Fresh Start!

There is something truly wonderful about the first day of a new year and I know for a fact that 2013 is going to be a good one, which makes today even better!! I dropped Chad and Whitney off at the airport at 5:30 this morning and was back under the covers with Steven by 5:45, where I slept cozily until nearly 10 o'clock! It was amazing! And when I woke up I could see blue sky outside and there was an excessive amount of lovely, bright, warm sunlight flowing into my room. I was instantly excited about a sunny day and could hardly wait to shower and clean the kitchen and get outside. I was hoping for a walk along the Kirkland waterfront and a nice little stop at the Starbucks at Carillon Point. I figured it would be a fun outing with Mom and Tara and we could take some pretty sunny pictures with Lake Washington and the snowy Olympic Mountains in the background. We didn't quite make it to the beach though. We spent the afternoon and evening organizing Tara's bedroom -- it was entirely my idea and turned out to be a pretty good (and fun!) use of our time.

It's amazing how motivating a sunny day in the new year can be. I was tempted to stay home and organize my own house but couldn't stand to be alone on such a nice day. We got a lot done and it felt good to be so productive. You can now see her carpet once more and her clothes have found their way onto hangers and into drawers. We solved her storage issue but recycling lots of old school papers and adding a few basket drawers in her closet. We also took the door off of her closet and found a pretty curtain at Target that we are going to hang over the closet tomorrow. It looks great and I'm hoping she feels good about it too.

Today was Steven's first day back to work since the 18th -- I miss him! It's so weird to not get to see him all day long. He is also working this Thursday and then we have the weekend together before I have to go back to work on Monday. I can hardly bare the thought. I don't want to go! I feel like I should be done. I worked almost  four full months, isn't that enough? Sigh, only five more months until summer, I guess I'll make it to the end of the school year. Having the fresh start of 2013 and taking time to get organized around the house and starting to get excited about travel plans and fun things that will happen in the next year, all just make me wish even more that I could have a fresh start in the job department of my life right now. I just want to enjoy my job -- is that so much to ask? Anybody want to pay me to bake? Or just to stay home with my husband all day? Because I would really like that. I don't think that's a very likely scenario at this point, so my goal over the next few months is just to try to make more time for things that I do enjoy. Zumba. Baking. Cooking. Sewing. Letter writing. Blogging. Reading. And other fun things that allow me to forget how much I dislike my job. Like I said, there's lots to look forward to (especially the last day of school!!) and I think the year is already off to a pretty good start.

2012.

I knew 2012 was going to be a good year! I would have to say that it definitely exceeded my expectations. I started out the year at a job that I absolutely hated and spent the first couple months of the year moping, and relieving my stress through baking and zumba. Fortunately, I got to skip a week of that awful job when we had one of the worst snow/ice storms I've ever seen. We lost power for three days! Steven, of course, still had to go to work where there was a furnace and a hot shower, and I almost froze under layers of blankets on our couch. A couple of weeks later we had the joy of celebrating with our dear friends Tim & Annika at their beautiful wedding. Then came the month of March, when my moping and complaining about work and our difficult schedules reached a depressing low and my sweet and amazingly thoughtful husband surprised me with a ticket to Disneyland for a weekend with my mom and Tara! It rained - sideways - the entire time we were there but it was still Disneyland it was still a vacation and it was still one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. Steven was one of the highest achieving participants at the Stairclimb -- He improved his time by 2.5 minutes (15 minutes 20 seconds), placing himself 92nd out of 1500+ participants, and he raised over $2,000!! I was the most proud! Still am, of course. The week after my Disneyland trip, I interviewed for and was offered a position as a longterm substitute teacher in a 5th/6th grade classroom at a small Lutheran school -- I didn't even hesitate and was pleased as punch to say goodbye to my terrible-awful-no-good-very-bad part time job as an aftercare program director. The new job was an excellent change of pace, much better commute, and fantastic experience, but it kicked my butt in terms of curriculum development and lesson planning (they didn't tell me that I would have to create my own curriculum...). We spent spring break on a California road trip (much needed vacation!!) with the first night spent at our time share resort in Sun River, OR -- beautiful! Then a stop in Visalia, Mariposa (we love the Solanos!), and San Francisco (to see Paigey of course!). Steven's 26th birthday was a blast and we kicked off his 27th year with a trip down to Portland for dinner with friends and another incredible Cirque show. I finished my temporary teaching job with a bang and a rockin' awesome unit on Ancient China -- the kids loved it! Steven completed his first full year as a career firefighter, wahoo! And the biggest news of all: We bought our first house!! It's bigger and more beautiful than we could have hoped it would be and we are so happy here! I turned 25 (say what?!?) and we celebrated with the party of the year at Eastlake: drinks4drinks. A week later Steven was in Cle Elum fighting his first wildfire and I was in our new home making blackberry ice cream and maple pecan scones trying not to worry. While Steven was fighting fires in Cle Elum, we celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary and I received the news that I had been offered my very first full time teaching job - wow! We started the school year off with 3 straight weeks of 80+ degree sunny weather (most beautiful late summer and fall I have ever seen!) and I quickly learned that my job was kicking my tush and maybe I'm not meant to be a teacher after all. And here we are in 2013 -- I will finish my job strong (only 5 more months!), and Steven and I are planning an amazing vacation for the end of the summer. We have another marvelous year ahead of us and I can't wait to see what surprises 2013 holds for us!

