Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Christmas #1


Tyler and I celebrated our own little Christmas last Sunday, before the stress of working, packing, cleaning, and traveling began this week, and yes, it was just so hard to wait! Our tree has been full of presents for weeks, and neither of us could resist any longer!
It was fun in the days leading up to it, with Tyler reminding me, "3 days til Christmas....2 days til Christmas!....It's Christmas Eve!!" Now we have a similar countdown going on till we get to Seattle and start Christmas celebrations #2 with the Redds!!


Our huge tree is just so majestic looking in our not-so-huge living room!



(Cindy, this is the best picture of my gift wrapping I could find...I was also trying to do the whole artistic blurry thing you do so well..)



Stockings are my favorite part!!








And Tyler had no idea what I had put in his!!




Tyler got a new fireplace dvd, which he "has been wanting for years!!!!"




And he surprised me with this beautiful new "big purse"....apparently he was paying attention when I showed him all those purses I wanted!



Other gifts included a new belt for Tyler, The Nativity Story dvd and a little recipe book for Kelsey, and the gift I spent soo much time on, and still haven't finished..a homemade white robe for Tyler!

All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas in the Redd house!


Saturday, December 4, 2010

Speed Rock Climbing Competition!


What: Speed Climbing. You have three 30-foot routes to climb, and 2 attempts at each to get your fastest time, then your best times from each route are summed for your total time!

This year, Tyler and I both participated! And it was awesome!

Tyler did great, he came in 10th out of about 30 very fast guys! His total time was 38.5, averaging hardly over 12 seconds per climb! (He was only 11 seconds behind the winner!)

I was serious about winning after coming in 5th last year...and...I did it! I took 1st place out of about 15 girls with a total time of 44.3 seconds! (My best time on a route was a whopping 11 seconds, which I'm pretty proud of!) Not only did I come in first, there was 10 second gap between me and the next girl!! WHAT!


Anyways, sorry about the lack of pictures, it was kinda hard to be snapping pictures when we were both climbing our little hearts out!


Ok, ok, this is actually from last year's competition..but it's the same idea...




Here I am with the winner of the guys division and the kids division (this kid is also a champion gymnast!)




And here's me with my prize: a fancy, new $70 harness!! (which actually fits Tyler better than it fits me, so Merry Christmas Tyler!!) We actually came away with a lot of other gear from prizes as well, which we added to be worth about $150 total...not too shabby!

It was a lot of fun, and we'll see if I can defend my title next year!!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Craft Blog


Well, I was going to attempt a craft blog-style post, but after getting half way through, I was spent...so here are the copy and pasted instructions:

Here's what you'll need:
-3 styrofoam trees: sizes 15x5, 12x4, and 9x4
-3 small candlesticks (you can find these at just about any thrift store for about 50 cents)
-spray adhesive
-glue: Elmer's glue for the glitter and a stronger glue like E6000 to glue the tree to the candlestick
-glitter in your favorite 3 colors (we found these awesome colors of glitter at hobby lobby)
-white spray paint




Here's what you'll need to do:
- give your tree a good coating of the spray adhesive. you can use the elmers glue for this part, but the spray adhesive covers better and gives a nice smooth finish, plus it's a lot faster. leave the bottom of the tree undone, this will get glittered at the end.


- once you have your tree coated in glue, cover it completely with glitter. when all 3 trees have been glitterized set them aside to dry.
- next take your 3 candlesticks and give them a couple quick coats of white spray paint. then let those dry completely.
- now take your E6000 and glue the candlesticks to the trees. it's best to let them sit overnight. (keep an eye on it though. on one of the trees the glue ate away some of the styrofoam and my tree tilted to the side. so just check on it for the first hour or so.)


- when everything is completely dry, flip them over and cover the remaining part with glue and glitter. (we used the elmers glue for this part)
- then all you have left to do is decide where to put them!!