MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Just a quick post from snowy, beautiful Winthrop. We had decided to keep with my European roots and have our "official" X-mas dinner last night followed by opening our presents. Grace was pretty excited, even though she had some issues with Santa already. Last Thursday we were at the mall, all decked out in her pretty dress ready for pictures with Santa. Well, everything was going great, until she got to the part where she was supposed to sit with the big guy. Then she just plain out refused. Oh well, better luck next year, I seem to remember a certain picture of myself at that age screaming at the top of my lungs being held by Santa Claus. Guess it runs in the family.
We had a blast opening presents, well, Grace actually opened very single one of them for us. But she had so much fun and we loved watching her tear into the paper and figure otu what each box contained.

Yes, I will admit it, I drove around for two days with a headless horse in my trunk. Yes, you heard me correctly. A headless horse...but before you jump off your chair and rush to call the SPCA or whatever agency is responsible for animal cruelty/mutilation hear me out...I had to do it.

Last year I was Christmas shopping and when it came time to come up with the "WOW" factor gift I failed miserably. So this year I jumped at the chance(s). After a lengthy discussion with my hubby we "agreed" not to buy each other anything extravagant. Well, between you and me...I have no trouble buying for my hubby, as he apparently has buying for me. Although I am not sure what part about my list, that we went over in detail, he didn't understand??? Anyway, to cut to the chase I got the lucky guy a brand spanking new GPS system worth (as he informed me after looking it up on the Internet!) over $600. Well, I can't help that I am a great deal finder?

I digress...back to the horse... When I was at the mall for Santa photos, (the ones that didn't get taken, remember?) I ran through TARGET for a couple of small things. But to my dismay and delight they had in stock the infamous gift that all little girls want...Butterscotch the (almost) life sized horse. Well, imagine my delight, since it was sold out in a flash last year. So I drove my stroller with sleeping, post No-Santa-Photo fit child, into the check out lane to reserve this marvelous wonder for my darling daughter. Nothing would stop me, not the clerk who claimed that they could not help me as they could not be responsible for prepaid product, not the other shopper who crowed the store and mall in a last minute gift hunting frenzy nor the exuberant price tag on the little furry fella. I demanded that someone "hold that horse" for me so that I could go to the other end of the mall, retrieve my family sedan and return to collect my prize. After what seemed like a losing battle I found a sympathetic clerk who put my name on the box and I hustled back to my vehicle petrified of losing my hard earned chance to purchase this gift. when I got to the other side of the mall parking was of course scarcer than a drop of water in the Sahara but I decided drastic measures should be implemented as I had a sleeping toddler in the vehicle and needed to simply load Butterscotch into my car. Well, let me tell you Handicapped parking never looked so good. I ran inside handed the clerk my VISA card and told her to charge it. I then hefted the huge box, (it wasn't very heavy just bulky!) and made a run for it. Here's the clincher. The box was too big for my Honda's trunk. No amount of pushing, prodding or pulling would coax my horse into the trunk space of an Accord. After several dazed and confused minutes I capitulated and sliced open the box and lifted the headless horse, (Apparently the horse was too big for the box too!) loaded the folded box into the back seat and headed for home. So at home I faced the challenge to patch up the box and repackage the whole kit and caboodle so no one caught on to what was going on...

Needless to say Butterscotch made it to Winthrop in two pieces and after having a good laugh at my daughter's saucer sized eyes when she saw the headless horse we screwed the head on and enjoyed Grace playing with her new toy.

Grandma was clearly thrilled by the vinyl wall board Grace and I made her to display her gorgeous grandkids on. Thanks Elizabeth for the great idea.

Grandpa got a tool wagon, the boys some survival kits, carhart gear and socks, Martin his GPS, some books and a pair of dress pants, I received a birdfeeder with two colors of lights on it, a pair of gold hoop earrings and a craft book. Grace of course had the mother loot with a cash register toy, a Pooh Bear piggy bank, a slinky toy, some Lincoln Logs, Snowman Jammies, a Tic Tac Toe Game and of course Butterscotch.

MIA

What can I say....

It's been nuts around here and I'm just too tired and busy to post on my blog. There I've admitted it. So enough with the guilt trips already (you know who you are!!!)

Day OFF

Here I am with a day off and still no motivations to get anything done. Well, not absolutely nothing. I do have the second load of laundry in the machine and my volleyball clothes are packed for my 2 PM Game and tonight's match. I plan on staying in town between the two to get some chores done like grocery shopping, collecting last little presents or things I need to finish them, etc.




