10 on 10 :: January 2017

10 pictures on the 10th day of the month!

{Document a snapshot of your life & find beauty among the ordinary things in your day!}

Happy 10th of January! 

Here is a sneak peek into our day....it was a CRAZY rainy day here in California. 

We are in the middle of a huge rain storm which is awesome for our drought ridden state. 

What isn't good is that we are getting so much rain at once & the land isn't used to that so there have been major flooding, land slides, massive trees falling over & power outages.

Walking into school....rain is dumping!

A look at my desk....my breakfast (that I eat around 10am each day...I don't get hungry until then), my 2017 Erin Condren Planner & my cute desk calendar.

 I got a new stamp that I will use for stamping homework each day....love that I can change the date :)

After school, I picked Luke up from preschool and his shoes were soaked because his rain boots don't fit him anymore & he wore regular shoes.  Since are predicted to have a very rainy winter/Spring, he and I went to a shop downtown to get him some new rain boots.

 He is so funny to shop with...he lined up all the rainboots he was deciding between.....he picked the fire chief ones :) We also picked up some cute ones for the girls since they don't have rain boots either.

Then Luke I went home for lunch & I made a batch of my Grammy's Split Pea Soup.

 Grammy makes hers on the stove and it takes 12+ hours. I usually make it in the Slow Cooker and it takes 8+ hours. I decided to try it out in my Instant Pot....it took less than 45 minutes!!!!!!  

I could not believe it...the soup turned out perfect!!!! I will be blogging this recipe soon and I will be blogging more Instant Pot recipes because I am obsessed. 

While my soup was cooking, I got some things organized for Kate's Birthday Party.  How cute are the invites? This theme is all Kate....she came up with the theme & the colors :)

I am just now getting the invites out & her birthday is in less than 2 weeks. Yikes!!!

This always happens to me...her birthday sneaks up on me because of Christmas & New Years...then bam! Her birthday! You would think that after 10 (!!!!!!) years I would remember to get the invites out sooner. I always get invites out 3-4 weeks ahead of time...except for Kate's. One of these years I will learn. LOL!

 

I also got caught up on some R+F stuff. If you missed my bulk eye cream order, it's not too late! I ordered some extra eye creams, so if you want one, it's $60 (I am covering tax & shipping) Send me an email or leave me a comment! First come, first serve!

melissa_larson17@yahoo.com

 Then it was time to pick up the girls from school, so Luke and I drove over in the rain to get them and we went straight to gymnastics for Kate. (I signed both girls up, but Claire is still on the wait list for her age group)

 The girls have been asking for months to do gymnastics, so now that soccer (and the holidays) are over, I said they can do gymnastics. I have a pretty firm "one sport" at a time rule. In years past we have had softball & swimming overlap or soccer & dance overlap & it's just too much with 3 kids and all their activities, so for now, 1 activity per kid at a time so that we aren't so "busy"

  After gymnastics, it was still dumping rain, so we went to check out the creek near our house since it was looking full from all the rain.... This creek is usually 2 inches deep and about 2-3 feet wide.

  Can you believe it?!?!? I have never seen it like this before. It was like a raging river. People were getting sandbags ready to go. I really hope it doesn't flood...we have rain in the forecast until tomorrow night!

The kids got soaked from playing in the rain so then it was baths, dinner, books & bedtime.

Then, I settled down with some tea & watched This is Us.

 Between Obama's speech thanking Michelle & his daughters and then watching "This is 

Us"....I cried all the tears last night!!!

 

 It was such a fun 10th...definitely one that I will remember because of all the crazy rain. 

I always look forward to documenting the 10th of each month & I love looking back on them each month to see what we did in previous years on that day!

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Please tell me you remember that song from the 90's & please tell me it's now stuck in your head :)

Today we went back to school after 2.5 glorious (and I mean glorious) weeks off.

Our school schedule was strange this year & they changed our school calendar. We started school 2 weeks earlier (in the middle of August) so that the semester ended before Winter Break. This meant we were in school until December 22nd, which was late!!!  And, we now end school on June 1st instead of the middle of June. This schedule isn't my favorite....I want school to start after Labor Day and end at the end of June like when I was a kid, but I don't think they will ever change it to that.

Anyways, because of our school schedule this year, we got 2.5 weeks off for Winter Break and didn't go back until today....which was awesome! 

The not awesome part was only having 2 days off before school Christmas, so a lot of our Christmas activities felt rushed. We crammed in a lot, like going to see Christmas lights at our local Griswold house....pictures don't even do it justice...

 My sisters and I on Christmas Eve after church:

What the kids left for Santa....

The aftermath of what Santa brought the kids....

Then over to my parents for Jimmy's 3 meat breakfast....

 We said goodbye to Christmas & then headed to Tahoe for a week.

This was basically me in Tahoe:

The week between Christmas & New Years might be my favorite week in the entire year. Sooooo relaxing! We skied for 3 days & of course I wore my Colorado beanie the day our football team played in the Alamo Bowl (that game was rough. Yikes!)

 I channeled my sadness about the game and finally beat Bowser's Castle in Super Mario Brothers. Kevin and I love this game on the wii and so do our kids.

  You don't even want to know how many hours we spent playing Super Mario Brothers this break.....#somany #ilosttrack

 The last few days in Tahoe a HUGE snow storm hit....it was beautiful.

 It was truly a Winter Wonderland! Driving home was a little nuts...

 After we got home from Tahoe we still had another 5 days until school started back up, so it was spent reading books, playing more Mario Bros ;) and getting things done around the house.

I think I wore pj's 95% of the time during Winter Break....it was awesome!

So thankful for over 2 weeks of family time with no homework, no responsibilities & no structure!

