california sun....

We made it to cali for a quick little visit.. more on that later...

look at my little men...he heee

sushi...

What a nice ending to such a bummer day!

christmas road trip failure...

Today we were supposed to be finishing up our drive to California. We were supposed to be in Modesto for a week, wake up Christmas morning and celebrate with B's mom, grandpa, and uncle Lee. It was supposed to be super fun, and super special, since it would be the first Christmas we spent in California with the kids. Stupid Weather ruined our plans, but we put up a good fight, only to end in defeat last night... here is the rundown....

When the weather turned bad, we thought hmmm, maybe we should get train tickets? Nope totally sold out, good thing since train service shut down...

soooo... back to the original driving plan...

• Decided to get a 4wd rental car, our goal was to leave town between noon and 1pm...
• Getting the rental car should have taken, what, 20 minutes? took 2 hours... ughhh!
• Left my Mom's house loaded with half our stuff at 2:00pm...
• Ran down I-205, not really a problem and had to stop at our house... in record time had all presents loaded, snacks packed, and movie started for the boys...
• 3:00pm hit the road... goal was to make it to Medford to stay with my brother for the night by 9pm, 6 hours gave us plenty of time.
• 3:15 heard from my sister they would be closing I-5 at 4pm to de-ice the roads, so we needed to be fast.
• Didn't stop for gas, figured we would make it to I-5 before they closed it down and would stop to get gas than.
• 4pm sitting on I-205 going 5 miles an hour... sucks...
• 4:30pm have gone not even a mile...
• 5:30pm still on I-205 not moving at all...
• 6:30pm... still sitting, people are out of the cars, trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
• ...We have only a quarter a tank of gas left...
• 7:45pm barely moving along, we finally make it to the stafford road exit... we get off of I-205 south, and get right back on I-205 North... we are going home!
• 4 and a half hours we made it 2.6 miles...
• It took us 11 minutes to make it back to our exit for home, that was traveling at a high speed of 30mph.
• We threw in the towel! There are now winter advisories on both sexton and the siskiyou pass, plus a storm is supposed to hit Northern California... we are done. the universe is telling us it is No Go....

after almost 5 hours in the car to only turn around, we decided to go out to dinner (I have no groceries at home, thought we were going to be gone for the week).... we ended up having a very lovely dinner at 8pm at our local sushi-go-round place...

Totally bummed!

all hung by the "chimney" with care...

My stocking is 30 years old, so crazy. My Great Grandma made every child in my family a stocking and they are the only ones we have ever used.It is so fun to carry on the tradition and make ones for my family. B's is from our first Christmas together, Ollie's was of course his first Christmas. Max did'nt get one for his first two years, poor guy, I finally got my stuff together and got his made... so fun....

so over it....

If I had no where to go, and nothing to do, this would be great. Maybe for a day.

Going on over a week, this is starting to suck!

snowy days...

Well, the weather gods were not listening to little old me, and dumped snow and ice on the metro area, totally ignoring my request.... how rude.

But despite the snow we made it to the crafty wonderland yesterday, just by the skin of our teeth. I almost had B turn around about 3 times and just head home. I am glad we stuck it out and got there. There was actually a great stream of shoppers and we made our money goal for the day so it was good. I sold out of most of my women's stuff, and was so glad I went ahead and added in long sleeve shirts with the dresses. There was allot of baby stuff, but we still did really well.

Today I am so glad to just be home, and not have to go anywhere, even though I am on my last diaper for max, I guess we have to use up the last of the g's. Maybe we could just potty train today.. oh wouldn't that be awesome, but not going to happen.

I do need to go to the post office, and may just bundle up the boys and walk down there, don't know if I would rather walk on icey sidewalks or drive on icey streets... hmmmm.

The boys LOVE the snow, which is so awesome. Last year I don't think we really got any. The year before that I had a 2 month old baby and a 2 year old, so ollie didn't really get to spend that much time actually playing in the snow. This year they both have had so much fun. I see many trips to the mountains in our future. Maybe we will have enthusiastic snowboarders in our future... that won't be so bad, fun for mom, dad, and the boys...

**again blogger just uploading my pics anyway they want to... what the heck?

this is for you Nana Barb...

I got a request last night on the phone from a certain Nana.

seems I've been heavy on the max video, so here is some ollie clips to hold Nana over till Christmas....

No Snow Please...

Oh Weather Gods... please, oh please, could you hold off on the snow until Monday...

Otherwise this house will have a very broke Christmas....

www.craftywonderland.com

baby Jesus is cute...

What a sweet little man.

oh christmas tree...

Ideally I would love to hike out into the forest and cut down my own tree...

Ideally I would love to make a day out of a Christmas tree farm, hiking through the mud and picking out the perfect tree....

Reality is my husband grew up in Central Valley California, we are lucky we get a real tree!

This year we headed down to a local lot selling lovely trees for $12. We walked around the lot looking at the trees they had out, and the huge pile of trees still wrapped up tight. We opted to gamble on our tree and picked one out of the pile still all wrapped up. It was fun when we got it home, like the anticipation of opening a present, fingers crossed that it didn't have a huge gaping hole in the side. The tree turned out to be a perfectly cute little tree, We had a warm and fuzzy evening decorating it up. Our living room looks so pretty, and smells so good.

the shopping list...

My husband is awesome. Let's just start with that.

But, anytime I have him run to the store to pick up a couple of things, he is gone, seriously like 2 hours. Usually he comes home with odd things that I asked for, but the completely wrong brand and wrong size. Accompanied by exaggerated tales of having to search the store, and walk from end to end multiple times.

An example, milk, we buy only organic milk, which I won't go into the reasons here, but you know the reasons. So B will usually come home with a half gallon, claiming that was all they had... hmmmmm... pretty sure they have gallons.

Since I spend allot of my time, I mean allot of my time, at the grocery store, last time I sent him, I sent him with a map...

I think I am freakin hilarious!

I really shouldn't complain at all, he took the kids with him so I could get some work done... love that man.

etsy article...

I was asked to submit a photo and a little blurb for a shop local etsy article...

http://www.etsy.com/storque/spotlight/gift-ideas-shop-local-portland-with-thisisalliknow-2980/

funny...

my daily saving grace...

I heart naptime.

weekend exploring...

I have been obsessed with hum bow (steamed chinese BBQ pork buns, yummmm) lately. Usually we make the trek out to Uwajimaya in beaverton, but a couple weekends ago we decided to stay on the eastside and check out one of the biggest Asian markets off of 82nd. I have been in my share of grocery stores, Seattle and San Francisco both had great Chinatowns, with huge markets. And Mexico, of course, is a whole different shopping experience. Nothing better than bumming around a shop where you can't read most of the packaging.

**(blogger will not import the photo below of ollie correctly, in my viewer it is the right way, in photoshop it is the right way, but every time I upload the pic it uploads this way... stupid blogger).

I never realized how upscale Uwajimaya was until we visited this store. It is like comparing whole foods and winco. I ended up only buying a few things at the mega-asian mart. I hate winco, and I guess I don't enjoy the mega-asian mart either. We had planned to pick up some steamed buns and long noodles for a kung fu panda night. We ended up at trader joes, with potstickers and pad thai... not exactly the same, but close, and my boys dig pot stickers.


I guess my hum bow cravings will have to be filled out at Uwajimaya after all.