We received another card, this one totally unexpected. It's from the Iron shop where we purchased the parts for the railing for our house. It's kind of nice to get cards from unexpected sources, don't you think?

Two Days off in a row starting Tomorrow...

I hope to get a ton of things done, including finishing my post about our Tofino Trip over Thanksgiving...we'll see what happens. I have three loads of laundry, maybe I should make it festive, like Shaun suggest in her blog. Naaaah, I just don't have any motivation today. What's a girl to do?

Today's photo is courtesy of my friend Brad from Kelowna, who now lives in Victoria on Vancouver Island. He sent me a cute Christmas card with Santa and the Reindeer making Snow Angels. Too Funny!

It's really nice to start receiving cards, finally. LOL I kn0w I shouldn't be complaining since I haven't' even started with sending out my cards.

Frosty Travels

Came across a truck in the ditch this morning on the way to work. It had snowed a bit during the night and there was quite a bit of frost in the fields. The roads were covered in black ice and many drivers were going way to slow, this in turn aggravating others , like myself, with some of these being more reckless and trying to pass only to fail miserably and ending up in the ditch. Scary!

I bought a new ornament for our tree. I am painfully aware that we do not have even close to enought ornaments to decorate the huge tree we can fit into our new livingroom. So I've been collecting new ornaments at every turn. I found some cute handcrafted snowflakes in Tofino during our Thanksgiving excursion...maybe I can take a photo of them later this week. TAnyway this one is obviously from Starbucks, or the "coffee" store as Gracie likes to call it. IT's a cute snowglobe on a Starbucks cup.

Woke up to snow again this Sunday.

It didn't' last long though by the afternoon it was all gone again, so nothing like last Weekend.

Today's countdown number is accented by Miss Julie's wonderful POM (that stands for Project of the Month! for all you non TOM visitors!)

We ended up vegging out on the couch today and didn't do much. Martin cleaned the kitchen after I made breakfast and we watched a couple of football games. The Seahawks kicked the Arizona Cardinals butt. Yeah!

I got a little bit of scrapbooking done, a couple more X-mas gifts. The irony is that I had already packed up gifts for these people and the one I really needed to work on I didn't have enough paper for. ARGH!

Better luck next time I guess...

Lost in Cyberspace (again!)

Well, it seems like yesterday's post got eaten. This is not the first time this has happened and I am very frustrated, cause I had actually saved the post and it still disappeared. What a bummer...well, here's yesterday's photo.

The snowman is courtesy of my secret Santa Recipient...thanks Carly. I can't believe it's already the 9th today, where has December gone?

Ben made the Paper (again!)

Ben, my 18 year old step-son, started wrestling a couple of weeks ago and he had a match against Bellingham yesterday. After losing his first match last week he dug in and secured a win this time. Martin was at the matches and tried to use my camera to video the matches. Grace had a great time cheering her brother on.

MOUNT BAKER 35, BELLINGHAM 30
PREP WRESTLING: Baker pins dramatic victory
Mountaineers edge Red Raiders with triple-overtime win in final match of the night

DEMING — With Mount Baker’s first wrestling victory hinging on the outcome of the final match, coach Ron Lepper knew just what to say to his inexperienced heavyweight.
“You win, we win. You lose, we lose,” he told Dylan Reiter seconds before the last match of the night Thursday.
But Lepper couldn’t know that Reiter and Bellingham junior Dane Tilley — in his first action since his freshman year — would go to a third overtime.
Reiter responded with a dramatic 4-3 victory and secured a 35-30 win over the Red Raiders (1-4 overall) in a matchup of two Class 2A Northwest Conference programs.
“I won my first match with a pin in 44 seconds, but I had never been in any situation like that before,” said Reiter, who was in only his second match for the Mounties. “He’s pretty big and I couldn’t move him around, so I just knew I had to score some points.”
“I wanted to see what he was made of and he gave us a chance,” Lepper said.
Bellingham coach Brian Smith was impressed with both big guys.
“Both kids had big hearts in that situation,” he said. “Dane missed all of last year’s sports because of an ACL tear he suffered in the AAU nationals in North Dakota the summer after his freshman year. He’s one of those great kids you can’t say enough about.
“What I liked was that he wasn’t afraid to try stuff and he was constantly moving for a big guy.”
Tilley took a 2-0 first-period lead with a takedown, but a pair of escapes in the second and third periods for Reiter sent the match into a one-minute overtime. When neither scored, a pair of 30- second overtimes enabled Reiter to score on an escape after he was also awarded a point when Tilley locked hands. Tilley’s escape in the third overtime left him just short.
“Dylan caused that handlock (penalty) by keeping moving,” Lepper said.
Smith felt both teams accomplished much.
“It was a fun match,” he said. “There were lots of lessons learned.”
The first big moment for Mount Baker (1-1) was freshman Bryce Postlewait’s first victory, a wild 14-8 decision over sophomore Malcolm Owings at 125. State meet medalist Dawson Patrick won a 19-3 technical fall at 135, followed by state meet participant Eli Jacoby’s first-round pin at 140.
Victories by Baker’s Ben La Vergne at 160 and Robert Bumatay at 189 set up the crowd-pleasing final. La Vergne defeated sophomore Jack Morgan 10-8 and Bumatay beat Jake Clary 8-5, indicating how close this match was.
Bellingham’s highlights included junior Garrett Montanez’s 18-2 technical fall over state meet participant James Calhoun at 119 and Michael Takemura’s 12-0 win at 130 over Tom Williamson in a matchup of state meet qualifiers. J.T. Fitz Gerald (145) and Gabe Ketchum (152) scored first-round pins for the Red Raiders and Riley Mullett (171) kept them in the match with an 8-3 victory.
“This is the least experienced team we’ve had since our 1995-96 team,” said Lepper, in his 14th season as head coach. “I’m real pleased to get a win like this at home.”

