5 years ago

5 years ago today, I had cold feet. Literally. They were muddy too.
But I didn't have cold feet, figuratively. Happy 5th anniversary, Eric! I'll save everyone the mushiness. I made Eric a photo book, so he's already read that stuff :-).

Merry Christmas!

Make a Smilebox greeting

Trauma for Kaylin

As if taking Kaylin sledding wasn't bad enough, we made her go here:

Looks cute and harmless, right?

Wrong! Apparently talking about Santa for days on end and telling Kaylin that he would bring her presents and give her candy wasn't good enough. Kaylin even told me that she wanted to ask Santa for applesauce and poptarts. If you couldn't tell from the picture, Kaylin did not take the opportunity to tell Santa what she wanted. I don't know if he will bring her applesauce and poptarts.

Maybe next year...

Snowy weekend

We've had a very snowy weekend. It started snowing again on Saturday afternoon and pretty much hasn't stopped. We were planning to go to a party on Saturday night. We took Kaylin to Eric's parents house early and brought extra clothes in case we ended up staying overnight. The hills to their house weren't great, so we stayed there and skipped the party. Eric's sister and brother-in-law came into town earlier on Saturday, so we had a big party. We brought some pizza and a movie and had a great time. Church on Sunday was cancelled, so we went sledding. Here is Kaylin's first (and only) run.

She went down the hill with Grammy on a garbage can lid. She wasn't a fan of sledding or the snow. Here she is with Uncle Parker, obviously not enjoying the snow:

Here are Kaylin, Parker, Carly, and Eric:

Sunday evening we headed home. The hills weren't too bad, but our driveway was a joke. We nearly got stuck going from the street into our driveway. It took quite a few tries to get into the driveway. Then we got stuck in the driveway. Eric and I had to shovel our way out. Our neighbor came out to help which was really nice. He didn't have a shovel, so he took mine and I got to sit in the warm car with Kaylin. The reason our driveway was so bad was because of the wind. Parts of our driveway had no snow (just ice) and other parts had three feet! After we put Kaylin to bed Eric and I went back outside and shoveled part of the driveway so he hopefully won't have as much work to do in the morning. I'd prefer it if he stays at home, but they missed a day last week and Eric is set on getting to the office. We'll see how the snow is tomorrow.

Snow day II

Here's our house with our Christmas lights up and some snow on the ground. You can see our Christmas tree in the front window too.

Eric has been wanting to rearrange the furniture in the living room for a few weeks now. Here's what we did:

My two cuties:

We rearranged the family room too. I took a picture of the first time, but then Eric wanted to rearrange again, so I didn't post the picture. I'm not a fan of the current arrangement (another reason to not post a picture), so we'll see how long it lasts.

Snow day

Eric left for work this morning and was home half an hour later. There wasn't much snow near our house, but as he got to Newcastle it got bad. There were cars spun out everywhere. All his guys called or texted to say that they couldn't get to the office and his dad called to tell him to stay at home. So Eric turned around and came home. According to the news, the Newcastle and Bellevue areas were hit about the worst in the area today, and that's where Eric's office is. He was hoping to get into work later today, but it doesn't look like that will be happening. He's on the phone with his guys right now telling them that they don't need to try to get in later today. As of this morning schools here were just running late, but then they ended up cancelling around 8:30 am. I feel bad for the high school kids (and teachers!) who were already on there way or at school! I love having Eric at home, so I'm glad it's snowing so much. I'm not getting anything else done, but that's okay. Yea for snow and staying home!

SNOW!!!

It started to snow Saturday evening. Sunday morning we had to go and play in it as soon as we woke up. This is Kaylin's first "real" time in the snow. Last year she was crawling at this time, so we didn't take her out in it. Here we are dressed and ready to go:

Poor Kaylin could hardly move. She was wearing pj pants, baby legs, jeans, 2 pairs of socks, and sweatpants. Hopefully she was warm.

She wasn't too sure about the snow. Her mittens came off immediately, but she didn't like to get snow on her hands. She kept making me wipe it off.

She mostly stayed on the patio, or in the driveway in the front. She didn't like the deeper snow in the grass.

