Making do in blah weather

It pretty much rained all weekend. Here's how we made do...

Ran to the video store Friday afternoon to pick out a movie to watch with the family that night.

Came out of the store with not one, but five movies.

Sent husband a text to give him the heads-up that I lost all self-control in Blockbuster.

Smiled when he replied with an "Awesome, good job, babe!" (Someone's a fan of the movie-watching.)

Enjoyed ourselves a three-movie marathon Friday night.

Left hubby and the boys home Saturday morning and took daughter on a girls-only outing to the nail salon. Fresh pedicure for me, first professional manicure for her. (Kendall also charmed salon owner into giving her two new bottles of polish. I don't know how she does it.)

Went to freshman niece's district volleyball tournament and watched some excellent games, rushed the court when niece's team won two matches - making it to the state playoffs, then beamed with pride when she made the all-tournament team. AS A FRESHMAN.

Watched fourth movie that night at brother and sister-in-law's.

Arrived half an hour early to church Sunday morning to take our first turn as official door greeters.

Received an INORDINATE amount of teasing for actually being at church on time.

Indulged in Chinese takeout for lunch then watched fifth and final movie before crashing for a solid two hour nap because, all the work we accomplished this weekend! Phew!

To sum it up: I didn't mind the rain one bit.

A little Insta-Friday

I say little because I was not so good with the remembering to use my camera phone this week.

Enjoyed a day at Bauman Farms Tuesday with my Mom, sister, some friends and our large passel of kids. Large enough to get the group discount. Sweetness!

Speaking of sweet, I got to spend a whole afternoon with my lovely friend Sairaina, who is celebrating a birthday this weekend. IN VEGAS. WHERE SHE'LL BE GOING TO AMAZING SHOWS. I will not be jealous, I will not be jealous...

It's been a baking week. New Zealand Afghan cookies. My favorite. NOT my family's favorite. Which is why I baked them. Mwahaha...yuuuummm.

Last night I appeased them by making sugar cookies instead. Notice the pink sprinkles and plain white icing on my pumpkin shaped cookies. I'm pretty sure I'd make Martha Stuart sad.

Everybody needs a cuddly, soft and NON-shedding puppy in their life. What did we do before early morning snuggles with Miley? Or as Blake likes to call her "Miley Snoofer" (his interpretation of Schnoodle, which he thinks is her last name. Pretty cute.)

Happy Friday, folks!

No art reproductions sold here

The new American Girl doll catalog arrived last week, and just like that Kendall's love for all things AG was rekindled. By bedtime she'd fallen so in love with the doll of the year, Kanani, that she'd vowed to save enough money to buy her before she was no longer available starting 1/1/12.

That's not very far away. And girlfriend's broke. So I lightly laughed in a "oh, you're cute honey" kind of way and then wished her well on her venture, being the super supportive Mom that I am.

Kanani hasn't left Kendall's mind though... she has been asking relatives for work, offering to do odd jobs left and right, and yesterday came home with a list of money-making ideas that she worked on with some friends at school (Kanani is suddenly quite popular in the 5th grade.)

I find the list EXCEPTIONALLY adorable.

While we're working on idea #1, 4, 6 (with Mom's help), and 8, I'm not sure about #2, as the weather has been in the balmy mid-30's every morning and besides that, we live out in the country where not a person walks by.

And idea #5 sounds like a lot of work. Especially since we don't own a single puppet.

But idea #3? Hands-down favorite. Sell original artwork? Brilliant :)

And for #7, while I have no problem with it, I just want to make sure people know what they're getting into...

Makeup by Kendall

You've been warned.

Late night Monday confessional

If you aren't facebook friends with me you may not know that I was featured on a blog today.

(If you are facebook friends with me you couldn't have missed the news because I flaunted it shamelessly. It was a pretty exciting moment for me.)

I actually found out last night this was going to happen when Hayley from Tiny Twig emailed to ask my permission to use my pictures. (Isn't that lovely and respectful?) She told me how she found my blog and explained what she was doing, and mentioned that she'd read my "about me" page and had a son named Cooper too, and that hers was three.

