More of Christmas

We always have our big Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, so that was out of this world! I wish I would have taken pics of it. We all had assignments so it wasn't a burden on any one person. We didn't have quite as many treats as when my mom always came, but we still had way more than we needed. My mom would have been proud of her granddaughters dipping ability of the chocolates. They were beautiful and delicious. Rebecca whipped out some Almond Roca at the last minute also-yuuuuuummmmmmmy!!!! I made 3 pies, and Patty brought some yummy treats also. Christmas morning was fun. The girls were cute as kids always are.

Christmas night we all went to look at lights. Talk about amazing, there was this one house that had their lights timed to music on a radio station they rented. I felt like I was at Disneyland looking at the fireworks, but instead it was Christmas lights. We stayed and watched for about 20-3o minutes. We then went around and looked at other inspiring lights. I am ready for next year!!!! I was kind of bumbed about our new home when it came to Christmas lights-not now!!! I'm not going to do the music thing, but there were all kinds of neat ideas at the other houses. Well, here are some pics.Rebecca hired Amy to make these cute hats that had matching skirts for them and their American Girl Dolls, the girls loved them and they were very cute! Anna wanted a Ball Gown and before Christmas Greg had taught Anna to Waltz, Ballroom Style. So Christmas morning when she opened her ball gown, she said, "Now I can dance with Greg!" It was so sweet. What a great uncle Greg is.Aliese is growing up. Her favorite presents were her Clinique, shown here in the box and the bag, and her memory foam mattress and pillow. All in all it was a great trip! We were so grateful to be able to go and be with so much of our family at this special time of year! Love you all!!!

Last Chemo Party, and Christmas Eve

Amy had her last chemo party. All of us in Oregon were there. It was wonderful. We had it at Nate and Brooks, Mikes Brother and Sister-in-laws house. Amy was very happy and looked beautiful. She took time to thank each of us all for all we had done for her, it was very touching.Miles is all boy. If you will let him he will jump on you, run into you and etc. He kept jumping on Greg. Greg is a good sport. Miles in creative mode.Megan and Greg came for a couple of days. Then we took Megan, Greg, Amy, and Mike with us to Idaho for Christmas. We stayed for 3 nights and 4 days at Danielle's and Rebecca's. We had a great time. I was thoroughly exhausted before I left and so got even more tired while I was there and got a sore throat. We did some great family stuff and just hung out. Christmas Eve was spent with all of us and Clay's family. It was great! We did the Christmas story. I think because I wasn't feeling well, I didn't take very many pics, so there aren't any of Danielle and Clay or Rebecca, strange.Mike was Joseph, Gracie was Mary, Anna the angel, Steve the Narrator(in my rhinestone glasses), Greg the Donkey, Clay the innkeeper, the rest of us Angels or shepherds. We sang a lot and it was great fun. I'm afraid we weren't as reverent as we probably should have been, but I am sure the girls still felt the spirit, and I am sure Gracie felt really special. We were going to go sledding on Wednesday, but there wasn't enough snow. We went to the new Disney movie. It was really good, the older girls were very affected by how evil the bad guy was. I think he was a typical villian. Most of the adults fell asleep off and on, not because it was boring, but we were tuckered out from traveling and staying up too late.

More of Disneyland

These were all up and down main street, Aliese wanted a pic of them. I was glad it turned out nice. It was so beautiful.

One of the fun things we did a lot of was meet characters. I am always amazed at how animated the characters are. They are so fun and take all the time you need or want with them. At Goofy's Breakfast Kate and Gracie got to dance with Goofy for a long time! It was awesome. Breakfast had everything from child size cinnamon rolls, eggs, waffles, sweet breads, you name it they had it. Goofy came and sat at our table and signed all the kids books he was great!Check out how big their hands are, and yet their signatures are really cool looking. Snow White came by and look at Tanner, that is how he looked when the characters were there. These were some pics I liked that were just during the breakfast.Baloo came by and was as cute as the rest! I caught Aliese in a very funny way and it made her hair look red, strange huh?More tomorrow, I am tired. Love you all!

Julie and Julia and Disneyland

Saturday Steve and I saw Julie and Julia for the first time. It was sooooo wonderful!!! We loved it. Of course we love anything with Meryl Streep, but besides her it was a great and wonderful story, I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it. It is such a wonderful example how you can do anything if you set your mind to it. I want to go out and buy the cookbook even though I probably would never make anything from it because it would be way to fattening. But I would really like to cook like that. I always think I don't really like to cook, but that isn't true. I love food and love to cook it. I just don't like figuring out what to cook, and it is time to cook when I am at my lowest energy time of the day.

