Where am I, the North Pole??

Ted believes that ANY weather is good barbequeing weather. Yummy, snowy steaks, my favorite!




Here is blast #2 of Winter 2008 in the Northwest! It snowed all day and by the end, we had 2 feet total.



Better view from the porch of the accumulation.




Here is the kid's picnic table buried under a thick layer. Who wants to eat outside today!!



Here is my birdhouse that is usually in the shape of a cat with it's mouth wide open. Now it's just a mouth!





The news is saying that #3 blast is suppose to be coming on Saturday. In our area we are suppose to get another 10 inches plus with 90 mile an hour winds.
Wish us luck!

Where's my one horse open sleigh when I need it?

Winter has finally hit the Pacific Northwest! We had our first snowfall Saturday and up in our neck of the woods we got around 3 inches. It snowed off and on all day but finally around 8pm it really started snowing and didn't let up for a couple more inches. How exciting!

CJ the pudding brain didn't know what to think about the snow at first. He ran around the backyard with his mouth open eating the snow as he ran. Unfortunately his girlfriend, Allie the beagle from across the neighborhood came over to visit and they ran off together into the sunset. This little trick that he pulls would be the reason for the name of our blog. CJ has not quite figured out that when he is trusted to go outside and go potty that that is ALL he is suppose to do, not run the neighborhood with all the other "gang" dogs! Once I found him and brought him home, this is where he got to spend the day. Notice how he is trying to work me with his cute, "sorry" look?



This is what we woke up to this morning, Sunday. It's not a ton of snow but it was enough for the kids to start fresh with a freshly snowed yard to sled down and the driveway was full of good sledding snow.



View from the backporch of the kids sledding down the little hill in the back of the property.



The dragging of the sled, an Olympic event at our house in the winter.

Cole coming in to complain about being too hot. I will admit that he was dressed like the little brother from the movie "A Christmas Story".

We are suppose to get more snow this week and it is suppose to get COOOOOLLLLDDD!! I am not an outside girl, I am definitely an inside girl when it comes to cold weather so my plan is to just dress them warmly this week and let them enjoy the snow for me! Can somebody please turn up the heat for me?

Let's get this tree decorated already!!!

Finally, Sunday has arrived and the house is all decorated! Ted spent the day outside putting the lights on and I spent the day inside putting all the decorations up. It was finally time to bring in the tree! Apparently if you put on footed pajamas covered in robots and Hannah Montana tweener pj's on, you can decorate much better.



Once it was decorated and all the empty boxes are put away, I turned the lights off and just sat and looked at it. Isn't it wonderful how a little bit of garland, a little bit of lights and a big beautiful tree can change your whole perspective on a completely exhausting day?

Here is my front room off of the entryway and the stairs leading up.



Our tree in all it's beauty. Also, that is my grandmother's nativity scene that she made sitting on the glass coffee table. It is my favorite thing to unpack each year, I miss my Grandma Racoon.



This next picture is of my entryway. You can't really tell since the picture is so dark but it looks so cute and simple with that little flickering candle light that I have on the antique side table. That is also where we have Ted's dad's grandfather clock that he made and we inherited. It's another one of my favorite pieces of furniture that we have.



Here is another look from my front door into the house. On the right is Ted's grandmother's old radio that we were given, another favorite piece. I always make sure to decorate it nice since it is one of the first things that you see when you enter our home.



Another view because I don't know how to delete a picture once it is put on here. Tee Hee!

Here is our curio that is at the base of our stairs filled with all of my glass and pottery treasures. Most of them were my Grandma Racoon's things and the rest are things that I have found at different antique stores and just couldn't live without.

Here is a closer look of the antique radio and some of the goodies I put on top of it. Yummy, candy canes!!!

Phew, we just barely made it!

Apparently last Saturday was the last day that St. Nicks Tree Farm was open and we just barely made it! Wow, I have never heard of a tree farm closing so early but I guess they had such a successful season that they needed to close. There were still quite a few nice trees left so we got lucky but they weren't the ones that we usually get.

Here are the kids and Ted checking out our final pick. Have to check all sides to make sure there is at least one good side! It had 3 out of 4, that one goes against the wall!



Ted taking his annual place under our Christmas pick and starting the sawing. I think the kids THINK they are helping, Ted would probably not agree.





Once done with the hard work, now comes the easy stuff. The stuff I'm good at....POSING! Hey, it was hard work making the final decision on the tree and carrying the camera the whole time!





