The stocking were hung, let Christmas begin!

I'm way excited we actually have a chimney this year!
( I did put a picture in AJ and Sophia's stocking holders just in case you're wondering)

I'm ready to go on this Christmas thing. Let's do this! I even wrapped the presents already people!
Let's get the show on the road.

Speaking of on the road...

I'm going to Guatemala next week.

I'm not driving though, so I guess the road thing wasn't a good transition.

I will not be blogging from Central America. (Like that's a surprise! I barely blog from Las Vegas!)

I plan on focusing more on not contracting Malaria, hepatitis, Diarrhea, and all other diseases.

All of which would definitely ruin Christmas.


Feliz Navidad!

Family Photo Shoot

My awesome, amazing, wonderful, professional photographer/crafter friend Rychelle agreed to take our family Christmas card picture again this year.


My sisters crashed the photo shoot and Rychelle ended up taking their family pictures as well.

She's that amazing! And the only payment she accepted was some cookies. (It was also the only payment offered, so it worked out well)

Here are some highlights.

Here we are looking amazing. This isn't even the one I chose for our card. Rychelle did such an awesome job, we had plenty to chose from. Of course it helps that she had such beautiful models.


These girls were definitely ready for their close up.



One of my favorites of the day! Is it wrong to laugh at a crying baby?

We had the brilliant idea to put just the kids together.... um, it didn't quite work out.

But here, look! It actually appears like their enjoying themselves!



Actually, we all enjoyed ourselves. Thanks Rychelle!

Keep your eye out for my upcoming Christmas card, it'll be a keeper! (You might want to have a frame ready!)

PS. If you've moved and I don't have your new address, email me. Or if you're a complete stranger reading this post and would like a Christmas card, email me. (That doesn't mean you're going to get one, but I just really like reading emails!)

All about me, me, me, me, and me

I FINALLY connected my computer in my new house and spent some time this weekend working on a project for my grandma's 90th birthday that I've haven't touched since June.

Scanning old pictures into digital files. It was much needed, and kind of fun.

I found a ton of pictures of me.

And of course feel obligated to make a blog post about my coolness as a child.

Prepare yourself, for this little girl had no idea how awesome she'd become.

Here I am obviously enjoying nature and an amazing sense of fashion.




I've always been so kind to animals.


Even when they weren't nice to me. Gotta love the sweatsuit.



My first trip to NYC and the towers were still intact.


I've always been excellent at carpentry. Who knew I'd be making headboard benches in the future?

I'm not completely convinced this is me... but it was in the envelop my mom gave me. I kind of think it's Eliza, but I'm living the dream because I always wanted to have a picture of myself in front of the snowy forest.

I've always been amazing with my hair.

Another good hair day, this time at girls camp. Having curly hair is such a blessing. I get to look like this.

Future beauty queen of course.

If only my eyes weren't shut, this would've been an amazing picture of me holding up a hanging bird house. Top model material.

And who'd have thought that these two lookers...

Once frightened small children.

And I've always been the adventurer, cliff jumper.

There you have it, my awesome childhood in a nutshell. I encourage everyone else to break out that scanner and spread the love.

Halloween Teaser and memory lane

All the festivities are this weekend so the better pictures will be next week, but I do have a little teaser. We went to a Halloween activity a couple weeks ago and here are this year's costumes.

(poorly lit pictures I took with my phone)




Sophia as a pumpkin.





AJ as Harry Potter. Easiest costume ever. I found the choir robe at DI and just hemmed it to fit him. The pumpkin outfit was also found at DI. Best $3 I ever spent!

I feel like costumes are harder to put together now then when I was a kid. When we were younger we didn't really plan far in advance what we were going to be. It was usually the week of Halloween or even that night that we would dig out the costume box and kind of rotate a few standard costumes. I was a clown on at least 3 separate occasions (back before clowns were creepy). We had a doctor outfit with jacket and stethoscope. We had a couple of random wigs that we could just kind of modify an outfit with. Good times.

I have a couple of Halloween's engraved in my memory - (since no one thought to document these events, I have no photo evidence).

When I was 10 I got to be a princess. I was so excited about this costume. My mom made it and it was beautiful. I had a pretty wand, so I guess that made me a fairy princess. I went trick or treating with my sister Eliza and her friend Deanna. They were hookers (I think that was the year Pretty Woman came out). I remember my mom didn't want Eliza to wear her outfit, so I had to figure out why. That was when I learned what the word Hooker meant.

The main thing I remember about that Halloween was that it was cold. My mom made me wear a coat and I was so mad because I was covering up my pretty dress. I'm pretty sure I left it unzipped for most of the night. That was the famous Halloween Blizzard of 1991. (Well, famous if you lived in Minnesota.) We got 28 inches of snow that night. And I was wearing a dress. It was so cold, but we would do anything for free candy!

Speaking of candy.

The other Halloween memory I have was probably a year or two after that blizzard. My sisters were too old to go trick or treating so they sent me as the sacrificial candy gatherer. I had to go alone and once I went around the block once, they sent me back out in a different costume to go around again. (That's why it's handy to have a costume box) The only problem was we lived in a small town and small neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else. All the neighbors recognized me the first time I went around. And the second time I definitely got some weird looks. Or at least I interpreted them as weird since I was so embarrassed to be knocking on every one's door a second time in a different costume.

What's your favorite Halloween memory?

The Cannery (AKA Eliza's House)

This weekend we had our annual, "CanningFest" at Eliza's house. We usually do jelly, but we were feeling more "saucy" this weekend so we made applesauce, salsa, bruschetta, and apple pie filling.

