Christmas Fun

We definitely had a white Christmas here in Spokane! After last weekend's extreme snowfall, it hasn't stopped.

To get out of the house today, we hooked our little dogs up to the sled and they pulled Caden all around the neighborhood. Can't upload a picture right now, I finally have an MP3 player and am uploading songs from the computer at the moment. Hope to add some posts tomorrow with pictures.

Caden got 2 wiggles DVD's which were a big hit. He got some playdough, lots of hot wheels cars, as well as a hot wheels city. His present from Santa was a Go Diego little couch that pulls out into a bed - great for a nap or if cousin charlie wants to sleep over. :)

We did have a Christmas miracle in the extended family... Justin's sister Ashley got engaged to her boyfriend Chris. We are so excited for them, maybe they will get married at Mickfenway.... They are planning a May 2010 wedding, so stay tuned. :)

Merry Christmas!

We still have a blizzard!

I took some pictures to put our day into perspective of how snowy it is. On first glance, you may think that this snow pile is from shoveling. It's not. That is our "feeding reindeer" christmas light buried in the snow there. We most likely have 2 feet of snow here.

The snow is deeper than my car wheels! Oh yeah, the Ford Escape is challenged in the snow, but the Xterra (2WD) is out of commission. Justin's car is at least back in our driveway now after his snow driving mishaps.

This is Caden liking the snow. He had fun touching it with his mittens on. When we got back from dropping Justin near the bus route, Caden had a bit of a spill in the snow and screamed for a while once we got back inside. Maybe if Justin ever get's to come home from work, we could go sledding......

Sidebar - Many businesses and offices are closed in Spokane today. The city offices, the federal courthouse, the schools, even kindercare which never closes is closed. Justin's boss calls him to come in early. In fact, his boss couldn't get to work, so his brother delivered him. Justin called when he got there - at 11:15am. He said he wasn't sure how he would get home. I asked who was there - the 2 owners and him. He definitely is employee of the year if I get a vote. :) When he does get to go home, there is only 1 city bus coming north, so when it drops him off, he will have to walk over a mile to get here. I don't think the escape can venture out again to get him.

The good news is, my office is closed today so I am not worried that I am not doing work today. I think I will go work on cleaning my house now!

Oh I almost forgot - yesterday it took me 2 1/2 hours to get home from work. I left work at 4:15 and got home at 6:45pm. I took the bus since it was snowing when I left in the morning. I figured that the bus would be the safest and best option. Well, I waited for the bus for 1 1/2 hours. All that time stressing about if I would make it to Kindercare by 6:30pm. After talking with my sister about 4 times about the various conditions, Matt (her hubby) put on his coat and gave the roads a try. He made it to Kindercare and they gave him a quiz to see if he was really allowed to pick up Caden. Caden was the deciding vote when they said "Caden look who is here" He said "Matt!"

Thank you Matt & Jeannette for saving my hide again! I read your post and if I could deliver you milk I would. We have 2 gallons in our fridge...

It's a blizzard out there!

It has been snowing non stop here in Spokane since 7am on Wednesday. We have around 18 inches at our house. Our street is not on the plow list at this point and the buses are barely running in Spokane. My office is closed and kindercare just called to say they closed! That never happens. It is pretty chilly here.

Our neighbors have a cover that goes over their hot tub, that collapsed this morning. We have shoveled our driveway, sidewalk and front path multiple times. Justin has decided a snowblower may be in our future.

We had to drive my car to a main street for Justin to catch the bus. (His work is open and they called him in early because someone else couldn't make it...) Nice!

So Caden & I are watching Frosty the snowman and Elmo's Christmas. We will not be leaving the house for the rest of the day. When we drove Justin to the bus, we got stuck less than 15 feet from our house. Justin shoveled us out and we were on our way.

I hope to put up some pictures soon. :)

Weekly update (or 2 weeks)

Caden is learning manners. Justin is teaching him to say please, thank you and bless you. He gets please and thank you a little bit confused, but he is learning that if he says please, which sounds like peas, we can't resist. We can resist if it is the 2nd cereal bar in the morning, or watching Frosty for the 4th time in the day (I know, how did he watch it 2 or 3 times).

