Christmas!

Christmas went way too fast this year...way too fast. We always say that and most of the time it's just because it's coming to an end and we don't want to go back to work, but this year, it really truly, no lie, felt like it went way too fast!

We started our trip out in Waukesha visiting my family, I didn't take nearly enough photos as usual. Thursday night Chris and I got into town dropped the grandpuppy off at Grandma and Grandpa's and went out to dinner with my brother Tony and sister-in-law Jacki. Nothing special, just some quality time out at Chili's with bottomless chips and salsa, nacho's and shrimp tacos. Minus a newly poured, spilled beer compliments of Anthony and his flailing hand movements during one of his monumental stories, we had a great time!

Did I lay the sarcasm on thick enough there for everyone who's going to get it, to get it!?

Friday morning we met our good friends Gini and Mike out for breakfast. I will be standing up in their wedding this July! So excited! They just bought a house in New Berlin so after breakfast we went out to see it. They have done some amazing work on it, as it's older home in need of some fixing. I wish I had thought to bring my camera with to snap some pictures for you all. The funniest thing about the whole house is the upstairs bathroom. I'll do my best to describe it, but a picture easily would have said a thousand words. At the top of the stairs there is a fluted glass window, full length, in the wall. Plain and simple....on the other side of the window....the toilet! Yeah, ummmm weird! Right at the top of the stairs! Gini and Mike are hoping to drywall over it on the toilet side and maybe put a mirror in on the stairwell side. What kind of weirdo's lived there before them!?!!

Later Friday afternoon we opened gifts from "Santa". We all scored some pretty great stuff and Lola sat patiently like such a good girl. Tessa too!
















My Papa and Jan came over a bit later for some snacks, drinks and family time. I just wish that the drinks part wasn't so delicious...Bailey's and Jameson get's me every year! This also would have been an opportune time for pictures but I failed again and you are all stuck reading my poor excuse for writing instead. Sorry!

For dinner we went with tradition and made our way to Maggiano's for dinner. There really are not words for how awesome their hearty Italian greatness is. The funny part of it all, we've have now been sat at the exact same table, three years in a row without requesting it. Church followed dinner and that's always a tough one to do after eating a big Italian dinner and for some reason it was hotter than heck in there which only makes you want to crawl into a ball and go to sleep even more.




Saturday we were early to rise in order to make our way to Chris' family to see our nephew Kellan before they left for Loyal. Oh yeah...Tim and Sarah too...but mostly Kellan ;) Uncle Chris and Auntie Ashlee were the lame ones this year and bought him a studly outfit....he didn't give a darn but I know Sarah was excited. He's going to look like mini hotness in his blue flannel shirt, polar bear sweatshirt and black puffy vest. Oh yeah...and this hat....got to love the hat!






Lola Bear got a present too from Grandma Casey, she carries it everywhere!










Lola also got to meet her cousin Misha....need I say more than this photo....




Before the Tim, Sarah, Kellan clan left for Loyal we went outside to play in the snow and send Kellan down the sled slide Mike made for him.









I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, this was such a great year and there are many more memories to come in 2011 :)

Christmas Tree Tour!

I already gave a sneak peek of some of our favorite new ornaments in a previous post but I saw a friends blog who gave a tour of their Christmas Tree....long story short...I'm being a copycat! I loved the idea. Let's begin!

Oldies But Goodies!
This is a pair of ballerina slippers from when I was young...real young... and in ballet...real young. As it turns out short and stumpy isn't exactly a fab ballet body! These little slippers still remain one of my favorites!




This year when I opened the box of ornaments my mom gave me from home I found out there were a lot of ornaments that were actually mine that I had no idea about...ie...the one below, it's from an old babysitter of mine.




My brother and I had matching Mickey and Minnie ornaments. Over the years Minnie has not been so lucky, she has lost her nose along the way. I painted a new one on for her this year :)




Lastly, I have always loved The Wizard of Oz. Of course when I was little Dorthy was my favorite but I could not say Dorthy. So when someone would call me Ashlee I would kindly tell them, 'NO, my name is Doorcy!'




The Good Ol' Days!
Long live the basketball and softball bazillion years of my life!