MICHELLE NOLAN FOR THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

An in other news... we won the "Chocolate Connection" at work yesterday. It's a KAFE104.3 local radio stations contest where you enter the name of your office into a draw. The funny thing is that I just sent the e-mail like at the beginning of the week and here they show up at Treasury with almost 10 pounds of chocolate, I kid you not! I wasn't workign on Thursday so I got to taste the leftovers today and man, was it worth it. YUMMY!

I bought a X-mas Gift!

Yeah, for me. I did purchase something yesterday and am soooo proud of myself. I actually ended up venturing into the jaws of the lion, or should I say the doors of TARGET yesterday. It wasn't as bad as I anticipated. I've tried a couple of times just to give up due to the sheer volume of cars in the parking lot in front of the store. But yesterday I must've timed it just right and got there during dinner hour between chores and volleyball at 7:15 last night.

So tonight and tomorrow (Martin is going to Ray & Lisa's house to play poker tomorrow!) I will try to accomplish a lot and work on my gifts to be completed....we'll see how that goes.

On another note, Monday we had our first winning match of the season for our women's team. This is quite a feat since we've moved up to the top division and have never played at this level before. We've been playing so much better since the beginning of the season. These stronger teams just lift our play to a whole 'nother level. So far we've always managed to take one game out of three twice and lost one match, but on Monday we actually won all three games. Whooooohoooo!

I went by Trader Joe's last night for some groceries, and picked up this cute little wreath. It's kind of hard to see in this photo, but it's got little walnuts tied to it and smells divine. What do you think? I love it.

See What Grace Brought Home from Daycare...

they made these cute chains to count down the days till Christmas. How cool is that? She was hamming it up for the picture and has been proudly displaying her handiwork to everyone that comes to the house.

On another note, why can't I decide whether computers are helping our hurting us? This is another case of probable data entry errors causing me stress and headaches. I just spent an hour on the phone trying to get someone to reverse this error. So now I have to fax paperwork, follow up with phone calls and all because someone made a typo somewhere down the line. What a nightmare.... ARGH!

Hopefully later today I'll be able to finish my Tofino post and also work on some Christmas stuff that's starting to stress me out... How many shopping days till X-mas?

Christmas Countdown

I really wanted to post yesterday, but between working, grocery shopping, prepping dinner and having a volleyball match at 7:15 PM, then rushing back to the grocery store for forgotten items and rushing home to finish preparing dinner I didn't get a break. So I managed to feed everyone, have a shower and collapse into bed at 11 something, too tired to even read a few pages of my book.

So how many days till Christmas? I've officially decided that there isn't enough time, no matter when I start with my shopping, writing cards or making gifts. I never get it all done. So this year I am stressing a lot less, I wish I could say I wasn't stressing at all, but that would be a lie. LOL

Off to make my list and check it twice...

Second Day of the Christmas Countdown...

and I found the Advent Calendar that my mother (AKA Oma) gave to Gracie. She was enthralled by the picture on the front and imagine her delight when she found out that it contained chocolates. Yep, she wanted to dig in right away, however I told her she had to share with Dad. So when Martin woke up from his Football induced nap she grabbed him and they opened door number one.