Caden also has figured out when he sees santa to say santa and that christmas lights are pretty.

I am learning that I need to keep snacks in my car so that on our way home from daycare, I don't have an upset hungry little boy in the back.

Caden also has his own christmas countdown. We have an advent calender and in each box is a sticker. He gets to open a box each day and get his sticker. He also has a piece of green construction paper to stick his stickers on. He really likes it, and they are the island of the misfit toys stickers, along with Santa and Rudolf. Luckily one of Caden's books names the characters so I am not totally making it up.

The weather has turned cold here. We are talking Pullman finals week cold. I think it is 8 degrees or colder right now. It's too cold to snow! It snowed on Friday night and then everything froze. The roads were real slick, and I actually slid through an intersection on Saturday morning. Not my finest hour as I was pretty stressed about being T-boned. Needless to say, we finally sucked it up and bought snow tires. No bargain there. At least with Costco, I like to believe that with the 1% or 2 % rebate, that will go back to pay for some of our membership next year.

Speaking of how cold it is here, I slipped on the ice in our own driveway. I fell on all fours and have the bruises to show for it. Talk about sucking up the pride. After I caught my breath, and held back the tears of pain, I got up to make sure no one saw me! I left the garbage on the driveway (the whole reason I was moving fast was the garbage truck was 5 houses away). Justin ran out after me and finished up.

Lucky for me I bought a down jacket to keep me warm, otherwise I don't think I would leave the house. In fact, I wonder how I could work from home to avoid going out in the cold... something to think about.

We are having our Anda Family christmas this Saturday, so it should be a fun filled family day for all. My brother & sister in law are coming up from the tri-cities with their 2 great danes and staying with my parents at the townhouse. Oh yeah, my parents have 2 dogs too! Should be an exciting evening for us all.

I think that is all for the updates, Merry Christmas!

Christmas is magical

Well, we are brave souls. We went and chopped down our Christmas tree on Sunday and then put it up when Caden was napping. We did the lights on the tree at the same time. We waited until Caden was awake to decorate the tree. To say our tree is unbalanced is the understatement. On the top half, we have lots of ornaments that all have different significance. We don't theme our tree, we just decorate with our collections of ornaments. We let Caden help. Oh boy! He has some sesame street ornaments that we let him hang up at his level. He likes to name them all every day. In fact, when we get home each night, he runs to the tree and pulls off elmo and carries him to the tv, then asks to watch elmo. I make him hang the ornament back on the tree before he can watch elmo. Cruise to the North Pole - we went on a cruise to the north pole to see santa. It was actually on lake Coeur D'alene. When we got to Santa, his house lit up and it was snowing. Santa read off a list of all the good kids, and Charlie, Caden & Annie were all listed. I guess Santa is coming to our house this year. Oh and for any of you Sigma Kappa ladies out there, it was the same concept as the fall cruise, but there was no green X on our hands, and there was no dance floor. :)

Before we got on the cruise boat, we walked around these shops and Santa's sleigh was there. It was empty and Charlie said he wanted to go see the sleigh. So we piled all the cousins in the sleigh. Caden was a bit angry and upset because he now has a real strong attachement to his pacifier, which he calls binky. Hence the tears, no paci in the picture please.

It's called a picture!

Well after a bit of a hiatus from posting pictures (6 weeks) I am back. I won't make excuses, just know that we have long exhausting days chasing Caden and I am too tired at 10pm to post (or there is a good tv show I want to watch....) Either way, here are some new pics so you can see a little of what we are up to... This picture of the cars is a taste of what we find on a daily basis. This is the remnant of a dog door from the previous owner, could be a cat door. Caden put his cars in there one day and we noticed it after he was in bed. It just made me laugh that he would think to line his cars up on the ledge in the dog door. Caden went to a birthday party for his friend at daycare. It was at Chuck E Cheese. That is a lot to live up to for a 2 year old birthday. Caden had fun with Ray. They just kept making each other laugh. Don't worry, we are setting the bar low for Caden's 2nd birthday. We will be inviting people over to have pizza and play. Nothing fancy, just time to watch the little ones have fun.