Apparently we were pretty much the only ones around here who had church yesterday. What's up with that? We slipped and slided our way to church and back. I played in Handel's Messiah yesterday night at the stake center. Most of the musicians were there (2 cellos couldn't make it) and all of the soloists were there. Not a lot of others came, but it was still great. Thanks Michelle and family for braving the cold and ice to come! I had a lot of fun and I'm planning on playing again next year. If you want to join me (Kim? Ken? Others?) let me know!

Christmas gift tags!

I hosted my 2nd annual Christmas gift tag exchange party last week. It was a huge success (if I do say so myself, and I do!) We had lots of fun eating, chatting, admiring people's tags, and playing fabulous party games (thanks for humoring me, ladies). Everyone's tags turned out so well. I always have a hard time putting the tags on presents because I don't want to give them away. For your viewing pleasure and holiday crafting inspiration, here are this year's tags:

Thanks again for coming ladies!

Clam Lights

A little over a week ago we went to the lighting of the Ivar's Clam Lights at Coulon park on Lake Washington. They had fun Christmas music playing and a boat parade after the lighting. Most of my pictures didn't turn out since it was dark outside. Here are the best ones:

Here are Ivar's dancing clams. I always remember the dancing clams commercials, so I thought this was funny. Their legs "moved", so it looked like they were running in place or something.

My laptop came last week! This is my first post using it. Yea! I love it already! Thank you Eric!

Vanilla Joy Giveaways

The last time that I posted about giveaways on Vanilla Joy, I won one. So, if you want to try to win one too head on over soon. Current giveaways include $25 to Shade Clothing and the Silhouette Digital Craft Cutter. Amazing stuff. And more giveaways are coming. Good luck! If you win the digital craft cutter, maybe I could borrow it once in awhile??? Thanks!

Gift tags

I finished my gift tags yesterday!


I got the idea for these tags from Kelsey (you have to scroll down a few posts to see her tags). Thank you Kelsey!

I thought my tags were pretty awesome, until I saw Kim's. I even tried to take a cool picture like she did. Unfortunately my two "cool" pictures came out blurry. Even the picture I took of one tag alone was blurry. So this is the one you get.

Thou shalt not envy

I can finally wear this lovely number all the time now. I even went shopping in it today. I know you're jealous.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

On Friday after Thanksgiving I put up my Christmas decorations! Just like when I put up my fall/Halloween/Thanksgiving decorations, I realized that I don't have very many. The good thing about that is that I got them down from the garage and put up during Kaylin's nap time. I had to wait a couple of days to decorate the tree, though.

Kaylin was excited when she came downstairs after her nap and saw the tree. She kept saying, "Tree! Tree!" She went over to the nativity and started woofing at it. I told her that there weren't any dogs in the nativity. So then she mooed. There aren't any cows in my nativity. So then she neighed. No horses either. Finally she realized there were sheep and she starting baaing. Apparently she was pretty confused by the donkeys and camels.

I am super excited to have a fireplace this year so I can hang our stockings from the mantle. I love our stockings. I made them myself. If you blow the picture up you can see that I cross-stitched our first initials on each stocking.


All of the grandkids on my mom's side of the family have a Christmas ornament theme. My theme is bears. Every year I would get a bear ornament from my parents and often I would get one from my grandparents too. My parents would often try to pick an ornament that related to something we did each year. For example, the year I went to Japan I got a bear on a paper crane. I love looking through my ornaments each Christmas. Here are all of my bears:

Our tree is decorated mostly with my bears. Kaylin's theme is angels, and she has a couple of ornaments of her own. Poor Eric just has some from work. I also put up small red and silver ball ornaments to fill in the gaps.


The tree looks a little crooked in the picture, but you can see that the window looks crooked too... don't worry Mom, my tree isn't crooked this year like it was last year :-). Also notice that the tree skirt matches our stockings. Love it!

TWILIGHT!!!