Speaking of good ol' days I made this ornament in college for a Christmas party give away for our design major. They were a big hit, but the blisters on my hands from bending all that wire certainly was not a big hit with me!



As long as we're talking about college....this is a new favorite for sure! My friend Steph bought this for our tree this year to remind me of the good ol' days....too funny! So much to say about that house...so little time!




Young at Heart!
We use to get fun silly ornaments like this...










Serious Business!
Then we got married...and had to start acting like adults! Bummer!



A year to remember...




Now It's All About the Hobbies!
Which for Chris is Golfing and Fishing. I dig the moose golfing with his little raccoon buddy hanging around on his back. Now that's a talented swing!






And my hobbies....well these aren't saying much! Or are they!?!






Well, that's the most of it! I hope you enjoyed the tour of our tree! Merry Christmas! Santa comes soon!

Naughty & Nice

Every year my co-workers and I have had a Naughty & Nice Christmas Party. I've hosted the past two years and we've had a blast! There are some things that just can't be said in the work environment and we get that all out at this party!

We all bring NICE food and drink to share. I didn't think to grab a picture of our spread but it consisted of taco dip, veggie platter with rockstar hummus, shrimp cocktail, hot spinach/crab and artichoke dip, baked brie with strawberry pinot noir jam and apples(Hello!!), and cake balls...lots and lots of cake balls. Just to mention a few (I mean all) of the flavors...Gingerbread, Pumpkin, Andes Mint, German Chocolate, and Oreo Truffle...are you drooling yet!?! It was all delicious!

For the NAUGHTY part we all bring naughty, sassy or frivolous gifts to exchange white elephant style. Many are too naughty to mention here though, I run a PG-13 blog around here!

Here are some pictures of the sassy beautiful ladies I work with day in and day out. Aren't they a lovely bunch of coconuts!?!











There were a million and one laughs like this....





From crazy things like this...

Oh....Christmas Lights...How I hate thee..

My parents taught me that HATE is a strong word and I should use something else like dislike. Well, my parents also forgot to mention that Christmas lights are a pain in the you know where and are worthy of the word HATE!(p.s I still love Christmas lights)

Okay, let me begin....

So the weekend before Thanksgiving we decided to hang our lights since we knew we'd be gone all thanksgiving weekend and could have them up and running for the Monday after the holiday. We went up on the roof and measured where we would like all the lights. Single strand lights over the garages and icicles over the front of the house. Sounds simple. We needed 60' of sting lights and 36' of icicles. We get down and go to the store. We buy all the same brand so the color will match, everything is LED and everything is warm white.

So when we get home and we get up on the roof again and start hanging, making sure to leave the "male" plug-in on the end we needed to connect for power. As we are finishing up the garages we find out the 70' of string lights we got are not going to cover the 60' of garage. We are about 3' short. So I head back over the roof to the beginning and start pulling everything tight in hopes we will gain back the 3' we need to reach the gutters...no such luck...we are still 2' short. So we get the brilliant idea to wrap all the icicles around the cord so they look like string lights until we get to the gutters. Done Deal.

So we continue on and hang all of the icicles lights. Plug in our extension cords and set the timer. We go to plug in the icicles lights and it's a no go...."Female/Female" plug-in...What!?! By this point it was getting dark and we had guests coming so we called it a day and said we'd fix it after the holiday.

Number of arguments accumulated to hang lights, go back and tighten lights, wrap icicles lights around cord for an extra 2' and then find out we can't plug it in = 3

Here I am ready to go and excited to get back up there and flip all the lights....oh how happy I still look...that won't last long!


So after thanksgiving we take down the icicles and turn them all around. We decided to start at the extension cord end so we wouldn't mess it up. As we are hanging and plugging in each set it begins to light up. The whole time we are thinking these warm white lights are looking pretty blue...We get to the single strand lights and plug them in....everything lights up, the moment of excitement! NO! It's the moment of getting mad...AGAIN! The lights are two different colors! Please see the picture below.



