Christmas is here and I cannot wait to go to Portland to celebrate with my family! This will be our first time in Portland since we have been married.

This is our Christmas decor we have up in our house. We are a little limited and it's hard to want to get a real Christmas tree since we leave for the holidays.



We hope you all have a blessed Christmas and remember that Christmas about Jesus - not presents and materialism. It is so easy to get caught up in the worldly ideas. I can't wait to start our own traditions with our own family! Merry Christmas!

surprise outside our front door.

This is what we found outside our house a couple of weeks ago.




Yeah, a rattlesnake!

Portland visit.

In August, Andrew and I spent about a week up in Portland. We had such a great time..as always!

Here is my beautiful sister and mother. We went to go play mini golf!







One of my goals right now is to become a better photographer. I want to learn my camera more and all of its buttons and also just want to take pictures more. Pictures capture SO MUCH in life and I love it. I want to share this journey with you, so we'll see how it goes.

To come...my recent projects.

I am long overdue blogging and really want to get better at this whole blogging thing. Unfortunately, our internet at camp is awful! I have tried and tried to upload pictures. Without pics, it's hard for me to blog..sometimes! So, here I am at a coffee shop this very hot morning. (I've probably lost all my readers...)

Let's go back to August...when my friends Jackie and Brant and their 1 year old, Maddie visited our house! We had so much fun!

Maddie in her mom's hat! She is such a cutie!

Jackie and Brant went on the Flying Squirrel. As they flew by Maddie and I, Maddie thought her parents were leaving her forever and was totally confused on what was going on! :)




We went to the pool and had soo much fun playing in the water! I just can't get over how CUTE Maddie is.
[I am not very good at this whole posting picture thing..one of these days..ha!]

GROUP SHOT!! The Himes finally came to see Camp Hammer and where we live. Now, I suppose it is our turn to go check out Pasadena...we love you guys!

Miracles DO happen.

One week ago today my friends' dad had a heart attack while biking. Luckily, his brother was with him. When his brother turned around and caught up to him he was not breathing so he performed CPR. Moments later he began to breathe and paramedics arrived shortly after.

George was taken immediately to the hospital where they did several tests. Apparently there is this new method of 'icing' where it basically slows everything down that they chose to do for him. He was unresponsive for about four days. In these four days he would continually show positive progress. It is so weird how the body works. He was able to move his legs and other extremities but unable to talk. His eyes were open and would start to track his wife's voice in the room but no words. Friday afternoon he was able to speak and immediately was crackin' jokes right and left. He gets a pacemaker today and they will take it from there. God is so BIG!

George is a miracle. I have been praying so much for George and his family. This family is like my family away from home. The kids and the parents are all so dear to Andrew and I both. Please be praying for continual healing and strength for George.

A few things.

Ok. I have been neglecting this blog for too long now. I have just made it look all fun, so I must write something!

First things first. We definitely caught a mouse in our house (ha, that rhymes!) a few nights ago. (I think in the 2+ years we have been in this house, we have caught maybe 3..if even that) Of course it is our fault because when we let little miss Ruthie out, we crack the front door a bit..and that is probably why. Mice disgust me. A few days ago I saw that the trap was upside down, which only means something triggered it. Ew. Andrew set the trap and sure enough the next morning we caught one. BUT...he didn't even tell me until that night. He had cleared the evidence before I went out there to check. (sneaky, sneaky)

I have officially chopped all my hair off!! It probably ended up being about 14 inches my hairstylist cut off.

Before.



After.





This week I have started training for a half marathon. I do not LOVE running, but I enjoy it. My main motivation behind this half marathon is purely for my mom! My mom was diagnosed in November with multiple myeloma cancer. (i'll save this one for another blog). This marathon is to raise money for research for this cancer. I am excited but a half marathon..OH MAN!!

What is going on!?!

So, I've probably lost all my readers...the whole two readers that even read my blog..haha!

I haven't been writing because I've been wanting to add pictures to the things I have wanted to talk about and for some reason it isn't even an option right now. Like, I can't even see the icon to attach one...this is ridiculous!! I have no idea if it is because of our internet here at camp or what? Does anyone have any ideas as to why this would be?? If you do, please let me know..for now, I'll just have to try and post without pictures. Thank you.

xo.

Mountain Adventures...

Yesterday was definitely a day to remember! The weather forecast for this week is rain. rain. thunder. lightening. rain. thunder. rain. rain. and more rain. :)

I read on facebook from a neighbor that this was suppose to be a "historic" and "epic" storm...OH GREAT!! I got my candles out, lighters ready, laundry done, house cleaned, flashlights, and headlamp all ready! Bring on the storm. By the way, Andrew is gone this week recruiting in the Northwest..perfect timing!