I saw Twilight this weekend. I didn't go with all the crazy people to the 12:01 am showing on Thursday night/Friday morning (sorry to my friends that did :-)). But I did go opening weekend. This is NOT like me at all. I rarely go to movies. The last movie we saw in the theater was with a gift card that we won at Eric's work's luau in 2007. Pretty much every movie we've seen in the theater has been courtesy of a gift card. What can I say, we're both cheap. But I HAD to see Twilight. And I loved it. Sure, the acting could have been better, the hair and makeup needed some work, and the script and editing weren't what they could have been. But overall, I was thrilled. I loved seeing the people and story that I love come to life. At the end of the 2 hours I was not ready to leave. I could have stayed for another hour or two and not have realized how long I'd been there. I wish the rest of the books were coming out as movies sooner. Oh well. At least I can be sure that there will be a sequel.

Yea Twilight!

Kaylin's Fashion Corner

This installment of Kaylin's Fashion Corner is brought to you by Eric (aka the best husband in the world).

Eric stayed home from work on Wednesday to help me with Kaylin since I could barely walk. I really needed to go to JoAnn's (the fabric was on sale plus I had an extra 10% off everything coupon... it was an emergency!) Eric got Kaylin dressed so we could go. When I asked about her lovely outfit, Eric kindly explained WHY it matched. In case you are also wondering why it matched, I will explain. You see, her too small capris are green. The baby legs have green in them. The baby legs and too small shirt are both striped. There is pink in both the baby legs and shirt and her hair clip also has pink in it (who cares that they are all different shades). That is why it matches. And yes, I let her go to the store in this outfit. I put a coat on her and hoped that people would think she dressed herself. I also made sure to stay away from Eric and Kaylin while in JoAnn's ;-).

Pictures are fixed

I think my internet is FINALLY working normally. I re-uploaded my hurt foot pictures. You should be able to see them now :-).

12 Days of Junkie

Alright all of my crafty (and not-so-crafty) friends, do I have some giveaways for you! Tip Junkie is hosting a 12 Days of Junkie Giveaway (aka Mom-preneur Shop-a-thon Giveaway). She will be giving away 2 prizes a day for 12 days! Good luck to all (especially me)!!

Mathematical PROOF that housecleaning is bad for your health

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Yup folks. It's true. I just proved it myself, and I majored in this stuff and taught proofs for four years. I should know.

Here's the story. On Saturday morning I was carrying the vacuum down the stairs and somehow tripped. The toes of my right foot bent underneath my foot as they bumped down over 4 or 5 steps. It made quite the commotion because the vacuum came apart and multiple pieces of it were also crashing down the stairs. I started yelling for Eric, who was still in bed (Saturday is his day to sleep in, Sunday is mine). I heard all sorts of crashing as he came running to my rescue, poor guy probably thought I was dead. I started yelling, "I'm okay, I'm okay!" so hopefully he wouldn't hurt himself while trying to get to me.

It started to swell immediately and it took a long time for the pain to subside. But once it did, as long as I had my foot up it felt alright. Eric took me to the doctor on Monday (it's my right foot, so I couldn't drive myself). They took x-rays and thankfully found that nothing was broken. I guess it's just a really bad bruise. I have my MIL's walking boot, leftover from the foot surgery she had this summer, which has been a lifesaver. When I do have to walk somewhere the boot allows me to do it. The doctor gave me a lovely shoe, I'll take a picture later, that I am supposed to wear as soon as I don't need the boot. He said it will probably be about a week. Once I'm in the shoe I should hopefully be able to drive. For now I'm just supposed to keep my foot up as much as possible, which isn't too hard to do since it hurts when it's not up.

Kaylin is NOT happy about this.

That was her this morning. Poor thing.

THANK YOU to my wonderful friends Kristina and Krista who are bringing me dinner, coming over to play with Kaylin, and driving me to play group. And thank you to my in-laws who have fed us and entertained Kaylin. I appreciate you guys so much more than you know. I feel so blessed to have you guys in my life! Here's to hoping I'll be able to drive and walk normally again soon!!!!

My little helper

This Saturday the stars aligned and we did some yard work. This is a rare event because three things have to happen: a) we have to be home on a Saturday, b) it can't be raining, c) it can't be too cold. Kaylin was such a good helper. She carried Eric's bucket of weeds around for him and brought it to him when he asked for it.

The Greens came over to watch the Texas/Texas Tech game and Kaylin tried to help Brandon with his computer. She's such a good little helper (when she wants to be).