New Year, New Name!

I've been thinking about changing the name of my blog for a while. While "Partly Sunny with a Chance of Showers" describes my usual mood and is pretty accurate for the PacNW, I acutally find the name a little depressing. So, after thinking about it and thinking about what a good description would be for our lives, I came up with a new name....Chapters of Our Life. I like it, it feels right and it accurately describes how I feel about our lives, we're going through chapters. We've been through the "Newly Married" chapter, the "Babies, babies and more babies" chapter, we've had the "Working mom" chapter, the "Husband/Dad deployed chapter (twice), the "I have an adult child" chapter (three times), the "My baby is married" chapter, the "I'm a grandparent" chapter, and right now we're working on the "In a couple of years my children will all be grown" chapter. So, that's where the new name came from and I'm looking forward to all the new chapters that will be written!

December!

December is always, always a busy but fun month!

We started off the month celebrating Lindsay's 26th birthday with a trip to the casino buffet where we ate too much yummy food and then went out on the casino floor and played a few rounds on the slot machines. Kelly and I and the girls and my mom went. When we got there my brother-in-law, his wife and my husband's parents were there celebrating my b-i-l's birthday. Kind of wierd. The next day was Lindsay's actual birthday and Kelsey made her a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cake.;


The next weekend Kelly's Guard unit had a formal, adults only, Christmas dinner at the Tiffany Center in downtown Portland. It was a really pretty place but the dinner was SO boring. There was no entertainment unless you count the 1/2 hour video of pictures from the deployment to Iraq (10 min would have been sufficient!);

Kelsey and a big group of her friends went to Winter Formal. They had two Hummer limos and went to dinner at the Macaroni Grill;


We went and got our Christmas tree. We went to a place we hadn't got to before. You pick out your tree and they cut it for you. We got a 7ft Noble for $15.00! One of the many reasons I love living here!!;


Kelsey had two Christmas (oh, excuse me..."Holiday") concerts at school;

The next weekend Kelly took Friday off and he and I went to Portland and stayed two nights at the Ambassador Hotel. We had a great time walking around downtown, Pioneer Courthouse Square, Saturday Market, having dinner at the Melting Pot and just enjoying the Christmas atmosphere;





The next week Kelly took Wednesday off and we took the girls to Portland to do a lot of the same things. We went to PQS, Saturday Market, ate lunch at the food carts, got Voodoo donuts, went to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial at Washington Park and went to zoo lights. I've wanted to take the kids to zoo lights for years. It was crazy!! We got in quickly because we have a membership and immediately got in line for the train. We were on the third train (each one holds about 100 people) and when we got off, the line was HUGE! We got hot chocolate and walked around, looking at the lights;




On the 23rd we went to my sister's for what we call "Christmas eve eve". It's a time for our immediate family (my parents and sisters and our families) to have our own time. We do it then so that we can have Christmas eve to just do our own things. We had a great time eating and visiting;

Christmas eve we went to the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie. We've gone to all the Narnia movies at Christmas time and our church centered the sermons around the movie this year;

Christmas day we went to my other sister's house where we again, ate too much and enjoyed seeing family;

The last week of the year we didn't do much of anything, just hung around home. New Year's eve we made lots of snack food and stayed home to celebrate. I was super tired and went to bed right after midnight and woke up at 3:30am to my hubby coming in to bed. He and the girls had finally finished their Star Wars movie marathon (they watched all of the first three movies)! And, just like that, another year is done!

November

November started with Brittany and Holden returning home to Texas;

10 days later I left to go to Texas to stay for 10 days while Nick was training in another state. We spent the time visiting the PX, playing at the playground, seeing the sights of El Paso, visiting the hospital (for hours!) for Britt's doctor's appointment, and hanging around the house. It was so odd to leave here where it was cold and raining to go there where it was in the 70's most days. I went from wearing sweaters and coats to short sleeves and flip-flops!







Even more odd, when I returned home it was freezing and snowed the next day!;




Kelsey bought her first car, a 1965 Ford Mustang! It needs a little work like a new paint job and some minor repairs but it runs. The biggest issue is that it is a stick shift and Kelsey has to learn to drive it;




We had a nice Thanksgiving at my sister's house here in town. I really like only having to drive across town!

October Wrap-Up

October was a fun month!