I was actually supposed to work today, but it's been snowing/hailing/raining on and off all morning and I called this morning to see if they could get by without me as I did not want to drive/slide my Honda into a ditch. So a big THANK YOU goes out to Kim who braved the drive from Sudden Valley to go to work today. I will be in the kitchen in a few minutes whipping up a batch of HKS Chocolate Chip Cookies as Thank You's for the TOM Girls...Yummy!

It's DECEMBER!

Wow, where did time go? I can't believe it's almost Christmas. I think this is the first year where I am sooooo totally completely behind with my X-mas shopping. Usually I am more than halfway done in the middle of summer...what happened?


Anyway, I digress. Timing was for once perfect. I completed a sample for the store Treasury of Memories with the beautiful Making Memories Christmas line of papers and stickers and we sold out of them just in time for me to take it home. What luck....I now have it displayed in our living room and look forward to using it to countdown to Christmas Day.

The Christmas Card Holder on the left is also a sample that we sold out of shortly after I made it. So lucky me get's to use it for holding our X-mas cards. Which by the way, we have only received one of, and that was hand delivered. But I have faith...

If I have time I will try to get started on blogging about our wonderful trip to Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. I highly recommend it...

Better Late Than Never...

here are the few photos I managed to get of our little spook during our trick or treat excursion... Isn't she cute?

This is the display we had up outside our store for Halloween, what a great way to invite customers to check out our vinyl goodies right? So since we had some computer issues at the store I stopped by to see if we could resolve some stuff. I had Grace with me and Martin met me there. While I putter around the store they two of them checked out the dollar store next door and promptly got Grace started with some candy. LOL

We had originally planned to go to Fairhaven to trick or treat, but sadly ran out of time to complete the circuit I had so carefully planned out online. So we decided to ditch the master plan and just enjoy the time we had left to get our little Flamingo some candy. I had previously done up a sample for the store of one of our cute little buckets...so I snatched it cause this bad mom totally forgot to get her little goblin a bag/container for the loot.

Cowden, the gravel/cement people even brought out one of their trucks and had a cascade of candy running down the chute. What a cool idea...

Of course daddy had to help pick the candy since they were giving out "life" size candy bars, not just the miniature ones.

Overall, Grace seemed a little overwhelmed at all the crazy kids, costumes and even dogs that were out trick or treating in the Christ The King Church parking lot for their "Trunk or Treat" event. They even had stuff set up inside the church, like a magic show, a kids' carnival with games where you could win tokens and exchange them for prizes, and a free popcorn booth. Grace tried most of the games and had a blast, here she is fishing for prizes...and she won a waterbottle

Second Visit to the Pumpkin Patch!

Well, since Grace's Cousins (well, they are actually the kids of Martin's Cousin Mark! So does that make them Gracie's 2nd cousins????)came over for a visit last weekend we decided to take another trip to the pumpkin patch. This time we went to McPhail's Berry Farm out in Lynden. It was a little bit colder and definitely wetter than our first time, but the three kids had fun nonetheless. Aaron, Grace and Landon got to ride the train and had a blast doing so. I tried to get them all to pose out the windows of the wagon, but no such luck. This was the best photo...

We took a bumpy ride out to the patch and since we couldn't really leave without some pumpkins each of the kids got to pick one to take home. Aaron found a really cute little pumpkin, Grace got a medium one, and Landon decided to wait till we got back to the farm and pick one out from the wagon. Smart kid, the ones we carried back from the patch were pretty muddy. YUCK!

As we were leaving the farm I decided to get Gracie to pose by the sign with her pumpkin. she wasn't really interested in that so a little bribing was involved. In order for me to take her picture she got to take some of mommy posing. So here are the results. Not bad for a 2 1/2 year old. What do you think?

Pumpkin Time

On Saturday Martin, Grace & I headed out to the Pumpkin Patch. Last year I went along with the ladies of the MOM's club and we had a great time at Stoney Ridge Farm. Since it was closest to our house we decided to go there again this year. It was a first for Martin and he enjoyed it, judging from the wrestling match we had over the camera. So some of these photos were taken by me and some by my husband. Gracie just loved all the animals and Mom was into taking her picture at the growth chart, the second in hopefully a long row of scrapbook photos. After taking the haywagon to the pumpkin field Grace and Daddy polished off two freshly picked apples, with me getting some small bites in between. They had a photo op set up and Grace couldn't wait to get her face in the cut-out and ham it up for the camera. After some perusing of the pretty picked over pumpkin patch we settled on two pumpkins, a big one for Dad and a smaller one for Grace. We got to the patch right at 10 AM when it opened, and it was a good thing too, cause after noon it got jam packed with families and would have been no fun to stand in line. So by the time we got our pumpkins loaded into a wheelbarrow, Miss Grace was ready for a nap and decided to ride along. On the way home we stopped off in Everson to try out a new breakfast place before I had to head into work.

