Valentine's Day

I woke up on Valentine's Day and Chris had a surprise waiting for me. I have wanted a beach cruiser for a long time and I finally got one! Love it!!

And the next day, the balloon monkey died.

It looked like we hung the monkey and it reminded us of the "Monkey hangers" story that our cabby in London told us. Nate and Dayna...did we ever tell you that story? LOL

Where in the world have I been the last few months?

Well here it is! This is where I live. It's my office. I haven't even had time to decorate it. Just clean it. When I first came in this room was jam packed with JUNK. You could hardly have standing room. Now it's at least clean. I even painted it that green color that you see. Notice the picture is taken at night...I spend a lot of long days and in to the night here.

I plan a lot of special events at the YMCA. I'm in charge of planning all the Family Nights, Late Night Teen Nights, Special Events, Healthy Kids Events, Holiday Events, etc. This is when we had our nearby Wild Life Safari come and present animals to our families at Family Night.

I didn't get a chance to take a ton of pictures but the animals were a huge hit!

This is our Zumba party. Zumba is a HUGE hit here in Roseburg. I don't teach it. Maybe someday I will learn how but basically it's like Latin aerobic dance. SO FUN!! This is my boss Marisa (left) and fellow directors and friends Audrey and Christine.

We had 138 people attend. It was a very busy night!

On the left is my pal Meg. She's a hoot! And an awesome Zumba instructor!

The gym was full!

This is the YMCA Director staff doing a skit at our Christmas party. We did a Grinch and Whoville parody. Check out the hair. It's hard to see but mine is up like a conehead with a Christmas bulb on top. It was a lot of fun.

This is our Strong Kids Campaign kickoff dinner and annual meeting. I am a team captain for our campaign this year. Anyone want to donate to our Strong Kid's campaign that helps sponsor families in need for programs, childcare, and membership? LOL

My Family Services Associate and pal Emily (left), friend Meg (middle) and boss, friend, and Executive Director Marisa (right). There have been a lot of events on top of these that I just haven't had time to take pictures of. The YMCA keeps me SO BUSY!!

And when I am not working, I'm doing my calling for church working with the Young Men and Young Women. This is a skating trip that we went on a few weekends ago. Here are two of the many "choice" young men I work with. LOL

And here are some more. I love these girls! They are a lot of fun. We do all kinds of fun activities and hang out Wed. nights and a lot of weekends.

Last Minute Christmas Surprise

We literally decided just hours before we left that we would head to Idaho and surprise my brother and his wife and kids in Idaho. It's about a 9 hour drive and we were originally going to stay home for Christmas at our house. Eric was really sick and we decided that we wanted to be near family for Christmas so we packed up the car and headed out at 4am. We drove through Portland and the drive was gorgeous! Until we hit eastern Oregon and then it was pretty boring.

We stopped at a hotel in Portland on our way back to break up the drive. I only had a few days off so it was a very quick trip. We were so tired! We even brought Maximus. I think this picture says it all. But we did have a lot of fun in Portland.

This is the gang hanging out on Christmas Eve. My other brother Joe and his fiancee Jessica were there too. Nothing beat Tiff's face when she saw us come in the door. They were completely surprised. It was so fun! We had a great time and thanks to Tiff's parents who let us crash their holiday! Don't I have the cutest nieces and nephew?

Christmas at the Adams

Crazy story about our Christmas trees. We got such an amazing deal on our tree with delivery that we decided to buy two. The second tree was bound up still but it was the right height so we go it. Well tree #1 was great. Tree #2 when we started to unbind it, we discovered a bird's nest nestled in the branches. I felt SO BAD! Here it is. The tree looked great besides the fact that it was a bird's home before we got it.

We finally have our very first real tree and it's BIG! Don't know how we did it but it fit perfectly without having to cut it and we didn't even measure.

Mistle toe hung where you can't see.

The dining room.

Dining room 2

Expanded picture of the living room.

The stairway

The kitchen buffet area.

The door to the garage. Thanks everyone for the great Christmas cards.

Our front door

I tried to get a good picture of the house lit up. I did the classic New England look with the wreaths and a candle in every window. We got the second tree upstairs WHAT A MESS WITH PINE NEEDLES!! Unfortunately you can't really see it all in this picture.

This picture at least shows the waterfall down our hill lit up. Night pictures are so hard!

Debbie Retires and Patience Becomes Another Person...or just does the job of another

This is the retirement party of the Child Care Director whom I shared my office with. She retired3 months after I started my job at the YMCA. Good news...I now have my own offiice...bad news...I now get to do her whole job as well as mine. Darn budget. I'm officially doing the work of 4 people now. Debbie is the larger lady with grey hair in the middle on the left. Most of the people in the picture are my team that I work with.

Sunsets From Our House

We live up on a hill overlooking our town and our house faces West so we get these amazing views of sunsets. Oregon has its clouds and its rain but MAN do we get some amazing sunsets because of it. I love them!

Unfortunately we aren't always home before sunset so we don't always get to take pictures of it. We get great views of rainbows too. We just love it here!

Thanksgiving at the Adams

Chris and I did Thanksgiving on our own again this year. We deliberated over several options but finally decided that we really like quiet Thanksgiving where you can wait to do the dishes and take a nap right after eating. PLUS you can have all the pumpkin pie and leftovers to yourselves!

I got just the breast of Turkey. It's the perfect amount for 2 and you can even stuff it. The best part is that it only takes 30 minutes to cook!

READY TO EAT!

Chris salivating over dinner.

And of course tradition with great grandmother's china and lots of decorations.

There's No Place Like Home

This is the center of town in Hopkinton, MA where I grew up. Can you understand now why I love the Fall so much. There is nothing like New England in the Fall. I'm not sure I can get my West Coast friends to understand that.

Halloween

This is one of over 150 pictures that Chris and I took of families that attended the Halloween Carnival that I was in charge of planning at running at the YMCA.

Here it is. Me at work as the tooth fairy. Chris joined me later as the dentist. But these are two people that I work with. Brenda (the biker chick) works for me as my Teen services Associate and Gary (the personal trainer) is a fellow director. We have a lot of fun at our job!

This is me and Chris taking pictures at the Fall Carnival the night before Halloween. It was a very busy but very successful night and it almost killed me planning it and decorating for it. But well worth it!!

And of course we had to make Maximus join in on the fun. He really lived up to his costume this year!! The Devil Dog...

And here's the loot we handed out. Yes those are tooth brushes but they were given out WITH candy not instead. We thought we'd try and contribute to oral hygiene as well right?

In Search of Fall...FOUND IT!

Every Fall I get home sick because I miss the New England Fall foliage. There is NOTHING like it!! Well I went in search of Fall this year and I found it right away. Thankfully we now live in Oregon where there is a plethora of trees so it really wasn't hard at all. Finally...FALL. And it's BEAUTIFUL here!!! I LOVE Oregon!!

I just wanted to rake up all these leaves and jump in them. Ahh...the memories.

Congratulations Stubbs (Dave) and Brandy!!!

We went down to San Francisco in a VERY whirlwind trip to attend our great friend Dave aka Stubbs' wedding. I have known Dave since my freshman year of college. The funny thing is that his new wife Brandy is from where we moved to in Oregon. What a small world! We were so happy to be able to attend their sealing. What a great couple!

It was such a beautiful day at the Oakland Temple!

And the fog/smog over Oakland wasn't too bad either. LOL. The Fall scenery was so pretty! Ahh...to have been married in the Fall...too bad we were in school when we got married.

Had to get one of these shots. It was hard though because the temple was HOPPING that day. It was crazy busy!!