A White Christmas in Vancouver?

Well I don't know if you would say it was a white Christmas, but it did snow on Christmas Day. Around 1:00 in the afternoon, I looked out the window and noticed large flakes coming down. We got all excited and ran out and took pics (sorry not uploaded yet). I don't know if you can even see the snow falling, but it did fall for an hour or so. Hannah, Justin and their cousin Caden got bundled and ran outside and caught snowflakes on their tongues. When they came in, they were soaking wet because the snow was so wet. It was brief, but hey, it was snow. I hope that we do get some accumulation at some point for the kids to play in. We have a good little hill to sled down in the school yard behind us.

We had a wonderful Christmas here. We started out fairly leisurely, not getting up until 8:00 A.M. The kids quickly went through their presents. Santa was very successful as usual. Hannah's favorite gift was her guitar--a real kids size acoustic guitar. It is electric blue with flame like swirls on it. Now she can be a real rockstar. Justin's favorite gift was a 5 in 1 Spiderman web shooter. It shoots that nasty silly string like web fluid that numerous friends have told us is just not worth it, but he hasn't even used that yet because the one he got also shoots a suction dart, little missiles, plastic webs and water. Even without the nasty fluid, he has a great time with it. They also got a rock polisher, which they must've forgotten about (it's hiding behind a chair) because they haven't bugged us nonstop to do it. They are both rock hounds. And they got a plug and play video game (a joystick that just plugs into the tv) and plays Pac Man and other vintage arcade games (yes, sadly the 80's are vintage now) It was so funny to hear that all so familiar pac man wawka wawka wawka sound. My brother, Ryan, had a ball playing it Christmas morning. Owen wasn't too sure what all was going on but did get a Little Poople garage (he likes to watch the cars go down the spiral ramp) and a little pop up tent that he instantly ran right into. It's his own little spot. He also had great fun body surfing on all the wrapping paper.

After our Christmas mayhem, we had the whole family over for brunch at our house and more presents. We of course ate tons of good food and a nice leisurely afternoon. Then later that day we went to Grandpa Mike and Grandma Carol's for dinner and yet more presents. It was a very full but a very fun day. Can't believe it's all over for yet another year. I will post pics soon.

Year in review slide show--click on view all images to view slideshow

Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

to all our family and friends. I know that I should have had this done when I sent the Christmas cards out, and hopefully you didn’t come here earlier to find there was no Christmas letter, but per my usual MO, I am late. This year, Christmas seems like it has come especially fast. Anyway, I am glad you’ve found this letter, and we wish you all peace and joy during this season that we celebrate our Savior’s birth. We also wish you many blessings in the New Year.

As usual, our year has been full, and it has flown by. One piece of news that we do NOT have is that we either learned we were expecting or had a baby in the past year. I realized the other night that 2007 and 2004 were the only two years since 1999 that one of those has not been true.

Our big news for this year is that we moved. For over 3 years, we had been looking on and off for a home that we could see ourselves raising our kids in until they left home. Since I am extremely picky, and it wasn’t necessary we move, no one house had everything we were looking for. But after having Owen, our interest in moving was renewed, and in January we finally found something we could see ourselves in for the long haul. It’s in a wonderful neighborhood and the elementary school (which is one of the best in the district) is right behind our back fence. With us having to make a contingent offer and sell our house first, we didn’t actually close on the house until June. Right after moving in, we tore the kitchen out and gave it a complete overhaul with new cabinets, countertops and appliances. There are photos of the remodel on my blog (click here and scrolld down for the pics). We were entirely without a kitchen for about a month except for a microwave and toaster oven, which was a real pain, but it was all worth it. There are still a few boxes around and we’re still trying to get rid of stuff and get the garage in order, but for the most part, we are settled and feel at home.

Hannah will turn 7 in January and is in first grade at the school behind us. We can actually see the door to her classroom from our kitchen sliding door. She has been doing extremely well academically and has made lots of friends. She is a very popular little girl and whenever I pick her up from school, all you here is “bye Hannah, bye Hannah, bye Hannah…” from all her classmates. She has had a bit of a rough time ever since a boy in her class got hurt on the playground only a couple weeks into school. It wasn’t serious, but it was traumatic enough to her to cause quite a bit of distress. For a few weeks, going to school was very difficult and there were many tears from her and from me. She came out of that for the most part, although she is still very fearful of anyone getting hurt. We just pray that in time, she will not worry about such things. She is still doing ballet and was in her 3rd recital in June. She also played soccer again this fall. She was on an all-girl team called Mia’s Angels (as in Mia Hamm) and had lots of fun. She took swimming lessons and really blossomed over the two sessions. She had been afraid to even put her face in the water, but this summer, she was entirely underwater all the time.

