Category Archives: Family

A Short Wednesday!!!!

Ok, so technically there are still 24 hours in today, but I am getting ready to head to work and I am only working 1/2 day today – YEAH!!! My sister and her husband are still here, and when I get back home, my sis and I are going to paint some ornaments. Later this evening, my sweetie and I are playing Santa and delivering presents to both of my sis-in-laws’ places!! That will be fun! 🙂

Tomorrow we are heading down to Roseburg to spend Christmas with my family, I am hoping that everyone will have fun!! My sis, Alex, is going to keep our house and our puppies company!! Thank you, Alex!!!

On a side note: I am so jealous my little sister and her husband got to go up and visit the aunts last night! It sounds like they had a memorable visit!! Don’t worry lil’Sis – your secret is safe with me!!! HEE! HEE!! 😉

Anyway, I will give you an update on how all that goes later tonight!!

Have a FABULOUS day!!! 🙂

Early Birds!

Well, I had some early bird family members join me a little before Christmas this evening. My little sister Jennifer, and her husband, Austin, came up from Roseburg to visit for the next 2 days, since they have to work both days before and after Christmas, and we were sure if we would get the opportunity to spend some time hanging out together!! They are taking a quick trip to Portland and will be back later this evening!

Jason is also out this evening, I am not sure what exactly he is doing, but if I were to really think about it, I would know that he is out getting his last minute Christmas shopping finished!!

SO, I am just taking a moment to enjoy the quiet evening here at the manse…er uhm…ok, so manse might be quite the overstatement, but you know!! Anyway, I have been browsing some books that my sis-in-law had stored in her trunk that she had ready for thrifting. I LOVE reading, but I am having some serious difficulties getting into a book right now. My mind seems to constantly be running – lack of focus! I want to find a good book that has some  romance, passion, camaraderie, hilarity, a tricky mystery, and some kind of ironic twist that ends with a happy ending!! Is that too much to ask???? LOL!! I know!!

Jason just got home – it looks like he has gotten enough baking supplies to do some serious damage to the kitchen I just got cleaned up from his last baking day!! I still love that man – that bakin’ fool o’ mine!!! 😉

Anyway, I am planning on hitting the hay early tonight, so off to get ready for bed I go!!

Have a FABULOUS evening! 🙂

Happy Saturday!

What is your idea of perfect happiness? A lazy, naked Sunday hanging in out in bed with my Sweetie reading, watching classic movies, or other extracurricular activities.

What is your most marked characteristic? My smile

What is the trait that you most deplore in yourself? Fear

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Living without faith

What is your favorite occupation?
Being a designer

What is your greatest extravagance? Books! Books! And more Books!!

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Being married 15 years in a time when divorce is something that happens as easily and as often as you change your panties!

Which word or phrases do you overuse? For fucksake! (Sorry Dad!)

Who or what is your greatest love? My family, hands down!!!

Who is your favorite fiction hero?
Auntie Mame!!!

What is the quality you most like in a man? Honesty, drive, humor and generosity

What is the quality you most like in a woman? Honesty, drive, humor and generosity

Where would you like to live? Paris, France

If you were reincarnated, and you could choose who you came back as, who would you choose? I would want to come back as one of the Cosby kids!

How would you like to die? Happy

What is your favorite journey? Discovering what my purpose is

Which talent would you most like to have? To be successful with anything I try

Who are your heroes in real life? Audrey Hepburn, Della Reese, Diane Von Ferstenburg, Isaac Mizrahi, Oprah Winfrey, Rick Steves, and JK Rowling

What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Patience, but only because I don’t have any

What is your current state of mind? Pleasantly exhausted and happy to be done with Christmas shopping!!

On what occasion do you lie? Only when it saves someone from getting hurt

What is your motto? I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength

– Christina

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Sunday Evening Update!

Today has been a pretty good day! Got up, rallied the troops and then went out and did a little shopping – ok a lot of shopping!!! Went over to my sister-in-law’s and helped decorate a Christmas tree for her and the kiddos. The colors were rich chocolate, medium brown, gold, and burgundy. I was a little worried about the chocolate brown, but it turned out looking GORGEOUS!!!

Anyway, after decorating my sweetie and I headed home, I hopped into my jammies, turned on my Christmas lights and snuggled up on our couch!! I am pretty happy that I at least got out of the house, having been sick for the past 2 days!

Anyway, I have a long week of work ahead of me this week, and a lot of last minute preparations to get ready for our Christmas trip down to Roseburg.

So with that in mind, what are some things that I can do to help me have a Level 10 (as in perfect)???

  1. Take my i-pod to work, fully charged, and rock out to music while I work.
  2. Take time out of my work day to go for an energizing walk.
  3. Have plenty of ice water on hand – maybe even cut orange slices to give my water a little flavor.
  4. Pre-plan my work day the night before. Make sure my to-do lists are already created and ready to go.
  5. Get to bed on time every night this week. Sleep is your friend.
  6. Take a 10 minute meditation break at ;east once a day to help ease stress level.
  7. Make sure to pack healthy breakfast, lunch, and snacks to stave off hunger and to keep blood sugar level.
  8. Keep telling myself, “You are blessed” over and over again.
  9. When all hell breaks loose, PRAY!
  10. Remember that you can’t control everything that happens, you can only control yourself. Decide to have a good day!!! It’s A CHOICE!!!

