Ready for the New Year

I'm about to vent and ramble so move on if you don't want to read about it......
We're having a very low key weekend.  Sleeping in, laying around, not getting a whole lot done. 
The house is a wreck.  Christmas bags, gifts, plates, dishware, dog sweaters, toys, books EVERYWHERE.  I'm sick so I can't get the motivation to get up and get stuff done. 
Not looking promising for the new year.
People are posting about resolutions already.
I can't get Christmas out of my house, so I can't begin to think about the new year.
It was a crappy year. Lots of crap happened.  In my life and in the world.....not one of my favorite years.  I didn't accomplish anything.  I still need a new job, there are still a million and one house projects that need to be done, I'm still fat, I'd still like to repaint my bedroom, I still didn't get back to Disney.
Disney, thats it thats who I blame for this crappy mood.  We're supposed to be going in Feb and its not going to happen.  All those grand plans of paying a little bit here and there to get the trip paid off didn't happen.  So the Feb trip to Disney has been cancelled.  Thats why I'm in such a blah mood, damn Disney.
One good thing that happened this year, Tucker.  He's the best, I love having him.

Little troublemaker.
So I guess I'll try to stop complaining about 2012 and focus on 2013. 
Right after I take care of some of this Christmas crap.....

Christmas in a Nutshell

Saturday, Day 1 Buschlen Family Christmas

Sunday, Day 2 Hartley Family Christmas

Monday, Day 3 Christmas Eve at Josh and Allisons

Day 3 White Elephant gift exchange

Day 4 Christmas Morning

Day 4 Christmas Morning

Oh Christmas Tree 2012

We had a great time getting our tree on Sunday with Josh, Allison, and Chase.  Of course when we got home Sunday night we had to put it up right away.

I remember being a kid and going to get our tree.  We always cut one down from somewhere.  We would spend a LONG time picking out the perfect tree, my dad hated it.  Or pretended he hated it. 

But when we got it home we had to put it up and "let the branches fall"  " let it warm up" What a load of bull crap.  I couldn't wait to decorate the tree.  We always had to wait, sometimes till the next day.  What a punishment.  I vowed to never make my kids wait.  We cut it down, drive it home, put it up, get lights on it, and BAM its decorated!! 

I treasure this time.  It's only a matter of time before my kids won't want to help decorate.  We go through all the ornaments, talk about where we got them.  I have several from my Uncle Gary from when I was growing up.  Jeremy has several that his mom gave us from when he was growing up.  He even has an original Elf on the Shelf.  We never knew who he was till a few years ago.  We just thought he was an ugly antique elf.  Who knew he was watching us all these years. 

It's one of those times that the kids get along and are helpful to each other.  We get it done pretty quickly since we're all helping. 

I do have to say that this years tree is the smallest I think that Jeremy and I have ever had.  Even in our small apartment and small house on Weeks.  Its pretty.  Just doesn't have that wow factor for me.  Jeremy is pleased that the top isn't jamming into the ceiling.  I do think it looks better since it doesn't look like the top of it is upstairs in Sarah's room.  I guess I just like a fatter tree.   

It's a pretty tree.

Made more pretty by the tree skirt that my grandma Hartley made for my mom and dad many years ago. 

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year we went over to my Aunts house.  We usually spend it at my inlaws but decided to do something a little different this year.  We had a delicious meal.  The turkey was so good.  She lives in a little bitty house but it was perfect.  Everyone was together and we had a great time.  I did miss having my dad there but he was up north.

We took family pics of the groups of families that were there.  Of course my son would be the one to ruin the photo.  Brat 

 

  On Saturday we went to my inlaws to have a late Thanksgiving meal and celebrate my mother in laws birthday.  She loves her birthday and loves to celebrate it.  My father in law made her a cake and we were all able to be there to enjoy the day with her.  We finished off the night playing apples to apples.  Fun game, we were laughing awfully hard.  Such a gassy family.

 

We spend the weekend at Josh and Allisons house and on Sunday we went with them to get our Christmas trees.  We went to Klucks, in Saginaw.  It was a lot of fun.  We both found the "perfect" tree.  We took a wagon ride and had some hot chocolate around the fire.   

It's so nice to be close with my brother.  We weren't close growing up and I'm sorry for that.  I was not a nice sister.  Now I just love him to death.  He married the perfect girl for him and they have a nice little life.  Allison is a wonderful host and I love how she always wants us to stay at their house.  They were living in a little house, and recently bought a bigger home.  Now they can have us there overnight and I think thats where will be staying alot of the time we are in Bay City. 

