2008 Year Picture Review

January

Big Bear, CA

February

Snowed at our House

March

Easter Egg Hunts

April

Playing at Papa and Grandma's

May

Going to the Park


June

Chase and Cody's 2nd birthday party

July

Learning how to play "Ring Around the Rosie"

August

Playing in the sand in Hawaii

September

Thunderboats and playing with friends

October

Little Pirates

November

Thanksgiving in the Desert

December

A beautiful Christmas Tree

I am borrowing this idea from another blog. I think it is a great way to review our wonderful year. This is just a small look at every month what we did, it was difficult to choose just one picture to represent each month. I hope you enjoy reviewing our year as much as we enjoyed doing everything this past year.

2008 In Review by Words

To reflect upon the year, I am copying my fellow blogger in capturing 2008 highlights and low lights.


1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
I left the boys for 2 nights in a row.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't make a resolution last year and probably won't again.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes, my friend Leslie had a boy named Jack.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes

5. What countries did you visit?
None

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
More time spending with family

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
June 5, 2008 - Chase and Cody's 2nd birthday
October 14, 2008 - My grandfathers death

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Losing the last 10 pounds of baby weight.

9. What was your biggest failure?
And then gaining the weight back (or most of it).

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes - a abscess that ended up infected on my face

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Laptop computer

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Chase and Cody's

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
None

14. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage and Daycare

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Chase and Cody

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Jingle Bells - Chase and Cody had to learn this song for their Christmas performance.
Also - Happy Do Do ( For happy birthday)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? happier
b) thinner or fatter? marginally thinner
c) richer or poorer? poorer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Camping

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Housework

20. How did you spend Christmas?
With Family

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
More and More everyday with Chase and Cody

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Grey's Anatomy

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Nah

24. What was the best book you read?
Debbie Macomber - The Dakota Series

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The boys learning how to "sing" Pour Some Sugar on Me"

26. What did you want and get?
Clothes

27. What did you want and not get?
Nothing

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
I am not a movie person

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 34. I worked during the day and went to the thunderboat camping that night.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Winning the lottery.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Comfy

32. What kept you sane?
Chase and Cody

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Don't really keep up.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
The election - in general.


35. Who did you miss?
My Mom.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Jen

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
That raising twins can be a challenge

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
"All I wanna dooooooooooooooooo
All I wanna doooooooooooooooooo
Is Love You.

Menu Planning Monday

Last week went good. We didn't have the steak on Friday and instead ordered pizza. We did have the steak on Saturday though.

So this week:

Monday: Meatloaf and potatoes
Tuesday: Stew meat over noodles
Wednesday: We will be in the desert - and we are doing a potluck. I am bringing the carne asada.
Thursday: BBQ Chicken and Rice
Friday: Tri-Tip and Corn
Saturday: Hamburgers/Hot Dogs and Baked Beans
Sunday: Mexican

Weekend Post

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. We sure did. Chase and Cody got spoiled by Santa. We had a very good Prime Rib for Christmas dinner at Steve's parents house. Here are a few pictures that I took throughout the day:

Friday we played with new toys and I cleaned the house. We also took down the Christmas tree. That tree was making such a mess in the house I wanted to out. Chase and Cody played in thier new mega maze tent system - they had so much fun in that!!

Saturday: I started to load up the motorhome for going to the desert. It is so cold outside that I don't want to leave the warm house. As in cold, I am talking about 50 degrees. But that is super cold for us! We also opened up more toy's for Chase and Cody. We put together some of thier GeoTrax Train and we have more to put together.

Sunday: Continue to be cold and also load up the motorhome. I also went grocery shopping - oh what fun!! Get ready for work on Monday!!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a wonderful weekend.

Way Back When-sday

Cody and Chase with Santa 2 years ago.

Age: 6 months

December, 2006

Play along with Way Back When-sday with Cheryl at Twinfatuation

Menu Plan Monday

I thought I would join Sara at Twice is Nice and plan my food menu for this week. How simple is that - especially this week since it is a short week of cooking at what not with Christmas in there.

I have made a very easy food week.

Tonight: Campbell's Supper Bakes Herb Chicken

Tuesday: Roast in the Crockpot with Potatoes (Something we have every week or just about)

Wednesday: Having dinner at Steve's parents house for Christmas Eve.

Thursday: Again having dinner at Steve's parents house for Christmas.

Friday: Steak

Saturday: Hamburgers

Sunday: Mexican Food!!

I will let you know next week how this goes and how will I stick to the menu.

Have a great Christmas!

Photo Tag

Since I read Rachael's blog I thought I would play along with her.

Rules:

1) Choose the 4th folder where you store your pictures on your computer

2) Select the 4th picture in the folder

3) Explain the picture

4) Tag 4 people to do the same

NO CHEATING! (cropping, editing, etc!)

Chase sitting in his chair at the Thunderboat Races we went to in September. They were at the beach, the boys had a great time.

I tag:

Amy at The Ward Family

Sara at Twice as Nice

Amber at Team Gillis

And anyone else that would like to play along.

Way Back When-sday

This is Christmas last year with all their gifts that they received! They are tottally spoiled!

Age: 18 months old

December, 2007

Check out Cheryls blog Twinfatuation for more Way Back Pictures...and play along!

