My brother is a HUSBAND!!!

I look at this and I can't help by cry. 

I haven't been able to control myself for days.

I'm not even a crier. 

I'm just so happy.

 These aren't even half of the selfies on my phone…just a few of my favorites.

 My boys adore their new Auntie!

These four have always had my heart. 

There was a time, not too long ago the the five of us lived together.

That was fun. 

The bodily noises were in full effect. DAILY!

I was the only girl. 

I ran a lot back then. Ha!

 I'm glad my Mr. is always by my side. I don't know what I'd do without him.

 I always wanted a sister growing up…God heard my prayers. 

I now have six. 

Is it me or am i shrinking?

Do you ever have so many feelings that you can't put into words, and everything comes out weird and awkward? That's me today. I make jokes when that happens, but in all honesty i am over the moon for my brother. 

Here's where this post will get deep. (You've been warned.) Our parents got divorced when I was 14 and he was 12. It was a hard time. He and I ended up so broken in so many ways. Through an infinite amount of prayer (on all of our parts) God is always faithful and redeems brokenness and I am grateful.

Sam is my brothers perfect match. 

Everyone has asked over the past year if I liked her and my answer was always, "yes, she takes care  of him and deals with him in such a kind and calm fashion. She is everything i could of wished for and more. She was made for him." God is crazy good in that way. He gives us exactly what we need. 

Scottish Wedding Blessing

May the blessing of light be on you - light without and light within. May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great peat fire, so that stranger and friend may come and warm himself at it. And may light shine out of the two eyes of you, like a candle set in the window of a house, bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm. And may the blessing of the rain be on you, may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean, and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines, and sometimes a star. And may the blessing of the earth be on you, soft under your feet as you pass along the roads, soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day; and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it. May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly; up and off and on its way to God. And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly. 

Amen.

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Cheers to One Hundred Years!!!

savor all the moments

i don't know if i've ever said this on my blog or not but i have this major fear that when I'm older I'm going to get Alzheimer's. my dr. assures me that my lack of memory currently is due to the fact that my vitamin d level is still morbidly low. so back to a therapeutic regimen i go.  that being said, i want to be able to look back twenty years from now and savor all the moments. remember all the things. and feel all the feelings that motherhood has made me feel.

there are 8 days left of the school year. at this time every year i freak out as reality sets in and i realize how huge my babies boys man children are becoming. G is fifteen and finishing up his freshman year. WTH? D is 13 and is finishing up 7th grade. HOLD ME.

i thought i'd do a little recap of the year. in photos. lots of them. the difference between a black and white take with my phone and big girl camera is killing me. don't say i didn't warn ya.

 G's first forensics tournament

 thursday night football 

{above & below G is #85}

pencil tricks a.k.a proud mom moment ha! 

surf or die dude. he's never surfed a day in his life, but he sure is cute.

 santa's in that H3. say whaaaat?

hockey shmockey. selfies forever! 

pheasant hunting 

 they day he got his first deer.

momma + son date night

happy birthday JESUS

family camp

 bidding adieu until we meet again to grand

judging by this photo it's like she new her time was near.

we miss her every second.

the first day he gave flowers to a "real" girl. not just his momma.

T H I R T E E N

F I F T E E N

our first boy//girl par-tay. 

YIKES!

boys lets take a nice picture together…ha right.

 snuggled up to watch the voice

 the first of many snowboarding trips

thinking they're hysterical in anthro

track. a new adventure. 

go get em' tiger 

leading the greek dance pack 

OPA 

we tried to get a nice photo to give to the grandma's for mothers day. ha. twas a nice try though.

love you both to infinity and beyond G & D…

not to be confused with D & G

promise to love me boys when i lose my mind.

kiss.kiss 

S A T U R D A Y {{ part 1 }}

sometimes days are full and long.

sometimes those days are over the top wonderful.

S A T U R D A Y

was one of those over the top wonderful days.

we started off the day bright and early with a drive to a neighboring town for a jr. pheasant hunt.

i normally don't go along on these types of adventures, but someone needs to take photographs and be a keeper of these memories. 

lucky for me another mom ended up in our group went along for the ride. she was so nice and to my surprise she's a hunter. and she just may have convinced me to get my hunting license. of course my husband jumped at the chance of me being slightly interested to get me into the hunter safety class. 

i may have convinced my niece and nephew to go through the course with me. 

i'm a big baby and don't like to do things alone. ha!

this girl is German Shorthaired Pointer and man can she can work. 

she looked like she was having a blast finding the birds.

this lady is a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon she was just beautiful. 

three things that really stand out to me from the hunt are:

1. the community of hunters are not what i expected. they are truly so kind and friendly. 

2. my boys can shoot. like whoa, can they shoot. 

