Flashback Friday

I was going through pictures last night and I found this one of Jeff when he was a boy. I absolutely couldn't resist putting it up for this weeks Flashback Friday. He might kill me for it when he gets home and sees it.
Kaylee's Reaction after first seeing the picture: "Who is THAT?"
My reply: "That's your dad"
Kaylee: "No way! That's not MY dad!!!" , "That's not dad, I can tell you that!" "That is SOOOOO not dad!!!

I Love Faces-Anything Goes

I wanted to submit a couple pictures for the "I Love Faces" photography contest.



This picture is fun to me because you see the sheer delight in his whole posture. He is so excited about his little sucker treat. That innocent delight only comes during childhood. Too soon it will vanish away and be replaced with, "Is this it?" (I hope not)



This is my entry for the Adult section.

This is Jeff's grandma who just happens to be 99 years old.

She is still bright and kind, laughs easily and cares about all those around her. This, to me, is true beauty--to be able to look at your reflection, each wrinkle, each mark and know that each one represents moments of shared laughter, hard work, service to others and modeling your life, the very best you can, after the image of the Saviour.

If you would like to check out other contest entries, feel free to visit their website at www.iheartfaces.com

Happy Birthday, Kaylee

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Flashback Friday--In honor of my own Birthday

Since my birthday is coming up soon, I figured that I would dedicate flashback friday to--myself!

Can you believe that I was just turning 15 in this picture?

These were two of my very best friends growing up: Amy Pistorius and Docena Roundy.

I Loved Them! (and still do)

We had SO many fun times together. A big part of who I am comes, in large part, from them.

So, I guess, in fact, I dedicate flashback friday to THEM--and to ALL KINDRED SPIRITS wherever you might find them!

New Beginnings

Every morning I wake up grateful for a "New Beginning". I love that each morning is fresh without any mistakes in it yet. I haven't yelled at my children yet. I haven't been impatient with my husband yet. I havent' kicked the dog yet. What a glorious feeling. I lay in bed and relish those thoughts. No matter what happened the day before I always know that today is good and so far--perfect. I can't wait to be the perfect mom--to read oodles of books to them, to teach Drew to read, to help them with piano, to get them out the door and to school on time and without any fights. I can't wait to cook dinner and have those quirky dinner conversations--you know the ones about "why DID the chicken cross the road" and "what IS at the end of the rainbow". I can't wait to shoot Jeff in the bum with a nerf dart and instigate a full-fledged family war.

................What a Beautiful Morning! Such promise! It's going to be a GREAT day!


Then all of a sudden...all hell breaks lose!

...Drew is in the pantry stealing food AGAIN!
...K is yelling at A for wearing her headband
...A can't find her shoes and is crying about it
...The dog stole the toast off the table
...J has to have his clothes ironed
...lunches have to be made
...I can't find my keys to take kids to school


and maybe, just maybe I think to myself, "Oh, X#!* here we go again."


There's always tomorrow morning!

Powder From the Gods

We have gotten SO much snow in the past couple weeks. It's a little crazy up here right now. I'm a fan of snow though so I'm not going crazy with it just yet although when I couldn't make it up my driveway in my 4-wheel drive truck I had to question my enthusiasm for it. I have captured some fun pictures of the snow though. I thought I would post some of them--just for those of you who are craving some powder from the Gods.

There is a Truck under there somewhere

There is always something special about seeing the sun shine after weeks of grey overcast skies. When that sun catches the snow on the trees and makes them sparkle like diamonds it is even more beautiful.

I took this one from inside my house through the open window. This was one behemoth of an icicle.

Somewhere under all of this snow are some stairs leading up through the arbor.



Kaylee's first "opportunity" to shovel the sidewalks. (Ahhh! My little girl is growing up)

I was sitting on the couch with Andrew, holding him, "like a baby" when he looked up and saw the moon. "look at that moon, mom" he said. I looked and it WAS really a beautiful moon. I just had to try a couple pictures of it.

And of course things like this............. are what happen when you have 3 feet of snow on the ground and freezing temperatures.

Dogs are turned into "UnderDog"

Princes and Princesses are saved by evil Ogres

And massive forts are built right in the middle of the house where everyone MUST pass through 50 times every day.

Ahhhh! These are good Days....Never to be Forgotten!