Justin will turn 5 in January and is in Pre-K. He is learning a lot and has many friends. He is our boy of 100 questions. If you are alone with him in the car, he talks non-stop asking tons of questions that I usually cannot answer. He also played soccer again this fall and did great. He really improved over last year. Justin took swimming lessons this summer and, like Hannah, became much more comfortable in the water. He keeps asking when we’re going to do lessons again.

Owen is almost 18 months old and has changed tremendously over the year as all toddlers do. He is walking and running all over the place trying to keep up with Hannah and Justin. He is also quite the little climber. He is a very active little boy and keeps us on our toes all day long. He has had a few words like kick (when kicking a ball like his siblings did during soccer) and thank you. He loves, balls, balloons, his bath (splashing like a madman) and just being included in any activity going on at the time. Sometimes this is a cause of anguish for his siblings. Especially Hannah who has to keep the door to her room shut at all times because there are way too many little things for him to destroy or eat. For the most part though, Hannah and Justin adore their baby brother and it is a joy to see them interact with him.

I am still teaching fitness classes as a way to keep in shape, earn a little money, and get a little break from home, although two of the classes are at 5:30 A.M., so the break I am getting is from the sleep I would otherwise be enjoying. Oh well. I also started a new business this year selling Uppercase Living (http://www.uppercaseliving.com/) vinyl expressions (fancy stickers) that go on the wall or tiles and plaques for home décor. I’ve been selling since October and so far it has been very successful, so we’ll see where it goes. It’s been fun, and I love putting the stuff up in my home, which was my main reason for starting to sell it. I also still try to find as much time as possible to scrapbook. Last year in the letter, I said that I was going to have two of my layouts published in an idea book. That was supposed to be out this fall, but unfortunately, was delayed until after Christmas. So hopefully soon, that book will be out. I will definitely put it on my blog when it is. Before then though, I am going to be published in an online magazine. I am actually going to have 4 of my layouts and an article on me put in the January issue of ScrapStreet magazine (shh!!!!! It’s supposed to be a secret until then). I will provide the link to that in January when it comes out.

Dale continues to work at Brown and Caldwell and enjoys his job, although the commute to Portland can be a bear at times. He is managing one project that keeps him closer to home, which makes the commute easier some days. He has once again joined an indoor soccer team and is really enjoying the chance to get some physical activity despite the aches and pains for a couple days after. He also was a soccer mom this fall getting all the kids ready and to Hannah and Justin’s soccer games on Saturday mornings when I taught aerobics.

Now that Owen is a little bigger we got the chance to get out of the house a few times. In the spring, we headed over to Cannon Beach, one of our favorite places in the world for a couple of days with Dale’s parents. Later, during the summer, we rented a house in Sunriver for a long weekend with some friends and had a great time. We determined on the first day that a weekend is not long enough and are looking at a week next time.

Also during the summer, we attended the McDonald family reunion at dad’s place in Washougal. The family got to spend their first night in a tent and boy was it cold! Owen and I spent the second night on the couch in the house. I was good to get together with family and there was a lot to do. Dad stocked the pond with trout and all the kids pulled out 54 fish in about an hour. Together, Hannah and Justin caught 7.

We spent Thanksgiving in Indiana with Dale’s family. Owen did surprisingly well for his first time on a plane and we had a good time. One highlight was seeing a couple of bald eagles in a field while we were taking a drive through the countryside.

Well I should wrap this up. I am also going to add a slideshow of pictures throughout the year. We love hearing from you all so please email or even send a real card or letter when you get a chance. I put our new address in with our Christmas card, but if you missed that tiny slip of paper, email me to get our new address.