Disneyland at night! Cool huh! They had an icicle look for Christmas.

Well, as I already said the other day I went to Disneyland with Rebecca, Lizzie, Aliese, Anna, Tanner, Gracie, and Kate. It was great. For the first three days Lizzie and the kids under 4 were with us. It was great, we did all the great kids stuff and some of the big kid stuff. It was the perfect amount of time with the little kids, it is fun to see the world through there eyes. The last two days we got to do the "big girl" stuff. It was just Rebecca, Me, Aliese, and Anna. A whole different experience. I sat in the front of the log at splash mountain 2 times!!!!! A first for me, I felt very impowered. I bought the pics of it because you could see each one of us and it was hilarous to see the total fear on our faces, it was great! I rode all the scary rides except for the Tower of Terror. The girls weren't interested, it didn't hurt my feelings. We saw lots of characters, had breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen (it had everything!!!) Did just about everything I think. I ran to get the fast passes until the last day. My feet still hurt and I have been home a week now. But I was really happy at how well I weathered everything. If I hadn't been a firm believer in exercise before we moved and I went to Disneyland, I would really be a believer now. I kept up with everyone and actually had more energy than all of them. Considering I am 53, that makes me feel good about that part of my life. I am grateful for my health, I feel truly blessed. As I said I took 333 pics, so obviously I won't be able to post them all, so I will try to put some of my favorites as well as a taste of everything.

Gracie with Snow White! Can it get cuter than that!

Santa and Mrs. Claus were there how lucky was that! Mrs Clause was a riot. Santa walked past her after his break and she asked how many cookies he had. She had her hands on her hips and shook her head. It was very cute! Tanner was to shy to stand talk to her.Santa was really cute also, he just grabbed Tanner and so it was the first time that Tanner has sat on Santa's lap. He really took his time with each child.I thought this was a cute pic
One of the few times Kate and Tanner wanted to walk. Lucky me, I was there!

Alice's Tea cups, the only kids ride that borders on making me nauseous. I always debate whether I will do it, but I can't turn down my grandkids. Gracie and Rebecca went alone because Gracie didn't want to spin and neither did Rebecca. It is fun that we were all in most all the pics.Who knows what I was talking about, but I had to put it in! I think Rebecca looks like Joe Cool!
After the ride we ran into Alice and theTea Party guy. They were great! Alice was very proper and the tea party guy was hilarious, he acted just like the guy in the movie. After he got done signing Gracie's book he yelled GRRRAAAAAACIE! It was great!By far Gracies favorite ride is Dumbo, I think we all love it! I love how relaxed and happy Rebecca is on it!I love this pic of Rebecca, it is a classic look for her the whole time we are there! The pics on the merry go round were awesome! I loved them!There is a new princess movie coming out this week. We got to see her before it came out! She was so pretty and sweet, she has a southern drawl. Boy could she sing!Well,it is late so I will post more tomorrow! Love you all!

Icicles on the beach!!!

We got up this morning and it was soooo cold. But it was beautiful, so I decided to take my first walk on our new beach. It has been so busy and rainy that I haven't ventured down our trail. So today was the day and boy what a find! These icicles are anywhere from 3-4 feet long. Crazy huh!

This is all ice. The water skim on the beach also froze. I walked almost to the jetty. I walked for almost an hour. What a great treat!

I had the great blessing of being with 5 of my grandchildren and two of my daughters for 5 days in Disneyland!! It truly is a magical place. I will never cease to be amazed at the feeling there. Everyone is happy, there is no smoking, the workers are nice and there is always good music playing. It was wonderful. I ended up with 333 pictures. You know what that means, who knows how many pics I took. I have been working on them for several hours now. How to pick my favorites? I don't know. I will have to post them over the next few days. For now, enjoy my collage! love you all!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, this is by far the smallest Thanksgiving group I have ever had at my house! It was just my mom and dad and Steve and I. I had a little "teary" as Steve calls them yesterday before my parents came. It was the first time we didn't have any of our kids with us or us being at their house. It was a nice day today. We got a lot of it ready last night. My mom can do quite a lot with her little walker chair.

We are thinking about putting an elevator in our home, I wish we had it this time my parents came. She had to climb up the stairs in her cast, it scares me.

