Thank You Secret Chick!

At work we've been gifting each other secretly and no one is supposed to know who has who. But as always with a bunch of fun girls like our group it's hard to keep a secret and most of us are already sure of who we've been getting fun stuff from. Anyway, I received the coolest treasure hunt type of clues and they led me on a hunt all over the store. The first time I got a cute shamrock plant, and I'm proud to say it's still alive. I love the little white flowers on it... The second time my secret chick led me on a merry chase around the store again and I got a bag full of fun for Gracie and me. In it where the coolest shades and some awesome bubbles. Grace has been anxiously awaiting some nice weather to use them outside.

Just had to post this photo...as you can see the shades have been put to good use already.


Thanks again!

Awesome Easter Egg Hunting

All I can say is WOW!
I am in awe of what this amazing group of people has accomplished. Grace, Martin & I were lucky enough to snag an invite to the annual Easter Eggstravaganza my boss and her family and friends put on in a little park behind their house. I can't rave enough about how cool it is to have a park and playground like this in your backyard. Wow! Very cool.
Anyway, I digress... We suited Grace up in her Easter finery and lo and behold (like some other girls, I was glad to see!) she refused to put on pantyhose to keep her legs warm. So knee-high socks and black leather shoes it was, since a girl get's what a girl wants, right? (Well, sometimes she gets...)
I found the cutest bunny pail that unintentionally even color coordinated with her outfit. How cool is that? She even wore her bunny ears for most of the day, what a trooper.
She was a little set back by the fact that there were a lot of kids there and absolutely refused to get into the group photo. But I got some nice single shots of our little bunny girl.
I heard rumors that there were between 800 and 1000 eggs hidden in the park, and boy some were hidden rather creatively, like hanging from bushes and such. Very neat to make it a bit of a challenge for the older kids. I think the number of kids was supposed to be around 50 or so...
This year Grace got into the egg thing a little better than last year. Last year she just kind of stood there and watched all the other kids running to pushing to get a the loot. This year she took off at a good pace and had her share in her basket fairly quickly. The cool twist was that there were some "golden" eggs hidden that the kids could trade up for prizes like stuffed bunnies, bracelets, PEZ dispensers, little toys and trinkets, stickers and much more. Grace decided to go for a three pack of play-dough, which Mommy will hoard until we can play without making too much of a mess.
It was really neat that the event was a potluck so there was plenty of good food to be had and we had our share. Yummy! Grace was in 7th heaven with her strawberries and cheese on cookies. Yes, you read that correctly she placed her cheese slices on her sprinkle cookie instead of her cracker. Guess she liked it...
After we spent some time catching up with the gals from work and saying hello to others we knew we headed out for home. Grace barely made it out to the main road and my tired little bunny girl fell asleep. What an exciting morning...

Help, Advice or any Input is appreciated...

I am in the throes of planning my first ever Toddler birthday party. And I'm all by myself. Thank you so much for Sara and the other TOM girls with their helpful thoughts on my invitations. Because of them I am on my way... (on the way to what I don't know, but nevertheless I am going there!)

But now I still need help with food, decorations, goodie bags, the cake, games, what time to have the party, etc? Heck, how many kids is it sane and politically correct to invite?

As you can see I am a total novice when it comes to kid party planning. At least with my birthday I could pretend to know what I was doing and with a little help from my friend MARTHA I even lulled some of my guests into believing that. LOL

So please help a girl out and post any hints, tips or advice on my comments here...

Thank you so much.

Finally Found Some Free Time..

Wow, what a concept. After being sicker than I've ever been, (I couldn't even scrapbook!), I finally found some time and energy to finish some layouts. These particular ones were part of Creative Escape last year, a class taught by Heidi the daughter of Mr. BAZZILL. I wasn't too fond of the class especialy since it was supooed to be a calendar and they only gave us 1/2 the pages due to budget issues, what's that all about? Anyway, I put the page kits together and printed some quick photos to finiehs the puppies off.

So without much further ado, here they are:

Wrestling News

Well last Saturday Ben was wrestling in Lynden and things finally went his way...he will be going to state this year.
So watch here for some hopefully good photos and a run down of what happened.

Viva Las Vegas Baby!

I guess it's about time I blogged about our trip to Lost Wages. It's been a month already and wow, lot's of things been happening.
Most of us in the house have been sick for the past month on and off. Martin got sick right after we returned from Vegas. We arrived home to a blizzard and landed in Bellingham airport with a total whiteout. It was strange to see this at the end of January, and the whole town was turned into a winter wonderland.
Vegas was definitely a last minute decision as we had originally planned to spend that weekend on the "Rowe Boat" out in the San Juans. When we heard that the forecast called for cold weather that weekend with snow int he mix we just thought that we'd be better off somewhere else. Since the place we wanted to go to in Oregon was booked that weekend Troy suggested flying out of Bellingham with Allegiant Air straight to Vegas. The price was right at $88 each way so we looked into a hotel and booked. I even investigated a little and reserved us a limo from and to the airport. It was quite an experience...
We stayed at the Mandalay Bay and I must say the place was very nice. Our room was connected to Troy & Aubrey's and there was a TV in the bathroom and even a phone in the toilet room. We immediately made plans for dinner and Troy's choice of restaurant was vetoed by the girls. We picked a different one and boy did we pick! It was a wonderful choice at the top of THE Hotel, a section of the Mandalay Bay and the view was spectacular, including sitting right across from Stone Cold Steve Austin the wrestler. Dinner was fantastic but so was the bill at the end. We even decided to forgo a wine and dessert as we just couldn't justify spending that much.
The second day we went for a walk down the strip. Here's the boys on the bridge crossing the strip at the New York, New York.
The idea was to head to the Paris for some crepes for breakfast. We obviously didn't' realize how much of a walk this really was. The last time I was in Vegas was back in the late nineties and the Mandalay Bay was just being built, the Paris not even thought about....

