Friday Night Thoughts

1. When your husband offers to fix dinner, accept gladly, but be prepared for him to make 17 hamburger patties.

FOR YOUR FAMILY OF FIVE. 

2. Peanut butter and bananas on toast NEVER loses its appeal. 

3. Christmastime makes my living room look 80% better than it does the whole rest of the year. 

4. And honestly, the same goes for the Christmas cards displayed on my kitchen cabinets. 

Bring on the cards, friends. 

5. When your daughter tries to talk you out of going to the doctor for her sore throat and has you convinced that you're wasting your time as she sings along to the radio the entire way there, keep reminding yourself that three of her cousins just had strep and it's better to check with a nurse on Friday than have to visit urgent care over the weekend. 

Because YES. It's strep alright. 

Dang it.  

It's Russell's fault

Our regularly scheduled programming will return shortly (ie: What I Wore Wednesday).

It appears that somebody stole his wife's SD card out of her camera and used it to put in a trail camera at his secret hunting spot.

This same somebody is currently in the dog house and has promised the return of the missing card with all the outfit pictures on it poste haste.

MEN.

Monday photo dump - catching up

I meant to do this Friday, but then the weekend happened, and also, a really good book, so here we are in a new week. 

Which means now the weekend gets to be included in the photo dump! See? It all worked out!

SCENES FROM THE CELL PHONE:

Family movie date last weekend to see Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. 

Such a cute movie! I'm a dork and cried. Twice. Coop, lover of all things Star Wars, Super Heroes, and action/violence,

declared it "the best movie I've seen in my WHOLE life!" So it won us all over!

Blake, under the tutelage of his Grandma Halverson, painted his first canvas!

I'm telling you right now, that thing is going to hang in my house the rest of my life. 

My grocery shopping assistant extraordinaire. 

Dude. I forget how much having a helper... helps. 

Coop shooting a free throw. We are ENTRENCHED in basketball again.

Weekends, week nights, after school, early morning, it's bonkers.

Kendall and I are in the last month of the mother-daughter devotional we started back in January. 

Honestly, we've been pretty hit and miss at remembering every morning,

 but when we do remember, we really enjoy it and it's led to some great discussions. 

The book I read this weekend. I have declared it "possibly my favorite read of 2014".

"Possibly", because I can't remember for sure what all else I read this year. 

But I really, really liked it! 

Our tree hunt was as short and sweet as you could possibly manage this year. 

$5 u-cut only 5 minutes from our house. We picked it out in all of 3 minutes. 

God bless Oregon, land of all the trees. 

Technically these aren't from my phone... but I saved them there from facebook! 

We went to a married's white elephant Christmas party Saturday night and had

ourselves a very fun non-ugly-sweater party! (Had to take a break from the horror after last year ;)

The ipad cake my niece, Debby, made for our cousin Nick's surprise birthday party last night. 

He's the techie of the family. Looks pretty good, right? It's tasted great too! 

And that's what we've been up to! Happy Monday!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Awkward:
- spraying your hair with dry shampoo... or so you think. The horrible realization that, OH NO, you've just used the spray tan with the unfortunately similar-colored lid. Side note: spray-on tanner works surprisingly well on scalps.
(This special awkward moment brought to you by Jana, who was gracious enough to let me share it even after I laughed at her for a full minute.)

- also, spraying your legs down with bug spray at an outdoor summer party and then realizing you've just coated yourself in fly spray. Which explains the white sticky film.
(This awkward moment from my past brought back up by Jana after I laughed at her for a full minute. So now we're even.)

- when the FedEx truck arrives and you have no time to throw on a bra so you just hope your hoodie has things covered and wish for the best as you open the door and take your package as fast as humanly possible.

Awesome:
- the number of ladies we fit into my sister-in-law's living room Tuesday night for a Christmas party/scarf exchange (51!)

- finding out during the party game that night (everyone had to write a fact about themselves on a piece of paper and it got read out for everyone else to guess who it was) that one of our friends there is pregnant! What a fun way to announce the news!

- Realizing that Christmas is only three weeks away (favorite holiday alert!) and patting yourself on the back for being 3/4 of the way done with your gift buying. Three cheers for shopping mostly online this year! (In a sweatshirt with no bra. HA.)


p.s. my apologies to my Grandma in New Zealand for all the bra talk. ;)

Giving Thanks {x3}

We had ourselves a weekend full of get-togethers with family and friends and I'm still in a little bit of a food coma. 

Thanksgiving #1 was with Russ's family, with a few extras added in for good measure. 

After eating, we (the fun ones ;) played Nerts for a good two hours straight. 

Obviously I was too busy trying to win to take pictures. So that's it for Thanksgiving #1! It was a good one!

Thanksgiving #2 was with my Wilson side, hosted at my cousin Stephanie's house. 

I went from taking two pictures at our first thanksgiving to zero at this one. Thankfully God created a little thing called dropbox and Kelly sent me all of her shots. Thanks, Sis. 

With my Aunt Kathy, one of my biggest life-supporters and always fun to be around. 

And of course Nanna and Papa Duke, the epicenter of all our family gatherings.

Kendall looking especially thirteen. 

Thanksgiving #3 was with our adopted family members, the Coxes, celebrating Diana being in town from Vegas with her boyfriend, John. Diana cooked for everyone and it's safe to say she'll know how to feed her family well if she ever has ten children. 

Diana and John with my nephew, Lincoln.

Tracy, Danielle and Scott

We played Apples to Apples after eating and were all beaten to flinders by Cooper. TWICE. 

This year I am especially thankful for my family, and for friends who are like family. 

(And for sons who break all the rules when cutting into the Thanksgiving leftovers...) 

Niiice.

"Cooper!"