Christmas & Wedding

Christmas morning.....
.......more Christmas morning.

Max & Carly at traditional temple door

The fam!

With "his" side of the group

Siblings.....

.......more siblings.

Siblings and spouses

Moroni's toes with my new camera/zoom

Mom and I at the dinner in the Joseph Smith Building

What a Christmas. Saturday we drove to Post Falls to enjoy Christmas with Matt and Kimbre. Sunday morning we opened presents and then went to church. After church we had a wonderful dinner and enjoyed the rest of the day. Monday morning Mom and I took off for Salt Lake. I was a little reluctant due to road conditions but all went well. Tuesday morning we attend the wedding at the temple and the dinner at the Joseph Smith Building. That evening we drove to Thanksgiving Point to the reception. Wednesday morning we headed back home. We decided to go back up through Montana to drop off some pictures for Kimbre. The road was great except for about 30 miles just north of Idaho Falls where the road was a sheet of ice. We got out to change drives and I had to hold on to the car just to walk around it. After that the sun came out and the temperature shot up to 56 degrees. It rained all the way from Post Falls to Moscow but we were glad to get home. We enjoyed talking to all of you on the phone. Thanks for the gifts and especially the two volumes of the blog - they were FANTASTIC!!!!! This is the short version. I'll try to add more pictures next time. I went back to work today and then will be off until Tuesday. Hope you all have a Happy New Year.

Christmas in Seattle

We're in Seattle this year for Christmas.

Christmas eve we opened new jammies and attempted to take a family picture.

Not everyone wanted to play along. 

We're getting there... 

The whole fam in our new jammies. 

Our letters and treats for Santa. 

Seth recently discovered buckeye treats in honor of his Ohio roots,

so we started a new tradition of making some for Santa. 

I think I woke up every hour on Christmas eve/morning.

Once seven o'clock hit and everyone was still sleeping,

I started waking people up.

Koper wanted nothing to do with me at that point and refused to get up. 

At this point he was still hoping for a motorcycle,

when he realized it wasn't going to happen, he handled it very well. 

Koper decided to join us. 

The tent in the background was our homemade present this year. 

Mom helped me put it together and did most of the sewing.

It fits over a card table. 

Santa must have had too much eggnog when he

decided to give this bag of 100+ playland balls to Ivan.

I'm sure we'll end up taking a few less home. 

This kid was pretty chill while everyone opened presents.

All he wanted was his jersey and bag of cereal.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!!!

Christmas

Kids holding one of their gifts.

We had a peaceful and relaxing Christmas morning, even though we were up at 6AM. We slowly opened gifts and enjoyed playing along the way. Here are the kiddos ready for church. I was able to make these dresses for the girls out of one of my old prom dresses. I'm into re-using right now. Hope the holidays were good for everyone!

Merry Christmas

Braxton

A pre-snow activity

Before the snow hit we wanted to install a paver walkway up to our door, so when visitors came they wouldn't have to walk through the icy terrain. It didn't take very long to do and Kevin did a great job. It's like he had done this before! The kids helped out where they could and they made sure to charge an hourly wage. I never got a "finished" picture. This is the best I have.
This is how Kevin cut the pavers. I had to go inside. He used his foot to hold the paver in place while he used the demo saw to slice right through it. Luckily he still has all of his toes.

No explanation needed

Riley and Kya

We had a fun time with Riley and Kya this morning! I don't know why but Riley just finds her hilarious! Enjoy the giggles!!

Mmmm, Bacon.

An ice cream flavor we found the other night. Not nearly as good as you would hope.

Ice Skating

Here are some fun shots from ice skating yesterday.  We went downtown to the Southwest Airlines sponsered rink.  Skating is free and you just pay $2 for skate rentals.  It was crowded, but a great place for the kids to learn.  The weather was nice and warm and everyone had fun.

Brant

Twas the Week Before Christmas

Mom finished her last day of school on Friday and life suddenly got better. Friday after school we drove to Post Falls to visit and stay overnight with Matt and Kimbre. We will probably be driving to Salt Lake on the 26th to attend Max Backhand's wedding and I need a new suit. Saturday morning we drove to the Men's Warehouse where I underwent the ordeal of being fitted for a new suit. It all went great until they started adding up all the "things" you have been encouraged to purchase. Sorry, there went your inheritance. The suit will be ready next Saturday so we will pick it up on our way back to Matt and Kimbres. We are going to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with them. Should be lots of fun. Then Monday morning we will head for Utah. Out to Butte and then down I-15 to Salt Lake. Hope the snow holds off!!!! Mom is happy to be through with school. This morning she put the lights on the tree and now she is practicing the piano for church. Since the ward split she has become the unofficial ward organist. I am teaching the high priests this morning. Hope you are all ready and anxious for Christmas morning. We love you all and wish you the best.