The girls were out of school for a couple of days so Kelly took time off work and we went to Rilea for two nights. We took a walk around the camp, visited Fort Clatsop and took a long nature walk along the bay, went out to the jetty where the waves were breaking over the jetty, drove around Astoria, flew wooden airplanes off the Astoria column, drove across the bridge to Washington and back and introduced the girls to "our" new pizza place. We took the long way home down the coast stopping to take in the scenery at the top of the mountain looking down at Manzanita, drove through Sand Lake, checked out the Cape Mears lighthouse and octopus tree, stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory and had ice cream, drove along the bay out to Netarts, found the house my grandparent's used to own, fed the fish at the hatchery, climbed the dunes from Tierra Del Mar to Pacific City and came home;

Kelly and I got to spend our "favorite" holiday together (Columbus Day, when he has the day off but the girls have school!);

took a couple of trips to the VA with a stop-off at IKEA;

Brittany and Holden came later in the month and stayed for a couple of weeks;

Kelly, Lindsay, Brittany and Kelsey went crabbing and caught ONE keeper. They gave it to some other people there since it was pointless to bring home one crab. Chloey, Shelby, Holden and I met them at the beach and went to lunch at Galluccis;

Kelsey made an awesome Halloween cake;

Brittany made Holden a lion costume and he trick-or-treated our block (much to the delight of the neighbors who've seen my girls grow up), stopped at Uncle John's and finished the night at my parent's house. (and I didn't get any pictures)

All in all, October was a good month!

Super September

September is all about getting into the new routine. I dread school starting at first because I hate giving up the relaxed, easy-going pace of summer. But, once they get back to school I love having my days to myself and being able to get the house clean and have it stay clean (for at least as long as the school day!).

This month we:

Took the boat out on the Friday of Labor Day weekend and took a two hour cruise (an hour each way) from Newberg (where we always put the boat in) to the Oregon City Falls (where you have to either turn around or go through the locks) and back;



celebrated my birthday on Sunday with a barbecue at my parent's and a beautiful cake made by my middle daughter (and future chef) Kelsey;



went to the beach with my girls, my nieces and my mom on the first day of school. Here only the freshman go on the first day and we don't have any of those this year (yay!). We went to the mall, spent time on the beach and ate at Gallucci's (of course);



had another barbecue and birthday party for Kelsey who turned 18 (!) and her only request was that someone other than her make her cake. Shelby did the honors! ;



found out that we are going to have a new grandbaby in May 2011! ;

celebrated our great-nephew's first birthday (well, Kelly and Chloey were the only ones who got to go). Shelby ended up getting sick that morning and then Kelsey had a meeting after work that ran way longer than it was supposed to so the three of us ended up staying home;

other than that, the month was spent going to the doctor, dentist and orthodontist and just getting back into the routine of school.

Our Crazy August

August is always a pretty crazy, busy month, trying to fit in camping, getting ready for school and trying to enjoy the last bits of carefree days.

We started off the month with a surprise party for my hubby. Last year he turned 50 while he was deployed to Iraq so that pretty much blew. So, I planned a party with the theme "we're gonna party like it's 2009", rolling back the calendar and having a "do-over" for his birthday. It was pretty funny all the stories I came up with for everything from two trips to Costco for the food (which I hid at my parent's house), to the reason for going to the park (where we had the party). He was completely surprised and it was awesome!




We had our annual block party with all the neighbors and got caught up with everyone;


Kelly and I celebrated our 27th Anniversary with a kayak trip to Smith Lake in Portland. It was a really fun day even though the lake was full of some kind of weed that made paddling challenging!



We went camping at Foster with my whole family and it was especially great having a boat this year. We spent many hours on the lake and I kayaked every day too. We even stayed an extra day this year and got home just as the 100 degree weather hit;

My mom and sister on the tube

Kelly and I and the girls spent a day at the beach shopping at the mall, eating at Galucci's and watching kiteboarders;




we had a birthday party for my dad who turned 72;

went shopping at the mall in Clackamas and met Kelly at Chipolte for dinner;

spent 2 hours (!) in line registering the girls for school;

I took my three of my girls (17, 15, 15) and my sister's three girls (16, 15, 1) to Salem for what turned out to be all day and we had a really fun time;

and again, we spent lots of days out on the boat.

And, that's August!

Life in July

July was a busy month.

To start off, our nephew and his wife added a new baby boy to the family;
Nick, Brittany and Holden were here for a visit;
the transmission went out on the Suburban on the way to the airport to pick them up so pretty much the whole time they were here we had the 4-Runner (which holds 4 people comfortably) for 8-9 people!

We spent a day at the zoo with all of us, my mom, both sisters, one brother-in-law, four nieces and two nephews (and my BIL's grandma). The weather was cool which was nice for a day at the zoo and we had a great time.

We celebrated the 4th with a barbecue and fireworks at my parents and celebrated my niece, Rilee's first birthday;

Kelly went back to work after being off for 11 weeks;
the Allen's returned to Texas;
we had a 40th birthday party for my BIL;
my BFF was here visiting from California and we got to go to lunch to catch up;
we had a graduation party for my niece, Sarah;
we went to dinner with some good friends from church and,
we spent MANY days out on the boat!