Celebrate EVERY DAY!

Do you know someone who literally finds something to celebrate every day?

I do.

She is a my friend @MaryHeston’s mother. She lives here in my teeny tiny town.
She celebrates every single day.

• If it’s nat’l ‘Mustard’ day? You better believe there will be hotdogs for lunch!
• If it’s nat’l ‘Something on a Stick’ day? YES. There are Popsicles in her freezer.
• If it’s nat’l ‘Sneak a Zucchini on Your Neighbor’s Front Porch’ day? She’ll hurry and go buy zukes and sneak em out!

Recently Mary and I found out that August 26th is National Toilet Paper Day… and we looked at each other and we KNEW we had to do something wonderful. Something fabulous for her mom on such special day. But what?

We decided to ‘Toilet Paper’ Her House of course!

And we did.

And we had way too much fun.
More than adult moms should be allowed.

And YES ToiletPaperWorld Sponsored us.
(They sent the toilet paper you see here!)

Isn’t it purty? In a redneck kind of way?

And please meet my partner in crime. Mary’s Dad was in on the whole thing. And this is Mary’s mom. Everyone please say hi to possibly one of the most FUN mom’s in the world!

And I quote: “We haven’t had our house TP’d in over 50 years!” Mom.

I think they were equally happy when we showed up the next morning to clean it all up!

Happy toilet paper day!

Yes ToiletPaperWorld provided the TP for this excapade but otherwise I was not compensated. But totally have been having fun writing TP posts for them: Recycled and Toilet Paper should NOT be in the same sentence! And Mom TP Types, Which Type are You?

Find great family fun activities EASILY when you travel!

(Or locate something new to you close to home?)

There’s an APP for THAT!

GOBY.com Totally does this for you!

We are all about researching a destination WAY before we travel as a family.

What are we going to do when we get there?
What’s fun for kids?
What would the grown ups like that the kids definitely will NOT?

And where are great local restaurants?

I looked at the Online version of Goby.com and pulled up a couple cities close to home where we might take a day trip.

First I checked out Bend, Oregon.  And BAM!
30 listings ALL under Family Activities!
A few examples:

• High Desert Museum
• Tumelo State Park (Float the Deshutes River)
• Sunriver Nature Center

How about Restaurants? I want a new place we wouldn’t think to go:

• Hottest Dog (chicago style! yum!)
• The Breakfast Club (breakfast all day!)
• Cafe Yumm (vegetarian options!)

But how does the mobile version of Goby work?

I have an Android phone so I LOVE it when the fun apps work for me too. Use this QR code to download the FREE Goby Android App! ——>

We are heading to Seattle in a few weeks so I looked up Family Fun Ideas in the Seattle Area:
(I love that it gives you directions right in the app!)

• Seattle Aquarium (of course!)
• Museum of Flight (my little boy is all about paper airplanes right now, perfect!)
• Rosalie Whyel Museum of Doll Art (my 10yrold daughter would be in HEAVEN!)
• Kidsquest Children’s Museum

WIN AN iPAD 2 During #TMOM!!

HOW?
In 4 Easy STEPS:

Click over to TravelingMom.com and RSVP for the Twitter Party on MONDAY! (May 23rd).

Leave a Comment with your Twitter Username

Visit www.goby.com and search for an adventure in your city

Show up to the party and use the hashtag #TMOM

Good Luck! See you on Monday night!

This is not a compensated post. However, as a contributor of Travelingmom.com this post counts as entry to win an iPad2.

In ten years from now I’ll be saying:

“Yeah… we were like dolphins caught in the Tuna nets of the Mortgage Crisis.”

And I’m sure I’ll laugh at it all. But. Right now?

We didn’t lose a job. We haven’t really changed income or lifestyle. All we did was MOVE. We changed states. And changed work. My husband agreed to move for the new job. But we weren’t able to sell our house. And it was during the beginning of the 2008 mortgage crash. Who knew it would get worse?

We were optimistic and figured even though very few people walked through our house looking to buy, we would simply rent it out for a year and try to sell it again.

