Misty in Washington

Kolten's Birthday in Webkinz World

2009-03-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

Kolten has been into Webkinz for a while now, and he decided he wanted a Webkinz birthday party this year. How do you throw a Webkinz party? I wasn't sure, so I of course googled it and found a great blog that told me everthing I needed to do.

We started with "Operation Gumball" and the boys tried to guess how many gumballs were in the bar. The closest guess won the jar of gumballs. Then they went to the "Employement Office" to do their job for the day. The decorated bags and tried to be the first to copy the picture. Then they were paid KinzCash (small plastic tokens from the $ store) for doing their job.

My favorite was the Wheel of Wow. It turned out great! The kids had fun spinning it to see which prize they got.

Next was Zingoz Pop - they tried to pop balloons by sitting on them and they got the prize listed on the paper inside.

The Gem Hunt was fun too. I had small colored glass stones hidden behind rocks on the back deck. They each got three tries to find a "gem" and then they could decide to 'keep it for their collection, or I could buy it from them if they liked'.

Then it was time for the Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament. The boys all shouted "1, 2, 3!" as they each played for 2 out of 3. The way they placed in the tournament was the order they got to shop at the W-shop.

Our W-shop was an ice-cream shop mostly. They could choose from several sundaes or ice cream cones. They used the KinzCash they earned while playing the other games to make thier purchases.

Wacky Bingoz was the kids favorite I think. I'd made bingo cards with webkinz pictures and if they got Bingo they got to choose a lil' kinz to keep.

Kolten opened his gifts at the Kinz Post, and then the grand finale was Candy Bash. I made little "sombreros" out of paper plates and bowls. They used the hats to try to catch candy that I threw into the air.

We had lots of fun, Kolten had a great time, and I even heard a few kids say, "this is the best birthday party ever!" That just makes it all worth it. Hopefully Kolten will have great memories of this birthday for a long time.

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Here are some pics from our family birthday celebration too.

Top 10 Ways to Beat the January Blahs

2009-01-17T12:55:00.000-08:00

Do you get the January Blahs? You know, when Christmas is over, life gets back to normal, but it's still too cold and wet to really get out and do very much?

Here are my top 10 ways I've been coping:

10. Listen to crazy songs from my teen years
"Ponderous man, really ponderous"

9. Try on crazy hairstyles online
(See my last post)

8. Make some friends on Facebook

7. Catch up on some scrapbooking
(See the work in progress! I'm only 3 1/2 years behind now!)

6. Go shopping for a new outfit!
I got mine for 60% off due to winter clearance sales. Can't beat that!

5. When the sun does shine, open all the blinds in the house!

4. Give myself a pedicure

3. Attend a little girl's ballet class

This is Nikole of course

2. Eat chocolate truffles
(You've got to try the french truffles sold at Costco. Yummy!)

1. Girls Night Out!!

This is only about 1/3 of us at Red Robin on Thursday night. It was Monique's "last hurrah" before her baby is born. So much fun! I spent much of the time trying to decide which conversation I wanted to be part of, because everyone was so much fun. Often I would try listening to two at once, but that just wasn't working. Good luck with the baby, Monique!

To Cut or Not to Cut, that is the QUESTION!

2009-01-15T11:29:00.000-08:00

I've been debating whether I should cut my hair or not. I haven't had a hair cut in a year!

Currently it looks like this:

But only if I curl it to make it less frizzy.

Otherwise it looks like this:

With a crazy ringlet in my bangs and frizz everywhere! Embarrassing!

So most of the time, in order to avoid spending
too much time on it, it looks like this:

Pulled back in a ponytail or bun or something.

So I've been doing a little research and I found a site where you can try on hairstyles for free!
It's at http://www.dailymakeover.com/makeover/virtualMakeover in case you want to try it for yourself.

It's kind of fun, and mostly very silly, and I'm not sure any of them would really work on me. But here's a few. Vote for your favorite!
A B

C D

Thanks for voting!

PS - Want to see something really silly? Here's me as a BLOND

Over the River and Through the Woods...

2009-01-14T22:34:00.000-08:00

We planned to go to Utah for Christmas, and nothing was going to keep us from getting there. So when we heard a big storm was coming in, we made an executive decision on Friday night to leave on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday morning. We were afraid that the mountain passes would be closed if we didn't get going as soon as possible.

We left around 3 pm and we stopped in Troutdale to put on chains. The roads were still bare, but we'd heard that they would be required in about 10 miles or so, and we wanted to be able to stop in a protected area because the wind was blowing so hard. A few miles down the road, a couple of links gave way (it turns out they weren't welded properly) and they weren't really helping anyway, so we stopped by the side of the road to take them off again.

On the Road

The biggest problem we had was the snow blowing behind the vehicles when we were getting ready to pass someone. Often you could hardly see! GPS became helpful so we knew if the road was straight or if it was going to turn. The roads were the worst between Hood River and The Dalles on this side of the Cascades. We saw a couple of slide offs who had crashed into the barriers and smashed thier cars a bit. Once we got past Arlington the road were better, and it was snowing lightly, but not sticking We had stopped about 10 miles before Arlington at a gas station/McDonalds to eat. I called my Dad because we'd seen a sign that said that I-84 was closed at mile marker 64. I was confused because I was sure we'd passed that already (we were at about mile marker 104 or something). Apparently I-84 had closed between Troutdale and Hood River at around 5:30 pm. We had gone through there at about 4:30. Talk about cutting it close!

