Snow Much Fun

The day after Christmas we had lots and lots of snow.

Luckily, Bryant received a new sled as a Christmas gift and he could hardly wait to break it in!

So, we called our neighbor and friends, Jen, Karsyn and Cooper to come sledding with us.

Cooper, Karsyn, Bryant

Me and Jen

The kids had lots and lots of fun. Is there anything better than snow when you're 6 years old?

Bryant and I even took a few runs together down the hill.

Before long, Bryant decided he needed to be his normal dare-devil self...

so he started surfing (or snowboarding) his sled down the hill.

He got some serious air!

Watch this video of Bryant surfing down the hill...

And if that wasn't enough to give his mother a heart attack, Bryant and Cooper started sledding down some deck stairs and onto the snow hill.

Watch this video for some fun....

I hope you're having fun in the snow too!

Christmas Morning

We have several family traditions for Christmas Morning...

#1 We always spend the night with the WHOLE extended family.

One giant sleep over!

#2 Santa's Helper (my dad) always meets us at the end of the hallway to lead us to Santa's gifts.

This year he wore an "interesting" Santa's Helper costume :)...

#3 Bryant checks out what Santa brought and left in front of the tree.

This year it was a motorized scooter that goes 10 MPH!

#4 We check our Stockings. Santa brings everyone something in their stockings. Usually the adult stockings have "gag" gifts. Of course, Santa is to blame... so nobody can get mad :)

This year my dad's stocking contained some "Bitch Be Gone"... Fast Relief from a Bitching Wife!

Many other stockings contained worse... which I won't post on here. But needless to say, we got some fine fine laughs out of the gag gifts.

#5 We start opening gifts.
Only one gift per person at a time. We take turns going around the room from youngest to oldest. This year it took us 3 1/2 hours to open presents... but it's sooo fun. I love to see what everyone is getting. Plus, it keeps Bryant from getting too wild.

Highlight from the first hour and a half...

Bryant got a MP3 player that he just loved (downloaded with 100 of his favorite songs)

Zac received a special tie that Bryant made for him.

I received the fabulous Toro Leaf Blower from my mom and dad (I asked for one).

Here we are about half way though Christmas morning....

Then the second half of opening...

Austin and Travis opened "A Curious Case of Holiday Ales" which had naught holiday beer names.

Austin opened the awesome Guitar Hero World Tour for the Xbox 360

Zac received his favorite gift... a gift card to Barnes and Noble (it's not Powells Books in Portland... but it will have to do).

Suzi got some awesome high heeled shoes...

There were many great and generous gifts given. Too many to name.


#6 We always give each other lots and lots of board games.

We are board game lovin' family of fools.

#7 We always have a wonderful Christmas breakfast after we're done opening gifts.

This year Sasha decided to try one of the Christmas Ales for her breakfast!

#8 We pose for lots of fun Christmas day photos...

#9 We spend the rest of the day trying out our Christmas gifts!

Here's Bryant getting a pedicure in my new foot spa.

And of course we spend much of the day and night playing "Rock Band." Even Bryant rocked out on the drums and guitar. Rock on!

We are so blessed to have family we love to spend time with. It sure does make the holidays extra special.

I hope each and every one of you had a great Christmas too.

No Christmas Cards from us...

We've had multiple attempts to get a decent family picture for a Christmas card... but everything has been a bust so far.

The most recent set of pictures looked like this:

I keep trying to think of a great caption for the above photo...

Do you have any ideas?

I have no idea what Bryant saw that made him look so surprised... but I do love his face... just not for our Christmas card!

**************************

On the another Christmas card attempt we were looking so cute... but later realized that our goofy child had a HUGE wad of gum in his mouth in all the pictures.

*********************************

On the other hand, I recently took a great picture (not a Christmas card photo... but a great photo nonetheless) of Sasha and Suzi:

School is out and Zac, Bryant and I have the next two and a half weeks of work.

Can I get a Wooo Hoooo?

I'm finally getting in the mood for Christmas

I'm usually one of those people who puts up their Christmas decorations Thanksgiving weekend. But this year, I've had a hard time getting in the mood. I don't know why... but I just keep putting it off! Every day I say I'm going to get the stuff out of the garage (we're talking lots of storage totes) and every day I end up doing something else (usually something senseless like watching reality TV).

So today when we woke up and found the first SNOW of the season, it was like someone hit me in the ass with a snowball and said "get those decorations up." All of a sudden I was motivated!

Bryant went outside to play with Karson in the snow...

Then Bryant and Cooper spent hours sitting in the back of the truck trying to look cool for all the people walking by...

And by the time Bryant came inside, the tree was up.

I can't say this is a "good looking" tree... it's fake. It's only the second time in my life I've had a fake tree... but I couldn't justify the cost of buying a real tree this late in December (shame on me for waiting this long to get the tree up... I know).

As if I wasn't already feeling like shit for waiting so long to get the decorations up, my lovely son came inside and said, "Oh mom, I love it. I love Christmas. I wish we could have Christmas for a whole month not just one or two weeks. I want Christmas forever. "

Yeah, so I feel like a giant ball of crap. Taking away the excitement of Christmas for a little boy for the last 3 weeks...

Bryant was so excited about the decorations, we went around the living room with my camera and took pictures.

He took over 25 pictures... and I'll save you from viewing all of them. But these are the three he says are his favorite. Enjoy!