Yeah. THREE years later? Not so much.

Now we are tangled in the net that is the job crisis and economy crash.  Did we make a bad decision to move for a great job? How is THAT ever a bad decision!? Staring down the barrel of foreclosure or short sell and credit woes, it’s sure FEELING like a bad decision.

Our house is back up for sale this spring. And we have updated the carpet, counters, hard wood floors, lighting and paint to the tune of thousands of dollars. (Shoot me now).

It’s like we’re paying for a dead relative to enjoy her dream vacation. We aren’t exactly enjoying the new granite countertops from 2 states away, ya know?

I am so ready to finally finalize this move. To MOVE on…To sell that house….And to get this country of ours back on track. Here’s to more jobs, more stability and a whole lot less stress about family income.

Imagine the party we are gonna throw when our house sells?!

***

DISCLOSURE: Sponsored POST including links by USJobResource.com.

I checked out USJobResource, and believe me you have to click many many pages and additional ‘offers’ before you get to the clearinghouse of jobs available in your area or expertise.  But I did locate several jobs in my expertise even in my tiny rural area of Oregon.
This post is part of a BroadcastBlogger campaign.

We spent Valentine’s weekend in Ashland, Oregon.
Such fun pictures!!

While my mom was in town a few weeks back we took a weekend, called it close enough to our anniversary and headed over the hill to lovely Ashland, Oregon. We stayed in possibly the cutest Bed & Breakfast I’ve ever seen! Ashland is home to arts and crafts and fairs and Southern Oregon University and… Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival.

Appropriately our B&B was named ‘A Midsummers Dream’. And we stayed in the Romeo and Juliet room…. wherefore art thou… and all that!

Everyone say awwww….

It’s nice to have 16 years of marriage behind us.

• 3 kids.
• 3 different houses bought.
• 1 sold.
• 1 for sale.
• 1 We live in and love.
• 5 different apartments or rentals where we hung up our hats and called home.
• 6 different cities and 4 different states, each kid born in a different state, all except the current one.

But it’s even better to imagine the next 16 years!

• Wrinkles
• Age Spots
• College/Missions/Marriages?
• Grandkids
• Retirement
• Pay off at least one house in my lifetime?
• TRAVEL!

All with the love of my life.

***

Side note. We ate the most fabulous breakfast egg popovers that morning at the B&B!
Anyone know how to make em?

Reading the book is optional.

This is not your average suburban bookclub group of mommies chatting quietly over tea about the most recent Nicholas Sparks book.
(His books make me gag… let’s not go there.)

We tend to ‘talk’ about the book for exactly 7.5 minutes. Someone even bravely brings ‘discussion questions’ most months. We’ve been known to get all the way to question number 4 (twice!). There are as many as 15 of us on any given Thursday night. Who has time to talk about a book when you have that many friends to catch up with!?

We’ve also considered a month where the ‘book’ is People magazine. I revolted at that point and they agreed on a ‘movie book night’ instead.Feel free to read my “I hate People” post.

This bookclub is our excuse to get together (sans kids or sig. others), talk  in too loud voices, and eat yummy grown up mommy food:  Think—hummus,cream-filled strawberries, homemade cookies, and plenty of NOT homemade too… last month someone brought a whole Costco Jar of Jelly Belly’s. She was the mom-STAR that night!

Oh and leaving before midnight is not part of the deal. 2AM and later is more the norm. The poor family of the host that night, understands, the home has been given over to cackling, laughing moms in need of serious GIRL time. My husband totally understands how my one night of serious female connection is in his best interest if you know what I mean....

Did I mention we are LOUD? And this is from non-alcohol drinking Mormon Mommies. One night a couple of the bookclub women ticked off a hash mark for each time the ‘discussion’ changed topics… um… they got lost around 35 in about 10 minutes time.