ROFLPIMPing

I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm posting again. Twice in one day--it's a record. The key is keeping the posts short and sweet. Anyway, I just have a funny story. Don't know how many of you know texting jargon well (I don't ever text) but my post title refers to Hannah coming down from upstairs where she and Justin were playing well (just after they had been fighting) and said that Justin made her laugh so hard, she peed her pants. It was almost deja vu because yesterday at my MOPS meeting, we had a speaker who told the exact same story about her two daughters. Anyway, the whole thing reminded me of my favorite text shortcut (or whatever you call them), ROFLPIMP (I pronounce it Roffle Pimp)--rolling on the floor laughing, peeing in my pants. I just had to laugh--although I was able to control my bladder. Well enough with the potty talk. Next time, I'll try to get pics up of our holiday decorations.

TTFN --Ta Ta For Now

View my slideshow

Hey all. I've added a slideshow in the left column that has a lot of my scrapbook layouts in it. Some are old and some are new and some are new layouts but very old pictures because I'm so far behind. But if you're interested in taking a look, scroll down and click on the slideshow--then it will take you to the website where you can view the layouts full size.

TTFN

Oh, I forgot something

On the flight out to Indiana, while we were at the Portland airport, a photographer for the Associated Press snapped a photo of Justin hauling mommy's suitcase. We found it online and found out just yesterday that it did make it into the Oregonian Metro section--a big 5x7 photo all on its own with the caption. Here's the link to the photo online. It's cute.

I'm a Bad Blogger

Okay, I am such a bad blogger. I apologize to all those who come to see if there's anything new and all they find is my depressing last post. Plus, did I ever get those Halloween pics up? No! If you want to see the kids in their Halloween outfits, go to my best friend Annaliese's blog and check it out. We always get the kids together to get pictures of them, although with six kids and 2 of them being under 2 at the time, it was not an easy task. You will have to either scroll way down her blog or click directly to her Halloween post since she is a much better blogger than I and has many posts since then. If you can't tell, Hannah was an all-american cheerleader (she just wasn't going to be another princess this year), Justin was Darth Vader, and Owen was the adorable frog.

We have moved waaayyy past Halloween and, can you believe, past Thanksgiving, and Christmas is upon us. For Thanksgiving, we traveled to Indiana to be with the Lough family. We were actually there for 9 days. We flew out the Monday before and returned the Wed. after Thanksgiving, which made it a nice break and not such a crazy harried trip. Hannah and Justin have always loved flying, although I think it has lost some of its luster for them, but we were dreading having Owen on a plane. He is just so much more active than the other 2 ever seemed to be at that age, and we didn't know how we would get him to sit contained for 6 hours. He had his moments, but all in all, he did better than we expected. It definitely made for a long plane ride though. He also had a bit of trouble adjusting his schedule at G'ma and G'pa's. Finally on the last night we were there, he actually slept in the crib rather than between Dale and I. Thankfully though, he got right back on schedule when we got home and is sleeping better than ever. As far as the trip, it was pretty low key except for on Thanksgiving Day when there were 29 people in Dale's parents' home. Hannah and Grandma counted 8 kids and 21 adults. It was good to see everyone. Hannah and Justin of course were thrilled to see G'ma and G[pa and monopolized their time constantly. It took Owen a little time to warm up, but in the last few days, he felt pretty comfortable and was running around like he owned the place. Dale and I took many opportunities to get away a little--most times to a coffee shop in a town 20 minutes away where we could get a good coffee (I missed my Starbucks) and surf on the internet. It doesn't take much to make us happy. The other major part of the trip was meeting our nephew Drew who is a few months younger than Owen. He and Owen didn't really pay too much attention to each other, but it was neat to see them together. Kari and Duane are expecting another baby in May and are really hoping for a little girl. Here are some pics from the trip.

Owen and Drew in matching pj's

Okay, so there is a cute story to tell about these photos. I bought Hannah and Justin disposable cameras to take on the trip and Justin was carrying his around all day on Thanksgiving and came up to me and whispered that he wanted a picture of everybody--some sitting and some standing--and that I had to tell them. So we got all 29 people (I haven't actually counted to see if they're all there) to squeeze into the front room (it was really cold outside, so we weren't going out there), so Justin and mommy could take pics. We couldn't get everyone in one shot, so we did a panorama of 3 shots. Justin does love taking pictures. He's my budding photographer.

All the grandkids in the matching sweaters we bought.

Seefood anyone? Sorry. I just had to put this photo in. It's after Owen smashed his face onto the cool whip lid to eat it and then had a mouth full of something.

All right. I guess that's enough for now. The past few days we have been feverishly getting our tree and other Christmas decorations up, so hopefully (no promises) I will post more about that soon.

TTFN--Ta Ta For Now