Well, Monday morning at about 9:15AM the power went out. We had been informed that morning that there was a tree that fell on powerlines on the road out of camp. Bummer! Minutes later someone told us there was a tree that fell the other direction out of camp. You have got to be kidding me! We were completely stranded!!! Luckily, the tree that fell on the power line was soon removed.

On Monday nights I have my high school small group. I was trying to decide if I would tackle the mountain roads to head into town. This week we had small group at one of the girls house whose family I absolutely LOVE! The husband happened to be out of town that night and they had invited me to spend the night with just the girls. I said alright. This is where the story gets good...

It took me about 20 min. to pack up the car. (Ruthie was coming with me of course!) The second I walk out the door, the power comes back on. I still left anyway. I am now on the road out of camp and see a bunch of cars stopped up ahead and people getting out of their cars, while others are turning around. Meanwhile, my puppy in the back, sees all the people and begins to bark non-stop. OH MY GOSH! A man walked up and told me that a tree had fallen down and no one was there to fix it yet, so we better just turn around.

I called Andrew. Remember he is in Portland. Oh, I should probably tell you that I have absolutely NO gas. My gas light was on and it was just about to hit the white line...EMPTY. AWESOME. Well I had decided to take a back way into town. This back road has three roads that can lead to town. I began driving and I came to the first road...ROAD CLOSED. I continue driving on this road and get to the next road...ROAD CLOSED! You can imagine my frustration and definitely on the verge of tears! I called Andrew again. He convinced me to call it a day and head back to camp. When I needed to go into town next, one of the facilities guys here at camp could just put some gas in my car. I had just turned around to go home when Andrew calls me and tells me to go towards UCSC (University of California - Santa Cruz)..the third way to town and try and get gas there and then go spend the night in town. I said alright..probably crying at this point...and head back towards UCSC. I FINALLY make it to a gas station and am so glad. Andrew calls to make sure I got there ok and while he is still on the phone I say.."OH NO!"....

"I forgot my purse!!!" Ok this is like the adventure of all time. Unbelievable!!! Andrew called a friend who lives nearby to see if they would come over and lend me some money for gas..I was STUCK! AND...How awful to have to ask someone for money for something as expensive as gas!!! The friend apparently didn't answer so I ended up calling his wife..twice! No answer. Meanwhile, Andrew was calling my cousin, Nathan, to see if he could borrow a car and come save me. Nathan was about to leave when my friend Hannah called me back and said there were 5 min. from me and would come help me out! What a relief. The story gets better...This family was so incredibly sweet because they paid for my gas and didn't want me to pay them back. What a God thing! :) Thank you Hannah and Kevin!!!

I ended up spending the night in town and came back up to camp today to POWER!! I am frantically writing this, even though it's a novel, before the power goes out again. There was LOUD thunder and some lightning earlier and I think little Ruthie was a little scared. (Mom, I am fine!)

All this to say, the storm isn't over and the worse is yet to come...or so they say!

Christmas in Colorado.

WOW, what a whirlwind it has been. We were gone a total of 16 days! I was so excited to be home in our house with our bed and our life. We had a great time in Colorado and I actually felt that I connected with my sister-in-law a lot more on this trip.

I will have to say that I will probably never do that road trip again. It was actually a very cool drive because we saw antelope, heard the history of many places and we even gambled on the way home. (Andrew won $40 bucks!) But, a small car with 4 adults and two dogs is not a good idea! Although, the other dog, Ginger, wanted nothing to do with Ruthie...I guess worked out for the road trip! HA! Andrew did get pulled over once in New Mexico with just a warning for speeding...and he called us the Republic of California! :) Nothing else TOO alarming happened.

While in Colorado, we celebrated Jenni's (Andrew's sister) 40th birthday. We were able to just lounge around and even watch the snow fall for one day. I was surprised it only snowed one day as the last time we were there it snowed the WHOLE time. Unlike Portland, the snow stuck around because it was so cold!

Well, I was hoping to post pictures but for some reason I can't even see the button to upload...what a bummer. The joys of living at a camp with unreliable internet. Gotta love it, right? Stay tuned for more.

We bought a car!

Yes, it's true! We traded in my 2003 Nissan Altima for a brand new 2010 Subaru Forester.  This car is awesome! It's a great car for the mountain roads (AWD) and now our puppy has the back all to herself...SO GREAT! :) 

The car is dark grey and light grey in the inside. The inside shows the outside temperature (which is awesome!) and it also shows you your average mpg (which is also very cool). Oh, another cool feature, is that it has an auxillary outlet for you to plug your ipod right in...so cool! We love it and it drives great! We are down to one car and I think it will be doable for us at this point in our lives. Andrew works downstairs at the camp we live at and I nanny in town Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. PERFECT! (Or so I hope) I feel like I have so much I want to blog about from the Holidays so if the internet cooperates, you better keep up!