I replied back as quickly as possible, basically answering, "HECK, YES" to using my pictures, and then to end my letter on a friendly note said that we loved the name Cooper and that ours was three too, and highly energetic. I then sent my reply off and went to bed in a lovely daze, because as little of a deal as it may seem to some, I was completely tickled pink about it.

Unfortunately when I woke up this morning and re-read my email reply, it was only five kinds of embarrassment I felt. You see, you may or may not know this, but my son Cooper is EIGHT YEARS OLD. I do have an energetic three year old, but his name is BLAKE. Which is nothing like Cooper at all.

Apparently when I get a little excited I forget who my own children are. Niiiiice.

Which leads to my awkward moment of the day: emailing a second reply to explain my mistake... as if a stranger visiting my blog one single time might have noticed and wondered about that!

Good grief.

It's only a small obsession

I refer to my love of mustard yellow clothing and accessories. I'm gaining quite the collection.

This weekend I added a coat.

Here's how it happened...

After a fun Saturday watching my husband play in a 4-on-4 volleyball fundraiser tournament, and not just play but WIN the championship (which was a good thing as the team they beat were all 16-year-olds or younger!), we went out on a date night.

The champs: Tricia, Erik, Linda, and Russ

The plan was to head to The Cheesecake Factory and a movie, using gift certificates we received for our birthdays, therefore spending nothing except the cost of the sitter. But after not paying attention and heading the wrong direction on the freeway Russ decided he didn't want to turn around and announced that The Olive Garden it was going to be.

I gave him a high-five. I'm ALL about The Olive Garden. (And saving our certificate for another date night.)

We had time to kill before being seated so wandered over to Nordstrom Rack and somehow ended up buying Russ two pairs of much-needed dress shoes for work and his upcoming basketball season. This is the point of the story where I'd like you all to know that I AM NOT THE ONLY SPONTANEOUS SHOPPER IN THE FAMILY! I had no objections of course, it didn't matter that we weren't shopping for me, we were shopping together and I was in heaven.

After dinner we headed to the mall where we had more time to waste before our movie. We visited my cousin Linley working at Macy's, picked up a Cinnabon treat for me and a Jamba Juice for Russ, and sat down in comfy easy-chairs overlooking the main pavilion of the mall and made of fun of people's crazy outfits people-watched. It was highly entertaining.

Enjoying each other and people-watching at the mall

I also happened to spot Forever 21 across the way and, always the opportunist, talked Russ into wandering over for a quick looksie-loo to see if there was anything super-cheap I could pick up for fun (seeing as that we did just buy him two new pairs of leather shoes). Well I found several fabulous items that would certainly qualify as fun, but none of them were super-cheap (I'm talking $12.00 or under here) so I was about to leave empty-handed when I spotted the coat, practically RAN towards it, and announced that I was buying it and that was that, because I'd had a picture of my dream coat saved on my computer for two years now and this was basically it. For $30.00.

(Here's the back. Cute no?)

via Forever 21

Russ didn't have much to say against that argument and we happily left the store hand-in-hand and headed to the theater to watch Real Steel, which turned out to be better than I was hoping for (I wasn't hoping for much, honestly.)

And that's how I bought my mustard-colored coat. Another great date night in the bag, even though it went nothing like planned. Pretty much our M.O.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

InstaFriday - making my heart happy

Some of the things making my heart happy this week (as captured by my cell phone camera)...

- Steel cut oats. Nice and chewy. (With a little sweetened condensed milk of course.)

- These Costco muffins (Pumpkin Streusel). I cut them in half then wrap and freeze them. Great for breakfast, a snack, and school and work lunches.

- Dry skied fall days. They are a blessing in rainy Oregon.

- A new floral scarf. Now that I've seen this ADORABLE tutorial video, I have to get practicing!

- A cute peasant top. $12.99 at Burlington. That worked into the grocery budget quite nicely! (So did the scarf. I swear that's it though!)

- My prayer journal. I'm all about the pink.

- A drawer full of Scentsy bars. Ready to fill my warmer and make my house smell delicious.

