Christmas won't be the same without him........

Congratulations Colton!

Today, my brother Colton was commissioned into
the Marine Corps as a 2nd lieutenant!!!!!
Congrats to you Cole for working so hard
these last 4 years!!

He finally gets to wear his dress blues!!

Kels and I at the ceremony

My parents! Dad was the one who got to swear him in,
It was a special day!

He's the spitting image of my dad, especially when
they're both in the same uniform!

Reciting the oath

Sorry....blurry one

My mom and Michelle got to pin his rank on!

It was a sweet moment

Yay! It's done!

My boys

Signing the commissioning log

What a great day....I'm so proud!

It's Snowing!!

I love Bend in the winter time!!!
Especially when Heather visits!

Sipping on tea while the snow falls outside!

It was 18 degrees today, which is a little much for me

But at least it's pretty!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thaksgiving is a time for funny faces!!

And lots of giggling!!

My 3 favorite ladies!

We had quite the gathering at our Sunriver house!

Colton teaching Jadyn how to play some keys

Me and my girl

I'm especially thankful for my amazing family this year!
Hope everyone's holiday was great!

Jim

Man I miss him.......

Halloween and Half Marathon!

Halloween 2009

Probably about as hideous as it gets.....Kels and I
as Wayne and Garth for Halloween!!!

The family together at the Metolius cabin!

On Halloween day, we ran our half marathon and it
went really well minus the 2 miles in the middle
of uphill that we didn't plan for!!

Our friend Chris made an amazing t-shirt and came
out as our # 1 fan and even ran 2 of the miles alongside
us cheering us on!!

Here's the costume we came up with! A 3-lane highway
although we broke into 3 separate lanes during the race:)

It felt so good to be done!

Kels on the home stretch

Aiyana, who signed up the week of and
hardly trained!!

And me.......I swear I actually ran it!

The pleather Hannah Montana skin-tight pants weren't
the smartest choice!!

You have no idea how excited I was to see this marker!!

A much-needed Update!!!!!!

Ok blogging world, I know I'm terrible.
I haven't been good at updating you all.
I ran into many of you at an amazing Beaver game last weekend
and I felt a little convicted.......so here is a much needed update!

First things first, Jim is doing great!! Well.....considering
all of the variables, he's great. He's been keeping busy, which
has made the time go by rather quickly. We're half way there!
Thank you to everyone who has been praying for him and for
those of you who have sent him letters and packages. He's
feeling pretty loved!

This pictures was taken from my phone
of my computer screen while I skyped with Jim:)
Skype has saved us! We've been able to chat/talk on the phone
and even text from our computers, which is really cool!

As for me, I've been keeping really busy! This summer,
my sister and I decided to run a half-marathon
so we have been training for months. I've always been a runner,
but kind of a 4 miles a day runner, so the thought of 13.1 was a bit
out there. When you look up training schedules for half-marathons,
they actually have you run up to 16 miles the week before so that
13 feels easy. I'm not doing that, but I did do 14 and was surprised at
how easy it felt.

The Run Like Hell marathon is on Halloween day and we're supposed to
dress up in costume and run!

I don't know how this poor woman ran 13 miles in this, but I will
find a costume that I can actually move in!


In other news, we are in the (very long) process of
buying a house!!!!!! I didn't want to say anything until
it was more official, but to give you an idea on time line,
we put the offer in on this house on the 1st of July, and we're
still not in it!!!! Not only was it a short sale, but the
bank that owned it was going through bankruptcy themselves!
To add a terrible lending market to all of that, and the fact that
Jim has been self-employed for less than 2 years (none of that
income counts) and he is deployed to Iraq (none of that income counts),
I had to do EVERYTHING on my own, and it is taking forever!!!
Now, I'm just hoping it closes before November 30 so I can get
an $8,000 check from Uncle Sam.

This might look familiar to some of you because it's the same house
only flipped that we're renting right now!!
It's across our driveway, so needless to say, the move should be easy!

We'll be paying less for our mortgage than we're paying in rent!

We have a picnic pavilion area right by the house
and then a little playground just down the sidewalk from us!
Now we can make some little ones:)



Next......and you guys thought you were getting out of a
One Street Down update!
We just put in a wrought iron fence and it makes the place look
even cozier! My brother Colton installed it and did
such a great job!!

We had a slammin' summer! Everyone loves to eat
outside and we have an awesome patio area!
We expected it to slow down as soon as the temperature
dropped, and while it might have slowed down a little,
we're still super busy!!
In fact, we broke a One Street Down record on the
1st day of school! We all think the parents were
celebrating their freedom!!

For those of you that like your booze, we decided
to get our beer/wine license so you enjoy a cold brew
or a glass of wine at lunch (or breakfast if you want)....but
the process is completely ridiculous! Anyone who's ever dealt
with OLCC understands that it takes forever!! We should
be days away, and we've got a local brewer all lined up.
We had a beer tasting last week, which we were surprised to
find we had an excess of volunteers for :)

Ok, I did my best guys! There's a lot more going on
but this at least sums it up.
Hope you're all doing well!