By the way, I have a 4 week break from my Master's program and a 3 week break from teaching coming up... so I promise to be a better blogger starting this week.

What's your favorite dish at Thanksgiving?

So what food are you looking forward to the most on Thursday?

The turkey? A favorite side dish? Dessert?

Growing up, my favorite part was always the stuffing. Since we've lived away from family for so many years, I've gotten use to cooking Thanksgiving dinner on my own. I make a mean mean stuffing!

This year will be very special since my parents have moved here to Idaho (event though only my mom will be here for Thanksgiving). Of course Suzi, Austin and baby Sasha will be here too. It's going to be so nice to have family close by again.

I love holidays and I love thanksgiving. I am soooo looking forward to the carbo load on Thursday.

Here's a fun Turkey day quiz I found! What part of Thanksgiving are you? It says I am mashed potatoes...

You Are Mashed Potatoes

Ordinary, comforting, and more than a little predictable You're the glue that holds everyone together.

What Part of Thanksgiving Are You?

Let me know what you are!

Abercrombie Kid

The first day we were in Portland, we went shopping.

Thank goodness for a REAL shopping mall. Boise has malls but nothing like what Portland has to offer.

Bryant has always been a good shopper... but now (at age 6) he's figured out that I want him to look nice and that means I'll buy him clothes if he goes shopping with me.

I'll admit that I'm pretty picky about what he can wear. No cartoon characters and no sweatpants with cuffs or elastic on the bottom. I like the trendy preppy look... or the athletic look.

So, imagine my great delight when we walked past the Abercrombie Store and Bryant wanted to go in! I was even more excited when I realized that he's now big enough to wear the stuff in the Abercromie kids store!



Bryant totally bought into the whole Abercromie vibe. He loved the loud music. He loved the clothes. He tried on each of the colognes they had for sale (yes he stunk by the time he was done). He thought he was one cool dude.

I told him he could buy one thing and he picked out an awesome shirt (you'll see it in a future post). He was so proud to carry his Abercromie bag around the mall.

There were two shirts he absolutely WANTED but I stayed strong said "no". Maybe Santa will have to bring them....

Thank the Good Lord that we don't have an Abercromie Kid's in Boise... or I would have to get a second job!

(and before all you naysayers start telling me about how Abercrombie "sells" sex, etc..., I don't care. I like their clothes and that's what I'm buying. Although the half naked sales clerks are nice too look at too :))

What the Heck? High Heeled Crocs are Cool???

I know... I suck at blogging these days!

We've been on a mini-vacation to Portland Oregon.

In the next couple of days I'll report on all sorts of fun stuff we've been doing... but right now I want to say a few words about Crocs...

I don’t know when or why it happened, but some time in the last few years people started popping up all over the place wearing orthopedic shoes. Brightly colored, rubber shoes called Crocs. And then they started sticking little decorations on them.

And then, gasp, I saw them being sold at Nordstrom when I was in Portland. What the heck???

Not only were they Crocs... but they were high heeled Crocs! They were EVERYWHERE in Portland. Try as I might to get my mom to put some on... she absolutely refused. The best she'd do is hold one while I took her picture.

Since when does the entire world give up fashion for comfort? Seriously, my grandma wouldn’t even be caught dead in those things... and that's saying something!

To quote one of my friends who saw the picture of my mom and the high heeled crocs,

"I don't care how comfortable those things are, I would rather walk home from the bar with 2 bloody stumps than even try these things on in stores."

Amen Sister!

Ode' to Bryant

Laughing

Mischievous

Handsome

Smart

Caring

Compassionate

Friend to Everyone

Messy Faced

Son of Mine...

I LOVE YOU!

Painting Pumpkins

Rather than carving our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch, we decided to paint them.

I'm sure we'll end up carving others before it's over...

But until then, I give you our Beautiful Painted Pumpkins.

Bryant's is the big one...

Ganny and Grandpa's are the two tall skinny ones...

Su-Su's is the small round one.

Just in case you missed the details... Bryant's pumpkin is covered with hand-drawn bugs.

Even the pumpkin's mouth has "bugs" in it.

Have I told you I hate bugs?

Do you think Bryant decorated his pumpkin just to "bug" me?

Without a doubt!

Give me a... P U M P K I N * P A T C H

We love the pumpkin patch.

This year we were not alone at our favorite p-patch.

Aunt Su-Su, Uncle Ostridge and baby Sasha joined us.

So did Ganny and Grandpa!

It was baby Sasha's first time at the pumpkin patch.

Unfortunately, she slept all the way through it (and the thousands of pictures we all took)!

In true family form, we couldn't just be "normal."

Aunt Su-Su had to demonstrate what it felt like to give birth

Grandpa had to find pumpkins the shape of Ganny's boobs...

Bryant had to examine and destroy a pumpkin (in the name of science, of course)...

And Zac had to talk football on his cell phone with all the other coaches!

The night before was a heck of a game and the coaches were re-hashing every play.

Finally we got down to business and picked our pumpkins out.

Su-Su even found a baby pumpkin for Sasha!

Mom and I stood around and looked beautiful while everyone else worked (yeah right!)

It was a great day at the pumpkin patch.

I love my family... and I love that we can be crazy and have fun no matter where we go.

Hopefully Travis (my brother) will be here to join us next year. I missed you T!