- A potty-trained puppy. It's the little things that make life easier.

- Paint on the walls and pretty looking tile. More importantly... an almost finished master suite!

- Fun weekend plans!


Today I'm linking up with Jeannett of Life Rearranged for InstaFriday - where you share cell phone pics from your week. Happy weekend, everyone!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Awkward:
- My brother-in-law calling at 6:00 pm to give us the heads up that he's coming over to pick something up... making it clear that the notice is to ensure Russ and I have all our clothes on. Ha ha Erik. That only ever happened THAT ONE TIME!
- Trying to nonchalantly tell my husband about the new boots I recently purchased quite spontaneously. "Honey, I have a little confession to make..." I begin. He interrupts, "How much money did you spend?". Well when you put it that way no answer is going to sound very good!
- The neighbor that lives across the fence bringing our runaway dog back home (she's still little enough to squeeze through the farm fencing, and they have cats. Enough said.), and telling me off like I'm trying to get her killed. Similar to a trip to the principal's office... I was both humiliated and guilt-ridden.
- Attempting to delicately probe my growing daughter with questions as to whether anyone is making fun of the hair on her legs and if it bothers her... and her response, "Noooo. Why, Mom, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THEM?!!" I need a manual please. Obviously I don't know what the heck I'm doing.

Awesome:
- Kendall making Reese's peanut butter bars from scratch. All on her own. I just tried one for breakfast... they're delicious.
- The fact that Kendall got her recipe from her dentist. Who says dentists these days have to steer their patients away from any and all sugar?
- Introducing my kids to The Cosby Show on Netflix. All 8 seasons! We spent the first night watching the different dancing intros from each season and now Kendall and Cooper have fallen in love with the Huxtable children and can't get enough of them. And who could blame them?

- Raising boys. Last night Cooper asked if he could make a mound of fake mucus, showing me a recipe in a kid's science book. As this came right after Kendall asked to make a chocolate dessert, I just had to laugh. (And thankfully we were short two ingredients so I could say no!)
- Enjoying a little sweetened condensed milk on top of my breakfast cereal. A trick I learned from my mother. Haven't tried it? You're missing out!

Happy Thursday!

The Scrap recap

Fall 2011 Scrap Around the Clock

I'm finally recovered from the weekend and it's a good thing too, I'm watching my two nephews today and between them, Blake, and the dog I've had my hands full. (To give you a clue of how full: I started this post 3 hours ago.)

It was a good weekend. Old and new friends, fun chick flicks, delicious food, 15 minute massages, white mochas, and lots and lots of scrapbooking! Scrap Around the Clock was another great success and even though I only slept for 4 hours Friday night, it was enough of a rest to last me through the end of Saturday. Which is a good thing since Sunday was dubbed "paint the house addition" day and my day of rest turned into a day of driving half an hour to Home Depot - twice - for paint and supplies and then helping paint in between doing laundry (yes, still) and feeding everyone. Productive? Yes. Relaxing? Not at all.

But that's okay. I got to have my fun on Friday and Saturday and the lack of sleep was totally worth it.

And look who joined us this year!

Our mother! Mum, the most avid NON-scrapper you've ever met, decided that working on an online album of her trip to Hawaii might actually be kinda-sorta-maybe fun and ended up staying awake almost the whole 24 hours! She readily admitted that the weekend was very different from what she'd always pictured and a total blast. (We told you, Mum! ;)

Even though I was busy being a hostess and also got sucked into the movies big time (hello, Soul Surfer and Flipped - my faves from the weekend), I was able to be a bit productive myself, completing 7 pages. Nothing compared to the 25-35 pages some ladies made, but enough to make me feel like I got something accomplished.

Which I can not say about my day so far today... unless keeping 3 boys ages three and under happy and out of trouble counts, in which case I've done an outstanding job!

Monday confessional: forgetting to pray

A week ago Sunday Kendall lost her glasses while getting ready for church. Not just the "set down and momentarily misplaced" kind of lost, but full-on lost, as in, a week went by and numerous thorough searches left us empty-handed.