This is what a cord of wood looks like. We have a wood stove and we need wood. Since oil was $3.70 a gallon for the furnace (in September) we decided we needed some wood too. We found a bargain, had it delivered and Justin & I stacked it. Caden helped a little, but Justin really did most of the work.

This was pumpkin carving. We had fun with this. Caden was really fascinated by the pumpkin carving and was real interested in what Justin was doing. He even scooped the inards out.

We took my nephew Charlie with us to the pumpkin patch to give my sister a breather. Her husband is in grad school and has to spend any extra time he has studying, giving my sister little relief. We rely on her for help quite a bit, so we were delighted that she asked us for help. We made a fun morning of visiting green bluff. We walked through the apple orchards, walked through the pumpkin patch, picked our pumpkins, watched the farm launch corncobs from and air gun, and then finished off the morning with lunch at McDonalds. Charlie climbed all the way to the top of the play structure and then stopped in a tube. He was about 10 feet in the air, and I was worried that I would be going up there too. Charlie powered through and we all had a nice lunch. The boys even ate their cheeseburgers.

Albuquerque, NM - here till saturday

I am traveling for work this week. I am in Albuquerque, staying at the Hyatt. I got here yesterday and have been getting lots of work done. I had 2 client meetings, both were a success, so that was good. I have also worked out in the gym 2 times, eaten at a wonderful mexican restaurant and a brazilian restaurant. The brazilian restaurant was delicious, and it was an experience. The waiters literally walk around with giant skewers of meat and stop by your table to see if you would like any. We are talking 15 different kinds of beef and 6 kinds of chicken, as well as pork. They also have a giant salad bar. I am not sure why there are not more of these restaurants around. The other cool thing is that kids under 6 are free with a paying adult. I guess that most kids under 6 wouldn't like to have filet mignon or bacon wrapped turkey, probably just stick with the fruit salad at the salad bar.

I realize that I haven't put pictures up in a while. Lets face it, you will have to wait until Sunday if I can get it together. :) fingers crossed people.

Our week of being a Nielsen family is over. Justin is thrilled that he no longer has to track all of his TV shows and it makes his channel surfing less stressful.

It's been awhile...

It's been awhile since a post. I haven't had much time or energy for posting since Caden doesn't want to sleep at night. He ends up falling asleep on the couch with me at 10pm, so by the time I move him to his bed, it's 10:30pm and I am ready for sleep.

This week we are going to be one of the Nielsen families. We get to record all of our tv watching for the next week. I think this will definitely be an eye opener for us about how much tv is being watched. I will keep you updated on it.

Not so happy halloween

It's a good thing Caden is only 20 months old. (Is that a real age?) He had to stay home from Daycare today with a cough and runny nose. If he was old enough to realize that he had to miss Pajama day at daycare, I think he would be one angry kid. Instead he gets to have a day of male bonding with Justin. I think that they have some great things on the agenda today... the library, dropping off our ballots and maybe Costco.

He still won't wear a costume, so happy halloween!

Caden does not like costumes!

Well, tonight was Caden's harvest party at kindercare. We have about 5 costume options, but he hates all of them and actually throws a tantrum when we try to put him in one. The only thing that didn't cause high drama was this size 6 (for a kindergartener) red sox play outfit. So Caden was Curt Schilling.

The funny thing was, once we got there, all his other little friends were dressed up. Caden was the only one that wasn't worried he would be left there. His little friend Ray had a tantrum over a fork, so at least we didn't have that happen.

Sigma Kappa update

Here we are, trying for a good christmas card picture for my parents. Might work for us too, but we will see. After our cougar football blowout, we headed to my sister's house for some burgers and more family bonding. Caden is the proud recipient of his own Cougar jersey, courtesy of Grandma & Grandpa. I guess we will just hope for an exciting Apple cup, which could be considered a battle of the losers! :) Here is a picture of the sorority. For anyone wondering, this is where I lived for 4 years in college. When we went to Pullman last week, I stopped by to drop off some halloween treats to the girls that are there now.