Anyway, we did make it to the Paris hotel and walked the little cobblestone streets to the cafe where we ordered up our crepes. Not my favorite I must say, and definitely nothing like the chocolate croissants or "Pain au chocolat" in Paris. The weather was nice maybe a little breezy but we enjoyed the walk and soon headed back towards our hotel. We had talked about going to a show and of course in true Man/Woman style no one could make a decision. So Aubrey & I headed for the box office at the New York, New York and proceeded to make reservations for the night. Well, by the time we had our ducks in a row of course all that was left for seats was waaaaay up in the rafters, not even the nosebleed section. We again made an executive decision and booked the tickets for Sunday night instead, forgoing the hypnotist we had talked about seeing. So with some rather pricey tickets for Cirque de Soleil's "Zumanity" we headed off home to the Mandalay. Troy had made some calls to his contacts in Vegas and managed to get us some awesome third row tickets on the floor to see the amazing Brad Paisley up close and personal. He just happened to be performing a the Mandalay that night. Martin & I had already enjoyed his show in Vancouver a while ago, but it was so good that we decided to do it again. And man, was it great. The talented Rodney Atkins opened for him after a great performance of Chuck Wicks the guy who sings "Stealing Cinderella" (great song and awesome performer, you'll see more of this guy!).

Brad of course rocked the house with his awesome guitar playing and performed all his hits including, Ticks, Letter to Me, Celebrity (a must see video with Jason Alexander), The Fishing Song, You Are the World, Everything (a personal favorite!) and a new one that hasn't been released yet called I'm Still a Guy. During the show they had a slide show going on the screens and couldn't help themselves with poking a little fun at the Monte Carlo fire that happened the day before.

So Sunday we headed over to The Hotel for a nice breakfast. Then we spent the day enjoying the spa, doing some bargain hunting, playing some card or slots and Martin took in some poker with the big boys. He almost won big, got a great hand and was beat by an incredible hand, twice...what are the odds of that? Not very big, we were told.

Sunday afternoon we got ready for the show with a haircut for the boys, a little shopping for the girls... Aubrey had Troy buy her a beautiful sparkly ring and I shopped for a little black dress to wear that night with my Anne Taylor heels that I had snagged up the day before for $20, they were marked down from $200. Yeah! So looking a snazzy and pretty we headed to the Shanghai Lily for dinner that night.

After dinner we took a cab to the New York, New York to get there in plenty of time to have some dessert and of course to help us ladies with our heels. It would've been hell to walk all that way.
The show was phenomenal, I haven't laughed that hard for a long time. It was an adult show so it was a bit risque but tasteful and with the audience participation you never knew what you were gonna get. There was a midget who did acrobatics on the silk ties hanging from the ceiling, synchronized swimming by two very flexible Asian ladies, hot dancing men, a clown couple for some comedic relief and all in all I think we all enjoyed the show immensely. I would even go back and see it again, if there wasn't so much else to do and see in Vegas. I think we've already picked out a different show for our next trip...

What else could possibly happen???

Ok so it was sooo not a good day today. It was the day from H*ll.

First and foremost you must know that about three weeks ago I was rudely awakened in the middle of the night by an insistent, annoying beeping that wouldn't stop. So I dragged my sorry, tired butt out of our warm and cozy bed to hunt down the culprit. I found the problem in the kitchen. Our brand new state-of-the-art microwave that we purchased just before moving into our new home was displaying a blinking error code and noisily informing me that F3 was the problem. Now what the heck does that mean? I had no idea and proceeded to push buttons hoping to still the cacophony. No such luck. Then I thought I would outsmart my appliance by getting out the manual and punching in a sequence of buttons that muted the sounds of the microwave. Well, it didn't like that and continued the barrage of beepage. I got so frustrated and after waking Martin up to get no coherent input on how to solve this dilemma, decided to switch the breaker off. That seemed to still the monster. In the morning I called the 1-800 number that was supposed to help me diagnose the issue and send a repairman, all under the GE warranty. The first available appointment that would work around my schedule, (as the voice on the phone informed me "a person over the age of 18 must be present!) was two weeks out. So desparately I scheduled the first available slot and waited. The appliance guy showed up, made some calls and promptly announced that a part needed ordering. That should take about two weeks. So when the part arrives I would be able to have him return to replace it. WOW, how nice, not only was the microwave unusable, it would take another two, possibly three weeks to repair it. What a crock!