Books we read last year: (Well… I read them anyway…)

• Eragon

I liked this book only okay. Not my genre by a LONG shot. And the plot?? Um: Kid turned Dragon finder, turned Dragon Rider travels around his country about 40 times. Repeat. The end. Not enough story in this story. Can’t say I’ll read book two or three…

• Ophelia

I confess, I read this one about 15 years ago and I remember really really liking it at the time.. I couldn’t remember very much of it, the 7.5 minutes of book talk at bookclub helped jog my memory only slighty…

• Hamlet

Yes the play. I read most of it, and enjoyed reading about all the different versions of Shakespeare plays out there. The club? Not so much, several refused on principle to even try reading it. “It’s a play, not a book. Amen.” So much for classics with this group… we tried to find the Mel (oh la la) Gibson version of the movie/play… couldn’t find it. And hello who wants to watch Kenneth Brannaugh for 4 HOURS?? B-oring.

• Secret Life of Bees (movie night)

I read this one a long time ago too. I hadn’t seen the movie yet so I was on board with a movie night. We really did watch it… I had been suspicious.. I thought the talking might win out over actually watching it! Movie gets a B-, but the book I remember was really good.

• The Hunger Games

Believe it or not nearly every single woman in the group read this book… Like a mom-record for us. And the best part is that one of the moms seriously hated it. Which was odd since all the rest of us loved it. Made for a really long discussion about reality TV and the woes of the current state of atrocious spectator sports. I think we talked for a whole hour, nearly ON topic. And THAT definitely was a record! I immediately read book 2 and was mildly disappointed. Book 3 is due out in August… not really holding my breath.

• A Bride Most Begrudging

I think only two of us read this little book. I was SUPER not interested when I realized the author falls into the uber born again Christian types. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy to listen to all kinds of religion and doctrine.  I tried reading ‘The Shack’  —oh my gosh. Talk about painful. But I don’t even read books in the ‘Mormon Genre’. They are always such annoying books.

Turns out Bride Most Begrudging was feisty and interesting and downright feminist. A woman in early colonial America who LOVES math!? The nerve! I liked it.

• The Book Thief

Easily one of my favorite books in a really long time. It’s written in a strange way, basically from the character Death’s point of view. Taking place in Nazi Germany, following a young foster girl’s experience in a poor neighborhood. The story and plot is definitely worth reading, but honestly the author’s prose is the REAL reason to read this book. His metaphors are amazing and run so deep it was more like bunches of mini-allegories running through the story… As indeed having Death narrate is the main allegory. The use of a few certain German swearwords at first was strange and so prominent it was unsettling. Then you realize those words take on a life of their own. Become human almost. Seriously go read this book for the words alone.

I libraried another book by the same author called ‘The Messenger’. It was a great book, and the same amazing prose, but I’m warning you, this time the swearwords are in English.

Our upcoming books you ask?

• The Lacemaker and the Princess
• The House at Riverton
• The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
• (Attending a REAL play at Oregon’s Shakespeare Theatre)
• The Help
• Sarah’s Key
• Three Cups of Tea

What are you reading?
Does your bookclub read the books?
Do you have any good book suggestions for me??

I can talk books for hours. My bookclub.. yeah, no. We just TALK for hours.

A great year.
The Good. The Crazy.
Let me share some of it with you.
Thanks so much for being part of my GoodNCrazy world.

“A kiss is worth a thousand words.”

“Laughter is the best Medicine.”

“Family vacations are…”

Clark Griswald: Roy; can I call you Roy? Have you even driven cross-country?
Roy Walley: Oh, hell yes. Drove the whole family to Florida. Worst 2 weeks I ever spent in my life. The smell from the back seat was terrible.
Clark Griswald: Ooooh. Ooooh, I know that smell. Roy, could you imagine if you had driven all the way to Florida and it was closed?
Roy Walley: Closed? Uh, they don’t close Florida.

“Allium and the Bee.” -name that movie.

“Welcome.”

“Mother Daughters”

“Time for a new avatar…”

“Peony in Love.”

“Lighthouse in shades of yellow at Yaquina Head.”

