life= good.
christmas= good.

it's snowing and i love it. there is truly a time and a place for everything and the time for snow is Christmastime. i will not love it so much mid january on, but for now it has the ability to complete the season and make things magical. -- i'm all about magical.

for those who were wondering and those who were not, my birthday (the day itself) was ab-fab. i had a great time. B took me to the roof restaurant, which has a killer view and then we stayed the night in the marriott hotel downtown. it was w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l!!!

all apologies to the in-laws for missing the girl's night, but i'm glad you ate cake for me. trust me, i would have rather been there than pulling my hair out over little H who's been sick for 2 1/2 weeks now. ps- took him to the doctor on monday. all he said was that H had a virus and it was normal for kids this age to take 2 -3 weeks to get over something like this. whatever. thanks for not calming my fears at all. so at this point i don't know if he's sick or teething or both. i just know he's miserable and i'm at the end of my vast mommy knowledge for such things.

thanks to friends and fam for the b-day wishes. love you all.

-j

i'm the cute thing in the middle. the cute things on either side of me are my sis, Janna and my bro, Andy.


as is tradition in the mommy blogger world i am going to give a tribute to myself on this my day of birth. actually, the tradition is not to tribute yourself but since i am the only author on this blog it's going to have to be me. here are some reasons i think i'm great:
* i can be fairly entertaining
* i'm not bad to look at
* i bathe regularly
* i like to laugh
* i like to poke fun (at others and myself)
* if i put my mind to do something i'll do it
* i'm not super judgemental --unless you're being dumb, lame, or otherwise intolerable
* i'm honest
* i'm mellow
* i'm fairly laid back
* i'm a decent listener
* i'm cool with you if you're cool with me
* i like my kid and my husband a great deal
* i value family (even the weirdies, and boy are there a few of those...but in a good way)
* i'm not a bad friend, sometimes i'm even a GREAT friend
* i can roll with the punches
* i like life and life likes me. life and i fairly fully agree.

that's all i can think of, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!!!!!!

Here are some photos from our sometimes annual Christmas tree cutting down excursion. We packed H. in a sled and off we went. It was a b-u-tiful day. Almost 50 degrees in the Uintas, if you can believe that. We went with theMIL and a BIL and had a very nice time.

In the pics you see B and H sledding down a small hill, H sitting like a King in his sleigh, B Julie, and H posing after all was finished, and B cutting down our tree.

This is what Christmas is made of.

A few bits of gratitude that need to be made public:

To my mom for spending a ridiculous amount of time helping me paint, clean and a random assortment of other things (including LOTS of babysitting) to help me move upstairs. Seriously don't know what I'd do without that woman. So DON'T move!!!!

To my mom-in-law for taking time out of her busy schedule to help clean the basement apartment in prep for the new tenant (my second cousin, Emily).

To Michelle for watching H. ALL day on Friday so we could move in a more timely fashion. This is especially significant as H. has four(?) maybe more teeth coming in and is insanely cranky plus he vomited and had some bowel issues while at her house as well. What a trooper (Michelle, not Hayden)!!!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

we are currently in the process of moving upstairs. though it is not far, it is still moving and takes time and energy (something both my husband and i are running out of). the upstairs is not quite where we want it to be, but will be soon. i am soooooo thankful to finally be getting out of the basement though that i almost don't care what the upstairs looks like (almost). it will still be a bit before i'll feel like i can invite people over. but, the time will come, my friends, the time will come!!!

ps- yes, i do realize that i overuse the comma. i am and always have been the queen of the run-on sentence. get over it.

Saturday I got on the computer to quickly check my email when I noticed that a friend of mine, Eric VanTielen had tagged me in a photo on facebook. I found this odd, as I have not seen Eric VT in several years and couldn't remember the last time we had taken a photo together. Intrigued, I logged onto Facebook and was met with the photo below. Hours and hours of therapy were erased as I stared, in horror, at my junior prom photo. There I was, on the internet, in all my chubby, brace-face, closed-eyed glory. I had to sit down... further into my chair.

you may want to enlarge it to get the full effect.

The funny thing about junior prom was that I was nominated for Prom Queen and won second attendant! I'm still baffled as to how all of that happened.

This weekend I caught up with my prom date, since he was in town from the NYC and we decided to take an updated version of our prom photo. Good times, good times.

I'm sorry that it's sideways, I can't figure out how to rotate it.


Prom Revisited (almost) 15 years later.
Julia and EVT