10 Things (a Tuesday list)

1. I think I mentioned yesterday how much I loved the new Hunger Games movie. Looooved. Well one of the trailers before the movie was for a film called Divergent. Which apparently is also a 3-part book series, and I know this because I just downloaded all three onto my kindle, that's how interesting the movie trailer was.

2. This means I shall not be going to bed before midnight all week because I can NOT put a good book down. And I can tell, these are going to be good.

3. While on the subject of good books, I would like to share my excitement about a new book by my parenting mentors, Joey and Carla Link from Parenting Made Practical.

I have been listening to Joey and Carla's Mom's Notes presentations for probably ten years now... and a more practical and relatable, wisdom-filled teaching based on the Growing Kids God's Way (Babywise/Childwise) series you'd be hard-pressed to find. The help we have received from them in our parenting journey has been truly invaluable. You can find their new book, Why Can't I Get My Kids to Behave? on Amazon, or at Barnes and Nobles here.

4. And having nothing at all to do with books... a week ago I asked Blake what he would like for Christmas. His answer was a power wheels car that you can ride in and that "can fly just a little bit". Hmmmm.

5. Last night I asked Blake what he'd like for Christmas again, wondering if he'd remember what he'd said last time or if he'd be onto something new. His answer? "Meat. Deer meat." Well, that we have in abundance, my son. And also, YOU ARE STRANGE.

6. I think it says much about my age that my top two Christmas wishlist items are a new four-slot toaster and a sonicare toothbrush. Hey, properly toasted english muffins and good oral hygiene are both very important to me.

7. Remember back when I said I loaded new books onto my kindle? I may have just taken a writing break to "peek" into the first one and lost an hour of my time. Good gravy I'm in trouble.

8. Everyone is doing these "month of thanks" daily posts on facebook... or at least it seems like everyone. I'm thankful for lots of things too, but I have this stubborn streak that makes me not want to do something like that just because so many people are. So instead I think of the things I'm thankful for and refuse to tell anybody. Ha! Does that make me the Thanksgiving Grinch?

9. Don't answer that question.

10. Ten things is really hard when all you want to do is dive back into a book! SEE YA! ;)

Weekend highlights

I'm going to sum up the weekend as quickly as possible:

Husband away, movies in bed with kids, Blake basketball game x2, Kendall choir practice, naps, easy meals, yada yada, HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE!!! home late, lingering cough, husband home early, yay!, church, friends, food, warm fireplace, etc. etc. BANOFFEE PIE!!!, dishes, laundry x1000, basketball clinic, TWO WHOLE HOURS ALONE!!! kids to bed, read a little, dishes, TV with husband, blah blah blah... MORE BANOFFEE PIE!!!

And there you have it. Obviously I capitalized the high points.

^^This being the MAIN highlight^^ 

^^Although this was pretty comfy. Word to the wise though, Man of Steel never EVER ends^^

What I'm looking forward to this week:

Two and a half days of school, FIVE DAY WEEKEND!!! Family, feasting, shopping, date night, HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE!!! (yep, a second time! and I can't wait), down time, finger knitting, friends, church, more basketball, books, GAMES, etc. etc. etc.

It's gonna be good, folks.

Happy Monday, Happy almost Thanksgiving, Happy living :)

texting with Russell

^^Hey, cute husband!^^

Not all of these are recent (or appropriate!), but I like to store them up like the little gems they are...

me: so I found these cute boots on ebay...
Russ: buy em :)

me: You're lucky to have such a laid back wife, you know ;)
Russ: I would love to lie with my wife... that's what I just read, if you want me to hear anything else you'd better not use the words laid and wife in the same sentence :)

Russ: At the gas station. Do you care if I give a couple of tweaker (druggie) kids $10 for gas? Laid on my heart
me: of course not

me: thanks honey for saving me last night when I ran out of gas, you are the best!
Russ: no worries sugar momma ;)

Russ (at the Dr. office): they are going to do an xray for nemoanya
me: do you mean pneumonia? Coz that wasn't even close
Russ: thank you mrs. dictionary, some of us are sick here!