Five Christmases.

Steven and I had the usual marathon of a Christmas this year. We kicked things off with dinner at my dad's house on Sunday the 23rd. He cooked a turkey and I made the gravy. I'm normally quite good at gravy making but he didn't tell me that he brined the turkey in salt water and the gravy was pretty much just turkey flavored salt sauce. Yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I tried to water it down and flour it down but I still didn't like it. We ate all kinds of goodies and Steven and I brought a growler of Jolly Roger Christmas Ale from the taproom. Dad had purchased another pumpkin tart from Whole Foods but it wasn't nearly as tasty as the one he bought at Thanksgiving. I have no idea what made that one so magical but it was fantastic! We exchanged gifts and then watched silly animal youtube videos late into the night.

Christmas Eve, our alarms went off a little earlier than I'd generally prefer while on break, and we were on our way to Steven's parents' house. We exchanged loads more gifts (Karen gave me all kinds of sprinkles and baking things and a JoAnns gift card and Steven received a really nice bag for his gear at work), ate lots more cookies, played 7 Wonders 2 or 3 or 4 times, and had lunch with some of Steven's extended family. Steven's mom always has their home all decked out and Christmassy and it's quite cozy and festive. She made some really good cookies too -- some super soft chocolate cookies that were sandwiched together with cream cheese frosting in the middle. Yum.

Christmas Eve evening we spent with Mom and the girls. We went to church together and Santa stopped by and filled our stockings while we were gone. We opened stockings and then enjoyed a lovely salmon dinner with rum slush and all kinds of cookies on the side (big surprise!). Mom made even more cookies including snickers bars, and turtle bars. She also made a super tasty salad. It's hard to get enough salad these days... We exchanged gifts after dinner, which was the part we had been waiting for all week!! Mom gave us all kinds of wonderful gifts including gift cards to Cirque du Soleil and Daniel's Broiler (Valentine's Day date!!), hot curlers for me, and a toolbox for Steven. But we gave her a little push out into the dating world. I mentioned to Mom a little while ago that we thought it was time for her to start dating and she mentioned a matchmaking service. We looked into it and decided to help her pay for the membership. We wrapped up a check with a little note of explanation that Steven, Mandie, Tara, and I signed and she was shocked!!! But not in a bad way. She was speechless and a bit timid but it seemed like a positive thing overall. Steven was pretty worried that we had done something wrong and he kept giving her hugs and rubbing her shoulders and saying "are you sure it's okay?" It was really sweet :) I love how excited he is for her and how eager he was to help her out with this. He is so generous and kind and it just melts my heart. The girls got us some really fun gifts too. Tara and Mom each gave me cookbooks, Tara gave me an apron, and Mandie gave us some stemless wineglasses and a bottle of wine. It was a really fun evening.

Tari got a new mask.

Mandie got a new scarf.

Charlie and Chessie got new harnesses (he normally would be squirming away from her but he's chewing on his new parrot toy that has been stuffed with catnip).