Every day that went by I grew more and more frustrated that Kendall couldn't find them, because she really needs them to see well, yet every day I forgot to simply pray and ask the Lord to help her find them.

That's embarrassing to admit because I lose things all the time, and usually pray immediately for help finding them, and then do. Like, ALWAYS. Yet my daughter loses something and instead of praying like I would for myself, I get upset with her... for a whole week! 

But here's why the Lord is super-awesome cool.

Last night as I was praying with the kids at bed time I remembered the missing glasses and prayed out loud that we'd find them. Then I prayed that God would give Kendall a picture in her head of where to look (because I knew she'd looked everywhere), and that she'd find them and know that she could hear the voice of God and that He was always there to help her. I finished by praying for sweet dreams, and then turned out the light and went away, not giving the matter another thought.

Until 45 minutes later, when Kendall came out of her room grinning ear to ear... "Mom, I was just laying in bed and God put an image in my head of where my glasses were, so I turned on the light and looked there and THEY WERE THERE!" The look on her face was priceless. She was simply amazed. And I'm sure my face looked the same because I was too! Not 45 minutes after praying! Um, Hello God - you are too, too good!!

And I can tell you that where she found them is not somewhere I would have ever looked... they were on top of the air conditioner unit in her bedroom window - behind the blinds and the curtain - completely hidden out of sight. (Why Kendall ever thought this might be a convenient place to put a pair of glasses we'll never know.)

So now Kendall can see properly again and she has an awesome testimony to share to boot, besides learning that she can confidently hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. (Which answered my prayer, encouraging me greatly at the same time.)

I'm pretty sure I won't wait a week to pray next time. ;)

Miley's new haircut

Miley has been looking a bit like the shaggy dog lately, so yesterday I took her to the groomers to try a Schnauzer cut. Oh my goodness, she came out half the size that she went in!

I thought she looked adorable.

Russ laughed his butt off.

Cooper didn't recognize her as our dog.

(You'll just have to imagine what she looked like beforehand though because I hadn't taken any pictures of her recently.) 

(Actually, I'll help you're imagination by showing you this picture from the internet. This is a grown Schnoodle, but Miley's hair looked exactly like this... except of course she was much cuter ;)

Random google search photo. NOT Miley. 

THIS is Miley! 

4 months old.

Arguably the cutest puppy you'll ever see. But we're not biased ;)

The only thing that could be cuter are her feet, which are usually kept longer-haired like the legs, but with all the mud we have around here in the winter sanity called for a shave. And it's already helped a ton. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!

A Thursday list

- The best thing about fall is pumpkin spice lattes and pumpkin strudel muffins from Costco. And wearing my Uggs again. They complete me.

breaking them out at hunting camp

- My camping laundry is only halfway done. I'm a laundress failure!

- Kendall had her last volleyball game on Tuesday and a cute little awards ceremony afterwards. You may not have known she was even playing this year as I don't think I mentioned it... a direct result of failing to remember to bring my camera to every.single.game, giving me no pics to blog. Well I remembered it for her last game, but quickly found out I'd forgot the memory card! *face palm*

- Our Fall Scrap Around the Clock starts tomorrow and I've been busy, busy, busy taking care of last minute things for the event. It's going to be so fun! (And sleep depriving!)

- Miley the dog is going through this stage where she sounds like she's dying every time we leave her. Her cries are that hysterical. We hear the same thing as soon as we return and it takes her awhile to calm down and realize "Oh, they're staying". It's really annoying... Dog Whisperer advice, anyone?

- Yesterday we had to teach one of our children the painful lesson of calling a friend to say you can't come to their party after all because you waited till the very last minute to START a book report that you'd had two weeks to work on. It was not very fun, but it's a good lesson to learn!

- The sad thing is I had a class to co-teach last night, a class I'd known about for two weeks, and when did I prepare? Yesterday AFTERNOON. Someone needs to teach ME a lesson!

- In my above sentence "...book report that you'd had two weeks to work on." What is you'd short for? Did I make it up just now? Does it mean you had had? Because that doesn't make sense. But taking out the had after you'd doesn't make sense either. Lisa? Lynn? Help me out my friends.