(After going over the budget with Russ before leaving for grocery shopping with my mother, and ending in a heated argument over my "methods" of documenting our spending, I basically stormed off with a "don't micromanage me because I WILL QUIT!" and then sent Mum a text, except I accidentally sent it to Russ...)
me: not quite ready to leave, can you give me an extra 15 minutes?
Russ, pretending to be mum: Let's just cancel for tonight. Instead of giving you an extra 15 minutes I think you should spend the entire day making love with your husband!
me: oh my gosh I would smile except I don't like you right now!
Russ: well since your evening plans have been cancelled you can learn to like me.
me: Ha!
(And just like that we were made up and off I went shopping where I happily bought myself some fun things along the way :)

Monday confessional - fire edition

When my mother and I adventure out together, something is always sure to go amiss. We like to joke that we are our very own Laurel and Hardy show.

Once, after shopping together half an hour away from home, my Chevy Tahoe started to sound strange and wouldn't go fast at all... I ended up driving all the way home with my blinkers flashing going about 15 mph while talking alternately with Russ and our mechanic on the phone about how awful it was acting. Russ met us at home ready to take it straight to the shop only to discover Mum had accidentally pushed the button to engage the 4-wheel-drive-LOW while dusting my dash and all it needed was to be put back into 2-wheel-drive. We felt a tad bit embarrassed by that one.

This past weekend was our latest escapade. After coming down with a yucky head cold last Thursday and skipping my regular grocery shopping trip, I was finally willing to venture out by early Saturday evening and Mum said she'd come along. She offered to drive to my house to meet me but I said I'd meet her at the school halfway between our houses, only to forget my cell phone and have to drive back to my house with Mum along anyway.

Once at the Walmart Superstore in Woodburn (a much better option than Winco on a Saturday night) we started out with non-food items... and were quickly distracted by all the Christmas stuff out, wasting a good hour or so going back and forth between departments to check out whatever gift idea came to our heads. Just when we were ready to head to the food section and actually grocery shop, what would happen but the store would catch on fire and we would have to be evacuated.

NO JOKE.

So we did what any normal mother/daughter pair would do... stood outside and took 20+ self-portraits with the action in the background for instagram.

We quickly learned it was a very small fire in the back and that hopefully the store could reopen so instead of bailing (we'd driven half an hour and I really didn't want to make another trip), we headed to the car to take ourselves off to Taco Bell for some Cinnabon Delights.

Which is how I discovered I'd left the headlights on in my car.

How providential! That could have been a close one!

After our dessert run we came back to Walmart and just waited in our car. FOR AN HOUR. And that's how our early evening trip turned into a late evening trip, made even later by the fact that when we were finally finished shopping we drove all the way back to my house and parked and turned off the car before remembering Mum's car was at the school.

Like I said, Laurel and Hardy, us two.

(Love you, Mum ;)

End of the weekend photo dump

Cuddling in front of our shop's wood stove a couple weekends ago at our garage sale - our AWESOME garage sale - thanks to all the yard sale junkies being bored by the time November rolled around and coming out in droves!

This may look like a small seam but it was actually almost half the leg length of my husband's Carhartt dungarees that I lovingly sewed up by hand. Took me an entire movie! (I'm not saying it's pretty, but it works!)

Lunch date with Jana at Sweet Tomatoes on a rainy day. 

One of my very favorite places to eat and one of my very favorite people to eat with :) 

Surprised at the dessert spread at Fred Meyers grocery store... when did they get so fancy?!

Jamberry nail sample from the party my sister and I hosted last Monday night... love the single nail contrast!

Kelly and I made sure there were plenty of good eats too. 

Monday and Wednesday mornings. Turbo Jammin' with my friend, Kristie. LOTS of sweat.

Winter temperatures call for pot roast. One of our family faves. 

I first tried Bare Minerals makeup last November and just now had to buy more... makes it totally worth it! (Also had to pick up more Mac eye paint in bare canvas... keeps the eyeshadow on perfectly all day.)

AND THIS. 

Yes. I stepped out of my car the other night and slipped on a banana peel. No lie. 

If you were in the same parking lot as me you would have heard my loud exclamation, "A BANANA PEEL?!! WHAT AM I IN, A CARTOON?"

And then I had to take a picture of it because I still couldn't believe it.  

Awkward and Awesome

Awkward:
- Me, every time there's a "shake it" dance portion during my Turbo Jam workouts. I ain't got no shake it rhythm, that's for SURE.