Christmas morning was relaxing -- just the two of us at home. We wore our Christmas onesies from last year and drank hot chocolate and opened all of our gifts one at a time. Steven got me a new apron, and a thermos, and a cookbook, and a tea pot and two tea cups, and a pocket knife (with pen and flashlight -- so practical!), and a really cool salad dressing mixer bottle thing. I made him a couple of blankets with firefighter fleece on one side and flannel on the other side. I thought this would be his favorite gift but he actually preferred his new game -- Timber Peak -- an extension of the zombie game we like to play. I think the best part of our morning was when we went out to breakfast. This is the 4th year of our Christmas breakfast tradition but I didn't realize that we hadn't actually done it on Christmas Day. I guess all of the other years it has been on the 23rd or 24th so when we got in the car to go to breakfast, we quickly realized that nothing was open. Until we drove by Plum Delicious. They definitely looked open and the paint on their window said they served breakfast, so we pulled in. I always thought that place was an Asian restaurant but apparently it's a family owned diner. Steven described it as a combination between Denny's, Shari's, and a Pancake House. The food was actually pretty good (corned beef hash and fried eggs for Steven and a waffle for me) but it was just amusing to us that we were in some random diner off of Sunset that sells their table top space as advertisement space and looks like an Asian restaurant from the outside. We were thoroughly entertained. The good part about the advertisements on top of the table was that we found out about a dance barn in Renton and I think we're actually going to check it out sometime :)

I'm wearing Steven's new apron :) I believe that was a gift from Danny.
Like my new earrings? Santa gave them to me.

Next stop: Papa and Grammi's. It was a typical Parducci/Sodoma/Lentz Christmas -- more food than anyone should ever consume at one time, amazingly generous gifts that take 4+ hours to open, an incredibly entertaining game (or 5 games) of Catch Phrase, and some truly great company. I think the most successful gifts were given to Danny. He was thrilled with the 4 bags of candy cane flavored pop rocks that my mom gave him and quickly consumed all of them, and was also surprisingly happy with the toilet plunger that Steven and I had wrapped up for him. Amanda had to be at the airport by 4:30 the next morning so she and Steven and I headed out early but I wish we hadn't! Apparently Papa and Grammi joined in the Catch Phrase fun later in the evening -- they never play with us! We really missed out. We'll have to get them to join in a little earlier next time.

We had a wonderful Christmas and we are so blessed to have had all of this time off together. We're looking forward to having Chad & Whitney here for the last couple nights of their vacation before Steven has to go back to work on Tuesday.

Holiday Happenings.

The fun Christmassy part of this month has gone by incredibly fast. This is another one of those years where I feel like I kind of missed out. I didn't get to watch all of my movies. I hardly had time to bake. My Christmas cards were unbelieveably late. And so on and so forth. There have been little pockets of holiday fun though. Heather and I went shopping a few weekends ago. We started the evening with dinner and drinks at McCormick's and finished just in time to enjoy Snowflake Lane. She had never experienced the fake snow, and stilt-walkers, and snowflake drummers, and free candy cane tootsie pops so it was fun to share that with her.

That same weekend I attended an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party all. by. my. self. Aren't I brave??? I kind of shocked myself. It was a night that Steven was working and I wouldn't normally go to something like that alone but we really want to be friends with the couple who hosted the party and I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to hang out with them.

The whole time I was thinking, Oh my goodness - I'm just not this much fun! They had a photo booth and everyone was taking crazy silly pictures and drinking a lot and I was a little out of my element but I think I did pretty well. I took a few shots (both from the whiskey bottle and in the photo booth) and tried not to be too much of a dud. I even won third place in the ugly sweater contest! And everyone loved my fudge. So overall it was a success.

3rd place! Not Uglier or Ugliest, just plain Ugly. (I actually kind of like my sweater but don't tell anyone I said that)

We had our Christmas party a couple of weeks ago and we had such a fabulous time!! It was perfect. There were only four couples (including us) and it was very comfortable and relaxed and entertaining. I had the genius idea to put frozen pomegranate seeds in the rum slush -- beautiful, crunchy, and tasty. I loved it.