I think this was one of the best Thanksgivings.  I am very thankful for all that I have.  It's been a tough year, but not compared to many other people so I try to think about the positive and move on. 



Cherry Limeade, Ree Drummond style

Sorry for the blurry picture

 

We've been watching the Pioneer Woman on the food network.  I love her blog and so I started dvring her show. 
Well the whole family likes to watch it.  Last night she made cherry limeade and I was so excited, we love Sonic's cherry limeade.   I am famous for watching the food network shows but NEVER making anything I see on it. 

Until now....

I bought the ingredients after work today and whipped some up.  It's so easy and YES it tastes just like Sonic.  Well as close as I've ever tasted anyways. 

Here's the recipe taken right from the show.

 

1 cup lime juice (I used lemon lime cause thats all I could find)

1 cup sugar

I jar marashino cherries (add juice and cherries)

1 2-liter of lemon lime soda

Mix it all together, add some pretty lime slices and there ya go!! Fill a glass with ice, enjoy! 

If you make it, let me know what you think!

More Fall

How can you resist this little pirate? 

I was downloading pictures from my camera and came across more Halloween photos. 

Mason and Averie stopped over before trick or treating this year and they were so cute. 

Unfortuntely I didn't get a good pic of Averie but she was Tinkerbell and just as cute as her big brother.



I've been waiting for years to have my own little pup. 

Poor thing doesn't know he has years of dressing up for the holidays.

I just ordered his Christmas sweaters, they should be here any day.

What a sweet little hot dog! 

Then theres my husband who has been waiting for years to dress up as Michael Myers for Halloween.

He bought his mask this year.  We just happened to find the overalls at a garage sale. 

He got great pleasure scaring all the adults in the neighborhood since most of the kids just thought he was a old crazy man.  I don't think most of them had ever seen the Halloween movies, tragedy.

My super smart hates to do homework son!

Tucker looks like he's got a crooked smile and he's holding onto the pencil
showing Jacob how its done.



Then there's my super smart loves to read daughter.

They are both doing wonderful in school.  Just finished fall conferences for both of them and they both
got great reports.  I'm so proud of them.

October, I'm back

 

I don't know where I've been.  I'm sure I lost all of my 13 followers but I just wasn't into it.  We really haven't done anything that I've wanted to put out for everyone to know about.  It's been a tough couple of months but I'm hoping that things can only get better.  We have been busy.  The kids both played a fall sport, Jacob with football and Sarah with soccer.  Jeremy has been working on the upstairs bathroom and I've been drudging through life. 

 

Sarah's joined a new girl scout troop and we went to the Binder Park Zoo to do the pumpkin carve.  It was a freezing cold, drizzly kind of day.  We took little Sarah with us and hurried up and carved two pumpkins.  They both had a lot of fun so I guess I'm glad that we went.

Sarah's been helping out with yard work a lot lately.  We spent two days after school last week picking up leaves.  Thankfully the weather has stayed pretty nice.  Tucker LOVES the leaves.  Well he loved to eat the leaves and roll in the leaves. 



 Jacob's gotten to the point where he doesn't want his picture taken anymore.  When Jeremy took him to his camp out a couple weeks ago he had to pay him $5 bucks to let him take a pic of him dressed up like a zombie.  AND he had to promise not to post it on facebook.  So I promised him no facebook pictures, but he doesn't know about the blog. haha

He's so grown up.  He still wants to do kid things like carve pumpkins but sometimes he has to pretend that he doesn't want to do it.  Christmas should be fun this year.  I'm hoping he'll still help with the gingerbread house.  I'll probably have to promise him half the candy lol.



 This picture he let me take because I said I had to send it to Grandma Turkey.  He'll still do just about anything for her.  I think he's hoping he'll get to go visit her sometime soon.  NOT WITHOUT ME!!

 

 

 

And then theres little Mrs Riding Hood.  She was the cutest.  Nana made her the costume and she did such a great job.  The cape was so warm.  I think we'll get a lot of use out of it, especially at Jacob's football games.  Sarah says as long as the team we're playing isn't "red".



it was a good month.....



We stayed pretty busy in the month of July this year. 

I was having one of those oh poor me, "I don't get to spend enough time with my kids in the summer" feelings a lot this month.  One day while Jacob and Jeremy were at Boy Scout camp I took Sarah to the zoo.  Mason and Averie joined us and we had a really good time.