So, here is the sorority update as I know it: The house has about 95 members, the study is still an awful peach color and is crammed with desks. Someone finally hung up all the old composites around the house, but oddly, I never came across one that I was in. The one from the year before me is hung in the 3rd floor tv room - which is still the same. Good news, the nasty shower door in the 3rd floor bathroom has been removed! Also, the black & white tiles in the dining room are all gone, it is now pergo. The living room has all the same furniture, it has been recovered. The best surprise I saw was the tv room downstairs. The wood paneling has all been painted a light color, the carpet is all gone and it is hard wood flooring now. They have brand new modern couches with some big huge bean bags on the ground and a flat screen tv!

Another cool thing, since I am an alum, they all had to stand! :) Mrs Palmer is still there and said to say hi to all.

I also talked to Jenni Reeve, she had a baby girl in June and lives in my sister's neighborhood.


That's all for now from greek row!

Are we really routing for the Cougs?

Last weekend, we went to the cougar game. That's right, we were part of history. The school's worst loss in something like 24 years, and the cougars didn't even get past the 50 yard line. I am telling you, they didn't even "coug it" because they would have had to be doing well and then blow it!

We had bought these tickets back in July, little did we know what an extreme blowout we would be witness to. This is a photo of the end of the game. This is all the reserved seats that people abandoned. Yes, there were others like us that stayed to the end. This was Justin's first live college football game. We pointed out, it can only get better!

This was at halftime, look how many people left already.

Official score board need we say more.

School Pictures

Caden got his school pictures back. Pretty cute to see his little todler room. This is what organized chaos looks like.... Oh yeah, I am that person that took a picture of a picture. Since the pictures are $12 a sheet, you can enjoy all the money that we just saved. this post alone is worth $24. :) I am no dummy! Wait, I don't know how to rotate the next picture, so call me a partial dummy.

Aren't his teeth cute! Don't worry grandmas, we will be sending you a picture, but we will print at costco for $0.20 a picture.

Fun in the tri cities!

Well, we are back from the tri-cities (2 weeks ago....) and we had so much fun. We went wine tasting, which was free at most of the wineries. A nice change from Napa & Sonoma where you spend $10 a head for a tasting fee at each location. My parents were nice enough to watch Caden so we could do this.

Caden & Charlie had lots of fun this weekend. They went swimming in the pool, they rolled down a hill, they played hide & seek at Pete's and they wrestled with my dad. I think their favorite game was called "chase." Basically they would run from one end of the hotel room to the other and would chase each other and laugh.

Caden got to ride a horse too. Not just a regular horse, but a certified miniature. It was so cute. He was really excited when they "neighed" and he even pet them. Thanks to Aunt Vanessa for calling her friends with the horses.

One thing Caden learned this weekend, he can open the hotel room door! Not the greatest trick for us, but he is one capable little boy!

Heading to the Tri-Cities

WE are heading to the Tri-cities for a mini family reunion. My parents, my brother & his wife, my sister & her family, & myself & my family are all headed to the tri-cities for a weekend of relaxing, swimming, wine tasting, barbecuing and hiking. It should be a great weekend and we are looking forward to enjoying the crisp fall air.

Caden has a new hat that he really likes to wear. It's funny to hear him say "Hat!"

Hope to have some great fall pictures to put up on the blog.

Caden & Charlie in the tent

Caden & Charlie had so much fun today. Jeannette called and said they were in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by. I told her to come on over. Caden had just woken up from his nap, so he was a little bit cranky.

We had lunch and afterwards, the boys were playing in the tent. Justin had shaken it for them and walked away and they were saying shake it, so we got out the camera. When we finally got out the camera, they had stopped on their own, so we had to shake it for them.

Please excuse my awesome outfit, I wasn't planning on being photographed in my white sweatpants.

Enjoy the video.

