went out to our church’s hunting camp on Friday, right after Thanksgiving. We hunted from about 1pm to closing. We didn’t see anything. We spent the night in the camp and hunted again the next morning. Our set up for the night wasn’t so great though. We slept right on the ground, I didn’t even take my mattress pad (I never like taking more gear than I have to, it just gets in the way). BTW, if you own a mattress pad and you’re going camping, take it with you! You may be tough enough to sleep on the hard ground…but when you think about the insulation factor, well, it’s totally worth it. Especially if it’s late November! I actually ended up shivering like a dog ALL night long! Just when I started to get warm, Dad shook my bag and informed me that it had started raining. No wonder I got warm! So then we climbed into the car and slept in the car the rest of the night…which never works well. By morning I’m pretty sure I had only slept one little tiny hour. We headed out hunting at 5am because we wanted to be at our clear cut by daylight. And it was a really good hunting clear cut! We scared 6 deer out of there. :-/ I didn’t get a shot at any of them. But at least we found some! That was an encouraging step in the right direction. After a few more hours of hunting we headed back to the car so I could meet Matthew to go skiing (that’s the day we went skiing….after I’d only slept one miserable hour the night before).
Pastor with his grouse
The next Monday I left our house at 3:30am so I could be at the camp by 4:30am. All I saw that day was a BEAUTIFUL sunrise and a grouse at the end of the day. The grouse was an unfortunate creature because Pastor Shanks is a really good shot and took the head right off that bird. I also had to test my sense of direction as I walked through some THICK trees with tons of elk trails going every which direction. The fact that I am updating my blog proves that I passed the test. But it sure is easy to start getting yourself freaked out when you’re in the woods all alone. But if you freak out, then you are no good to yourself anyways.
It's not mine - I just spotted it
He gets the meat
Pastor knows how to pose with a deer, notice how much better his picture is than ours.
As we were discussing our plans to split up for a few hours of hunting, we heard a gunshot just over the rise from us in the clear cut. We took off down the road and I spotted this deer running across the side of the hill in front of us. All three of us went after it…and if I had been in the right place, I probably could have shot it, but I didn’t…
The next day (last Friday) I went out yet again. We split up to walk through some big timber in search for elk. And I FOUND ONE! But I’m such an immature hunter that I got all excited and ended up scaring this big beautiful bull. I looked at him through the sights on my gun but I didn’t pull the trigger because I was pretty sure I would only injure him if I shot at him as a running target. SO CLOSE! 
But he was a sight to see and I’m thankful I at least got to see one.
We pushed the deer out on a bike. What a blessing! 2 miles would have been a long haul otherwise.
Hanging at hunting camp
And so here I sit, a rather frustrated hunter. On Sunday night I heard Pastor tell Dad, “Suzanne almost got an elk! And she almost got a deer too!” Well, almost isn’t good enough. I have a little less than a week left to get out there, find, and this time KILL an animal. But I also have a life to live; there’s school to be done, chores to be kept up with, and my violin studio recital is this Friday night. I have to keep my priorities straight even if I do end up eating “tag soup”.
So they’ll go great with my purple coat. haha. I also got a pair of Salomon ski boots which I’m hoping will work well. I’m sure I’ll be thrilled with my new equipment considering my old skis were from the 70’s or something and my old boots had two broken clasps and only one working clasp. I used to worry that the lift attendant might tell me I wasn’t allowed on the lift with my ancient equipment. But it worked and I had fun so I was happy.