Christmas Vacation and the family

Over the river and through the woods...counting the time before and after our trip to Idaho and Utah, we realized that within a two week period our girls had seen all of their cousins on both sides of the family. Here are some pictures of the beginning of our trip and who we saw. I'll put another entry later of all the fun things we did on this trip.

Snow on the way there...we saw a lot of this white stuff on this trip.

Can you say "low visibility"?

We did get some lovely views along the way. I also found a new pastime..."inmotion pictures". I discovered that taking pictures from a moving vehicle is a fun way to pass the time.

Our first visit...
Putting together a puzzle with Great Grandma H.Second visit...having a good laugh with cousins Caden and Ava.
Third and longest visit...Playing with cousins at Grandma and Grandpa H.'s house.
Having some girl time with Aliysa and Courtney. (Thanks to the L family for introducing us to the spiral curling iron. We're gonna be getting one of those for ourselves soon.) Look at those lovely curls!
Group photo of the cousins. This picture was a "sit down", "smile", and be done in less than one minute. Not bad for being so fast and with hungry and tired kids. Ashlie did not want to pose so she is off to the side.
After staying at Grandpa and Grandma H's we went to stay with Laura and Kevin. We got to be at their home one night and another unplanned night since the road was closed and we had to turn back after 100 miles of travelling.
The girls with cousins Tyler, Logan and Emma.

Merry Christmas!

We hope you are enjoying your holiday season.

Yummy, yummy...

One of my girl's and my favorite Christmas traditions to do together is baking little gingerbread men and women. (Aaron likes this tradition as well since he gets to be the expert taste tester for us.)
All my girls take turns rolling out the dough and cutting out various people and shapes with cookie cutters.

The "fruits" of our labor...

Thinking we needed a little variety in our eating delight, Alia crafted this gingerbread mermaid.After that spark of creative genius...Madelyn and Ashlie joined in the fun making:
(top row, L to R) M's Angel, Ash's Angel with turbocharged wings, A's Angel, and M's shooting star.
(bottom row, L to R) A's wedding couple, A's monster, and M's star of Bethlehem.
We had a great time baking, laughing and creating happy memories together.

Christmas is in the air...

We've been decorating for Christmas this past week.

Decorating the tree and ...
the finished project.

I have a lot of surface area to decorate in my living room and I'm having fun coming up with different ideas to decorate the ledges for the holidays.

Since we had just moved recently we still had some leftover empty boxes and a big newspaper end roll. With a big spool of ribbon and a few extra trimmings...ta da...cute little boxes all fancy for Christmas and a great thrifty way to decorate.

I used to never have a place to display these cute Christmas tins. Now look at how cute they are up there.
The wooden mittens are a craft I made at one of my first Relief Society Enrichment activities. Yeay for Relief Society.

Pretty Princesses

We took some princess photos today and I thought I would post some...

Kissing a frog...

On your mark, get set...

GO!
Today's recreation activity..."gunny" sack races.

Cute little pumpkins

We made these pumpkins today.
We're getting excited for Thanksgiving!

Count your many blessings...

Last week for Family Home Evening we took some time to count our many blessings and display them on leaves we had colored. We each got to color 5 leaves and then write 1 thing for which we are thankful. We have these leaves hanging in our dining room as a fun decoration, and to remind us that we are very blessed.

Here are some of the things our family is thankful for: (in no particular order)

House (x5 all of us are grateful for this one)
movies
dogs
church
awesome husband
awesome wife
ice
job
sun
leaves
adorable children
lights
warm showers (this one is mine,
I get especially appreciative in the winter)
food
colors
cold showers (Alia likes to be opposite sometimes)

pies

What we've been up to...

Pie Night

Last weekend we had a bunch of our friends over for a pie night at our house. I was having so much fun with everyone that these are the only candid shots I got of some of the group. We enjoyed seeing all our friends from where we moved and our new house survived the party with an extra 23 children for the night. (I think almost every toy in the house was distributed throughout the girl's rooms after the night was over.)

We had a wide variety of super-yummy pies that tasted so good. Thanks to everyone who came up to visit and see our new place, we loved seeing you all and hopefully we'll get to see those who couldn't make it another time soon.

Picture is a little dark but the yummy pies are on the left...

The other things that we've been doing:

School
The girls working on their workbooks
Making fun fall crafts/decorations.
We did a leaf rubbing, traced the leaf and colored the outline and then taped the leaf we used with clear packing tape to complete the wall hanging. I think they turned out really cute.
Getting creative with duplos.
This is Ashlie's "pegasus unicorn" she built the other night. Check out the horn on it's head. I think the wings are a neat feature too.

Decorating the house
These are the curtains I made recently
Buying cool plants/investing for the future
This is the neat looking plant we bought recently. We were glad to find out that this plant is called a Money Tree. Wow and they were just selling them at our local home depot! We're hoping to get a fruitful harvest. Hopefully it will grow some hundreds soon.

Our New Home

At last I have some pictures to post of our new house.

We're really loving the house and yard and all the amenities of our new neighborhood. Our girls have already made friends with the next door neighbors - whose boys did me a favor by removing the salamander we found in our backyard.

Living room with gas fireplace. I love being able to turn on fire with the switch of a button!

Upstairs are three bedrooms and two bathrooms, downstairs we have a nice family/play/school room that was in full use when these pictures were taken and not very picture worthy.
My lovely kitchen with skylight. This house is really light-filled most of the time with all the windows and mostly east-west exposure. A nice feature in rainy/ cloudy WA.

Dining area and door to upper deck.

Our nice view from the upper deck. We have abundant wildlife from this field - a hawk lives nearby and circles the area frequently. There are also a lot of snakes and I'm sure a lot of rodents - like the mole that took up residence in our backyard. We're hoping to not have too many encounters with those kind of pests. We'll be active in our deterring efforts while we live here.

Aaron liked the already installed dog pen...he hopes to get a resident in that soon.

Walking trail behind our backyard. Great for bike rides and walks. We also have a community park just down the street from us.

So those are a few features of our new home. I'll probably post some more pictures later or maybe you'll just have to come visit us to see the rest =)

Happy Birthday Madelyn!

Madelyn recently celebrated her birthday. She woke up in the morning to find her bed decorated in her favorite colors. Later in the evening we went out to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory and then went shopping at Barnes and Noble.

Madelyn also had a birthday celebration at Grandpa and Grandma T's house a few days later. Madelyn got a "tiger" cake. The cake was supposed to be a tiger skin looking cake made with chocolate cake and orange flavored and colored frosting. It ended up looking more like a chocolate cake with a big orange zig zag down the whole cake, but it tasted yummy!