Best Wrapping Paper EVER

YES, I sure did.
I purchased this awesome gift wrap this year for Christmas. It is more amazing than I thought it would be. I absolutely love it. The only thing I wish is that there would be more on a roll than what I received.

And the best part... I will be wrapping my ex-husband's gift in this awesomeness. How hilarious is that? He will laugh. It's the youngest's dad and his sense of humor is strong.

It is the little things right now that make me laugh and keep me happy. This is definitely one of them for 2020. Find the little things and keep laughing. Life is too short not to find joy and laughter each and every day!

 

Happy Thanksgiving...

 Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I hope that you have a super blessed day.

Our governor has put us on lock down again and that lock down will end December 14th. That being said, Thanksgiving will not look the same as it has in the past. We are not allowed to meet indoors with anyone that doesn't live with us. The only exception to this is if the people getting together are able to quarantine for 14 days and everyone has a negative COVID test less than 48 hours before the gathering. 

No matter what you are doing for Thanksgiving, I want to wish you and your family a wonderful day. Yes, things won't be the same. But, we just have to pray that a safe vaccine comes out and next year we can have an even better Thanksgiving... Spend this day loving on your people and enjoying some yummy food. 

This year I am super thankful for my hard working husband. Without this man, we would not have our home... I am so thankful for him and for our home... This will be our first holiday season in the new place and I am so happy and in love with our little life together. I am thankful for all my family and friends. And I am super thankful for my job. I have been here 20 years and I just really love what I do. 

Hold your loved ones close this year and do the best you can to make the best out of your situation. We can choose to be stressed/frustrated or we can choose to make the best out of what we have. I plan to choose to make the best out of what we have.

Take care and I will be back blogging after my little 5 day vacation....

Our Christmas tradition...

The Christmas after I got divorced, I got the kiddo and I a fake Christmas tree. I also got us some ball ornaments to go on the new tree. It wasn't my favorite, but it would work for the time being. 

After doing this, I decided to start a tradition with my kiddo. Every year starting with that year, we would each pick out a new ornament for our tree. My thinking was one day we would not need to use any ball ornaments and can only use our special ornaments.

Well, here we are... 20 years later and our tree is packed with ornaments. Once I met my husband and step-daughter they joined in our on tradition. This year was so great. I loved the laughs and giggles as we tried to remember who bought what ornament and the WHY comments when they remembered they got this or that. It was a great afternoon decorating. We did end up using 18 balls to fill in some holes, but next year we will probably not have that problem since I have 2 new ones and they will each get 1. 

And what a fun time decorating our NEW home for our first Christmas there. It made my heart happy. We still have a little decorating to do, but we are waiting for the outside stuff until after Thanksgiving. I have window clings I got last year that are from the National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, but I want to do that on Friday after Thanksgiving. 

My heart is happy... In a year that has been really hard... this made my heart smile!

Our stockings were hung by the chimney with care... 
We just got our snowflake holders in and I love it. So so so much!

Our tree and other decorations...

This weekend we will have the floor covered with presents. I can not wait to start wrapping the gifts. I have so many this year and I need to get them out of my bedroom. HA!

Welcome home...

 2020 has been hard. 

2020 began with us receiving a letter from our landlord at the duplex we lived at. I have lived in the same unit since 2005. We knew there were changes coming because at the end of 2019 our old landlord sold the duplexes to a new landlord. 

What we did not expect, was to get an eviction notice. They were going to remodel every unit, raise the rent and then re-rent them to people. Our options were to reapply to rent a duplex there and pay the application fee and then pay the higher rent, or find another place to live. What a few stressful months of us trying to figure out what we were going to do.

And then this gem fell into our hands. Abe's uncle decided to sell us one of his houses. What an extremely awesome blessing this was. The month of March was spent boxing up our entire house and cleaning out our storage unit. April 4th was moving day. Moving was rough. It was at the beginning of our lockdown for the Coronavirus. Thankfully we had one friend who was able to come help us. My husband used his work truck and we were able move 95% of our house in 2 loads. The rest we would do the following few days. The next week we spent cleaning the old unit and turning in our keys and saying goodbye to our wonderful little home that we were able to have so many memories in. I was sad, but so thankful for what our future held. 

This picture above is of us holding our key to the new house. What a blessing. 

Our new home is amazing. We have lived in it for over 7 months and we love it. We have a huge back yard. The girls each have their own room. My husband has his man cave. And the laughter between our girls continues in our new home. We are home and we are blessed and we are so in love!

Who I am...

If you are new here and you don't know me... here is a little bit of who I am. 

I was born and raised in Southwest Louisiana. I have 2 amazing parents and 2 older brothers, who are now happily married to 2 amazing women. And between the 4 of them, they gave me 10 nieces and nephews. I was also raised around a lot of family. To be exact, 3 aunts, and 13 cousins, who then started families of their own and I was around most of them, most of the time. Life growing up had its ups and downs, but I had a good childhood.

When I was 19, I met my ex-husband on the internet and decided to move to Washington State. Was I crazy, probably? I know... a lot of people were not happy with me and I disappointed some as well. But, I felt like it was needed. I had just lost another cousin to suicide and I was just lost. 7 years after moving up to Washington I married my ex. 2 years later we had our beautiful baby girl, who I will refer to on this blog as C. A year later, we decided to separate and get a divorce. It was the hardest decision of my life and one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through. And I have been through some stuff! (Yes, I still get along with my ex, probably better now than ever before. Yes, I love love love his wife, my kid's stepmom... And yes... I will talk about their daughter, who I love more than I ever thought I could and I will call her Little J on here. More on this and our blended family later...)

December 2010, I met my current husband. A single divorced father of a little girl. I wasn't sure what would come of our relationship, but I knew early on he was a keeper. We didn't introduce the girls together right away. We wanted to wait to see where things were going. 6 months later, the girls met and I am not sure about the oldest, who I will call I on here, but my 3 year old C was very happy and LOVED her new friend.

Fast forward to today... We have been married for 8 years. This December will be our 10 years of being together. The best part of our story... Our kiddos get along so well. And now that we are in our own house and they have their own bedrooms, it seems like they get along even better... My heart truly is so very happy. (Yes, I know it's 2020 and it has been a hot mess this year, but my heart is happy and I choose to look at all my blessings instead of all the stresses this year has brought.)

The week we met. 

Our wedding day...

December 2019, when we went to Louisiana for Christmas. 

 

I am back...

I am back.  

For those that are new, I am back means that I use to have a blog for many, many years. I posted about my life, my family, my kids, my weight loss, etc. One day some ridiculous person decided to comment the most disturbing comment about my youngest kiddo. I was so disturbed that I decided to just get rid of my entire blog. Yes, it might have been a harsh decision, but the comment I read shook me to the core. 

I have decided to get the blog up and going again. With a little difference... I will be posting some of the same stuff. This blog will be about my life here in the Pacific Northwest. This time around, I will limit posting pictures of my kids.  

I was able to get my domain name back again... It will take 24-48 hours before it is live, so bare with me as I get that going and get the blog back up to the way it was before. 

Stay tuned for more about my life in the Pacific Northwest.