Martin even took time out on Sunday to carve Grace's pumpkin. At first she wasn't so sure about the whole thing but after a couple of minutes she got right into the mess, seeds, guts and all. I took some photos of the end result, but honestly, the one I carved for Grace a little later is a little more professional looking. LOL Grace picked out the pattern...I'll let you be the judge.

This month just seemed to fly by. I can't believe Wednesday is Halloween...Gracie will finally get to wear her awesome costume. I hope to take her trick or treating in Fairhaven this year. We'll see what the weather decides to do.

I'm Baaaaaaack...

It's been forever, (well since June!) that I've updated this sucker, so here I am. Tons of stuff has happened since we've moved into our (mostly!) completed new house right after July 4th weekend.

Where do I start? I flew out East to visit my BFF Megan in Maryland and attend CKC Valley Forge with her and some other gal pals, Martin went on his boys fishing trip in August, I started working at my favorite scrapbook store of all time Treasury of Memories in Bellingham, I went to Phoenix in September, we just returned from Thanksgiving in Canada at my folks and it's already the middle of October...where did time go?

Here is a photo of Megan and her wonderful Mom Darlene in Millville at the cutest little shopping spot. I found some great everyday items there that I can't live without now.

On the weekend we decided to brave the weather and got some awesome seats to "Sunday In The Country" a concert with many famous country stars of which we caught the following: Phil Vasser, Terri Clark, Sara Evans and Trace Adkins. We had loads of fun, even texted in to have our message displayed on the big screens up on stage. How kewl is that? ;)

Here is a shot of the famous cowgirl Gracie at the NW WA Fair on the 14th of August. Isn't she a cutie?

The day after the fair we got a very short notice invite from our cousin Mark down south in Olympia. So we hopped into the car and made the 4 hour drive to visit with him and the twins. Grace had a blast playing in the pool and didn't want to get out at all...

The next big adventure in our lives was the trip to Creative Escape 2007 in Phoenix. If you remember, last year I was the lucky winner of the FREE admission to this year's event, plus I got to take my new best friend Megan that I coincidentally met at CE 2006. Seems like the big guy upstairs meant well for us and we were destined to meet there. Thank you! We had a wonderful time and were so glad to meet up with old and new friends, learn lot's of fun new techniques (we've already managed to use three of the card folding techniques I learned a the store!), squeeze in some spa & pool time and even some shopping. We found a really great Halloween costume for Gracie in Phoenix of all places, but no photos of that till we get to wear it trick or treating. I also have to shout out a big, no HUGE Thank you to Megan's Mom Darlene. She spent a lot of her vacation time watching Grace so that Megan & I could attend the cool classes and events. We couldn't have done it without her.

When we got back we had already made plans for the weekend after our return home. Martin had arranged for us to borrow a friends boat to take a trip to the islands. This was only the second time for me on a boat and a first for Grace. She is such a natural, she just loves the water and the outdoors. Even though part of the weekend was beautiful and sunny we did ride out some weather and we had a tough time getting Grace to come inside. She was cold and wet but still having a blast. What a girl!

At the end of the month our cousin Mark visited baring gifts. He brought us a piano courtesy of Uncle Joe. At first I wasn't so sure, but seeing Grace have so much fun, it's a no-brainer. She'll be taking lessons sometime soon. Check it out:

So then just this past weekend we took the plunge and drove up to see my folks for CDN Thanksgiving. We has so much fun seeing the kids together, last time the cousins were there Grace was still pretty small and this time they really interacted. Check out Jayson reading to Gracie...

I think that brings us up to date, at least partially. LOL I promise to be better in the future but life just get's so busy sometimes...

House Update...again...

Getting closer....

We are getting carpet this week, upstairs today and our master bedroom on Friday. Yeah!
















Also pouring more concrete outside to finish part of the patio.

Got our appliances last week and have installed a few already, some are still in the boxes...just not enough hours in the day.

Our countertop for the kitchen is supposed to come on Friday also.

On Saturday we had soem parts of the reiling brought over to see if they fit. And to our amazement they were perfect. What's a 1/2 inch in a time of crisis... LOL

Tuesday last week I spent the day taping off and painting my daughter's room. It's now a vibrant shade of puprle called "Sassy Lilac", which I found super fitting.

The kid's bathroom upstairs is almost completed with tile too, just a few tiny touch ups and the vanity which is in the mail.