Next post, decorating the beast!

Hey look, we got a recent family picture!

Just wanted to add this real quick while I was able to use Ted's computer! This picture was taken at our friends wedding this past weekend. Yay, finally a decent family picture! Yes, I am laughing about something right when they took it but look how good it is of everyone else! Ha!

Computers, AAAUUURRGH!

Well, my home computer/best friend has decided to come down with a big 'ol case of "Trojans". That's not good. I miss her so much....

I'm not sure when she will be coming back to me but until then I will try and sneak onto Ted's work computer when I can.

FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!!!!

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth....

Once again, looks like the Tooth Fairy will be stopping by our house tonight! Cole's other front tooth went AWOL after he got home from school today. It was super wiggly so we did the dental floss trick again and the outcome was the same. A high pitched scream and then *POP*!



Here is the toothless wonder with his newest cash cow!

A little fluff and turkey day minus the TURKEY!

Big news, the tooth fairy came to our house on Thanksgiving! Cole William lost his top front tooth after battling with it all day. Dad tied a piece of dental floss around it and then it got stuck. He thought he would be funny and come over and hit me with the floss while I was on the phone with my parents. I got the last laugh because I grabbed the dental floss and when he jumped backwards to get away from me, POP, out it came! Apparently the top front teeth are worth a lot, he woke up to a nice letter from Mrs. Tooth Fairy and $2.50 to bank!


Here are Cole and my nephew Cade. Cole is exactly one month to the day older than Cade but you wouldn't know it by size. My sister and Cade came over the other night so that I could, as she put it, "wax her 'stache and do her nails". Apparently I have started my own beauty shop, anyone want to make an appointment?


Here are the two lovely ladies that we spent our Thanksgiving with . Meet Great Grandma Lura and Ted's mom Elaine, aka. Grammy E. They drove up from Olympia to spend the day and night with us at our home. We had lots of good food but no turkey. We replaced it with a delicious black forest ham.


Camille and Ted patiently posing for camera happy Mom!


What Thanksgiving would be complete without the appearance of "Olive Fingers"?



Ugh, the day after picture taken by Cole. I think I finally pulled myself out of bed around 11:30am. I am only awake about 5 minutes here and I have a camera flashing in my face and a daughter that won't stop smelling my hair and telling me how great it smells. I should have just turned right around and gone back to bed!


Here is an update picture on Camille and her chicken pox. Miss Picky Pickerton was unable to keep her dirty little fingers off of them and still picked like crazy but they are finally starting to heal up and look better. She can return to school on Monday after being off for 2 weeks.


I hope you all had a terrific Thanksgiving, we sure did. Now onto the next holiday.....CHRISTMAS!! Let the decorating begin!

We Wish You A Merry Christmas!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Las Vegas BABY!!!

Well, we are off! It's 8:30pm on Sunday night and Ted and I are needing to be up in a matter of hours to head out for Las Vegas!



We will be staying at Bally's with my parents who have never been to Vegas before. We love Bally's because it is right downtown and because it is a smaller hotel compared to some of the other hotels.



The really nice thing about Bally's is that it is right across the street from this spectacular hotel. The light and water show that they put on all day and through the night is spectacular.

Wish us luck and let's hope that we actually come home with a little cash left over.

Vegas or Bust!

Chickenpox and Calamine Lotion

This is what my beautiful daughter looked like yesterday. After waking up with spots all over her neck and face it was pretty obvious that Camille had chickenpox! I called her school and the front desk secretary said that it was the 3rd case that WEEK! I scanned my brain trying to remember if I had asked for her and Cole to get the Chickenpox vaccine but then remembered that I had passed on it because I was hoping that they would get it as children instead of taking a chance on them getting it as an adult.

So now my sweet girl has woken up this morning and the pox have more than doubled on her poor little body. Dad is going downtown to get some oatmeal so that she can take a nice soothing oatmeal bath and and then once again we will cover her in Calamine lotion.

One more thing, Ted and I are leaving on Monday morning at 5am for Las Vegas for 4 days and we have to leave my mother in law with this itchy, scratchy, scabby kid. The nice thing is, she is probably the best person to have here at this time because she is calm, mellow, and will keep Camille happy and dealing with other things instead of thinking about how itchy she is. Thank goodness for Grammy Elaine!

Blog of Randomness......

This has been a fun weekend and we are only one day into it so far.

