An amazing morning....

Once in awhile I am thankful that I work nights. It's not often, but occasionally there is an upside to it. This morning was one of those days. During the drive home from a long 12 hour shift, I saw the most beautiful horizon of Mount Rainier just as the sun was coming up. I just happened to have my camera with me in my purse from Christmas so I decided, while I was driving, to take a picture. (I don't recommend doing that on a regular basis.) Every once in awhile I'm reminded of just how beautiful the scenery of life is and that it's something that I should pay more attention to.

Christmas Day at my Mom and Dad's House

Christmas Morning at home. We all woke up and I thought that I would make pancakes for breakfast and try out a new gluten-free pancake batter. I whipped up the whole package and it made a lot of batter. The pancakes cooked well and I topped them with raspberry jam and cool whip (Mike's favorite). The pancakes themselves didn't taste too good. Jack didn't mind the flavor (he's not a picky eater) and Mike just tolerated it. I don't think I'll be buying that brand again. I probably will try another type eventually, but I'll have to get up the nerve first. After breakfast, we opened up our presents at home and headed over the bridge to Gig Harbor/Port Orchard. We stopped by the Perez household in the morning and the kiddos got a chance to play together. We left for my mom and dad's house about noon. These are some pictures of our breakfast and our Christmas together at home.








Pictures of Christmas at the Lehman household. Jack was a little tired from our Christmas Eve festivities, so he wasn't in the best of moods. I wish that I would have been able to spend more time with the family, but I had to nap because I WASN'T getting low census. Jack got a lot of good presents and we are thankful for the extra Christmas money.







Overall, we all had a really wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to a bright New Year!!

A Christmas Eve Tradition

Just got back from Christmas Eve at the Glen's in Bellingham (Mike's grandmother) and we had a wonderful time as always. I'm always so happy to see everyone and it reminds me of how little time we get to spend with our extended family but I guess that's what the holidays are for, right? Here are a few pictures from the event.







And more pictures.....








And some of a very tired boy opening his presents.

Curses to night shift working....

Once again working nights has screwed with my natural body clock and I am fully awake here at 2am on Christmas eve knowing full well that I have to get up in 4 hours to get ready to make the long trek to Bellingham. Maybe no one will notice if I don't shower, humm.... Thinking about it, I bet someone who worked nights probably started this whole blogging idea because they were up when no one else was and they couldn't make a lot of noise doing fun things so they started typing and posting it to the internet. Well, maybe that's just my imagination running wild at 2am. I can't be too sure right now, so you tell me.
: ) So while I had the time, I thought that I would put up new pictures of our Christmas adventure so far.


Jack's Christmas present this year was a train table and set. Mike and I had a lot of fun putting together the track and setting up the scenes on the table. I had to take a picture because I KNOW it will never look this cute again....






This is Jack on psuedo-Christmas morning. We are going to be lots of places near Christmas time, and we had set the table up already so he got his Christmas present a little early. I think Mike was as happy to get the train set as Jack was......
Boys and their toys.






After the very nice dinner out with Carol and Doug, (where I was a ding-dong and forgot that I had the camera with me) Mike and I stopped by my auntie Linda's house to visit with her and my uncle Tom. When she gave Jack his present, I had a light bulb moment that I HAD packed the camera and apparently it got shoved into the deepest depths of my purse. I love that bag because it eliminated the need for a diaper bag, but come ON! It hid a large camera. It's like freakin' Mary Poppins with this bag. The first picture I posted is of Jack helping Linda clean the magnets off of her fridge. He's very helpful, albeit not always in the most helpful way.... The second picture is my auntie Linda lovin' on her some of Jack. He protests some, but gives in eventually because he know she relentless until she gets her way. (I know Uncle Tom would agree with me on that one!) As Jack explored my auntie's house he came across an old light up chapel that was my great grandmother's before she passed away. To me, it's amazing to see things like that. They have so much character and heritage. Jack was VERY interested in it, and I was VERY scared that he would break it. After through inspection, he was satisfied and thought that it should be turned off. He kept pointing to it and saying 'Off, off!' It's good to know that he will be trying to save me electricity when he grows up. : )






PS ~ Who knew that Mike was a Christmas ornament?

Another birthday come and gone....well, almost.

I am 29 years old. I'm almost 30. It took a minute to sink in today. My birthday had kind of a rough start. Mike and I went to bed just after midnight and welcomed my birthday with a short marathon of 'That 70's Show'. I was having trouble sleeping so I ended up taking some Benadryl and just as I was dozing off to sleep, Jack let out a huge cry and when we went in to check on him, he was completely awake. Being a decent mom, I knew he was teething so I gave him some Ibuprofen just before bed, so Mike and I still haven't figured out what set off the crying fit. Long story short, Jack ended up in our bed for the night and I didn't sleep that well all night. Between Tornado Jack, and the Snoring Symphony (Jack AND Daddy) I slept from 1-4 am and was up after that. So when Jack woke up at 7 am, both of us got up reluctantly. Mike was nice enough to let me try to nap, but my body was so on edge for some reason, I'd just start to doze off and something would wake me up. Ahhhh, life with a toddler. After Jack went to play at Holly's, I got showered and ready to go out for my birthday dinner. I was hoping to go to Famous Daves' for some ribs but I thankfully called ahead to see if they have any menu items that are gluten free.......yeah, NO. I think there was one dish if I didn't get any seasoning on it that I could eat.....No. I'm trying to be good, so we decided to go to the casino and eat crab instead. We had a little time to kill so we played some slots. We didn't loose too much. I broke even, but Mike lost a little on video poker. All in all that was a good evening. After the casino, we went to Mike's co-worker's house to pick up a train set and table for Jack for Christmas. I think that he will really like it when we get everything set up. We took Jack to the Learning Sprout store and he was in love with the train table they had set up. I'm just hoping he'll be as interested in it, if it's at his own house. So now I'm just catching up on some blogging while MIke comes home from picking up some more train pieces. Mike is doing fine, albeit about the same as before. Not having such cold weather lately has helped his condition. When he stays indoors like he has lately, the condition is more easily managed. Now we just have to keep him inside more..... heh, like that will happen.