Like I mentioned in my 2016 letter the other day, I didn't open my laptop for over 10 days...the best!

 But now, it's back to life & back to reality!
Less than 3 months until Spring Break ;)

Dear 2016,

Every year I write a letter reflecting the past year.
I usually write it on December 31, but we have been in Lake Tahoe for the past week and I haven't even opened my laptop since the day after Christmas! No blogging in over 2 weeks, just soaking up Christmas, New Years & Family time.....the BEST!
To read the other yearly letters, click HERE.

Dear 2016, 

I know that you have gotten a bad rap for being a tough year (especially when it comes to celebrities passing away) but when I look back on 2016,  I will think of you as a good year for our family.

There were good times & bad times. Laughter & tears, but overall I will look back at 2016 and smile. 

Here are some highlights:

January:

My highlight of January is always Kate's birthday!

She turned 9 and we celebrated with a Roller Skating Disco Party!

We went to a Roller Skating Rink and then came back to our house for pizza & cake!

And a dance party....It was fun & easy celebration!

 Check out the entire party post {HERE}

February:

My highlight of February was that the Super Bowl was being hosted in San Francisco, so my older sister and I went to Super Bowl city one afternoon.

 It was  so fun having Super Bowl 50 in our "backyard"
I'm really glad we went to the city to check out all the fun & we ran into Brett Favre, Steve Mariucci & Terrell Davis. Such a fun day in the city!

March:

Kevin and I went away for the weekend to Pismo Beach for a wedding.

At the end of March, I ran my 3rd Half Marathon & got a PR:

My sister Elyse & brother in law Jason also ran it!

I also hosted Easter at our house (for the first time) at the end of March.

April:

I started off April with Spring Break & we went to Pebble Beach for 3 days.

The weather was amazing!

May:

May is always a fun month because it's both mine & Kevin's birthday months!

My highlight of May might have been the Mothers Day weekend. The Saturday of Mothers Day weekend we had both our parents over for dinner to celebrate Mother's Day (and watch the Kentucky Derby) After dinner, both our parents stayed out our house until 2 am playing Mexican Train Dominoes!!!!! It was epic...I can't believe we all stayed up so late. I love that my parents & Kevin's parents get along so well. 

In the middle of May, I earned a free Level 5 retreat to Lake Tahoe & it was a blast! 

View from the house....

For Kevin's birthday we went to one of the Warriors playoff games. Such a blast!

We headed to Chico for my nieces college graduation.

My birthday is Memorial Day weekend and we had a court block party that Kevin organized.

 May was a fun month!

June:
I was SOOOOOOOO thankful when June arrived. That meant that it was summer & then end of the school year. The 2015-2016 was my hardest year of teaching. It was rough, rough, rough.
I literally cried tears of relief on the first day of Summer.
The first day of summer is when our backyard re-do started:

We were under construction during most of the summer!
My R+F team leader earned her Free Lexus in June & she had a fun party to celebrate.

Several girls from my team were able to come...such a fun night!

July:
One of my highlights is always the 4th of July!

The kids and I headed up to Tahoe for a week, Kevin had to work, but my mom came with us...lots of fun in the sun!

 August:

 We went to Tahoe again for another week, this time Kevin came with us.

We had a blast at our new favorite beach...Sand Harbor!

 Luke turned 4 right after we got back from Tahoe & we had a fun Construction Party for him!

You can see the rest of the party post {HERE}

I started my 13th year of teaching:

 

So far it's been a great school year! Lucky 13!

Kevin and I celebrated 14 years of marriage & had a weekend away in Half Moon Bay:

September:

The highlight of September was Claire turning 8 and throwing her a Flamingo Pool Party!

This was one of my favorite parties!

You can see the rest of the party {HERE}

October:

October can be summed up in one word...EPIC.

It was full of FUN!

The first weekend of October, I headed to Vegas for the Rodan + Fields Convention.

We saw O, I met Gordon Ramsay & we we went to a Chainsmokers concert that started at 1am.

You can read more about our Vegas adventures {HERE}

A few days after I got back from Vegas, Kevin and I headed to Colorado for my college soccer reunion.

We got to see Soccer & Football play.

 I just love Colorado!

You can read more about our Colorado trip {HERE}

My Grammy turned 105 at the end of October.

 

Pretty incredible to be living at 105! 

For Halloween, I had one of my favorite costumes yet...straight from the 80's:

 

 It was an October that was so busy, but so fun!

November:

 November was mellow! We needed that after a busy October!

 The highlight, like usual is Thanksgiving at the Horse Races. 

 :

I just love Kevin's family tradition.

December:

December flew by WAY too fast. 

It started with Kevin and I going to the Pac 12 Championship Football game.

It was the 3rd CU football game that I got to see in person this season. What a treat, since we have had such a great season!

I love my house in December.....I love how cozy it feels.

I watched a ridiculous amount of Hallmark Christmas movies this December.

We had a wonderful Christmas & then headed to my happy place for 7 days to end the year & ring in 2017.

 We skied 3 days in a row:

Rang in the New Year with one of our favorite families with a deck view of a fireworks show:

 It was the perfect way to end 2016:

2016, you were good to us.

Also, in 2016 I added 36 new recipes & 5 new free printables to the blog!

You can check those out in the Recipe Box tab and the Free Printables tab.

 2016, you have memorable.

There was good, there was bad, there was ugly.

There were tears & laughter.

Thanks for all the memories.

I am thankful to God for the ways he worked in our family this year and for the ways that He will continue to work in us and through us.

Happy New Year, friends.

Thanks for reading my blog!

I appreciate all of you!
May your 2017 be filled with joy & hope no matter your circumstances!