Friday night we dropped Camille off at her friend's house for a slumber party where she managed to stay up until 4:30am giggling with her friends. After we dropped her off, Ted and Cole took me out on what we called a "date" and Cole got to pick the restaurant. He of course chose Red Robin and then informed us that we would be going to the movie Madagascar 2 afterwards. What a nice date huh? Too bad he didn't have any money to fund his big adventure. Dad came to the rescue and we got to do dinner and a movie. Afterwards he chose to go home and play cards with Mom and Dad but first him and I had to get into our footed pajamas! It's so much fun to treat him to a night of "single kid" stuff.




I forgot to post this the other night but when Camille got out of the shower before bed, we rolled her hair up in curlers for the first time and let her sleep in them. She thought she was soo cool in her rollers and doo rag! She woke up at 3am because one of them had fallen out and guess who got to put it back in for her so that she wouldn't have a straight piece in the morning? I wish I would have taken a picture of her the next morning, it turned out GORGEOUS! I could only dream of having such pretty hair.



Cole told me Friday night, "I'm sick of training wheels! I want them off and I'm going to learn to ride without them....TOMORROW!" So, this morning, Ted and Cole took his training wheels off and in the rain Cole took his first try at riding a two wheeler. I guess he fell a couple of times in the gravel, and then in the grass, even Ted fell but atleast Cole kept trying. He had me come out a little bit later once the rain had stopped to watch him. I am so proud of that guy, he was really working hard to do it. Way to go Cole!



Here's what happens when you let a 40 year old near a little kid's bike and he doesn't think anyone is looking!



That's all my randomness for now, hope anyone who is reading this is having a great weekend.

Looking back...

Today I am a bit melancholy. The reason I think is because last night while getting in on a free 8x10 deal from Walgreens I had to chose a picture from my 14,000 I have on my computer to have blown up into an 8x10. As I looked through all of my pictures I came upon this one that I have loved from the day that I took it way back when.

This picture was taken when we had just built and moved into our new home. We hadn't put the yard in yet but were working on clearing the dirt of all the huge rocks/boulders so that we could install the new grass. Cole was only about 2 in this picture and Camille was 6, such a sweet age. They had been out early one morning "helping" Dad.

Something about this picture last night set me into tears that I didn't even know where they came from when it happened. True, it was about 1am and I was probably tired but the emotions that came up were overwhelming.

How could so much time have passed? Where did it go? Look at his sweet face, his ruffled little boy hair, the rubber boots. My baby is 6 now and my gorgeous girl will be in middle school next year.

Great, now I'm getting weepy again! I had this feeling last night like maybe I had somehow let them down as a mom. Was I good enough for them? Could I have done more in those years when they were so little? I should have been taking them to parks more, letting them play outside in the rain and not cared how wet or muddy they had gotten. Did I show them enough love and attention?

Because of my panic disorder I have had to be on multiple medications and many of them were not right for me at the time. I feel a bit robbed of time spent with them and being the best mom I could have been. It really hit last night because it seemed that when I looked at his face, I almost couldn't remember that time but I know I was there. I just wasn't mentally there as much as I wish I could have been.

I am now on a great medication and even though I still have bad days and mild attacks, I am better able to handle them. I am living more in the moment and able to appreciate what gifts these two small people are.

Has anyone else ever sat back and looked at their lives like this? Really wondered if you were just going through the motions and then regretting that you didn't slow down and appreciate them when they were happening? I have and I am sad.

I know I am a good mom and that my kids love me. I really do my best but I think that sometimes you just have to kick it up a bit and REALLY see what is going on and realize that maybe it's not all you can do. There is more of me to give to these kids and I am going to appreciate every moment with them because I am never going to have these moments again.

I only wish I would have had this revelation a few years ago...

New Day

Let's hope, pray, and believe that today is a new beginning.
Pray for change!
Go USA!

Dinner a la candle light!

Sometimes, just for the heck of it, our family will get out the candles, grab some fancy wine glasses and have dinner by candle light for no good reason at all.

It makes us feel special. Like we are in a fancy restaurant or something. Try it sometime, the kids love it and it's nice for us moms and dads too since we don't get to have candle lit dinners very often. Spicy!!

Here are Camille and Cole right before we dished up.
On the menu, spaghetti, texas toast, pears and milk served in a crystal wine goblet.

Picture taken by Camille of her little brother eating before he was supposed to. Ah ha, caught in the act!


Here is my point of view from my seat at the table.

Another picture by Camille of Cole and the Chef!

Another great night at the House house.