- Walking into a public men's room on accident and upon seeing a MAN (surprise, surprise), concluding that he's in the wrong bathroom and telling him so! Spotted the urinals two seconds too late on that one.

- Closing your eyes from a surprise sneeze as you quickly turn your head away, and then opening them again to see a small spittle of phlegm STILL AIRBORNE as it arcs across a room before landing on the floor a good 7 feet away.

(This of course never happened to ME. And not in public either. Oh heavens no! But wouldn't that be awkward if it did happen? And you just froze in horror instead of instantly moving into action? I agree, what a terribly embarrassing situation. I pray I never ever go through that again EVER.)

Awesome:
- This dandy little idea I came up with during a moment of pure laundry room frustration:

We have a whole wall of shelving in our laundry room just for shoes. And two tall laundry hampers for whites and colors. Yet where do I find everyone's shoes and dirty clothes? On the laundry floor where they've been hastily thrown. Constantly.

I'll tell you something, money is a powerful motivator. Not a single infraction yet! Give it 48 hours though... I see some coffee money in my future ;)

- The spontaneous after-dinner sharing time we had as a family last night when I asked everyone to say what they were thankful for about each member of our family. The kids did not hold back and we were all puddles of mush and gushiness for a bit there! I heart my family.

- Stephen's Pumpkin Spice hot chocolate. Thank you Winco for revealing this treasure to me. Delish.

Back to tell you all about it

Let's take a look at our vacation, shall we? Because you KNOW I took plenty of pictures while we were gone!

A large part of that was because while in Eagle Crest (outside of Redmond, OR) we attended the 1A/2A state volleyball finals to watch our niece Miranda and Doug and Sarah's daughter Kennedy compete with their team in the final 8 playoffs for the first time in our school history.

It was very, very awesome to say the least. And to get to be a part while enjoying our getaway felt like having our cake and eating it too :)

But back to the beginning...

Lunch at Calamity Jane's on our way over. Last year we went to Leavenworth, WA for our couples getaway and had so much fun we had to repeat the experience again this year. 

The beginning of what seemed like an innocent little bike ride. (Taken approximately 30 seconds before Russell crashed magnificently, while still in front of our condo, and we about died laughing.)

Gorgeous views on the way down, down, down our big loop ride, which is when I started to get really nervous about how much downhill we were traveling and what that would mean for me when we started to loop back UP.

And here's me about 5 miles later, still plodding on! Okay, what's really happening is it's raining pretty steadily and I just almost threw up because I'm a cardio weenie and Doug had to go get the car to come back for me because HECK NO, I couldn't make it. Eagle crest ain't flat, folks. Not by a long shot. 

Late night gaming and movie watching. Accompanied by pie, ice cream, a Costco sized bag of Hi-Chews, and chips and salsa. We do vacations right.

A beautiful barn that I would like to adopt and keep forever. Central Oregon has some of the coolest buildings.

My sisters-in-law Cara and Tricia are the assistant coaches for the volleyball team so it was fun to see them when they arrived for the Friday/Saturday tournament.

And look who else arrived, a whole herd of CCS True Blue believers!

Including my mother and friends Tracy and Therese.

As for our girls, they ended up taking 5th place in State... an amazing accomplishment!

And Miranda made 1st team all tournament, a huge honor. (She is a STUD.)

And then we got back to our getaway and watched more movies, ate out some more, and enjoyed our time with our friends so, so much. 

Thanks for a great trip, Doug and Sarah, we love you guys! 

Getaway

The best part about the upcoming high school basketball season that my husband will be coaching for his 16th year? The five day getaway beforehand :)

No kids.
No schedule.
No commitments.
Just us and our favey-fave friends Doug & Sarah (Doug is the boys varsity coach).
Beautiful condo in Eaglecrest, OR.
And most importantly, no kids.

I'm pretty much in heaven. Be back later!

Scenes from a harvest party

Aka: Halloween party without any scary/creepy stuff ;)

kid corralin'

fun food eatin'

donut bobbin'

necklace makin'

 cowboy grinnin'

Brave girl smilin'

trunk or treatin'

 cousins hangin'

pumpkin puttin'

candy lovin'

And doggy shamin' :)

Thank you Kelly, Shiree, and Joni for throwing such a fun shindig!