I kept this party super low key and chose not to actually prep anything. I mostly just served chocolate, which is all you really need, right?

The gift exchange was a blast. I even got a sparkly red Justin Bieber ornament! Steven received some Sounders slippers and he wears them all over the house -- we had to fight for those. We finally lost the flip flop on a stick this year, but I think it went to a good home :) Rolf was pretty excited about it! Steven and I already have our white elephant gifts for next year, now I just have to make sure that I store them somewhere that I'll remember them.

Chad and Whitney are in town and we've already gotten to see them a few times. We met up with them and Scott & Chloe for drinks and games last Thursday. What a fun group of people! I was grumpy and tired after school and honestly didn't really want to go but, of course, it was a very enjoyable evening.

We spent the entire next day at the Mayers' house playing games and eating and drinking. Jeremy and Ronnie joined us for dinner and dessert and it was nice to see them too! They're moving to Utah next month so it looks like we'll have to plan a trip out there sometime in the nearish future.

I spent Saturday baking cookies with Mom and Tara while Steven played board games and ate sushi with Chad and Jeremy. We made snowball cookies, and English toffee, and cutout cookies, and coconut bonbons, and all kinds of yummy stuff. It was nice to catch up on the holiday baking and it is kind of fun to do it all in one go. Next year I have to help Mom clean up the kitchen -- I left it a complete disaster! Not sure how I managed to go the whole day without taking any pictures though...

On Sunday we drove into Seattle together and I went to holiday tea with Mom, Grammi, and the girls, while Steven went with Scott to get a tattoo. We've been talking for a long time about getting ring tattoos under our wedding rings. Steven had to take his ring off a lot at work and when he's working out and when he goes climbing and he was really wanting the tattoo so he wouldn't have to worry about the ring so much, though I still insist that he wears it anyway... I know, how unreasonable! He decided that it would be best to get the tattoo over the Christmas break so that it has a couple of weeks to heal before he has to go back to work. It looks pretty cool. I want one too but also kind of not. I liked the idea of getting marriage tattoos together but now that he already has one, I honestly can't see myself going by myself to get one. So there's that.

Here's the only picture I took at tea.

Thankfully, my mom took a few.

Maybe next year Amanda and I should sit on the same side of the table...

Mom asked why I wasn't taking pictures of the food but I figured I didn't need to since the pictures would look exactly the same as the ones I've taken the past two years. The food was amazing, as always, and we had a really nice time. Steven picked me up after tea and we went with Scott & Chloe to the Jolly Roger Taproom in Ballard. It was a fun and relaxing interlude in our chaotic Christmas weekend. We really enjoy being around them.



This post is getting a bit long and I'm only halfway through the holiday happenings so I'll wrap this one up and put all of the family stuff in the next post.

Christmas Cougar.

This has been the longest short month of my life! I thought this week would never end and it was only four days!! Our school days this month have been somewhat lacking in teaching time. We had the holiday program and party last Friday and we had extra music rehearsals every school day leading up to that. There were some days, usually Wednesdays, where I only had my kids in the classroom for a total of 30 minutes and that time was usually spent on some kind of holiday project. My kids get so excited when they see "Activity" up on the schedule. A few weeks ago one of my students said, "Another activity?! We're definitely never bored in Mrs. Lentz's class!" I loved it :)

My biggest project this month was the bulletin board in the hallway. After my frantic last minute bulletin board creation for the month of October, I immediately started planning my bulletin board project for the month of December. I had the students write about what their "gift" to our school community would be this holiday season. We talked about how our good qualities and characteristics can help to improve our community so they wrote about gifts like generosity, respect, sense of humor, kindness, friendship etc. They did really well with the assignment -- I was so proud! Then I let each of them choose colors for the "gift" that I made for the background of their writing pieces. I cut and pasted all of that, laminated it, and then attached curly ribbon to the top. Oh, and then I remembered that our headmaster really likes it when the students' pictures are up on the bulletin board. I had already put way too much time and effort into this bulletin board but decided to take pictures of each of the students holding a wrapped gift and then used the pictures to make a gift tag to hang from each gift. We used our parent gift to help decorate the bulletin board (the students made swirly ball ornaments -- swirled acrylic paint inside glass balls) and I added a little garland and a strand of battery operated lights. Can you say "overachiever"? I'm starting to think it's a dirty word.