On that note:

Have a FABULOUS evening! 😉

Cookie Night!!

Tonight I got to spend some time with my best friend, Dawn, her fabulous daughter, Sam, and my sweetie this evening. We spent the evening baking cookies. Well, wait, actually Jason and my girlfriend’s daughter baked cookies, while Dawn, and I chatted at the dining room table. Dawn was dealing with a painful tooth and I am dealing with a yucky bout of bronchitis.

Jason and Sammy made ginger cookies, peanut butter crunch bars (my personal favorite), sugar cookies, and chocolate butter cookies!! It was so much fun watching them in action. Dawn and I spent our evening trying to get pictures of them, and giggling at all sorts of mayhem and silliness – FUN!

Anyway, as I was sitting here trying to decide what to blog about, I thought I would rack my brain and see if I could remember any memories that pertained to cookies growing up. You see, Jason had asked me the other day what were the special cookies in my family, and to be honest with you I couldn’t remember any. However, after a while I did start to have some memories pop up, and the first one pertains to sugar cookies. I know my mom must have been making them, and I must have been about 4 or 5. My mom had some sugar cookie dough that she was making cookies with, and I remember that I was playing with my Barbie on the kitchen floor. My mom would occasionally pinch off a small portion of dough and give the pieces to me to eat – they were delicious!! I remember actually taking a piece or two and squishing them into my Barbie shoes – I was so amazed that the pieces actually fit. Silly me! 😉

I do remember my mom making peanut butter cookies; I would watch her as she would meticulously press the tines of a fork in a special pattern on the top of each cookie. I LOVED watching her do that, although I don’t really remember ever liking the taste of peanut butter cookies, it still is a GREAT memory for me!

Ooh, I just had another childhood cookie pop up in my head. My mom used to make these chocolate no bake cookies! HMMMMM…I can even smell the oatmeal and the chocolate sents wafting in the air. These cookies were cooked in a pan on the stove, and after the mixture had cooked the appropriate length of time, my mom would drop rounds of the hot mixture on parchment paper to let them cool. After coming home from school there were times where there were these chocolate no baked cookies on every flat surface in the dining room and kitchen, and if we were lucky, and if we didn’t get caught in the process, my sisters and I would always go in and try to grab one before it had cooled. Warm and gooey, and ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!!! You know, come to think of it – I bet that my mom always had a couple of extra cookies set out just so us girls thought we were stealing some, when in reality she was planning on it. Man, moms can be soooo sneaky!!! 😉

Do you have any cookie memories that you can think of??? I would LOVE to hear about them in the comments section.

In the meantime,

Have a FABULOUS evening! 😉

The Lessons of the Christmas Pageant!

After work this evening, my husband and I got the opportunity to go to our nephew’s preschool/kindergarten Christmas pageant. We were fortunate to sit in the very first row and I just did my best to be in the moment and to observe as much as possible. Some of the lesson I learned are:

  • When you have done a good job, don’t be afraid to clap for yourself – you deserve it
  • If the mood strikes, it is OK to cry in front of a large group of onlookers
  • You are never to old to want your mommy
  • When you make a mistake, make it loud, and make it look like you are having a blast while doing it
  • Always be ready for the paparazzi, because you NEVER know who will want to take your picture
  • If you are assigned the role of pageant donkey, and you don’t want to wear your donkey ears, you don’t have to
  • If you have to take a potty break in the middle of your performance – the show will go on, even if you do run to the potty
  • Take every opportunity to flirt with your cute neighbor (even if she happens to be a cute little cow)
  • Only you can know when you have hit your limit. When you are done, know it, and accept it. Even if that means you are stripping your costume off in the middle of the pageant floor, while walking back to your classroom.

Thank you, Morgan!!! We had such a good time this evening, and you are just growing up soooo quickly!!! I hope that we have many more opportunities to share memories with you!! Thank you for the lessons!! Auntie Chrissy loves you!!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!

Getting Back to More of the Same!

The fact is:

You are already doing what you want!

You Choose.

Period!

OK, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system…I am having a quiet evening at home, an old Patty Duke episode on the tele, Christmas lights lit, my sweetie Christmas shopping in the next room, the girls sleeping on the couch, and I can hear the hum of the washer and dryer going. It has been a long productive day.

I don’t think I’ve seen the Patty Duke show since I was a little girl. It reminds me of all of the trouble my sisters and I used to get into. I used to do all of the babysitting of my younger sisters while my parents were at work. My sisters loved to make my life difficult, and I loved to return the favor in kind, so to speak! LOL! I have so many stories of the crazy, zaniness, that we got ourselves into. One of the things that comes to the top of my head was the time that I was about 12 and caught the kitchen on fire. Not a “ooh the pan is on fire”, but “OMG THE FIRE IS TRAVELING UP THE CABINETS!!!!” fire!! After putting out the fire, I put the troops AKA my sisters, into cleaning mode!!! All I kept thinking was, if we clean this up mom and dad will never know!!! HAHAHAHA!!! Well, no – they found out. Matter of fact I remember my parents walking in, I was standing on the stove cleaning the ceiling, one of my sisters was cleaning the floor, another a wall, and another standing on the counter next to the sink cleaning cabinets!!! The jig was up!!! I am amazed we all made it into adulthood!!!

