twilight movie...

if you've read the stephenie meyer series about bella & edward then you are probably excited about the movie. i was worried they would find a good match for edward, but i think they did it. who knew cedric diggory (robert pattinson) would grow up to look like this? holy toledo!

kristen stewart is playing bella, not sure if she's a perfect fit, but i guess we will see.

i can't wait to find out who will be playing the other members of the cullen family, especially alice!

now i am just praying the movie doesn't disappoint.

have a great day!

hopefully i can make this into something nice...

i am not feeling very inspired about my christmas card this year, so i picked colors that weren't so christmasy and a VERY simple idea. well at least i THOUGHT it was simple until i counted up all the steps. still, the finished product will look simple and pretty plain, but i decided to be ok with it and MAYBE i'll be inspired to create something i love next year.

now i guess i better get started on assembling them.

first snow of the season...

my day was busy with taking pictures for kelly (scary...she's a way better photographer), getting the things i need for my christmas cards, buying ceb's LAST christmas gift and then heading to mary ann's for a craft day. so i wasn't too excited about the idea of snow, but once it was here i truly enjoyed the beauty of it...especially once i was home and inside where it was warm.

now i better get started on my cards.

have a wonderful day!

3 thanksgivings and SO much to be thankful for...

we had 3 thanksgiving celebrations this year. the 1st with my family the weekend prior, the 2nd in portland with jason's brothers family and his mother and the 3rd with jason's dad & stepmother. we are so lucky to have so much family near by and we enjoyed spending time with all of them.
i recently saw a list posted on a blog by my friend kelly's sister in-law jaime about the top 5 things she is most thankful for and it got me thinking about my own list.

i am thankful for many things, but these are the 1st 5 that come to mind...

5.starbucks...yeah it's a big corporate conglomerate, but they seem to hire some of the coolest people and those cool people make a very addictive venti black iced tea.

4.the awesome ladies i work with. kiki and ally are my sanity at work and make having to go there each day a good thing (well as good as it can be). i can't imagine being there without them. it helps that they totally rock and constantly make me laugh. betsy, debbie, mika & ashley also contribute to my work happiness.

3.my friends. i have wonderful old friends like kelly, amy & rach and amazing newer friends like mary ann, jennifer & christina. i feel really blessed with the friends i have made over the years. they are all good people that i am proud to know.

2.my family. i have amazing parents who do SO much for me and my family. i have great nephews and a sweet and sassy niece who make my life more interesting and full. AND i have the most amazing girls ever. they are so cool and fun and wonderful and kind and good. i LOVE those girls so much.

1.jason. he is the best guy ever. he completely loves me and thinks i am practically perfect just the way i am (except for my starbucks mug issue). he is totally supportive of me and always wants to make me happy. he is my best friend and i can't imagine my life without him.

now that kiki is blogging and hopefully ally too, i think you both need to make your own lists. i am sure kiki's will be all mushy, but i will try and deal with that.

thankful for weekends...

the girls and i went with 3 of the boys to see my father in his annual church play. my dad always does a great job and has a lot of fun getting into character. they alway do a funny family friendly play. the little boys were so good it was amazing...of course i did bribe them with HUGE candy bars afterwards if they were on their best behavior. surprising it worked amazinly well.

we also held our family thanksgiving get together on saturday. my mom does it early every year so that we can all be together and not have to worry about conflicts in our schedules. it's not the date that's important to us it's the time we spend with each other.




we are heading to portland on thursday for some more thankgiving celebrating with jason's brother and his family...and i know we will all be thankful to get there since cebastian is driving part of the way!!!

a little ghoulish fun...

my girls, along with their cousins, went to trunk or treat with my parents.



nobody was too scary this year, unless you count my dad who was a clown. a super creepy clown in my opinion!

i wasn't really in to halloween this year, but i did manage to make up treat boxes for my niece and nephews and cool starbucks cups filled with treats for my girls.


i have some ideas already for next year though...i have already decided to be more in the spirit of the holiday

life lessons...

time has flown and it’s been forever since i posted anything.

i went on a relaxing and fun scrapbook retreat the 2nd weekend of october. connected with some amazing women, ate lots of yummy food and almost got some digital scrapbook pages done.

it was perfect for me because just prior,in less than a week, 2 people i knew were killed in separate car accidents, both involving drunk drivers. the 1st was a sweet boy i met at starbucks a few years ago. KC was a passenger in a car driven by a man who was drunk. he chose to get in the car and paid with his life. it made me really have some frank discussions with the girls about never getting in a car with someone under the influence of drugs or alcohol. i also made sure they knew that no matter what the situation was i would always pick them up, no questions asked.

the 2nd person was an 18 year old girl who jason & i have known since she was about 2. bawny was jason’s friend chris’ cousin. she was in a car with her boyfriend driving down the freeway when a woman who was drunk AND driving the wrong way on the same freeway crashed head first into their truck. she killed bawny instantly and seriously injured bawny’s boyfriend. this accident was much harder for me to deal with since there was just no clear way it could have been avoided. how do you protect your children from other people’s bad choices? i took it as a reminder to enjoy, appreciate and be thankful for my family.

last thursday i received a call from kial's school because she was in the vice principals office. kial threw a girls phone in the garbage during soccer practice. long story short this girl has been bullying and harassing kial since last year. a friend of kial's saw this girls phone on the ground, handed it to kial and kial threw it in the trash; figuring she could pay her back a little bit for all the hurt. the phone was supposedly broken. kial was suspended from school for 3 days, suspended from the soccer team for 15 days and told she would have to replace the phone.

jason and i went to the school and had a meeting with the principal on monday. we were not contesting kial having consequences for her poor choice, but we felt like she was given too harsh of a punishment. we got kial's suspension from the team changed to 7 days, got the wording on her referral changed from theft to possession of stolen property and got the principal to agree that we needed to see the phone and a copy of her phone usage before we would replace the phone. (the reason we are contesting the phone damage is because of rumors at the school that the girls found the phone by calling it and that she used it after she found it.) we left the meeting feeling better than when we got there. we were reassured that kial was still considered a good kid and that her poor choice didn't change the way her teachers thought of her.

it was a hard and painful lesson for kial. she was humiliated and upset by the bad choice she made. the hardest part for her was worrying about us being disappointed, even though we completely understood why she did it. it's such a hard thing to see your child hurt.

kial will now be going straight to the principal if anything happens between her and this girl, no matter how small or trivial it seems. this has also helped some of kial's friends start to deal with their issues with this girl. the fact that kial's friends and their mothers have all rallied around kial really helped keep her spirits up. i seriously doubt we will ever be called to the principals office again. i think once was enough for all of us.

ps..it's been over a week and the girls mother still has not produced the phone or the usage information.