Winter in the House

Not this week - the last couple of days have been unseasonably warm. I'm referring to last week... when it was below zero and our heater broke.

We woke up and it was once again 50 degrees in the house. Dad tinkered around with the heat and it refused to turn on.

We called the heating guy who showed up with his friend.

They tinkered around with it.

They went out and bought parts.

They came back and tinkered some more.

We baked cookies in an attempt to warm up the kitchen.



It didn't work. But the guys enjoyed them.

We resorted to a makeshift reading lounge which was actually quite comfortable and - what was more important - very toasty.




After the heat guys being at our house almost all day, we had heat! YES! And an empty bank account. NO! (ok, not quite that bad, though when mom saw the bill she was wishing we hadn't given them those cookies...)

We were all so thrilled...

Next morning, here's what we saw:



YEAH. At 8 am Dad called the heating guy again. He said he'd be there in an hour.

At 5 minutes past noon, he showed up.

We decided that for a little variety, we'd gather around the fireplace this time instead of the stove!

More parts, and three hours later, we had heat! Thankfully, no more money down the tubes.

And the next morning....

Just kidding.

Home Alone

YES! WE SURVIVED!

This past weekend, Mom and Dad were at a "couples camp" in Wisconsin and so Kathryn and I had to hold down the fort here at home. It was the first time that we had slept in the house without an adult and it was not something that I'd like to do on a regular basis! :-)

They left Thursday night and we busied ourselves with writing letters, emailing, making dinner and texting them on the neat cell phone Dad left for us (Thanks Dad!!!) Then we settled down to watch the first half of Pride and Prejudice... the long version... and at around 9:45 we were in bed. 

Friday morning we woke up to a 52ºF house because the heater had stopped over night.

Photo taken at 10:37, as you can see. 

Brrrrrrr... thankfully we have a nice corn stove that kept the basement toasty, so we spent the morning, and most of the day, down there while the rest of the house heated up, which it did in time for us to go to bed! :-) We had fun scrapbooking, doing chores and playing instruments.

Kathryn's finished page. (We always tease Kathryn because she is such a perfectionist that she is SO SLOW in doing things like this. In the time she finished this page, I had completed 6 pages)

In the afternoon we set to work decorating Mom and Dad's room with streamers and "We Missed You", "Welcome Home", and "We Love You" signs, including one that turns in a circle that we attached to their fan.

Making the edges stiff with cardboard

 Decorating the "big sign"

All the small signs that we hung from the ceiling

Taping up the streamers...

and the heart signs

The completed room

Then of course we had to finish Pride and Prejudice, and so we watched as Mr. Darcy won the fair Elizabeth once again. (Dawn and Wendy - don't you want one of those bonnets now? :-)

Saturday the heat stayed ON over night (YES!) and we had the pleasure of a warm house. It was a pretty "normal" day and we eagerly awaited our parents arrival. They showed up finally at 4:30 and it was SO good to see them again, even though it was only 2 days since we last saw them. Needless to say, we all like it better when we are together as a family!

Sewing Day with Robyn

Last week we had Robyn over to sew her Liberty Day dress. Since she still isn't comfortable enough to sew by herself and Mrs. G doesn't have much time to help her, Tara offered to have Robyn over and we could help her make it. 

Thankfully it was an easy pattern and we made very good progress for one day. She arrived at about 11 a.m., and we...

Got out the material, cut it out and got to work!

Took a brief break for a tea party lunch...

Pinned and sewed and trimmed and basted and gathered and fitted....

And at 6:30 p.m. we had this:

A basically-finished dress (minus the hem) and a very pleased Robyn!

Thanks for coming over Robyn - it was fun!

Chinese New Year

Yesterday was Chinese New Year, and since Dad is Chinese, we celebrate it. And it just so happens that the Hills have Olivia who just so happens to be Chinese too! :) Of course, the only sensible thing to do is get together. So we did. And as usual I took very few pictures; people pictures just aren't my specialty. :) I'm waiting on Wendy to post hers so I can steal some of them. 

Dad picked out a bunch of Chinese dishes from our cookbook and we girls went to work chopping and prepping everything ahead of time. With Chinese cooking, the downside is that everything is stir-fried so you can't cook it ahead of time. We made the soup ahead of time and put that in the crock pot to keep warm.

Then Tara and I decorated with red streamers and paper lanterns. Red is the traditional Chinese color.

Tara made some fancy place card/napkin/chopstick ensembles.

The full place setting.

The the Hills arrived... and we stir-fried for the next hour.

Olivia being cute on the stairs :) (don't you love the dress?!)

Deep frying tofu

Tara and Wendy socializing across the stove

Fried rice

And here are two more pictures of Olivia because she is WAAAY too cute:




Shame on me, I didn't even get pictures of the finished dishes or anything... *sigh.* It's up to your imagination! :)

What's new with the Yens...

Uhhh.... not much. Which is why this blog has been rather quiet for the last week. Us girls have been scrapbooking the past few days for our "faithbooks" (scrapbooks centered on faith). Saturday Mr. Chidlow and Sokea came over for Mr. C to check out our living room ceiling and evaluate the possibility of building on top (or bottom?) of it to further insulate it as it's the draftiest room in the house.

We took Sokea out snowshoeing, which she very much enjoyed.

And... well... that's about it. :-)

Cookin' the Chinese Way

Here's a post Hannah will enjoy... a food post! :-) A few weeks ago we picked up a little Chinese cookbook, and Dad decided we should make an all-out Chinese meal. So he picked out 3 dishes and a soup, and we cooked them!

It was more work than a normal meal because it was like we were making two main dishes, a soup, a side, plus rice. We had marinated beef with vegetables, cashew chicken, stir-fried bean sprouts, and a bean sprout & bean curd (tofu) soup (Hills, these are all out of the same book we gave you, so take note :-).

And Dad's overall impression was........


Our comments were that everything was good except the beef should have marinated longer, even though we marinated it twice as long as the recipe said (it was slightly lacking in flavor).

Dad's plan is now to do this once a month....

Contest Results...

For those of you who remember when I posted that a story I wrote placed as a finalist in a contest, I just thought I'd update on that and say that FINALLY they announced the winners. They were supposed to announce on November 1st (yeah) but they had some very unprofessional professional judges :-) who were two months late on getting in their verdicts.

Anyway, after all that waiting, I didn't win. But that's alright. I'm still happy that I placed at all!