I got a very beautiful pie plate from Williams Sonoma for my B-day. I made an apple pie in it. What do you think!? I love it.

Well, I am going out of town on Saturday for a week. Between trying to get the rental ready and continuing to get into our home, and live life, I am exhausted. I don't feel ready to go at all. I am excited, just still doing laundry and figuring out what I am doing. I am excited to not have to think about real life for a week. Will be posting pics hopefully as the week goes by.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Love you all!

Catching Up sort of

Wow! It has been so long since I've blogged. Life has been crazy. About a month and a half ago Steve decided he wanted a fiberglass boat. If he bought one it would mean he would have to moor it (keep it in the water at the docks fulltime). That conversation then led to the idea we had explored many times about moving into our Newport Vacation Rental. Every time we considered it we would get close to deciding we would move and then change our minds. This time I really started to consider it more seriously than I ever had. I started to get excited about the idea of having all my kitchen stuff in the house and in the amazing pantry inside my house instead of in my garage. The idea of living closer to Newport-10 minutes to Walmart and Fred Meyer instead of 35-40 minutes, a larger living room. So I took Amy with me when she was out here and asked her what she thought. She said" I don't understand why you aren't already living here. " That pretty much did it for me. I had a struggle with the difference in the beach access between our Idaho Street house and this house, also the bedroom layout is better at Idaho Street. But with reassurance from my kids that I was making much ado about nothing, I felt like I not only could move, but wanted to.

Starting about the last week in October we have been working almost non-stop to get everything out of our Idaho Street house and get it ready to rent. We had just a little under 3 weeks. Add to that 2 extra Weight Watcher meetings (an hour away) I did during that time because I had to sub for a co-worker, driving to Portland to take Danielle to the airport, going to Eugene to pick up Amy, the list goes on. We still have a few things to get out of the other house, and a gillion boxes to unload and put away here.

One of the first things I did was to put up a few of my fall decorations, I couldn't live in utter chaos w/o some fun and seasonal things around me.We had Megan, Greg, Mike , Danielle and even Amy, helping us a few days. Greg painted my sewing room, and the others helped move stuff. Our living room and kitchen are livable, but thats about it. I am anxious to have it all done. I have to say, working in my new kitchen is a dream. I can't wait for my grandkids to see the sprinkle drawer. It is so great to actually have all my dishes in my kitchen and space to spare. Well, as we move forward I will post more pics.The Pantry is almost done, it has about 4 feet between these two sets of shelves, it is so cool to have room for all the food and some room to spare!

Amy and Mike are living with Mikes brother and sister-in-law and Mikes brother has a cold, so Amy is with us now. Mike was here on her b-day also, it was a fun day! Amy was cute as always, she is such a joy to have around. Steve and I feel blessed to have her in our life.Well, hope all of you are well! Love you all!

Tanner and Kate

I am at Lizzie and Shad's right now. I got here Sept. 1. I spent the first 3 days I was here with the family and then on Friday night they drove to LA so they could fly out early on Sat. So it has been me and the kids since Friday evening. They are so cute and as Lizzie says at a good age. They love to play together and can do it literally for hours. I thought I would easily get my steps in and I seem to get more at home! Go figure!?

We went to the Library for story hour on Tues. It was awesome, I never took advantage of that when my kids were home. I highly recommend it! They read stories, sings songs dance

and then do craftsOf course we checked out books and DVDs

It was great fun!

We swim almost 2 times a day, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon or evening. Kate always says she doesn't want to but loves it once we are in. She doesn't last as long as Tanner, I think he is part fish. It is amazing to watch him. I would take pics but then Kate might drown because she thinks she is an expert swimmer. She's amazing for a 2 year old, but far from an expert.

Art is a big deal in Tanner's life, so there is always art going on at some point in the day, sometimes several times. This doesn't do it justice, but it is the gist of how it is. He is really into filling things in completely, so this obviously is the beginning of one and the finished project of another.They both live in the world of pretend, but Kate is there a lot! This is her reading the scriptures to her dog Stu. Kate has many moods, she can get very silly, but can be very serious it is fun watching the many faces of Kate! Her and Tanner both fell in love with my water bottle! We made cookies as you can tell, and a tractor cake. The cake is on Lizzie's camera, so hopefully I can get that later.Tanner enjoying a very small amount of ice cream on a yummy cone. He loves ice cream, but then who doesn't!Its been a great week so far! I hope I will be able to have the good health and energy to take care of all my grandkids.