My classroom bulletin boards were a bit lacking because of all the creative energy that had been siphoned out of me and into the hallway bulletin board. For the board over the computer center I printed out large pictures of Christmas ornaments. The students cut and colored them and then wrote one of their favorite holiday memories on the back. My favorite part of this board was getting to plug the lights in every morning -- I loved having Christmas lights in my room!

The hanging bulletin boards were decorated with tissue paper wreaths. I remember making these in my 3rd grade class and really enjoying it. I was worried it would require a little too much patience from the kiddos but they all managed it just fine.

And here's our obnoxiously large school mascot -- scares the heck out of me from time to time when it's still dark out in the mornings. I was hoping he would get a little Christmas decoration and was quite pleased when I saw this ginormous hat get pulled out of storage.

And here's the salad I made for our potluck at school. I got the idea from an e-mail that Icon Grill sent out a while ago. They had a holiday wreath salad that was very pretty but I'm sure mine tasted better since I didn't use tomatoes to add red to my salad.

Remember how I work next to a zoo? They brought a reindeer down to greet our guests at the holiday program. Apparently last year lone of the reindeer was just a baby and they had him walk across the stage during the performance. I want to see a baby reindeer!!!

Heather and I used the Holiday Program as an excuse to get our nails done. $25 mani-pedis -- and they looked great! We both got sparkly red and our fingers and toes were feeling very festive.

The Holiday Program was quite the production. The kids did really well. There were little goofs here and there and I forgot to close the curtains once and that was awkward and embarrassing -- I shrugged it off later by saying that a) my mom was in the audience and I didn't want her to feel like her kid was the only one not doing some cute little mess-up and b) I can't let the kids get all the laughs! But I was secretly really embarrassed and worried that the headmaster was going to say something to me. Mostly the day was just an excuse to get all fancy and dressed up.

Lucky for me, my mom even took pictures at the Holiday Program! Here I am singing the school song AND helping the children to all sway the same direction during the last song. Unfortunately, our music teacher was telling them to sway opposite of me... the whole point of me being there was so that she could keep her hands on the piano.

I went really easy on the kids this week. They're all super excited for the holiday break so I've tried to keep things light and fun. They brought me some nice gifts including a $50 gift card to the Triple Door and a St. John Signature fragrance perfume/lotion box gift. And, or course, lots of chocolate. Phew. I'm glad it's all done. We're nearly halfway through the year -- wahoo! I hope this break lasts forever.

Back in Business!

Welcome to the NEW blog! I know, the second one in the past week. I gave up on wordpress before I even gave it a real chance but I'm not sure why I tried to switch from blogger in the first place. It took me long enough to figure this website out. So, here it is, the new new blog, and I'm hoping it will serve me well for the next 3+ years just as the last one did.

I can't wait to get blogging again! I've missed it, terribly, and it has been stressing me out that I haven't been documenting my life on a regular basis. I'm not exactly sure what I feel I'll be missing out on if I don't do it but it just seems to be necessary.

I'm off to catch up on old blog posts! Happy reading!!

Love,
Steph

Christmas With The Piehlers.

Warm fuzzy happy holiday feelings. Steven and I got to help the Piehlers decorate for Christmas today. We felt so lucky to be part of such a special family day! They had an entire feast of crackers and cheese and cookies and peppermint white chocolate covered pretzels and eggnog and all sorts of yummy things. We ate and drank and watched Christmas movies and decorated the tree and visited with some of our favorite people. This is truly one of the most amazing families I have ever had the pleasure to be around. I don't know if I've ever wanted to be part of a family as desperately as I do this one. I love watching them interact with one another and even though I'm a little bit jealous (let's be honest here, I mean, who wouldn't want the Piehlers for inlaws??), it's so heartwarming to see the way that Sue and Mike have welcomed Annika and Ronnie into the family. I hope someday Steven and I have a loving and caring family that enjoys spending time together just like the Piehlers do. We want to be like them when we grow up.

Here are a few fun pictures that I borrowed from Jeremy:

So hard to keep the straight face.

The gang's all here!

I just love these people.