It was exhausting, but such a beautiful sight.


In other awesome cooking news, I made pizza on the grill for the first time ever.



Who says pizza needs to be round?

And to round off my boast post of coolness,

I made some tie onsies for my brother-in-law's baby.

They were so easy I've decided they will be my standard baby shower gift when it's a boy.

I'm trying to figure out what I can do if it's a girl.

Any ideas?

Candlelighters 5K

Way back at the beginning of the summer, my office sent around a sign up for a 5K walk/run to raise money for childhood cancer that would be in September.

I signed up and convinced my unsuspecting family to sign up also.

Way back at the beginning of the summer, September seemed a long way away.

Way back at the beginning of the summer, I had goals to get in shape and do some hiking.

Way back at the beginning of the summer I actually did some hiking.

Way back at the beginning of the summer I hadn't bought a new house yet or moved which crushed my hiking/get in shape plan.

So September crept up on us.

I'm not in shape, but hey - 5k, no big deal right? So we did it.

Here's my group of suckers family members who braved to course pre-race.




Cathy and Dwain ditched us to actually run. Psha, who really does that?

Here's Eliza with the kids at around the 3K mark. Still smiling!



Then we switched so she could take a picture.

Here's a look at the crowd as we reached our final kilometer.

There were 2,400 people - the biggest group ever for this event. Many of those that attended wore t-shirts with a picture of a child who had passed away from cancer. That was the most disturbing part and we made every effort to pass those shirts.

Note to self, next time only sign up for the 5K walks that are trying to raise money for school supplies or city parks. It's just too emotional to have to walk behind the smiling face of some child you know didn't win their battle with cancer.

Here I am at the end! Yes, we did finish.

Don't let the smiles on these boys' faces fool you. They complained, cried, begged to ride a stroller, and sat/ran off and on for 4 kilometers.


Next year for sure I'll be in shape and I'll be able to run it.

(I just snorted my Diet Coke at the thought! Ha ha!)

What did you do in the summertime

I've been feeling this guilt every time I look at my blog and see a 3 month old entry staring at me. Not that I don't love looking at those pictures, but it's kind of like when you forget to update your journal, and then it just builds and builds until you'd rather just start a new journal than trying to go back and update everything you've missed.

I actually thought about starting a new blog.

But who would I get to read it? Everyone (I use the term loosely as I have no hopes that more than 3 people still have links to my blog) already has this blog address.

So this is me biting the bullet and digging in with my summer update.

Just as a disclaimer I'm not going to include EVERYTHING I did this summer, but hopefully I'll hit most of the highlights. And if I forget something, it's not like you're going to know anyway.

Also, in self defense, I actually had a pretty eventful, busy summer so you can just take your judgmental tongue clicks to another blog.

Here we go.

1. We bought a house!

Well, another house. We didn't have an official plan for our old town home, but after having it hit by lightning and a neighbor setting our truck on fire, we took those as very solid hints that we needed to get out. So we became homeowners... Again.

The original plan was to make repairs and upgrades to the new house slowly and then take our time moving in at which point we would figure out what to do with the old house.

Sophia was a big help with the painting as you can imagine.


Then we had a sudden change of plans when we found renters for the old house and they needed to move in 5 days later.

So our calm repairs turned into frantic packing, moving and shoving everything in any available space. There may or may not still be boxes packed and shoved in corners along with a partially painted living room and upstairs.

This is the only box Sophia packed. She's totally fired as a mover.


In the moving and unpacking I took some time off work to get set up in the new house, and instead worked on projects that were unnecessary, but seriously desired.

Like this antique window divider I put up between the family and living rooms. I found the windows for $5 on craigslist and sanded, painted, measured and hung and I totally love it.


It definitely divides the 2 rooms without closing either of them in.

One of the things we were most excited about was having a yard for the kids to play in. Currently that yard consists of dead grass, sand, rock, and a dying tree - but it's a good size yard so we instantly set up a poor-man's slip'n'slide.

It was a hit in the hot summer months!


We made it to a baseball game.



Went camping - sorry, no photos.

AJ and Sophia played.

And I started a new obsession. Headboard benches.

I was perusing a blog one day and found a re-purposer who takes old headboards and turns them into benches.

They were so cute so I rushed (I'm not kidding, I couldn't contain my excitement for a little manual labor and carpentry) to a thrift store and bought them out of headboards. Well almost - I think I left one or two in the store.

Then I made benches - ahem, am making benches as this project that I was sure I would finish in a day or two has been extended... indefinately.

Here's my first one. I took this headboard...

And made this bench, which now sits outside the front of my house on a little patio waving at all the people who come visit.

Seriously, it waves. Pretty cool.

And my friend Jen got into it and came over to make a bench.

(She'd kill me for posting this picture if she were one of the 3 people who read my blog - but I don't believe she does, so I'm probably safe)

Here's how that one turned out.


And I'm in love with how it fit right into her house.

And then I have this one still under construction.

This was my first attempt at adding "arms" and I was happy how it turned out until I started painting it. The goal was to do the bench black and the seat pastel yellow. But the black paint decided to throw up all over the bench and leave it destroyed and then to add insult, it refuses to be sanded off so I'm stuck with a black blob and no immediate solution to how to make it resemble a bench.


In the mean time, I've stopped working on the benches because I enter deep depression stages when I look at this one so I'll probably leave this project as undone as the paint in my upstairs hallway.

That's how I roll.

So, can anyone beat my summer?