Christmas in Seattle

Merry Christmas Everyone! I hope you all had a great time spent with family, friends, and filled with lot's of laughs and LOT'S of Food! We were supposed to leave Wednesday morning to go to Seattle but the weather was getting ugly and so Tuesday about 11 Jeff called home from work and said, "Do you think you can get packed up and ready to leave by 1?" Of course that wasn't at all possible but I said "Sure! I'll do my best." So I started throwing clothes into bags, frantically trying to finish the last minute homemade gifts that still weren't quite done and rounding up the presents that we were going to take with us. By 3 we were ready to go. The house was a disaster!!! We left dirty dishes, paint on the floor, clothes everywhere, Jeff's half-eaten birthday cake on the counter, laundry in the WASHER and quite a few of the presents that I had still stashed in their hiding places. BUT---At least we made it out the door. The roads were pretty good and travel was fairly easy. If we had waited until the next day as planned, it would have gotten pretty ugly--Dan and Amanda can attest to that!

Santa was pretty good to all--Everyone seemed to be happy with the offerings from the elves.

We topped off a great morning of stockings and gifts with a fabulous breakfast (Jeff always says that Bonnie is like an Italian mama--you know, the ones who keep ladeling food onto your plate until you either pass out or explode.)

After breakfast, everyone geared up in their snow clothes for some fun in the snow.

Andrew loved the lightsaber that Santa left for him. He kept building little snowmen all over the yard and then he'd "Saber" them down.

Dan and Kaylee built a snowman in the driveway so that they could drive through it with the Jeep. We named him "Desperaux".

This is the snowman that Addy and I built. We named her "Betty".

We Video'd Dan crashing through Desperaux but the file is too big to share here. Suffice it to say that this...

... is ALL that was left of poor Desperaux!

On Friday we took the kids to downtown Seattle. It was raining and pretty darn chilly so we weren't too adventurous. We did hit Pike Place Market. We had fun watching them throw the fish and checked out all of the booths.

All was well until we walked past a fruit stand and Andrew knocked one Apricot onto the floor. I, being the good citizen that I am, handed it to the sales guy thinking that he could wash it off and all would be well. The jerk, I mean sales guy, told me that I was going to have to buy it because it would be bruised now and they wouldn't be able to sell it. I was taken aback and all I could say was, "are you kidding me?" I thought he was joking at first. Was he really going to make me pay for it? Yep, he was totally serious. I bantered back and forth with him a bit and things got kind of testy. I hate to admit it, but I was REALLY mad--over 1 stupid 50 cent apricot. I never swore but I did raise my voice so that all of the people standing around (and there were a lot of them) could know exactly what I thought of this particularly evil fruit stand. He, the jerk, threatened to call security--imagine being sent to jail for a 3 year old dropping 1 apricot. I finally dug into my purse and practically threw the 50 cents at him and stomped off ---with one last parting shot of, "nice customer service!!!". I walked down the aisle to where everyone was waiting for me and Jeff asked me, "where is the apricot?" I had been so mad that I hadn't even taken it with me. So I said, "screw that, I'm going back there to get my stinkin' apricot--they're not goint to keep it." So I went back and said, "Where is my apricot, I want it" and guess where they had put it------yep, right back on the pile of apricots for sale-----"bruised" my arse. What a joke! I guess I will never know what possessed him to throw such a fit over one piece of harmless fruit. (Who knows, I may never know why I threw such a fit over the same fruit!) I think my sense of customer service just said that it was totally wrong to force me to pay for something that was a.) not my fault b.) not damaged in the least and c.) so inconsequential in the big scheme of things. Oh well, I had to add a picture of the offensive little man and complain about him at the very least.

This little episode might have ruined the outing but I couldn't help but shake my head and laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. We just moved on and enjoyed the Italian market, handmade popsicle stick puppets and the fresh mini doughnuts.

Andrew had fun kissing the hog--before I put the kabash on that germ filled activity.

We did not however enjoy ripping our hubcap off on the way out of the parking garage. We could have done without that. Thank goodness for Ebay! replacement cost dropped from $100 to $25.

We left to head home on Saturday morning. We stopped in North Bend to hit the outlet stores there and dawdled our way home. We finally made it to our house about 7:30. Of course it had snowed about a foot more since we'd been gone and so we had to borrow our neighbors shovels in order to dig our way up to the doors. The snow was pretty wet, evidently it had rained earlier as well and the snow was HEAVY so it took us about another hour just to make it up to the doors.

These icicles had started before we left but when we got home they were MONSTROUS! This picture was actually taken the day after we had gotten home and it had been raining hard for quite a while and so they had already melted a bunch. I should have taken them the night before when they were just about touching the ground and as thick around as stumps. I hope the gutter doesn't fall off.

I can't wait to see what the new year will bring. I'm looking forward to some great new years resolutions. What are you going to be doing in 2009?