So here's to turning 29, feeling like 50, but I'm goin' to keep trucking no matter what comes up.

Happy 29th Birthday!!

Setting up the Christmas tree

Things around our house are starting to look like we actually do celebrate things, such as Christmas. Here are a couple of pics of our decorations.




The tree is up....yes, the tree is up.




Our very first Christmas tree is standing majestically in our kitchen. We set up the tree and put the lights on while Jack was gone, (thought there would be less of a fire hazard that way) but he was there when we put all of our decorations on. We are using the wooden ornaments that my mom painted for my sister and my Christmas tree when we were very young, and I bought white sparkly snowflakes at Target. We were planning on using only white lights but they didn't quite make it all the way down the tree. I had a good 1/3 of the tree that didn't have any lights. Since we were in a pinch, (neither of us wanted to run to Costco at 8pm) we decided to put on the larger lights that were supposed to go around the deck, onto the tree. It helped me realize, I want colored lights instead of white lights on my tree next year. I kept both sets on my tree so it has lights all the way down, but next year I'm buying 2 SETS of colored christmas lights. Jack wasn't really interested in decorating the tree this year which for me was disappointing, but he did love it when we turned the house lights off and then turned the Christmas tree on. He kept trying to sniff the light bulbs like they were flowers. He also went around to all of the bulbs he could find and had us name ALL of the colors. Jack and Daddy put our tree topper on the tree. Jack wasn't too impressed with helping Daddy but I got a picture anyway.




My wonderful house husband.....



He's going to kill me for that!

Happy Holidays!!

The wind storm of the North and Mike's doctors appointment

Saturday was an interesting day all together. After getting our tree and coming home with an extra passenger (my niece Quinlan) we got settled into home. After the kids played together, and we watched a few movies, we all headed to bed. Apparently during the night a wind storm started up. I woke up at about 6 am to the dogs barking and some very eerie sound. "Creeeeeek-boom. Mike, what was that? What was what? Creeeeek-boom. That!' Mike got up to check things out and noticed that the car canopies that we have to park under had moved several feet and that his car was still parked under it. So both of us bundled up at 6 am and had to rescue the car from under the canopy before there was any more damage to the paint. After things had settled down, Mike took a picture of the canopies.




On Monday Mike and I went to see Dr Darby who has been following Mike since the injury at work. Overall, Mike is doing well. His condition is stable, albeit very limiting. I asked Dr Darby about the prognosis of him making enough of a recovery to be able to work again and he said that most of the cases he's seen there is little improvement after the initial injury. He said that over a few years, it might get slightly better but only time will tell. Mike wasn't very happy with the news that he's not going to be able to go back to work. He really loves his job and his co-workers. He's having a hard time trying to wrap his head around what to do next. On top of everything, they are still denying his claim to the Longshore L&I, so we have very limited cash flow coming in and Christmas is right around the corner. We have people working on getting the claim passed through as quickly as possible, but it's still scary to think that we might loose our house. We are both trying our best to be strong, but at times it's hard. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, right? I just hope the lemonade stand is enough to keep our little family afloat. Please keep Mike in your thoughts because he is having a pretty tough time with all of this.

A Christmas tradition has died.....

Snowy Owl christmas tree farm is dead..... Last year it changed to Christmas traditions tree farm but Christmas traditions my arse. What kind of Christmas tree farm isn't open on Saturdays? Hello? Saturdays? The most popular day to go do anything (at least in my book) and you are pretty much closed. They were open from 4-5pm so you can pick a pre-cut tree? Why on earth would you go to a 'cut yourself' farm to pick out a PRE-CUT tree? Dumb arses! This little set back didn't stop our Christmas tree hunting, though. We found another tree farm called The Wreath Company not too far away and we went there. Over all, the experience was much better but in my heart a Christmas tradition still has died. I guess that we will start a new tradition at this farm and Jack won't know any different, but it still makes me sad. We have gone to Snowy Owl tree farm for over 20 years and the fact that i would drive from Roy to Port Orchard to get a tree should tell you something. I'm a sucker for keeping tradtions alive. Hopefully this new tree farm will be around for a long time and we won't have to find another farm any time soon.

Here's to our new Christmas tradition of going to The Wreath Company's tree farm! Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Preparation for tree hunting.....





Treking through the forest to find the perfect tree....







Loading up the trees.







and to all a good night!