 

 

 I'm so against feeding the dang giraffes because they charge you $2 for a couple pieces of lettuce, very small pieces of lettuce.  I just think that that is such a blatant rip off that it pisses me off.  I think the admission fee is ridiculous too ($25 for me and Sarah)but I try to forget that when I think of how much it must cost for them to run a zoo.  BUT the lettuce cost that just makes me mad.  So "did you feed the giraffes" you might ask, freaking of course we did.

 The threee dodo birds!!

 

And at the end of the month we took Sarah back to Bair Lake Bible Camp.  She went with Mya again this year.  It wasn't as tramatic since it was the second year. Tramatic for me I mean!

Sarah had a blast again.  Three days away from home was great for her.  She came back with a lot of stories and memories.  Definitely a must for next summer. 

It's a week before school starts and I'm wishing we had more time.  More time to do all the things I had good intentions of doing in the beginning of the summer. 

Detroit zoo

Potter Park Zoo

Full Blast

Mackinac Island

Visiting my dad up at the cabin

Library days

slip and slides

lemonade stands

manis and pedis

sorting and cleaning closets

lazy pj days

I guess we'll just suck it up and get ready for school, theres always next summer!

 



Independance Day Holiday

We spent 5 days up in Bay City at the state park this year over the 4th of July.  It was so hot!

Thank God we had air in our camper.

Our little Tucker is getting to be a pretty good camper. 

It was so nice having so many family members out there camping also.

Aunt Kathy and Uncle Den, Amber and Chad, Josh and Allison and even mom and Terry were there in their new 5th wheel.  A lot of sitting around complaining about the heat.

On Saturday we went downtown to watch the 50th anniversary of the Bay City fireworks.  They were shooting off 50,000 fireworks in 50 minutes. 

Jacob and Chase hanging out before the fireworks started.

Sarah, a little nervous about the fireworks.  She's not a huge fan of the noise so she wasn't too sure she wanted to be there.

My cousin Ambers daughter Hailie, cutie.

Sarah was responsible for keeping her in the circle of chairs that we made so she wouldn't escape. 

I've never seen fireworks as amazing as these.  I have no idea how they are going to top that next year.  I'm happy to say we were there for the 50th anniversary.  I told my kids that maybe they'll bring their children and grandchildren to the 100th anniversary in another 50 years.

As nervous as she was she was able to take photos on her new ipod touch.  She has like a hundred photos on her ipod.  When it was all done, she said "that wasn't so bad"  So maybe we've overcome the fear of fireworks.  Maybe we can actually stay and watch the fireworks at Disney now.

My handsome son, with his crazy face and sparklers.

hanging out in the camper, out of the heat!  It was so unbearable!

We were able to sneak in a trip to the Turkey Roost with the Buschlen side of the family. 

mmmmm we love it there.

Joel and Sherry

After three days in the heat we finally went in search of a beach.  Terry suggested this little lake in Alger.  It was so nice.  We put our chairs right in the water and hung out for a couple hours.  It was so nice to cool off.

Lots of amazing memories were made over this holiday.  Being with family makes me so happy.  I wish that we all lived close.  Although if we did maybe I wouldn't appreciate being with them all the time. 

Happy 4th of July

Love

These two kids amaze me.  Honestly as much as they can drive me nuts, they are the best kids.

Sometimes I sit back and remember when they were babies and thinking that having a 12 year old and a 9 year old seemed like so far down the road. 

I find myself sad that they're growing up but really enjoying them at this age.  I love going places with them and discovering new things.  I love to listen to Jacobs voice as it is changing into a deep young mans voice.  I love to listen to Sarah in the back seat sing every other word to a song because she doesn't know the whole song. 

What I love most is that even though they fight like cats and dogs sometimes I do see them watch out for each other and care about what is happening to the other. 

I pray that they'll always be friends and take care of each other.

My Favorite Michigan Town

South Haven with mom, Jacob, and Sarah

Mom was in town from Fl and we spent the day in South Haven.  I absolutely love this place.  The stores, the lake, the smell, the lighthouse, and especially the onion rings at Clementines.

Sarah wouldn't stop making cross eyes at the camera, brat!

The bookstore with the fun hats and sunglasses. 

Stopping traffic in South Haven.  I could live here!

So many photo opportunities.

The kids were sick of the posing.

Apparently the water was pretty chilly.  I didn't even go down there and put my feet in.  I told them to pretend it was refreshing but Sarah was freaking out cause her feet were numb.