Gotta love those memories!!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

Back Home & Taking It Easy!

My sweetie and I are back at  home, from a quick weekend down to Roseburg. We went to support our little sisters with their Christmas bazaar! I am just so proud of them for all of the hard work they had done, and for all of the goodies they were able to come up with. The booth had all sorts of goodies for sale, ornaments, heating pads, i-spy pillows, gift baskets of bath goodies, advent calendars, etc. It actually was a little slower than my sis, Jennifer would have liked, but she really did do such a GREAT JOB!!! They all did! This was the first time that I can remember them stepping out of the box and do something that caused them to use their bravery muscles! I AM SOOOO PROUD OF THEM!!! I love you, girls! More than you will ever know!!!

On another note: I am longing for my farm today – I know it is out there somewhere, I just pray that we will find each other someday. I am really dreaming about growing my own fruits and vegetables. Sharing our goods with neighbors and friends, and canning our deliciousness away to be enjoyed year round or given as gifts – OH THAT WOULD BE THE LIFE!!! 🙂

While I go and dream some more,

Have a FABULOUS evening!!! 😉

A Day with the Aunts!

One of my FAVORITE days of the year is my annual Christmas AUNTIE DAY!! This is a day that myself and my two favorite Aunties – Alice, and Flo (HEY GIRRRLS!!) get together to do some window shopping, having lunch, chatting, laughing, and ooing and ahing at all of the Christmas sights!!!!! These ladies are such a strong support system in my life, I don’t know what I would ever do without them!!! Well, yesterday was NOOOOO exception!! We spent the day on 23rd street in Portland, and HONEY, we had SOOO MUCH FUN!!! I came home with more treasures than I actually expected – I did a little more actual shopping than window shopping this year! 😉 An oversized Gaudy-Fabulous ring, a chocolate brown hat with a flower/brooch, a couple of goodies from the MAC store – I just LOVE that place, and some other miscellaneous baubles!!!!

With that said, during our lunch yesterday one of the topics of conversation was my insane addiction to collecting stuff and the show Hoarder’s! Ok, before you get the wrong idea I am not THAT bad, but I did do a self-analysis last night and realized that if I wasn’t careful, I could be!! SO, today I have spent a LARGE portion of my day posting DVDs and books up on E-bay! I am not sure if any of it will sell, but I have to tell you that opening up my mind, I mean REALLY opening up my mind to the idea of getting rid of the excess and I realize that as I started posting objects, it just got easier and easier and actually quite…what’s the word???? FREEDOM!!! Ok, let’s not go too crazy here, I only posted 31 things – that does not a full decluttering make, but it is a GREAT start, and I can feel the momentum growing!! I will be on the lookout for more things to get rid of, and hopefully get some of this out-of-control-ness in control!!! 😉

I will keep you posted!

Have a FABULOUS evening!!!

Blessings & Birthdays!

Whew!!! It is officially the end of Friday and these past two to days have seemed to be a whirlwind of fun!!

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving at Jason’s mom’s place and we had a blast. Unfortunately my camera has crapped out so I was able to get 0 photos – BOO! HISS! Oh well, maybe I will just have to ask Santa for a new camera so that I can keep up with my hobby of photography.

So yesterday it was my job, along with my 7 year old niece to make the deviled eggs. What I was not aware of, however was that my niece LOVES hard boiled eggs and has the life philosophy that if, as she is pealing an egg, and it should break, then they are no longer deemed worthy of the deviled egg plate – hence she can just eat them to put them out of her misery! Cute, but NO!!! She ended up breaking sooooo many eggs that at dinner time she actually passed on the deviled egg platter as it came around because she had already eaten something like 4 whole eggs! Gotta love my girl!!!!!

After dinner, most of us managed to go for a quick walk in the neighborhood, which was good since the group was seeming a little cooped up. Then a few of us adults hung around to play the game Mad Gabs – WHAT A HOOT!!! That game is so much harder than it seems – I may have to pick this up, so I always have it on hand – could be fun at dinner parties!!!

To say the least – we had FUN!!!

As for today, it is my Sweetie’s 35th birthday and we literally spent the day doing WHATEVER he wanted to do! FUN!!! I won’t go into all of the details here, but we did a lot of walking around downtown checking out all of the French/European stores, made a pit stop at Great Harvest Bread Company – Yum, checked out this great kitchenware store for some supplies, and eventually made it back to Bentley’s for an absolutely DIVINE dinner!!! All-in-all, a damn near perfect day!!!

Happy Birthday my Love!!!! I love you more and more every year!!!

(And Daddy, keep your spirits up – you are in my prayers!!!)

Have a FABULOUS evening!
~Christina 😉