And with that confusing last point, I'll leave you. Happy Thursday, All!

late night Monday confessional

About 5 years ago (totally guessing, it could be 4 or 8, but you get the drift) we bought a new-to-us side by side refrigerator from a couple upgrading to stainless steel. Everything worked perfectly and we were in love with the magic of ice and water dispensed right from the door. (And the color, white being a huge improvement over our old peach model.)

About a year passed by when the inside light bulbs burned out on both the freezer and fridge side. Very much a pain when opening the fridge in the night to search for a late night snack. However, I assumed that I needed some kind of special "fridge only" light bulb to replace whatever was behind the little plastic shields in the back where the bulbs were housed, and never took the time to find out where to get them from. Until I was so used to no lights in the fridge/freezer that it didn't bother me any more. And I eventually forgot all about it.

And years went by. 

Until this evening, when the plastic shield fell down on the freezer side and I saw that a regular ol' 60 watt light bulb was what had been hiding there all along. Dumbfoundedly I checked the fridge side and discovered that sure enough, it took the same kind on that side too. 

So I replaced them both and the new lights worked instantly. 

And I realized I could have replaced them any time over the last 4 (or 3 or 7) years. 

Which turned out to be a wholly embarrassing moment. 

Procrastination doesn't pay, people. 

Lesson learned. 

So...

If your fridge has burned a light,

And you're not sure how to make it bright,

Don't wait, 

Investigate! 

Home from the woods

Since I haven't blogged in 9 days, you may have been wondering if we ever came home from our camping/hunting trip to Eastern Oregon. We didn't get lost, we just arrived home to a crazy busy weekend and I haven't had any time to play on the computer. Nor will I get to much over the next couple of days seeing as that my laundry room still looks like this as of late Sunday night:

Please pray for me.

As for the trip: it was a giant success, barring the fact that it rained a few nights and our trailer leaked like a sieve - causing me to call down curses from heaven upon it and use all our pots, pans and plastic bowls available to catch the drips. It put a bit of a damper on the week. (Get it? Damp? Hardy har ;)

But besides that, and the fact that my children all ran out of clean socks well before the week was over because they couldn't seem to keep their booted feet out of the creek even though I nagged them to death about it, we had a splendid, splendid time.

our home sweet home for 7 days

Remember the stack of books I brought? I read through eight of them. EIGHT. I was in book reading heaven the whole week and my fabulous Mr. catered to it by taking the kids on hikes and road hunts and leaving me in cozy silence. In return I came out of my warm trailer cocoon at lunch time and in the evening to cook yummy camp meals and chat around the fire and we decided that since we both got to do exactly what we wanted the whole time, we're pretty much a camping match made in heaven.

With five cousins in camp my kids of course were thoroughly entertained when not out with their dad and I honestly didn't see that much of them, except for the first day when they had to do almost a week's worth of school work and I decided by noon that a home-schooling mama I was NOT meant to be.

don't let their sweet smiles fool you... there was MUCH whining, complaining, dire threats and bribing with candy going on here!

Fun with the Grandle cousins

And because collages are fun, here's another one of the rest of us at camp:

Clockwise from top left: Russ and his sister Cara, Nathan and Marvin (Tim's brother and Dad) with Russ, Tim and Cara, nephew Ben, Russ and I (in my awesome pink rain boots ;)

The highlight of the trip was probably on the last day, when our oldest nephew Ben shot his first buck, and we all got to go search for it and be there when he found it. Fun family memories I tell ya.

the whole crew minus me, the photographer, who formally apologizes for not knowing how to remove blood from a picture. Sorry about that. 

And Ben wasn't the only one to succeed in the hunt either.

I know this pic is about Uncle Nathan's spike deer but could Blake in his Carhartt overalls be any cuter???

The rest of the hunters all had some close calls and exciting moments out in the woods so still had a great time even though they didn't bag a deer. (Will you look at me with all the hunting lingo? It's like I was married to a hunting maniac or something...)

But the best part of all was the family time together and new memories created. So worth a couple nights in a leaky trailer if you ask me :)