Our First Christmas at HOME

This year for Christmas Carl and I decided that we would stay home. I was a little hesitant I have to admit, we have never done this. It was such a perfect relaxing day though. We got up in the morning, opened gifts, had monkey bread(a tradition in my family) and then took a nap. Later we that day we went over to ride the snowmobile at Owen and Shasta's. It was Tory's first time on one and she did great. Thanks to Owen and Shast, Carl and I were able to go for a ride by ourselves, it was so fun. It brought back memories of our dating months where we would always go out on the 4wheeler together. Owen and Shasta also gave us this great white hot cocoa. Carl and I are still talking about how great it was. We finished up the night with lovely ham dinner and the Christmas story from the Bible. It was such a wonderful Christmas full of family time, being lazy in our jammies. Just what Carl has always dreamed of, me too I just never knew it.

Christmas treats and lights

It has become a tradition for me to make peanut cluster at Christmas time. This year one evening it was just Tory and I at home we didn't really have much to do other than the usual loads of laundry, which I try to find every excuse in the book not to do. So making some treats and going to look at Christmas lights sounded like a good idea. After we got all the peanut clusters wrapped up we loaded into the car and went out on our little adventure.
Here are some of the beautiful lights that we saw....This house had all its light hooked up to a music box so that the lights would blink to the beat of the music.

Only in North Idaho would you see a blow up Santa riding a twinkle light decorated ATV. It made me smile though.

And last but certainly not least is our light extravaganza. This is Carl's pride and joy, it probably took him a total of 2 days , 2 melted extension cords, hundreds of twinkle lights, 4 reindeer, one prelit tree, 8 prelit twig branched and a new breaker( thanks to Carl's cousin Enoch) to put up all our lights. Thankfully he was able to get everything done before we got any snow. It sure looks amazing. He did a wonderful job, Tory and I are greatful to be able to have a beautiful festive house for Christmas.

The great search

Last year we start going out with Chrysta and Bryan to find our Christmas tree. They took us to this wonderful tree farm called Camden Ranch in Elk, Washington. This year Carl was able to come along (last year he was to sick to come) so it was even more exciting to get to be there as a family. We are so lucky to have such great friends who share wonderful things with us, Chrysta and Bryan always find great things like this tree farm. We got to ride up the hill from the house to go find the perfect tree. Chrysta and Bryan didn't have much trouble, Carl and I on the other hand had a hard time compromising. In the end we were able to find that one perfect tree for us though. It turned out wonderful. We enjoyed spending time with Chrysta and Bryan and are so greatful for their love and friendship.





What a great little helper we have. Even though we got a spruce, it didn't stop Tory from wanting to touch it and help with the lights. After we got the tree moved into our living room and in its place, Tory laid down on the ground to get a good look at the tree. She's so cute.

Baisden Look-alike Meter

I saw this on a blog this morning, and thought for sure I could prove Carl and everyone else wrong for thinking that Tory look like him. Of course even the look-alike meter thinks that she looks like her Daddy. Darn it. Oh well, I guess its not such a bad thing. It was fun to try and easy to do, you should try it too.
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Family Christmas

"This is a Christmas decoration", would be the first thing we heard out of my mom's mouth the moment we started to say something about the pre lit tree. I got a good kick out of it. She was so defencive about the tree. I thought it was a great idea. It looked very festive. My mom hosted our (Holly's family) Family Christmas get together this year. Since it was at the beginning of December she was afraid that if she got her tree before hand it would get to dry by the time Christmas rolled around. Anyways, we had a nice dinner with Grammy and Gramps, Uncle Scott, Aunt Tena, Ben, Krissi, Tyson, Riley, Ty, Meghan, Brieanna, Jadee, My Mom, Jimbob, Ian, Jen, Jordan, Hunter, Kaid, Carl, Tory, Me and a partridge in a pear tree, oh no just kidding. There sure was a lot of us. It was so nice to be with family though and to see all the little kiddos play with each other. Just as a side note this was the center piece for the table, it's a ring of living succulents. I love it.

Here's our little monkey being a ham for the camera

Thanksgiving weekend

So for Thanksgiving weekend we went down to Coeur d' Alene to be with Carl's family. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast at his parents house. It was a nice time to be with his parents, Grandma Joy and siblings. We stayed at my mom's house Thursday night and Friday night. All of my family were out of town so we had the house to ourselves. Friday morning (Black Friday) I got up I 5am or so and went and picked up Shasta to go to Joannes for there get fabric sale. They opened at 6am and we were there waiting in line with all the other crazy women, at 8:30 we had made it back to the car with just a bit of fabric.... somewhere around 125 yards or so. If anyone has some get ideas of things to make out of flannel pass it on, I have a little bit of it to use. After shopping Shasta went back to her family and I returned to Carl and Tory at my mom's. When finished out the day with dinner and the Christmas lights - Festival of Trees down town. All in all we had a great weekend together and look forward to making this a tradition.

This was my favorite tree at the festival, It had that cozy country Christmas feeling - I loved it.

Tory's new favorite thing

So climbing into thing and on things is Tory's newest thing. As you can see.... We were over at a friends house playing when I heard Tory crying just around the corner. So I went into the bed room where she was and this is what I found. She was actually standing up on all those movies and couldn't figure out how to get down. It was pretty silly, I ran to get my camera and by the time I got back she had sat down but still hesitant on how to get down. One night all of us were in the bedroom together, I must have just done laundry, so Tory's basket was empty. Carl being the goofball that he is finds joy in tormenting our cat Jackson, which leads him to being put into the basket and then Tory thought that she needed to be in there with him. Thankfully he is a very easy going cat, and loves the attention. So he didn't seem to mind entertaining Tory and Carl.

