Beautiful Pictures

On Tory's birthday we got to go have 1 year pictures taken along with some of her and I. By chance I came across this amazing photographer(Amy Waddington) when I was pregnant. She did my belly pictures, Tory's new born pictures and now these. Amy is so cute and bubbly. She has a sense of warmth about her, when you are around her she make you feel like family not to mention she ogles Tory and gets her to smile. I think that she does an amazing job. We can't wait until the next pictures are done.

A gift from Heaven

Yesterday at 6:18pm I got the amazing opportunity to experience a miracle, Chrysta gave birth to her and Bryan's beautiful baby boy, Braeden. It's was so amazing to finally meet him. He is perfect in every way. In the beginning he didn't seem to excited to come out, Chrysta was admitted to the hospital Wednesday night and after a long wait he came out with out any complications. Chrysta is doing well, tired but good. It was the sweetest thing to see both her and Bryan all choked up when baby Braeden entered the world. Alright so there wasn't a dry eye all the way around. They are going to be such amazing parents, they have so much love for each other and now for their baby boy. I'm so excited for them and all the wonderful memories that are ahead of them and their new little family. I'm going back today to visit I'll be sure to get more pictures as I sure he is changing already.

Polar Bear Plunge 2009

Once again the tradition of the Polar Bear Plunge continues. This year Jordan, Ian and I got Hunter, Jen and Kaid to do it with us. It was exciting and refreshing just like I remember. This year it didn't hurt as bad as it has in the past, usually your toes and feet hurt so bad that you just want to cry. This year though it wasn't like that at all. Maybe I was just so excited to part take in the excitement. Carl and Tory along with my Mom watched us all on the beach all bundled up nice and warm. Mom was the official picture taker and towel holder. Carl just kept reminding us that we were crazy, secretly deep down inside he was wishing that he would have brought his shorts so that he could do it with us :) Anyway it was great and I'm so glad that Ian, Jen, Hunter, Jordan, Kaid - who said that next year she was going to be the official towel holder, I think it was a bit to cold for her. She's a trooper, how many 12 year old would be willing to do this with her crazy siblings, not many. I'm so glad we got to do this together. I'm looking forward to next year.

This man is my hero, he is 80 years old and still excited about the PLUNGE!

A New Year Challenge

I'm really torn about New Year's resolutions, I usually don't keep them, even though I have good intentions and then I feel guilty about not completing them. So in lieu of that I have come up with a plan for this year or goals I guess would be better to say. These are not my ideas so I can't take credit for them. I am however surrounded by great people that inspire me. I have a great friend who always seems to be doing one crazy project or another who this year is going to take a picture or 5:) a day the whole year, so at the end of the year she has a picture book of the year. Now that kind of stresses me out but, I liked the idea and thought that I could commit to one picture every week and try to do it on Sundays. I'm not quite sure why Sundays but it works for me. The picture of Tory in the bath would be my first picture of the Sunday pictures. Next, I read somewhere that instead of one year resolutions, you could do monthly resolutions and I thought YES that would work great for me. So far I haven't gotten to far with these but, for January I hope to get better at updating this Blog/journal and read the lessons for Sunday school . Hopefully in doing that it will motivate me to go to class. We have a wonderful teacher and her lessons are great but with Tory not quite old enough for Nursery and sometimes to rowdy and distracting we don't usually go. I want to though and so we are going to do it. Once I have the rest of the months figured out I'll post them maybe that will make me more accountable too.

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.
MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

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.