more holiday things

Christmas boats at Janet's house

Abby, Ainsley, and Emma playing the piano
The boats:

Sitting around the fire:
Making cookies:




Christmas Eve:


Abby was still a little timid of Santa even though she knew it was grandpa:
Jamie was all smiles (finally):
And grandpa had to bop him on the head:
Santa and grandma sitting in a tree...
Abby opens her xmas jammies:
Jamie got some jammies too and also a gumball machine from Santa:
Wow, I look terrible in this picture but this was the best one!
The tree with everyone snuggled in their bed:

Christmas program

Jamie's preschool class put on a Christmas program for the families on Dec. 16th. Chad took a break from work to come and watch and Grandma Debbie came to watch too. I was there, with 2 cameras around my neck, crawling up and down the aisle, pregnant as ever. It was very low light so the pictures are a bit blurry and grainy, but I'm still happy to have at least a few that turned out pretty good. Jamie is in the top row, third kid from the right.

holiday things

Setting up the nativity scene, I was so happy to find a kid friendly nativity set by playmobile. We kept it set up in the corner of the living room so they could play with it whenever.

Jamie finishes assembling one of the wise-men.
Taking turns with the advent calendar.
A few decorations:

The kids first-christmas portraits are displayed:
Our finished tree:
Decorative stockings:
The kids made clay handprints for Chad for christmas:
Jamie wanted to decorate our outside tree like he saw someone do near the preschool so I helped him put up these cheap ikea balls that we had. They were surprisingly weather-proof!
Chex-mix!
The beginnings of my chocolate candy-cane sandwich cookies:

oh christmas tree

The saturday after thanksgiving, we went out to a treefarm off Seabeck highway (Enebo trees) and selected one from their "sale lot" (they were trying to clear the lot for future use). We let Jamie pick and help cut the tree, then he even helped to carry back to the car. Before putting it in dad's truck, they put it in the shaker machine. Abby did not like the shaker machine, commenting that it was too loud. She just wanted to go back to the car because it was really cold outside and she had a dress on!





A few days later we decorated the tree and the kids had a blast doing that, especially when they found an ornament that belonged to them.




And we finished the evening off with homemade cinnamon rolls. (For those who have the artisan bread cookbook - I highly recommend using the broiche dough for the base of your cinnamon rolls, these were the best I've ever made!)

thankgiving

The day before thanksgiving we headed out to Ocean Shores for the night. We had a nice little family getaway.

Breakfast buffet thanksgiving morning:



The kids favorite part - the pool! The pool was so cold that we mostly hung out in the hot-tub with only occasional dips in the pool to cool off.

Jamie spouts his water like a whale:
Abby's holding on for dear life...and not happy about it!
We were happy to be able to go down to the beach without any rain:





Unfortunately, there was a small mishap...I took Abby down a little closer to the waves because she had rain boots on. We were well above where any of the waves had come to since being down on the beach. I wanted to show her how the foam could come up by her boots, but as the {rogue} wave approached, Chad said "you better run!". So Abby and I are turn around and start running, hand in hand, her with rainboots on and me pregnant with our SLR camera around my neck (quite the sight, I'm sure). Well, just as Abby tripped, the wave passed us by, coming up nearly to my knees. I had to bend down and pick up Abby and let me tell you, it was not easy to stand back up, with the wave pushing me from behind, the camera dangling barely in the water (I'm so glad Pentax has a nice weatherproofing on it's SLRs), not to mention...it's already hard to stand back up when you're this pregnant! So here I am, holding Abby up by her coat in front of me, sloshing thru the wave (she's obviously screaming) and I'm wondering "where is Chad", so I look up and see that him and Jamie have ran away leaving us girls victim to the expanse of the ocean. See for yourself, we were quite traumatized...