Decorating for Christmas

Nine years ago, Ken and I bought an artificial tree that we knew would be used for my sister’s upcoming wedding.  We didn’t realize that our tree would be quite a blessing, it allows us to start Christmas decorating the day after Thanksgiving.  With Ken home, the kids off of school, and the lure of Black Friday everywhere, we spend our day at home, enjoying each other, and begin celebrating Christmas getting out or tree, Nativity set, and our few boxes of knick knacks.  The music plays and now even Tabatha and Alicia add to the piano music of Christmas songs being played.  Not exactly Dicken’s like since we have no snow, but it is still very cozy and fun.

Once the ornaments come out, the girls make sure to recount where they all came from.  I make a point of putting a year on the bottom of each ornament, and if applicable I put an initial of the person it belongs to.  The girls know A ‘10 means Alicia got it two years ago, and it helps remind them of who gave it to them, or what year they were in school when they made it.  They love knowing it is there’s as they decorate the tree and make sure to let the correct person hang it on the tree.

Every year one girl gets the honor of topping the angel on the top of the tree.  This year Alicia had that honor.

Olivia really wanted to put the angel up as you can see from her pout above, but she found another angel and dad helped her up to put that on the tree too.

The house is decorated, the tree has been trimmed, and the season has begun.  Early Merry Christmas everyone.

Thanksgiving

Today we had Thanksgiving in our home for most of Ken’s family.  We wanted to have the day to be family oriented, so we did most of the prep work yesterday so that today we could relax and enjoy a day of Thanksgiving.  And that means a lot of food.

Below you can see our Thanksgiving brunch spread.  Ken’s family had a tradition of watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade while eating a lot of crackers, dips, vegetables, and chips.  So to keep up the tradition we made ranch dressing (yes, safe for Tabatha), Spinach dip, and onion dip and set everything out by the tv and tried to observe the parade.  The kids couldn’t sit still for 3 hours, but it was in the background, and they loved eating snack food all morning. 

We didn’t get pictures of the big feast, but it was as usual an evening of cousins playing, good food, and lots of time to catch up.  We have so much to be thankful for that I am grateful that we take time to stop and remember them all.  I am grateful for my family, for my house being put back together, and for laughter in my life.  I am blessed.

Fancy Nancy

While Ken and I went to Wicked, my mother-in-law took Alicia and Olivia to a Fancy Nancy Tea party at our nearby library.  I am always amazed at how dedicated the librarians are at getting children excited about books.  They had a french lesson, learned about manners and etiquette, and of course, got a chance to dress up and be very fancy for their photo shoot (which they now want to re-create often).  These are the pictures they took, and you can tell by their smiles that this was a wonderful activity for them to go to.

Here Olivia shows off the corsage she was able to make.

We are in gratitude to my mother-in-law for taking them, they will remember fondly this grandma grand-daughter date for a long time.

Wicked–The Musical

My parents completely surprised Ken and I last week by inviting us to see the musical Wicked up at the Paramount in Seattle.  I had seen it before, but that does not at all diminish the excitement I had to see it again.  If you like the movie Wizard of Oz, or at least seen it, than I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t laugh, cringe, and enjoy this musical.  It is a favorite CD in our home and the song “Popular” and “Defying Gravity” have made it into our most played list. 

We drove up together, and had a chance to catch up as we drove.  The theater was completely full, and our seats were perfect.  We could see everything and we were near the middle so nothing blocked our view.  We could even see the music pit where the orchestra played (something I love to see). 

After the musical, which we all enjoyed, Ken and I wanted to thank mom and dad so we took them to dinner.  We went to a mall we had heard of but never entered before called Pacific Place.  We ate at a Mexican restaurant (who doesn’t love Mexican) and on the way out found a few pictures I thought worth taking.

Here I am next to a cute Nutcracker.

And here is dad next to one of my favorite new pictures.  It just made me laugh so I had to have a picture of dad with it.

Yes dad, we always knew you had Great responsibility, now we know why.

Thanks for a wonderful night. 

Craft Night At Endeavour

Ken has been in Dallas for a few days, and the girls were needing a distraction, so tonight I took the girls to their school for a Craft Night.  I was surprised that so many of the crafts were Christmas related, I mean it isn’t even Thanksgiving, but the girls didn’t mind.  It also helped that our neighbor works at the school and knew Santa, we were able to get our picture taken without paying for it.  Mrs. Larson was warmly thanked since we now have this cute photo.

Besides the photo the girls happily got out their crafty genes and worked on making little elves

reindeer

and other fun crafts.  We have a great school that have Family Nights every few months and it really has become a community gathering point.  We saw a lot of teachers, friends, and neighbors.  It even brought the Christmas spirit early to our home.

Olivia Pictures

This year has been a turning point for Olivia.  She has set out on her own in Kindergarten, has made numerous new friends, and started to read on her own.  She is a smart, energetic, and absolutely bouncy five year old, and I have loved seeing her come into her own as she would rather ride the bus with her sisters than drive with me.  I love to watch her as she grows.

Here are a few pictures of her from the last month.  Below she is with her friend Lilly.

Then she wrote her first poem.  Olivia, Cake, Eaten.

Below she writes that if she lived in a snow globe, she would want to Live with Belle (her favorite Disney Princess).

Hard to believe she is getting so big.

Pumpkin Seeds and Soup

 

We like to do things a little differently.  Instead of carving pumpkins, my daughters love to paint there pumpkins so that we can later turn our beautiful creations into seeds and soup.  Sadly, my pictures of the painting party were lost when my cell phone died, but here is what they looked like right before we de seeded them.

Don’t you love our new family picture in the background.  I sure do

And here we are diligently getting the seeds out.

We ended up having my mother in law over for dinner, and she got to share in our Pumpkin Soup after Halloween tradition.  It is really delicious.  You should try it sometime.  With homemade potato rolls below,

it makes ones of our favorite fall meals.

We finished our meal with cinnamon and sugar flavored pumpkin seeds and now we are ready for Autumn to officially begin.