Well, today was that day. The part arrived last week and Mr. Repair Man was scheduled in the AM between 8 and Noon. He showed up at around 9:30 and eventually fixed my microwave. I never thought it would be so painful, but I ended up having to hold the stupid thing for him as we could not disconnect it from the wall outlet and I cut my finger to boot. After all the pain I do now have a microwave that works.

The second person hanging out at our house was the kitchen guy who, after a rather long hiatus (our kitchen was supposed to be completed in July!), returned to work. We were hoping to finally have our long awaited drawer knobs and cabinet handles installed, but he forgot the tool to do that. So he fiddled around finishing off some fronts to various drawers and will be back tomorrow. Oh, he did some work on our master bath, which with the grace of God, will be completed sometime before 2009.

The biggest disaster today was definitely the water leak in our master bedroom. Last night when I went to bed I noticed a strange noise when I walked across the carpet. I had noticed another noise the day prior but thought it was just trucks passing by on the highway down the road. Well, I should've listed to my instinct that something wasn't quite right...the squishy carpet was a dead giveaway. I asked my husband to confirm what I suspected and his reaction pretty much said it all. We had a water leak and it was a bad one. So the third guy in my house this morning was Ryan the plumber who proceeded to cut a hole into my wall behind the bed. Then he cut a hold into the outside of the house, pulled out the soaking wet insulation and went hunting for he leak. We had shut off the water the night before so there was no showering, no flushing the toilet, no brushing your teeth, doing dishes or laundry (I can live with that!) and I was lucky to have bottled water for my coffee maker. We did find a leak and hopefully (insert my crossed fingers and toes here) it is contained. Now we need to dry out the carpet. Any suggestions?

On a positive note, we did decide against taking out the boat into the snow this weekend. I took the weekend off to spend it with Martin as it was his birthday on Monday. So since it was his friend Troy's birthday also, we booked the four of us onto a plane to Las Vegas. We are soooo out of here...coming back Monday night. Can't wait.

Rejuvinated and ready for another week...

So the spa was fabulous. How could it not be...?

Well, I did a double take when the person who came to get me out of the quiet area turned out to be a guy. Never had a guy give me a massage before, well at least it wasn't a bikini wax. ROFLMAO His name is Steve and he was very professional and turned out to be the lucky guy who gave me the Apple Body Wrap to boot. When all was massaged, wrapped, heated up, showered off and lotioned all I needed was a side of Vanilla Ice Cream. All that apple scent and being wrapped up in hot towels made me feel like an Apple Pie. LOL

We also stayed overnight and had a great nights sleep after a late wonderful dinner at Fino's. I had a divine Crab Panini, (thanks Amy for turning me on to those awesome sandwiches again!). Breakfast was also included and we enjoyed a beautiful view out to Bellingham Bay watching the ducks and other birds frolick in the water. The breakfast buffet was quite nice, I would recommend it to anyone looking for an affordable light meal in the AM.

Today I finally managed to finish the wall hanging I started out before Christmas as a gift for Grace' cousin. I just didn't have enough photos of the guy to complete it and his parents didn't pull through for me, although Grandma did after an SOS e-mail plea. Thanks G-ma!

So here it is:

What do you think? I love it...but of course I am biased.

Dancing with the STARS! (or not...)

We had our first Salsa dance lesson yesterday and I must say it was quite different than what I expected...

There were of course way more women than men and that resulted in my dancing with quite a few female partners. Interesting. It was also interesting to observe my husband dancing with some women and girls that he did not know and to watch his reaction to that... Our friends Troy and Aubrey joined us for the class (well, we bought them the lessons as a Christmas Gift, so they had little choice! LOL). Troy is not very comfortable and he had sweaty palms all night. ;)

At the end of the 1 1/2 hour session we had learned the basic step and a spin. So now we just need to practice.

Today Martin & I are off to visit a local spa/hotel for the night. Last year at the Mighty Max Crop hosted by Treasury of Memories, (there will be one in April again this year!), I won a raffle for a free overnight stay with two massages and breakfast. So we are heading off to be pampered and hopefully relaxed by the time we return to the real world tomorrow afternoon.

'Nother Layout

Just doing some housekeeping today and I finally finished this layout I started on Thursday...

...what do you think?

Actually Scrapped some pages this weekend...

believe it or not, here's the latest:

It's all thanks to Laine at BIG Picture Scrapbooking, she's got a class going on right now that is challenging you to complete a page a day for the month of January. So far I've done three, not bad, three out of six. The other one is up on the right under "Latest Creation"

Na Na Na Na Naaaaah!

Sorry Megan, but I had to....

Seahawks beat Redskins to win pulsating game

Can You Guess???

what Miss Grace's all time favorite food in the whole wide world is?

We had some on New Year's Day and she loved every minute of it. Her standard reply when you ask what she would like to eat, breakfast, lunch or dinner time, is "pasgetty".

I make it with ground turkey and add the chunkiest jar of sauce you can find. Love all those veggies with my tomato sauce...and of course loads of cheese. Not diet food, that's for sure....

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?