A new game

Last night, Caden was running around like a wild man, so we wanted to focus his energy, hence the new game. Justin took an old floor board and made a ramp. He stacked some blocks at the bottom and then rolled the cars into it. Caden loved it. He would go get all the blocks so that Justin could set it up again. So funny to watch the two of them.

Tagged by Emily

Thanks Emily for this tagged feature. Here's my life in a blog shell...


20 years ago
Well that would be 1988, making me 11 and just starting 6th grade at Whatcom Middle School. Sixth grade - Let's see here, I was very cool. I made the all star team for the basketball intermurals after playing in 1 other game. It was a popularity contest, I won. I was friends with Trisha Rosenberg and we liked to listen to Guns & Roses. I also had a crush on Shane Kibler. The last thing that made me really cool was I played the clarinet. :)


10 years ago
Well that would be 1998, making me 21. I will give you 1 guess what I was doing. It would have been my junior year at WSU, and living in the sorority. I was probably taking math 202 for the second time - hate that class, and working on my hotel restaurant major. I also had just finished the first summer of working at Rosario. Which by the way was just auctioned for the low price of 5.7 million dollars to a buyer to be named later. Wow, 10 years ago, Brianna was my roommate at the cabin.


5 years ago
Well that would be 2003, making me 26. I would have just started dating Justin (my husband now). We would have been watching the Major League Baseball playoffs with the Hornbrooks, and when the Red Sox didn't make it, there were some tears. I was working at the Grand Hyatt Seattle, my 3rd Hyatt in 4 years, and having fun living in Seattle. I lived above the Blue Star grill in Fremont, and was very skinny courtesy of weight watchers and a lot of hard work. My sister would have just gotten engaged and my brother would have also just gotten engaged. Oh yeah, and Anne & I walked around Green Lake on Tuesdays.


3 years ago
That would have been 2005, making me a newlywed. We were living in Phoenix, settling in to our first home and making big plans for the future. I was at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix as a convention services manager. We had just gotten Rocky our second Rat Terrier.


1 year ago
We had just moved to Spokane and I had been working at the CVB for 1 month. Caden was 8 months old and army crawling around the townhouse. He was not sleeping through the night, which made it hard on us. We were living in my parents town house, waiting for our house in Phoenix to sell.

Today (Saturday)
I went to Weight watchers (trying to lose weight again), I lost 1 pound. Went on a walk, went to the library, had our sprinklers blown out, and played with Caden. I also read Caden about 20 books today, and we watched Thomas the train only 1 time! Yes!

Tomorrow (Sunday)
Get up at 6am when Caden wakes me up, make coffee, read the paper, go on a walk with my sister and Brenda. Maybe go to the park and let Caden play if it's not raining.

1 year from now
I am not sure what I will be up to. I am sure that I will still be working at the CVB, selling Spokane. Hopefully I will have made my goal weight by then for Weight watchers and I will be a lifetime member. We shall see.

Any of my blogging friends, you should do this too. It's surprising what you think of when you look back at these milestones.

Walking at Manito Park

Today we went for a walk at Manito park. This is an amazing park on the South Hill in Spokane. It has a perennial garden, a rose garden, a japanese garden, and this garden. It's called the Sunken Garden. The local gardening club and the parks department keep this garden beautiful. They change the color scheme each year. My picture came out pretty good, but this doesn't do it justice. The colors are so vibrant. There is a fountain in the middle that was a gift from Mrs Davenport to the parks department in honor of her husband Louis, who built the Davenport Hotel.

This is us getting ready for the walk. Charlie wouldn't look at my camera since Jeannette was gone, she came back right then, but he still wouldn't oblige. Annie is hidden in the back of the stroller. Caden was hungry, so this is what we look like.

At the end of the walk, we always stop at the playground. Caden & Charlie even rode the seahorse together.

When we put Annie on the seahorse with Charlie, Caden was standing there looking at Annie too. While I was trying to take the picture, Caden charged me. :)

Birthday party in the park!

