clair062

My hubby dropped me off at Costco (this was a few weeks ago) while he took Annette to get her permit (what!?!). I was done shopping and waiting for hubby and the kids to come join me, so I went "window" shopping.  I thought these would look nice in the backyard.  Would love this nice set of Mikasa mugs. They are so pretty.  I thought Josh and Caleb would appreciate these ThermoFlask drink bottles.  I have been wanting a toaster oven for a loooong time, 15 years to be exact =)  A great price for this Hamilton Beach hot water heater upper, funny!  Thes G2 pens are my favorite. Especially the last six colors on the right.  I would love a new dry erase board.  Needed to see the price so I could show my hubby later, haha.  Oooh, love this stove. And this is what I actually walked out of Costco with, hehe. 😮And Annette got her permit 😮

I like these pictures of Ethan and me. I was sitting at the top of the stairs and asked Ethan to sit with me. I'm normally not a selfie picture taker. I usually have a hard time taking selfies because I never know where to look. My hubby and I laugh so much when taking selfies because we look so funny and we just look goofy. This time I kinda like them. These are unfiltered photos. It's the real us. I like the one below because it captures us just having fun. I don't really like the way I came out but I like the little memory that is forever captured in a photo.

This Valentine's Day we were busy packing. We will be moving this week! Yay, we are so excited. With that said we didn't do much for Valentine's Day. Our oven stopped working a few weeks ago so we didn't even bake cookies.  What we did do was buy the kids some yummy Krispy Kreme donuts! They loved the heart shaped ones. Yup, even my boys were "fighting" over who gets what, haha, Thankfully there were 6 heart shaped ones.  I stayed away. I've had too many cheats during the holidays that my Triglycerides were up when I was tested a few weeks ago. So back to being super strict again. No giving in to these yummies!

Quiet time at the cabin. Just hubby and me. It gave me time to ponder what I'm thankful for. It was a nice weekend getaway celebrating our 20th Anniversary. Hard to believe we've been married for 20 amazing and wonderful years. Of course I brought more of my Thinking Tree journals. 

My hubby and I are not good at taking selfies together but we try. I think this is one of the first ones. I'm sure we must have taken one before.  We took a 20th Anniversary weekend getaway and thought we'd try out hand at selfies. I think we need a selfie stick, bwahahaha  We discovered that our phone will snap a picture if we say, "cheese", so I'm saying cheese while keeping my smile. My hubby on the other hand is saying it in Spanish and the picture snapped as he was saying the 'o' sound in queso.  We tried again. This time with just me saying cheese. We stayed in a one room cabin with a gorgeous view from every window. This picture was funny. I said, "Hey, Dear, let's take one here." His reply, "It's just wood, you want us to take a picture in front of wood?" and as I'm typing this I'm laughing to myself because it was funny but you had to be there. And yes my love of my life is saying, "Queso" :) I said, ...

Just taking time to SLOW down.  We decorated our gingerbread houses. Of course mine was a Coffee House. I'll share more soon. One of my SLOW goals is to stay off the computer during the holidays. And I'm so proud of myself. Through the Thanksgiving week I've been very careful NOT to jump on the computer. Which means we actually decorated our gingerbread houses early this year. Normally we don't get to them until New Years Eve.  When I pulled out all the gingerbread houses Lance said, "But it's our tradition to decorate them when we stay up all night", which translates to New Years Eve, hah, He made me laugh. I guess I might have to buy some more for our "tradition" (me laughing and smiling).

My sister MaryEllen came for a visit. It was totally a God thing because she was here on business and it so happened that she normally would have worked Friday but didn't because it was Memorial Day. Meaning she could come with us to see Josh on Advancement Day  from ALERT Academy. We were all so excited. She arrived Saturday and was able to stay the weekend with us. Monday Lupe and I dropped her and Annette off in Fort Work at the Hilton. Annette stayed with her from Monday-Thursday. Thursday night we picked them both up. Friday-Sunday she stayed with us. Friday going to the ALERT campus to see Josh. We stayed overnight renting three dorm rooms (wish I would have taken pics). We came home Saturday and dropped MaryEllen off at the airport on Sunday. It was sad to see her go. BUT, we made the most of her stay. Since she was here for a quick visit, we had to hit all the coffee shops in one day! Our first stop was Shoemaker & Heardt Coffee Shop. A place that sells antiques, gag gi...

Look who made it through the nine weeks of ALERT Academy!!! Lupe and I are so very proud of Joshua. This was not easy. He had to learn to rely on his squad and they on him. Learning to work together was key or else they could or would be dropped (50+ push-ups) or worse what they called 'smoked' and you didn't want to be smoked with all the intense exercises and drills that come with it. Josh even showed us a log that a team/squad would have to carry around to learn teamwork. Thankfully Joshua had an awesome team where all the guys worked together.  Week 3 ~Honor Squad. His squad worked so well together that they were the Honor Squad for the whole time. I thought that was huge and it says a lot about their character. When we first got there we could see Josh but not talk to him. I cried. It was so good to see him. I just stared at him because it was all I could do. I couldn't call out to him. I'd have loved to run up to him and give him a hug but that would not be a ...