Yesterday we made the rounds of the Christmas-y areas here in town. First stop, Mount Vernon, home of our most famous and universally loved president. No, not Reagan. Washington, of course!

Mount Vernon was full of brightly painted walls, Christmas wreaths, canopy beds (they had 600 overnight visitors in the period of 1 year), and robotic tour guides. Also. Martha W really liked chinaware. In the collage below, please note the turkey that was pardoned by President Obama, Washington's sheep, his special riding chair, and a camel named Aladdin like the one that Washington used to bring home during the holidays each year for the kiddies to enjoy.

 

Later that evening we headed downtown for a glimpse of the "People's" Tree at the Capitol and the National tree (Obama's tree) by the white house.

We swung by the swankiest hotel in town, the Williard InterContinental, where we felt incredibly low class as we listened to a children's choir sing carols. Home for a pizza and a movie. It was a good day.

And now I'm off to get my caramel sticky buns out of the oven.

Christmas at Our House

Some local Christmas characters
Some more Christmas Characters

Our Christmas tree in the early stages of decoration

It's been a busy week. My work Christmas party was a little different this year. There are only four of us so we went to an old flour mill in Pataha, Washington (about 25 miles west of Lewiston) that has been converted to a restaurant but still has all the machinery in-tact. We took a self-guided tour down two floors and up three. It was VERY interesting. Mom went to her party on Friday. Friday morning I came down with a super cold. I was in Wal-Mart about 10 days ago and some kid sneezed on me. I remember thinking, "I'll probably get a cold from this". Sure enough I got it. I stayed home from the ward social last night but Mom went. It was the last one for the old Quail Run Ward. We got our tree yesterday. We chose a Noble Fir instead of a Grand Fir. Mom liked the more open growth and the branches seem a little sturdier for holding ornaments. Today we have sacrament meeting only at 11:30 am. All four wards are meeting in our building because the Creche display is in the stake center and it takes the whole building. Mom has heard lots of good comments from teachers who have gone to see it. Even the "Inkster" who writes a column in the paper wonders how anyone can say the Mormons aren't Christian after visiting the display. One more week of teaching for Mom. I'll probably take a few extra days off from work just for fun. Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas Season.

A map

The other day I was thinking (a dangerous endeavor, I know) and I realized that most of you have never been to DC, so when we mention what we do you don't really have a frame of reference for it. I made this map to show some of the places that we work, play, and visit. You should be able to zoom in and out of the map and click on the markers to get a description. If you guys like it I may add some other markers.Let me know if you have any trouble viewing the map. 


View Where we work and live in a larger map

Ready for Christmas!

Our usual routine is to go out about 5 days before Christmas and try to find a decent Christmas tree among the already picked-through left-overs at the lot. But this year we were diligent, got out early and found a great tree!! We were so excited to take Riley out and I must say she looked smashing in her over-stuffed snow suit!
Now with our garland up and our stockings hung with care, we can enjoy our decorations for more than a week! Matt even put lights up on the house!! Needless to say, we are quite proud of ourselves.

Guess who has the bestest husband in the whole wide world?

Happy Christmas!

Tonight we went to the temple visitor's center to watch the Christmas devotional, see the lights, and admire the nativity sets. Here are a couple of pictures from our outing.

A call for pictures

I'm working on a gift for the kids and I need pictures of all the cousins.
I've been able to pull some from the blog and facebook but I still need more.
So...Brant, Erik and Kevin and families, can you either email your pics to me or post them on this blog?
School pictures work well, but if that doesn't work for you, I can crop other group shots to get single shots.
Erik and family when I tried to download a picture from the blog of your family to use, it wouldn't download as a .jpeg, so I was wondering if Trent or Hallee (or Shelby if she's free...) could email me some pictures.
My email is strawberrypearl(at)hotmail(dot)com.

Thank you!

New Ward

Well, we are now members of the Rolling Hills Ward. The three Moscow wards met at the student stake center today and the three wards were split into four. The area around our house was annexed into the Rolling Hills Ward. The Southwest part of town is the newly created Palouse River Ward. Our bishop is now Wynn Mosman. The new Quail Run Ward bishop is a fellow who moved in about a year ago named Ryan Cook. We lose everyone west of Mountain View and north of Berglunds. Our south border is Joseph Street (by the church.). We lost old timers like, Woodburys, Walkers, Coxes, Schwendimans, Pecks, all of Robinson Trail Park, etc. We still meet at the Mountain View Building, at 11:00 am.

Yesterday Mom put up the lights on the front deck, I put up the nativity set, she also put up decorations in the house. The sun is out and it is in the mid-thirties.

Have a good week.