You don’t take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it. ~Author Unknown

A good snapshot stops a moment from running away. ~Eudora Welty

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. ~John Steinbeck

Hi! Welcome to My World.
Where the town is tiny and the air is clean.
The Fighter Jets Train and The *Ducks Reign.

Where Good is Crazy & Crazy is Good.

Mom of all trades… Jack of NONE.

I’m Carissa. I’ve got three Crazy kids and one Good husband.
Thanks for joining me today… to all you Moxie Foxy Ladies…
A great big Hug and Puffy Heart Hello!

I was OhMiGosh FLATTERED when Francesca and her Moxie Crew asked if I would be the Oregon stop on this bloggy train ride. And then I went.. crap. I live in a tiny becarefulifyoublinkyou’llmissit kind of town. Kind of BORING… But the thing is. Southern Oregon has some AH-mazing things to see.. all I have to do is drive 15minutes in any direction and WOW! Cascade forests. Lakes and more lakes. Fun shopping towns and Southern Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival!

Sit back and enjoy, because I took a ton of pictures, so you and (Moxie Mona) won’t forget your little stopover here in my Land of GoodNCrazy. My kids saw me taking pictures of um… a doll… and said, “Oh.. like a flat Stanley?” Well, yes.. just like that.. only curvier!

If you ever get the chance to see Crater Lake for yourself. DO NOT PASS it up. Seriously, this is like one of the top 10 must-see-Mother-Nature-out-did-herself areas in North America. It really is THAT blue. It really is THAT gorgeous. It really is impossible to explain in words…

Pictures do a MUCH better job.

I promise. No editing was done to the above image.
It’s Straight Out Of the Camera.
That white speck in the middle is a boat.
You walk very carefully on the rim… it’s a long ways down!

Mona Takes it Easy in the tall summer grass of the Crater Lake Rim.

Crater Lake was created from a collapsed Volcano. There are no inlets or outlets; ALL the water is from snow and rain! (I’ve seen it in the winter…absolutely BREATH-taking). It is the deepest lake in North America and that accounts for it’s blue-er than blue color! The Crater Lake area is the only National Park in Oregon. It’s about a 4 hour drive from Portland and only 1 hour from me!

Hey! It turns out Mona is a great help around the house!

About 3 weeks ago I helped pick pears at a local church owned orchard. I don’t think I can make it clear enough just how cool it is to live in an area where there are more Pear and Peach orchards than PEOPLE!

You know the amazing Harry and David Company? As in Awe-SOME with a capital A! Well get this… they are located just over the hill from us… and they have a retail outlet… and yes. I’ve purchased Moose Munch. So there!

To Francesca and Kacey, Angie, Jill, Kathy and Laura…. This Fridge Art is for you! Thanks for letting me play along and may your new venture MoxieMediaGirls take flight like WonderWoman takes bullets! Pa-chew! Pa-ching!

Follow the Foxy Moxie Ladies on Twitter: @MoxieMediaGirls

*We are NOT affiliated with the DUCKS in any way shape or form. {GO UTES}!

**Should you want more Life In Oregon Posts.. Here they are.

• Lighthouse Love
• Quirky-ness of the fair and a list of fried foods, (guaranteed to gross you out).

Why my new life, new state is awesome.

• Why my new life is hard: good news bad news.
• How we vote here…

Other Moxie Mona sightings Today:

You know what I really wanted to capture with these photos on the beach? I wanted a great shot of all three kids working together.. in a non-posed shot. Something I could blow up to a poster sized shot you know? Or even better— hire an artist to use that awesome hoped-for photo to create a nice sized image.

I am really liking the ages of my kids right now. I want to catch them in the act of being kids. Cuz… I am starting to feel the winds of change these days.

Oldest is off to Jr. High this fall.

Youngest starts Kindergarten.

Something is in the air? Can you smell it?

What is it about Lighthouses?
I mean:

Apple Pie
Waves of Grain
and
Visiting Yaquina Head Lighthouse on the coast of Oregon

Oh my gosh it was so windy out on the point like that… but holy crazy gorgeous!