Baking

I decided that today was a baking day. I made a bunch of holiday treats and knew that the boys could help me. I made pumpkin bread, Black bottom cupcakes, German Chocolate Coconut bars, and chocolate chip cookies. Everything turned out delicious, if I do say so myself. The boys thought that the chocolate chips were candy. And they ate a lot of them. They helped me stir and pour things into the bowls. Very fun!

They also keep me entertained by singing...a lot. If one is not singing, the other one is. Right now they are singing "Jingle Bells". Other songs get sung as well like ABC's and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Which is a whole other post of the first performance. But anyways so while we were baking we were also singing. Very fun!

So since baking was so much fun and I had finished my official baking I brought out a gingerbread house kit. Okay I have never made a gingerbread house in my life so this was a new experience for me also. But I thought how hard could it be. Very hard. I guess I never could be a cake decorator.

It was much harder then I thought because I couldn't even get the frosting (if you call it that-sugar stuff that) the right consistency too stay on the house. After playing with it a while and adding water and powder sugar it stayed one long enough for Chase to get some candy on it, when he wasn't eating the candy himself. Cody liked it but liked playing cars much better so he went to play by himself as Chase finished. Chase had good time - but what a mess.

Our Tree

Steve brought home our tree on Friday evening. It is a flocked tree and stands about 10-11 feet high. Way bigger than our normal tree is but it is such a beautiful tree. We have while lights on it and I picked purple ornaments for it this year. Since I don't have my camera back yet from the repair shop I don't have good picture to show you.

Maybe tomorrow in the sunlight with all the drapes open I can take a picture of it. I am just using my video camera and it doesn't have a flash on it.

Steve and I put the lights on the tree on Friday night. Chase and Cody was "helping" also. They loved looking at the lights after they were on. They still do and we have to have the lights on all day also. On Saturday morning I started the task of decorations. We only broke one bulb. (Yes, I bought glass ornaments a few years back) not thinking that I would ever have 4 hands that like to hold bulbs in there hands! But the tree after decorating it for half the day turned out beautiful.

Now only if I could put preents under the tree and not have those 4 littel hands unwrap them before I get the second one under there that would be good.

Holiday Season

It seems like the Christmas Season has taken over my blogging, computer and office time. At night when I normally have been blogging and "talking" to my friends, I have been decorating trees, baking, wrapping packages and shopping. So I am here again (at least for tonight). I do have some new pictures to post from this past weekend - so here it goes.

Oh by the way I, just spent the last hour getting updated on every one's blog. I love looking at every one's holiday traditions and family pictures. They all look so wonderful.

Photo Shoot Preview

A few weekends ago, Chase and Cody had pictures taken with their cousins in the park. Here are a preview of the pictures.

Broken

That would describe my camera. A camera I received from Steve for Christmas. A camera that I love and take everywhere with me. I take pictures of the boys almost everyday. I am just so lost without it.
It started acting weird a couple of weeks ago not wanted to take every picture that I wanted it to take. It works great in no flash mode but the flash won't work. Even the video part would work. So I talked to Best Buy and since we have the extended warranty on it they will repair it or replace it (if they can't repair it). But this is going to take 2 weeks. Yes 2 weeks. What I am going to do without a camera for two weeks? Did this have to happen at the holidays?

Jeeping at Thanksgiving

I had mentioned in a previous post that Steve had rolled the jeep in the desert when we were there for Thanksgiving. This happened on Friday after Thanksgiving. I don't have any pictures of the actual roll over but just the damage that is caused.

I guess he went off a hill to the passenger side that he thought he could climb down and instead rolled down the hill and crashed. He and his passenger, Daniel, hit so hard that they bounced back onto all four tires. They both were okay, didn't get hurt. They were a little sore the next day though.

They were able to fix the jeep and he went out jeeping on Saturday. Here are some pictures of that.

Making Rice Crispy Treats

While we were gone to Las Vegas on Friday Chase and Cody stayed with their great-grandparents, Grammy and Pop. They had so much fun. Grammy and Pop kept them busy. They boys helped Pop put up his Christmas Lights on the porch.

They also were able to make Rice Krispie Treats with Grammy.

Cody didn't like the stuff on his hands.

While they were making the batter, every time Grammy would put a marshmallow in the bowl Chase would take two out. The treats turned out a little dry, but they were still very good and the boys were very proud of thier treats.

Grammy and Pop really wore them out and they slept for about 2 1/2 hours.

Thanks Grammy and Pop for keeping the boys for us while we were having fun!!

Weekend Update

On Thursday, we left for Las Vegas, NV. It was about a 5 hour drive for us and we went with 4 other couples. We stayed at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino downtown.

I had never stayed downtown before, and I loved it. Thursday night we started to drink, I am not a drinking type person, and probably haven't had a drunk night since before the boys were born. We ended up on the dance floor we danced the night away. It was so much fun. We had breakfast at about 2:30am and went to bed until about 11am.

On Friday, we went to Cowboy Christmas. This is a bunch of vendors all related to country stuff for the National Finals Rodeo that was in town. We go every year and this year was just as fun. We went to dinner at Binnon's Steakhouse on the 24th floor. What a fabulous view and great food.

We left early Saturday morning for our drive home. We had a great time. This was the first time I had left the boys for a consecutive 2 nights. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but we kept busy. The boys stayed with their grandparents and great-grandparents. They had just as much fun as we did.

Way Back When-sday

age: 6 months

December, 2006 - Exactly 2 years ago today!

You can check out the other way back pictures at Twinfatuation