I was worried about heading up into the mountains, but it turned out to not be a problem. Once there were no cars around, it became much easier. We were fine until we got past Baker City, and we headed into the next mountain pass. It started snowing much more heavily and the roads were snowpacked. Along the way we came across a car (a Jeep Cherokee or something I think) that had missed the turn and crashed into the barrier nearly head-on and removed the rubber from the front tires. The air bags had deployed, but the people were okay. We helped them call for help and warn other drivers with flashlights until the sheriff came.

At the hotel in Boise

After that, we were able to travel with no further incidents on our way to Meridian just north of Boise where we were going to stay the night. The roads were still snowpacked all the rest of the way, and I'm not sure we would have made it without our 4 wheel drive, but with it, it wasn't that bad. But it had taken us 10 hours to get to Boise, and it usually only takes us 11 to get all the way to Utah! We heard the next morning that the freeway had closed between Pendleton and La Grande overnight, so that was another close call.

In the morning we headed out and got ahead of the storm after about an hour and it was clear sailing beyond that. It is much easier to drive in the snow in the daylight! But if we had waited, we'd still be in Battle Ground.

Enjoying the Ride

Christmas Shopping

2008-12-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

I think I'm about 75% done with my Christmas shopping already this year! I've been making my list, checking it twice, and hoping I don't forget anything. I admit it, I'm a little bit of a control freak when it comes to things like this. I make lists of people I want to give gifts to, lists of gift ideas, shopping lists, final drafts of said lists, etc...it becomes an obsession. I just can't stand to leave a job undone once I start, so I'm determined to get my shopping done by the end of this week so I can sit back and relax.

I think about half of my holiday shopping has been over the internet this year. It's so much easier to search, point, click and price shop from home, especially when the alternative is bundling up a two year old and driving from store to store. Although I've done quite a bit of that as well. I think Jack's getting really tired of shopping! I wish I had a picture of his face at Fred Meyer today. I bought him a fruit roll-up because he was hungry and needed a little snack before we could go find him some real lunch. It turns out that fruit roll ups are extremely messy. And very sticky! Luckily, mom's purse has things like baby wipes tucked in a ziplock bag burried in the bottom. I need to remember to use that camera on my cell phone more often...

Being Grateful

2008-11-25T10:59:00.000-08:00

This was our first Thanksgiving away from family, and my first year cooking Thanksgiving dinner. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.

On Sunday in Relief Society, we had a wonderful less on finding "joy in the journey", based on President Monson's General Conference talk. There were many things I wanted to write down and remember, but didn't have anything to write on. Hopefully I can still remember some of them to share with you.

One of the important aspects of finding joy is being grateful for what we have. President Monson quotes Sarah Ben Breathnach saying, "Both abundance and lack of abundance exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It s always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend...when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that's present--love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us happiness--the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth."

Disappointments are merely an illusion of an ungrateful heart. When we remember to be grateful, all we see is the abundance around us.

Addicted to Music

2008-11-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

Several blogs I've seen have a playlist from playlist.com, so I decided to post one on mine. (See right column) Now I'm addicted! I'm totally reminiscing, thinking back to all those crazy songs I used to love as a teenager. I've added several of my favorites from then and now. It's so funny to find a song and think "I didn't know this was still around!" I hope you like it!

Do you remember buying packages of blank cassette tapes, just so you could record songs off the radio? I must have and a couple dozen tapes at one time (I wonder where they are...). I remember my friends and I would listen to the radio and wait and wait and wait for our favorite songs to play, and then we would scream, "It's on!!!!" and run as fast as we could to hit the record button. So most of my music had the first 5 seconds missing, and the last 5 seconds had "This is Q99.5 playing your fav...." Did you do that too, or was it just me??

Halloween

2008-11-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

This was our first Halloween in Washington, and the kids had a great time doing real trick-or-treating! In Honeyville, we always had a trunk-or-treat. We had a ward truck-or-treat here too, but I thought the door to door version was more fun. Maybe just because I haven't done it in a long time. I liked to see all the different houses decorated for Halloween. Kolten went around the neighborhood with his friend Alex, and then went to the ward trunk-or-treat with us.

Nikole was the Queen of France, Jack was a farmer (Old MacDonald) and Kolten was...well, Kolten was either green or slime, we're not sure.

I love digital scrapbooking! This layout was made during a Scrap Girls High Noon Chat challenge to use repetition. I made it in my Heritage Makers account.

School Picture Day

2008-11-07T11:43:00.001-08:00

Last month we had school pictures, and because I was afraid that all the hard work we did getting them ready would be undone after first recess, I took Kolten's and Nikole's pictures before they left for school. Jack, not to be left out, requested that his photo be taken as well.

They're all getting so big!

Under Construction

2008-11-07T10:23:00.000-08:00

I've been inspired by friend's blogs to start my own! Soon I'll have it all set up the way I want it, but right now it's under construction!

I'll be blogging soon...
Misty