Number of arguments accumulated to re-hang icicles lights and find out the colors don't match = 2

Another week goes by and I climb up the ladder and take down the blue icicles and head back to the store to find warm white ones. Only problem, the store does not have any warm white icicles left....only twinkle warm white icicles...OK WHATEVER!!
I get home hang the new ones and all is right in the world of Christmas lights again. I decide to move forward with setting up the spotlights for the front. I'm moving around the extension cords when I get a call from my parents. I answer and decide I can multi-task and do the cords and talk on the phone at the same time. Just as I get to the corner of the house I drop the phone. Now, this typically would not be that big of an issue except I happen to be standing over the one open pipe around all of our home. Nothing but Net! I ran inside to grab a flashlight and see if I could see it and find a way to fish it out. It's gone...way gone...under ground...GONE! I had to run over to the neighbors to call Chris and ask him to stop and pick me up a new phone because there was no way mine was coming back.



Long story short....5 arguments later....the lights look great....and I lost my phone and all of my contacts on it.

Seriously, HATE may be a strong word....but I earned the right to use it in this situation!

Merry Flippin Christmas to All ;)

DAY 30!!

So 30 days of gratitude finally comes to an end. I(Ashlee) picked up this idea from another blog and thought I'd give it a try. I've read that people who try and write down three things they are grateful for each day before going to bed increase their happiness and mood. Well I'm a person of many ups and downs and I think through the 30 days of gratitude that was pretty apparent. With it all coming to an end I can truly say it opened our eyes to all the amazing things in our life. Even on the bad days we were forced to find that one great moment that made us smile or laugh. That one moment that was typically something we easily forgot about and generalized the day as a "bad one".

I highly recommend everyone trying this little experiment for themselves. It does not have to be in blog form, it could just be a pad of paper next your bed or by the telephone (if you still have one of those things called land lines!). I'll be honest and say I did not write every single thing I am grateful for here in this blog, some of the things are just for Chris and I to be grateful for. With that said, I also did not write all the bad things I wish I could be ungrateful for...yes...there are some of those as well. That was the hardest part.

We are grateful for this challenging exercise of our brains and what it did for our outlook on our life as we live it....(yup, totally just played off the title of the blog.)

Much Love,
Ashlee + Chris

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 29

Today I was grateful for a day out of the office. Monday's are always the worst and kicking off the week with a day on the road...Awesome!

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 28

Today I/we were grateful for getting to see our nephew Kellan. It had been way too long and he is the darnedest cutest little ditty ever. He's walking/running now and is really starting to get a personality. He has this crazy mad looking scowl that he pulls out every now and then and we wish we knew what in the world he was thinking. Kellan is probably thinking...."Who is this again?...Oh great she's kissing me all over the face again....aghhh!"

Hehe...love him!

BBQ and I took the pups for a nice long walk and then Barb laid out quite the delicious spread of food! Happy Thanksgiving to us!

We snapped a quick family shot as well....not pictured is Casey K...we still love him, even though he couldn't make it.

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 27

Major headache....best Saturday morning leftover egg breakfast! The onward to Port Edwards to spend time with Chris' family for Thanksgiving.

I'm grateful for my loves wonderful breakfast making talent! Have I said that before?

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 26

Friday, Friday, Friday....I was very tired from the night before and crabby and needed to get back to Appleton for a 2:30p appointment. So yeah...of course that meant we had plenty of time to stop at Cabela's on Black Friday! I decided to stay in the car and take a little snooze with Lola while we waited for Chris. Roughly 45 minutes later I got a text from Chris letting me know I could bring the car around and pick him up in 4 minutes....then I got another text saying...."better make it 5 minutes." So I got up to the front, didn't see him, and drove around the parking lot a couple more times....then went back up front and waited....and waited.....and waited. 20 minutes later Chris emerged from his heaven, cart full.

Long story short, it took him 15 minutes to get everything and 45 minutes in line! Not to mention the man in front of him with only two sweaters took all of 10 minutes to check out because he was being so difficult. What a way to start a Friday. Oh, did I mention Chris was so excited about his purchases he talked about it the whole way home....did I mention I was tired! ;) Love you Babe!

Later that evening we met up with some great friends who were in town from Iowa for dinner and drinks. We brought them out to one of our favorite supper clubs... yes....supper club...they still have those in Wisconsin and yes, there still are a few great gems out there. Any who we later headed out to the bar where things got out of control....







I'm grateful for some quality time with some great friends!