Caden & I went to a birthday party for one of my work friend's little girl. She turned 1. It was kind of funny since Caden was the oldest little one at the party. He was very nice to the other kids. He played ball with them, and showed them how to dance.
Everyone was very impressed with his throwing ability. I guess the little guy has some skills.
There was only one baby swing, and it was occupied, so I put Caden on my lap on the big swing. this lasted for about a minute and then he didn't want to be on my lap. see below.

After that we hit the slide and had some cake. Then we went home. Caden got so dirty at the park where the birthday was. He even slipped in the muddy grass and landed on his head, leaving a big muddy print on his forehead. What a tough guy!

Our Little Fireman

The other day I was on the phone talking to my parents. I heard in the background -"go show mom" which usually means Justin has dressed Caden up in something or spiked his hair up. Sure enough, in walks this little fireman. It's a little dress up outfit, actually too big for him, but pretty cute.

I woke up to Caden staring at me!

This morning, I was woken up by a feeling that something was near me. It turns out Caden was standing by our bed looking at me and rubbing my arm very lightly. It was almost like he was sleep walking. He had his little pacifier right in my face. Kind of wierd to wake up to that, but it was better than the other option - screaming and pounding on his door, which is how he usually wakes up.

We decided to open Caden's door a crack when we go to sleep so if he wakes up, he can just go find us, instead of scream.

I am not sold on this plan, but we will see what happens. We shut all the other doors in the house so he can't get in to trouble with the toilet or the stairs.

Yesterday since it rained for the entire day, we got out some rainy day toys. Caden loved the fisher price zoo, which was Justin's from when he was little. We also got out both sets of legos and built stuff. This was actually me and Justin building things, while Caden ran the demolition part of the afternoon.

Can't imagine how we will keep ourselves busy when we can't go outside in the snow!

Go Cougs!

We watched the cougar game last night. They won! Yeah! We played a little football in the house with Caden. He has a soft football so it didn't hurt anything.
Caden loves to brush his teeth. He has a killer whale tooth brush (thanks Nonnie) that he loves! We have to hold him down to really brush his teeth, but he likes to suck the toothpaste and the water.
You can't tell from the picture, but when Caden gets dressed in the morning, he needs to be ready to go at all times. After he has his shirt and pants on, he finds his shoes and say "shoosh mommy." So we put on socks and shoes to wear around the house. Luckily, my sister had an extra pair of the soft shoes like Robeez so he can wear those.

We have been reading lots of books these days courtesy of the Spokane Library. We also have been watching some videos and dvd's. I don't know why it took me so long to hit up the library. We go on Mondays since they are open until 8pm. It's kind of a mad dash through the library. I grab 2 books for me, and then we get a basket for Caden. I try to get 10 books and 2 movies. While we are putting books in the bin, Caden usually pulls books off the shelf. He moves fast, so I usually catch him after he has pulled one out.

We also have been going on walks and playing at the playground at the school by our house. He really likes the slides. The school by my sister's house has swings, so we went to that playground on Thursday. It was a big hit, but we had to walk home in the dark.... That was not great.

What's new on Olympic?

Caden is all about the terrible two's. He is frustrated at us a lot, and we can't figure out what he needs. What we do know is that he doesn't like to eat anything, other than yogurt, chicken nuggets and macaroni & chesse. Oh yeah, he likes fruit and milk too. Whenever he is thirsty he says milk. Which I know we shouldn't discourage, but he likes to walk around with his milk cup. It spills and he also pours it out. So, sometimes I give him water too. Less mess. We went to the fair last week, but didn't take many pictures. We should have taken them of him looking at the animals... but didn't. We did stop at the Sheriff's booth and got Caden a sticker. They had a pretend jail, but Caden didn't like it. This is Caden eating yogurt. That's right, he really likes the blue yogurt! Our table cloths are getting colored with yogurt. Let's hope spray & wash is working it's magic. We are having a hard time with tablecloths, when Caden is mad, he pulls the tablecloth towards him and everything hits the ground. He also will not eat unless he is buckled into his booster seat. I am glad that he is concerned with safety, but it can make you crazy.

We had to take his clothes off for the yogurt adventure. So he is eating in his diaper. It's fun being 1 1/2.