happy birthday mama.

i can't imagine my world with out my perfect mama and cody's grandma. we love you.

Christmas break.

so our Christmas was really super lovely and for some reason i decided to horrify myself & delete all of the pictures off of the camera before saving them on the computer. i'll just blame it on being pregnant. :( here is a picture of some other family celebrating Christmas instead:

i was thinking that in just a few short days my mom will have a birthday which means that new years eve will be here. every year (for the past 7 or so...) we have made it a tradition to brave the weather and head over to the wolfs lodge steakhouse in idaho for dinner to celebrate her birthday/new years eve. it's a lot of fun and we aways eat way to much. this year we made reservations for 14. can't wait to eat the best steak ever.

also i was thinking about my annual new years resolutions. i'm still working on next years, but i went back and checked out out last years. i did alright as far as completing them, i guess:
*start a blog-DONE
*call my sister corinne every week-i got so much better about this.
*send a birthday card to every family member- almost, except i'm still behind on jasmine's december birthday and the 3 thanksgiving brithdays didn't exactly get cards.
*play risk more-didn't even play. not even once. :(
*go through grandparents photos, and then put some up around the house-work in progress
*rebuild back deck before it falls off house-this deck has now gone through another 2 serious snow falls and is currently sitting under about 3 1/2 feet of heavy snow but its still standing.
*finish basement family room- plans changed and we remodeled the upstairs instead.
*have baby brother/sister for cody- almost finished with this one. yay!
*learn to play more on guitar. at least 2 songs -oops....
*paint inside of house- DONE
*continue exercise routine and incorporate more pilates/yoga- i stuck with this really well until about 3 months into my pregnancy.
*more scrapbooking- negative.
*get cody a dog- maybe next sumer.
*take cody camping A LOT! - we did take him camping, just not a lot.
*take cody to the imax- arah took him instead.
*get cody a really tall bunk bed (all kids should have the experience at least once)- still in the works.
*run bloomsday again and beat past times- yay! i did by a lot!
*do a triathalon or a mini marathon - i got pregnant and changed my mind. but next summer...
*ride hiawatha bike trail in montana (or is it in idaho?) - i did the cour d'alene trail instead.
*cook dinner at least 4x's a week - definitely did this one.
*cut out caffeine- got much better.
*forgive others and get past guilt -a lot of progress here.
*be a good, kind & understanding mama to cody- i made a conciencious effort.
*be sweet to merv -most of the time.
*set up some kind of schedule for life; work play. (& stick to it). -umm ya right. for some reason this is just impossible for me.
*put cody in swimming & soccer- did both and even coached his team.
*take cody rock climbing more. - learned how to belay and took him and brinley several times at the y.
*more snowboarding - none.
*get bigger fire safe!! (after watching neighbors house burn down, i realize i am not prepared)-check this one off, but the safe is still sitting in its box in the office with all of the important documents stacked on top. next year i'll organize it.

holy crap! that's a lot of snow

we're recovering nicely from being completly dumped on. spokane received the all time high snowfall for a 24 hour period here. it seriously did not stop snowing for like 36 hours and we now have about 3 feet of snow on our porch.

cody thought it was the best thing on earth, until he discovered that school would be canceled for the last 2 days before christmas break and he wouldn't be having the gingerbread house making/gift exchange party at school, or be able to take his handmade reindeer ornaments & movie tickets to his teachers. :(

both of the cars were completly buried.

so, it was major good deal when this guy finally showed up to dig us out of the neighbor hood. :)

the end.

"you don't love us anymore?" said the little cookies

i may be the last one on the planet to learn that mothers cookies recently went bankrupt and will no longer be making their beloved pink & white sprinkled cookie globs.

30ish weeks.

cute cranky baby.

sorry arah, i couldn't resist posting just a few...yesterday i snapped some shots of sarah. she was a little cranky but still cute. these are some that i played around with that don't think arah will post. i'll save the best for her.

hello baby.

my big sister corinne had her baby girl chloe.

she is a tiny litte bird and only weighs 5lb 15oz and is 19 inches long.

and i can not wait to get my hands on her. :)

moose.

this afternoon i pulled up to the house and discovered visitors hanging out on my neighbors lawn. the baby moose was munching on some bushes and the mama moose was peeing. there were moose in the neighborhood a few years ago but we haven't seen them in awhile so it was a nice suprise. we love getting visits from critters. a porcupine was running around last summer while the kids were riding there bikes. they scared it into a bush...

santa.

photo borrowed from my sister.

Christmas tunes.

i really do love Christmas music and spokane has 2 stations that play Christmas music starting the day after thanksgiving! there is nothing merv loves more than listening to it non stop for 4 weeks. ;) he actually tolerates it pretty well and i think he even likes it a little too, but i'm pretty sure it's not playing in his car. i don't love all Christmas music though. i particularly can't stand the ultra las-vegas-loungy versions of classic Christmas songs or the way over done corny r&b and pop rock stuff. every year some cheese ball comes out with their rendition that gets majorly overplayed on the radio and thats when i crack out my very own collection of Christmas cd's the week of thanksgiving every year. this year i am very excited to ad this one:

this a great cd. so good. goose bumpy kind of good.

thankful.

this weekend for thanksgiving we:
*hung out with brian becca & the kiddo's
*& uncle gary & karri
*created our first thanksgiving dinner without mom (or dad) in their house.
*made lovely buttons trees
*played rockband galore ( i think creating and dressing up the characters might be the best part) *ate
*loved on baby sarah.
*went shopping at 4am like a bunch of lunatics
*passed the 24 hour flu around (i haven't been that sick since cody was about 6 months old. really.)
*ate
*watched dumb movies
*played beauty shop
*chatted a lot
*played carcasson
*let arah make grandma dot's peanut butter fudge so we could eat it
*tried to get a picture of karri without her hands in front of her face (unsuccesfully...)
* and got our tree up at home. :)

after posting these pictures, it looks like all we did was make buttons trees and played rockband. that's because we did. and it was great.