Lame, I know

Life has been SOO busy. BUT I blog because it keeps me sane sometimes. I blog because I LOVE to go back and read the stories and memories I've written. The title of this blog is "Lame, I know" because normally I would put all of these pictures in different blogs with stories. But because I have a long fun week ahead of me that I would like to blog about, I need to get caught up, so here is January!!

January brings our new Relay for Life year! Celebrate, Remember and Fight back!!! Another Lap for Pat is signed up, with 7 team members, I raised my first $140 yesterday in an hour!!! We are off to a great start! Every single dollar I raise helps! I had a team meeting at my house this weekend. We have some new recruits which I'm very excited about and some oldie but goodies too! I spent several hours making my Grandma's Spaghetti sauce this weekend! It was the first time I made sauce and it came out SOOO good! I was very proud. The Crazy thing is that the recipe makes 3 gallons of sauce, and I'm not kidding when I say 3 gallons. I gave some away to friends and neighbors and also keep some in the freezer that I can pull out at any time! So excited about that!
One of the things that came from our team meeting Saturday was this little poster I made. These are just a handful of the people that I will be walking for in the Relay for Life! Check out our team page and donate a few bucks if you can please!


In the last few weeks Alana and I have been battling the everlasting cold. One day last week Victor had the morning off so I decided to take a sick day. We went to the Orange Circle for Breakfast. This place called Bruxie has been on the top of our list to eat but EVERYTIME we go by there is always a big long line around the building!! ALWAYS. Turns out week day mornings are pretty slow there, perfect time to try their waffle sandwiches! Can I just tell you how amazing they are? I know that anything on a waffle will typically be really good, but these are SOOO good. I highly recommend going to try it out if you haven't already. There is one right outside of the orange circle and also one in Brea. Super yummy and worth the wait if you have to....


The weather has been kind of crazy. It was raining for a few days, then it was 80 the next day. Honestly I'm pretty sure that's why everyone is sick. But the sunny days in January have been so amazing! 80 degrees in mid January makes for a very happy Jamie! How amazing is this sky? Only in Cali!

Lots of sunshine means lots of bike riding for the family!! Alana LOVES her bike that Santa brought and can't get enough of it! She cracks me up when she honks her crazy little horn at every neighbor we pass and says "Happy New Year". I laugh so hard and she doesn't understand why it's so funny! I'll have to get it on video so you can have a good laugh with me!



At work our HR Dept came up with a fun way to say goodbye to 2011. We had a fire outside of the office and we put in pieces of paper of things that we wanted to burn and say goodbye to from 2011. Needless to say, I had plenty of them to burn. It was kind of fun and kind of weird.

January also brought my Aunt's 50th Birthday! We pulled off a surprise party for her. My uncle owns this awesome tractor and Alana got a kick out of being able to sit on it! It is pretty cool!

My friend Melissa is coming out from Michigan today and I'm taking the next few days off to spend with her. Seaworld Wednesday, out dancing Weds night. Disneyland on Thursday and Hollywood on Friday! Crossing stuff off a Bucket List!! More to come.

Mama always said...

I was an organized Pack Rat.

She wasn't kidding. Ever since I was little I liked to keep things. I'm pretty sure I inherited that from my father. Thanks to A&E I've seen my pack rat taken to the extreme in a little show called Hoarders. At least Victor knows what to expect when my children are grown and out of the house. Kidding babe.
When I was little I used to keep everything but it would be labeled and packed nicely in a box or something. Just a few years before my mom died I went through random boxes I had at my parents house still and I found old letters from friends in Jr. High. ALL of my High School letters from friends. (Cause letters were super cool to write in HS). I found a box full of the most random stuff in it. Each item was wrapped in a sandwich baggy and had a note in it telling me what it was or what happened. I had candy wrappers from a time my best friend Ashley and I had bought candy and eaten it all. Funny when I was 10 maybe? Not sure. I had movie stubs from movies I had gone to with boys. I really had random stuff in my "Memory Box" and it was appropriately labeled. My mom always said I was a pack rat but at least I was organized about it. I ended up throwing that memory box away. It was CRAZY to keep around but funny as hell to see this many years later.

That being said... Alana started pre-school in 2010 and since then she has been bringing home her "work" from school. We are talking at least 5 papers a week. This is her learning her numbers, colors, shapes. Tracing the letters, drawing shapes. All the stuff that she is learning in school. Every time I go to pick her up at school she wants to make sure I grab her "work". She is very proud of it. We talk about it the whole ride home and we go over it so I confirm she is in fact remembering what she just learned in school. After a few months I realized how MUCH she was bringing home. I'm not even counting the fun stuff she makes at church every week and brings home. So what do I do with all this stuff? I've been tossing it all in the desk and trying to figure out what I should do with it. One of my friends was talking about the same thing on FB and people told her so many different things. Some people just throw them away, or pick a few to keep. Some people take pictures of them and then toss them. I wasn't sure how I wanted to handle this either. Will Alana be mad at me when she's an adult for throwing them away? Will she care that I kept them? She still had another year of pre-school to go before she even starts real kindergarten. Then I'm going to have 12 years of keeping work she brings home? Good Lord! There is not enough space in the world for what I'd like to keep.

My solution for now: I bought a binder and some inserts and with her help alphabetized her work and stuck them in a folder.

I don't know how long I'll keep this folder. Maybe next year I'll feel differently about this work. But for now... I'm keeping my pack rat-ing organized.

Time off for the Holiday's

The Friday night before Christmas Victor, myself and Chrissy loaded up the girls to take them to Brea to see the beautiful Christmas Lights. It was a COLD night out so we bundled the girls up.

There is a whole bunch of neighborhoods that do up their houses like CRAZY. It's not just a few houses, ALL the houses do it. There are SOO many cars driving the neighborhoods, people walking the streets and people selling Hot Chocolate to make a little Christmas money. It was amazing!!

For Christmas eve it's our tradition to go to Victor's moms house to spend eve with them. Lupe makes tamales that night as well. Alana loves to get in on the action with helping! She did better this year than the last few. She will be a pro in no time.

Later that night when we finally made it home we had just enough time to set out the milk and cookies for Santa.

Then off to bed Alana went and Santa came.

Every year my mom "Santa" would fill our stockings and lay them by our bigger presents so I continue that with Alana.

It was 7:30 am and since we had gotten home late, Alana was still sleeping so we had to go wake her up. Out she ran to see what Santa brought her.

She loved everything in her stocking.

Her favorite was her new big girl bike!

We immediatly tossed on some warm clothes and took her outside to ride it! We didn't fix the training wheels and make them straight so the first time she tried to ride it she feel flat on her face. Poor girl. Her words to me "I never want to ride this bike again". Haha. Later in the day she became a pro and every day since then she's loved it!!

We spent Christmas eve at home, after our long day in LA. I taught Alana how to play Go-fish because she got it in her stocking and she now loves the game. She plays it at least once a day. As well as Old Maid.

We celebrated New Years Eve at New Yorks midnight so we could get Alana off to sleep! She loved yelling Happy New Year!