I've lost my wisdom

So what's been happening lately?


For one, I was lucky enough to have to have two of my wisdom teeth out. I'll pause for the cheers. Oh wait, no one wants that! I did pretty good actually. I think my jaw was more sore the afternoon after it was done than the next day. I remember in high school everyone having their wisdom teeth out. For some reason I was lucky (?) enough to miss that train. Oh well, better late than never, right??? This will be my diet for the next few days: 

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As soon as I can eat real solid foods again, I'm looking forward to some strawberries and salads and spaghetti, of course not all together.


Here are some photos:

Making a mess playing with toys. Messes are so fun!

Lots of feeding ourselves going on here. 

We celebrated our (Jackson's) first 4th of July. We went to watch the fire works in Chandler. What perfect weather it was that night, warm and humid, which is kinda rare for the desert but man it was nice!

Tough to get a good firework photo with my phone.

Bright flash makes us look funny!

While the 4th of July just wasn't the same since we all had to work and go to daycare, we did get to spend the evening together. Watermelon, strawberries, sitting at the park and playing. We missed the parades we used to go to. The BBQ's and family get togethers.

Lots of naps with our bunny and uncle jimmy bear. Gotta have a friend to cuddle up with :)

Enjoy your week. I'm on zombie shifts so I'll be backwards from you all. Looking forward to getting a few miles in this week in between the heat. Man oh man, we must be in July now:

Check out those overnight LOW temps only in the upper 80s and low 90s. Hello A/C!

It's beginning to maybe feel like Christmas? [late post]

[another 'started but didn't finish' post. here it is anyway!]
With just returning to work recently, getting the hang of taking Jackson to daycare everyday, running on little to no sleep everyday and still running around doing EVERYTHING, it hasn't really hit me that Christmas is in a FEW DAYS. 

We finally got a Christmas tree last weekend. I know, finally right?! Decorated it, got some gifts wrapped (in between other chores and while Jackson was sleeping) and semi tried to clean the house. I haven't made Christmas cookies, though I was able to send out Christmas cards at the last minute. 

I'm lucky enough to have Christmas eve and day off this year. Haven't taken Jackson to see Santa yet this year. Even though he is so small he will likely not remember it, it's his first Christmas. So I'm going to do my best to get him to see Santa. Though, if it doesn't happen, next Christmas he will be a year old and it should be a bit more fun.

I'm realizing how much there is to do being a mom during the holidays. WOW! So much respect for the other Mom's out there!


And of course, I didn't finish this post and get it out before Christmas, so I'll post it now. Who cares. Just adding more to the busy of the season.

I hope your Christmas was a very special one. I hope you spent lots of time loving those close to you and enjoying little things in life with friends and family. 


Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas & Happy New year from my little family to yours :)

Holiday Happiness

Here are some photos of our holiday season to share with you all! A little late, but better late than never right?! We enjoyed our Christmas eve together just the 3 of us and loved talking to our parents and videoing with our nephew. Merry Christmas!

She was aso excited when a package came and she had a gift from Grandma!

For Christmas Eve dinner I made Grandpa's Potato Soup.

I got a new zip hoodie & an apron!

 Our plate of goodies! And our asian meatballs we munched on.

Lucy absolutely LOVED her monkey doll from Grandma!

Party like its 1993

Sitting and remembering great memories with family....think back to Christmas 1993.

I was 8 years old and my brother was 5. If I remember right what our plans were for Christmas, on Christmas eve we were headed over to Aunt Sandi & Uncle Gary's house where Grandma and Grandpa would meet us over there too. We would get there and I would find Alexa and we would play and Jimmy would head off with D'anne to roam around the house. Before long it was dinner time and the 4 of us kids would sit at the kid's table and eat. Not to worry, my food still didn't touch on the plate then. I remember hearing all the adults out in the other room talking and laughing at the dinner table as us kids talked about what we thought was in those presents. Dinner would be over and it was goodie time. We grabbed a few treats and there even might have been Aunt Sandi's Rum cake...mmmm...I want to try to make that someday. Soon it would be time to open gifts. This has long been a tradition in my mom's side of the family, probably long before I was around, the way the gifts are to be opened. We start youngest to oldest and open them one at a time, not forgetting to read the card who it's from. I think this made the whole process a lot of fun. You really focused on who got what from who. There were a few years when Uncle Chuck & Aunt Tracy came out from Texas, but we always would get a phone call from them or we would call them as soon as we were finished to thank them and tell them what we got.

Christmas Day was usually spent half at my Dad's house, we would go over Christmas eve and stay the night, and then later that morning we would go back to Mom's house and see what Santa brought us there. We would have another meal with Grams & Gramps and just enjoy the day together.

Now that I'm married and have a whole other family to think about, things get a bit more complicated. But I love that. I love having a big family and lots of people to see over the holidays. Yes, it can get complicated trying to organize with 15 different people but being able to see everyone is so worth it. 

I wish I had some pictures from way back then...

Holiday Christmas Card 2010

Modern Cranberry Noir Christmas

Get custom photo Christmas cards online at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

 Yep, I am done with my Christmas cards, now just patiently waiting for them to come in the mail. I usually don't share with everyone what they will look like, but why not! I'm pretty excited about them this year. Josh and I usually pride ourselves, ok we always pride ourselves, in taking the "do-it-yourself-photo" so we find a great one to use in the card each year. This year I wanted to do something different and with more background since now we live in Arizona and I wanted to get some cactus in the picture. We went and did a photo shoot the other day to take some nice photos of us. I think they turned out pretty good. The lighting wasn't that great because it was close to sunset, but geez we did them ourselves so I'll take it!

Shutterfly Photo Cards

A Sunday hike & photo shoot

Josh and I got lucky, due to him getting last Saturday off and me getting both Saturday & Sunday off from trading at work, to have this last weekend off together, saaaweeet!

While we didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, usually doesn't go that way anyway, we did get one thing done that I'd been wanting to get done. Took pictures for a Christmas card, and plus I just wanted to get some more nice pictures done of us. Luckily the rain was kind enough to give us a window but the wind didn't stop.

I still have to decide which one(s) to include in the card. Which one do you like best??? For your enjoyment...

I like #4, #6, #7...counting from the top.

I realize are a bit grainy but it was the time of day with the lighting. We tried the flash and it just didn't look great either. Pretty good for doing these ourselves! Happy Holidays from Arizona. Who knew the desert was so pretty?! If you haven't guessed, I have a thing to try to find the coolest, strangest looking saguaro cactus. It was pretty chilly but nothing like Utah or Northern Arizona with the snow. Colorado hasn't gotten much if any snow yet.