3. watching the dogs sweep, point, and flush out the birds was so impressive. i would go as far as saying it was just beautiful to watch. 

this was only a third of what saturday held. 

i'll be back tomorrow with part 2.

how was your saturday?

halloween circa 2005

man do kids grow fast.
this seriously feels just like yesterday.

my boys, thing and dino force black power ranger are in full effect here. i mean look at those stances. while on the subject of stances look at my little guys foot on top of my big guys foot. L O V E !
to this day this little err big dude still puts his feet on top of ours. he a snuggler and likes to feel close to his people. i think that why he does, but you know i'm no psychologist.

also i sort want to but also sort of don't want apologize for this space turning into a remember zone for me. but hey, blogging wasn't a "thing" when my kids were little. So it is what it is. HA. and i really just want to remember. we haven't taken part since 2009. my kids spent a lot of time freaked out...we quit halloween. ;)

i hope you all enjoy the heck out of your day today. whatever you do whether or not you observe halloween or not.

a sentimental sap

yesterday i was stopped at a stop light and i looked over and saw these beautiful flowers growing in the center divide. i quickly glanced around looking for cops pulled out my camera and took a picture. you see, i want to plant some flowers in my yard but every time i go to the nursery i'm so overwhelmed by all the pretty flowers that i leave empty handed. i wanted to remember these flowers. when i went back to the photo the "good guys" sign caught my attention, and instantly my eyes filled with tears of remembrance. 

when my first born was around two and a half or three, he loved toy story, and rescue heroes. everyday we he would say, "momma we're the good guys aren't we?" noticing the theme of good versus evil.  i would reply, "yes baby we are." one day in the midst of him play with his toys he looks up and ask again, "momma we're the good guys aren't we?" but this time i said, "yes, i think we are, but why do you think we are?" his answer blew my mind. "Momma we're the good guys because we're christians. we love Jesus and he loves us, that makes us good." 

you know that tingly feeling you get that starts at the top of your head and washes over your entire body? the holy spirit. at that moment i got it. and it made me realize that even if we don't think our tiny babes understand what we are telling them, they do. especially the big things that we adults questions. the tinies just know.

for my whole life i have never been a cryer. then i had children. with each passing year, each new memory, and sweet remembrances of yesterday i have turned into a sentimental sap ready to erupt at any moment. 

espresso

on friday i purchased this bad boy. i'm pretty excited about it. It reminds me of when i was little. my mom had s friend who would make us "cappuccino milkshakes" using the sweetest little pot a.k.a. the espresso maker. i've decided to name him luca. you name your appliances to right?

my mom's friend worked at a local coffee/jazz bar in our downtown area. imagine how cool i thought i was when my mom would take my friends there on friday nights. we'd sit our own table, grab one of the many board games, and listen to the live jazz music among all college students and 20somethings. ha!

saturday morning i decided i was going to break in luca. this is what i made

cafe mocha.

next time it needs MORE chocolate.

cafe' mocha instructions here
the history of the espresso maker here
more yummy espresso drinks here

i hope you all are having a relaxing day off.
xxO

when i was little

we went out of town often. 

it went like this.

shasta lake

camp nelson ( it's in the sequoia national forest )

lake tahoe

repeat. 

each and every summer. 

by the time i got married and had kids of my own i could not, would not go to the mountains ever. i was over it. i declared myself a beach lover, and beach lovers only vacay at the beach. duh.

this week we snuck off for a quick over night trip to the beach. it was great, and i was glad to get out of the 109* heat. however, while lying on the beach trying to keep the sand off of my towel and listening to passers by have the most disgusting conversation ever, that i miss the mountains. 

on Shasta Lake my uncle had a houseboat, a ski boat, jet ski's and a pontoon. why he needed the pontoon i have no idea. actually i do. i think this song explains how he must have felt perfectly. somedays you just wanna float. i miss him. great. now i'm crying. ha! 

a few years in a row a black bear tried to climb aboard the house boat, and everytime my uncle would scream like a girl. you see the trash cans were on the bow of the boat. my aunt and uncle slept on the bow of the boat.  my cousin would bound down the ladder (he slept on top of the houseboat) run through the cabin and grab a the shot gun off the wall and pretend like he was going to do something. i prayed like heck that i didn't get eaten by the angry bear. by the time my cousin made it to the bow the bear was long gone. 

my brother and i would leave Oreo cookies on the bank for the deer. deer love Oreos i bet you didn't know that. they were fun to watch. so brave quenching their thirst only feet from our house boat. we saw snapping turtles, bald eagles and hawks. we played toe fish. oh you haven't heard of toe fish? it goes like this. it a two player game. first you need a gullible child and an adult who enjoys tormenting children. then when gullible child is floating and spalshing in the water having a grand ole time the tormenting adult swims close and shrills "the toe fish are going to get you" and simultaneously pinching your toes. i learned to swim with bent knees and feet sticking out of the water while keeping my toes curled. i am pretty sure that if you could get me in a lake now i would swim the same way.

my moms best friend had a cabin in sequoia. it was always such a fun trip. down by the camp nelson general store there were three little cottages that someone had decorated in story book themes. one belong to the three bears. one to little red riding hood and one to the three little pig. i was told that the recently that the cottages are still there. just beyond the houses was a meadow with a little creek running through the middle. the trees were covered in spanish moss. everything was so green. we would play there for hours and pretend that at any minute the big bad wolf was going to come get us. it was so perfect when a dog would howl while we were playing.  our imaginations ran wild.

my dads golfing buddy had a condo in tahoe more specifically in incline village, and he let us use it. tahoe is beautiful and still one of my favorite place in the world. we would go on boat tours to emerald cove. play on the shore and dare each other to get in the ice cold water. pass by ponderosa ranch (where bonanza was filmed) go to the mint in carson and try our luck at circus circus in reno. there was bowling alley across the street from the condo and a school around the corner. we were a soccer family, every evening my brother and i would kick around the ball in the school yard while my dad prepared dinner. 

i miss the quietness of the mountains and their majesty. the smell of the trees and the cool evening air. 

memories are good aren't they? 

the next chance we get i am for sure taking my boys to the mountains. they have hardly been. i feel like when they were little little i didn't get them out into nature to explore enough and be rough and tumble little guys. so today instead of feeling guilty over it this is my resolve...

it's never too late.

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