This is just another random time that I caught Tory in something. This is her toy basket in our living room. She had to empty out most of her toys to get in. I love how each day is such a new experience with her, she definitely keeps me on my toes and brings tons of joy to my life.

Ross Creek Cedars

Last week we went on a little adventure to Ross Creek Cedars. We got to go with Jake and Jill some friends of ours. It was so nice to get together with them. Both Carl and Jake had a stressful weekend with work and were gone alot dealing with a student. I don't know about Jill but I was getting antsy about Carl being gone so much. So it was nice when he came home early on Monday as did Jake. Which gave us all an opportunity to go to the cedars. This was Tory's and my first time at this beautiful place. Everyone else had been before. There was a bit of snow on the ground and it was pretty chilly, but it was so beautiful. The air was so clean and smelled so good. The Cedar trees were HUGE. Some were only hollowed out stumps that you could squeeze into(not me, to small of an opening SCARY). They were all so mysterious and big. It's so amazing to see living trees that size. I'm excited to go back again, maybe in the spring.

A Smile

Do you ever just have those pictures that just make you smile .... well for me this is one of them. There's really no reason behind this photo, other that we were over at my mom's and Tory was playing with this cute little hand bag that holds Kaid's old glasses in it. She figured out how it open it and so we put the old glasses on her while Ian was holding her and my mom got this picture of the two of them. I love it! She is so stinking cute.

Happy Very Late Halloween

Tory, Chance and I got all dressed up for Halloween and went to "Trunk or Treat" at our church. It was a great time Tory had so much fun riding around in her new wagon from Gigi and Papa Jimbob with Chance by her side. You can't real see Chance's costume in the picture, he went as a hot dog, he was such a good sport about it. Tory was a cute little giraffe and I was a huge white chicken. Everyone got a good giggle from my getup. I was so proud of my chicken... there's a story behind this ridiculous costume but for the sake of time I'll give you the short story.... It was a really good deal and chickens make me happy. All in all it was a very fun and memorable Halloween.

Our Baby is One

We celebrated Tory's 1st Birthday at Carvers Pumpkin Patch with friends and family. It was such a wonderful day. So many of our family members and friends made the drive, we are so thankful for them wanting to share Tory's special day. It's hard to believe that our once little baby girl is now 1 and walking. You really learn how fast time goes by when you become a parent. This past year has been so amazing, both Carl and I feel so very blessed to be Tory's parents. She has brought so much joy to our lives, and has taught us so much as well. I'm so excited for what the next year will bring. These are a few of Tory's favorite things and 1st:

First word (even though I don't like to admit it): Dada- Carl was so proud

Favorite Foods: Purple grapes, green beans and Cheerios oh and spaghetti noodles

Favorite Thing to play with: Hand bags, dog that you pull on a leash, Jackson and books

At One Tory is now walking, has a pretty good vocabulary, is not sleeping through the night(I'm sure it will happen some day, right?), loves animals, has all of her front teeth, one molar and is working on two more, she is a very happy, even tempered little girl and we are so blessed to have her as a daughter.

Tory loving her cake

and sharing a little with her Daddy.

I love this picture, in the past we have gone to the pumpkin patch for my birthday and we have always taken a picture of the group of us that go. This picture is missing our dear friend Meg, who is living in Washington D.C. and couldn't make it this year. She was in our thougts though. We did finally get Owen, Shasta and their kiddos to the pumpkin patch with us. So we definatly had to get a picture. On a little side note THANK YOU to everyone who helped us celebrate Tory's birthday. It was such a wonderful day.

Myrtle Falls

On October 20th for FHE we hiked to Myrtle Falls. This was our second attempt to go here. The first time got dark quicker that I thought it would and then this time is was raining but, Carl being the good sport that he is agreed to still go. It was such a nice little hike, most of the path was paved, with a cute little bridge going over the creek. We did have to ditch the stroller as we got closer to the falls. That last bit was kind of steep. Once you get to the top of the view point you have an amazing view of the falls, it was breath taking. I'm so excited to take little adventures like this with Tory and Carl. I love the memories.

Date Night and a 10 month Celebration

Alright so it is safe to say that I'm not so good at posting things when they happen. I have lots of good intentions though. On the 29th of August, we got the opportunity to go to dinner with some other couples. This wasn't just any dinner though, it was an Amish dinner in the middle of nowhere Montana. There is a community of Amish people in Montana that host dinners every Friday night during the summer. Some good friends of ours found this place. A couple of times Ginny and I have talked about all going there together. So finally we did it and it just happened to be on Tory's 10 month mark. The dinner was great and we even got to see a family riding in there little buggy. It was a great drive there, we drove along Lake Koocanusa. I didn't realize that it was such a huge lake. It's so beautiful and so fun to go on a little adventure. I enjoyed the time with Carl and Tory. Here are some pictures from that night.

a LITTLE bit of mud

Last Wednesday for mutual we played British Bulldog, in the mud. Usually it is mud football, but we ended up not having a football so we improvised. This is something all the youth look forward to at the end of the summer. This year I even braved the mud. I have to admit it was so much fun. This is a picture of all our young women, they sure are a great bunch of girls. I adore them.