The Celebration of Christmas

Our 2013 Christmas celebration started with the traditional visit to Christmas at Dairyville.

Levi still had no interest in visiting Santa, and telling him what present to bring.  (I can't say it makes me very sad.  I'd rather not wait in line for hours.)  But Levi was pretty thrilled when Santa waved at us through the window.  Although, this kid does love to spend hours watching the model trains go around and around and around and around...(maybe it just feels like hours).

We spent Christmas Eve-Eve and the morning of Christmas Eve baking.  Definitely a favorite holiday tradition around here!

Christmas Eve we spent with the Girard family.  Lots of food and gifts.

And of course time with cousin Elijah on his first Christmas!

Levi and Grandma G made a gift for Mommy and Daddy.  Levi could not wait for us to open it and wanted to take a picture of us while we opened it!  I forgot to look at his camera to see how his picture turned out.

When we got home from Grandpa and Grandma G's house we had some treats to get together before getting into bed.

Reindeer treats for Rudolf and the gang.

And of course treats for the big man in red!

I think there might be something wrong with our camera lens.  It seems to only want to focus on the background in photos.  Pretty sure it's  not user error because I've tried a lot of things to resolve the issue.

I love Christmas morning with this kid!

Everything is so exciting!

We finished the week by seeing friends who are in town visiting for the holidays.  And having Christmas #2 with Grandma Winnie.

It was a very happy holiday.

Holiday Spirit

It has been a busy week with lots of fun holiday activities.
Levi and Daddy made a gingerbread house!

I made it very clear to Levi that the house is just for decoration, but he still (almost every day) makes sure to tell me how much he wishes he could eat it anyway.

We had our 10th annual cocktail party this weekend.
It was fun, but we might be getting to old.  My legs still hurt from wearing high heals for hours and Gabe had a really difficult Sunday morning.
Here are a few shots.

Not sure why Gabe is not standing up straight in this picture.  Too much bourbon already?  He looks pretty nice in his vest and bow tie doesn't he?!

And the dancing started after midnight.  Another reason why I might be getting to old for year 11.

On Sunday (after clean up and recovery from the party was complete) we went out to PIR to see the lights at the Winter Wonderland.  It was fun.  But really busy.  I think it took us almost an hour to get around the track.

Apparently the flash on the camera is really bright in the dark car!

This evening Levi and I read Christmas books, drank warm cocoa and had a few cookies.

It's hard to believe Christmas is NEXT WEEK!

Oh, Christmas Tree

We braved the frigid temperatures this weekend to go and get our Christmas tree.  Levi and I were sure pressured by Dad to pick a tree quickly because he was "cold".  Actually, we all had pretty red frozen noses.

Thought I'd put this little collage together to show Levi and Daddy's tradition of putting the star on the top of the tree together.
It's hard to believe how quickly our boy has grown.  I don't think Gabe will be able to lift him next year.  We might have to get the ladder out and let Levi do the job solo.

Levi sure is excited about everything Christmas.  He will not leave the tree and ornaments alone.  All day he keeps going over and touching them...it's worse than when he was a baby/toddler.  I'm considering a rule that he has to maintain a two foot radius from the tree.  But he's so happy and excited!  I just hope he doesn't break any ornaments because I know he'll feel really badly.
More holiday festivities and celebrations to come!

Thankful

We spent a very nice Thanksgiving with Gabe's family in Oakridge.
Thank you Uncle Kirby and Aunt JoAnn for a wonderful feast!  (Times two...they invited us back for leftovers on Friday.)

Other than food, highlights of the holiday weekend included:
feeding trout at the fish hatchery

and a walk in the woods.

Since we are now starting the month of December (and the countdown to Christmas) Levi pulled his first activity from his advent calendar.
Ice skating for the first time.  Levi did a great job and was really proud of himself.  It was really fun and we'll try and get Daddy on the ice next year!

November Update

Apparently, I'm just going to finish the year giving monthly updates.
Even though we may not be sharing on the blog, November has brought us many blessings!

This month we spent our first Saturday morning, since June 1st, just hanging out at home.  It felt so great to not have something to do, or somewhere to go, I had to check my calendar to see when the last time we had a lazy Saturday was.  It was so lazy that Levi didn't even get out of his pajamas until late afternoon!
We've also raked up beautiful red leaves from our maple tree twice and cleaned the gutters that can be reached with our little ladder.  (We definitely need to invest in an extension ladder of our own!)  Pretty sure we'll have to do one more leaf pick up after our neighbor's ginkgo tree finishes dropping all of it's beautiful yellow leaves.

But November highlights have been the time we've spent with friends.  This month we've had some special times with friends.
Including a dinner gathering with little ones.

And one big kid's 36th birthday celebration.

Since I only took 4 pictures with our camera this month, I'll share one I took at the park on Veteran's day with Levi's camera.  I'd share some of the pictures he's taken with it, but they are mostly of his toys and are very blurry.  He hasn't mastered the important art of staying still while taking a photo.

I can't forget to mention that Gabe was able to give a "beautiful" blue Honda Accord a new home in just 2 hours of it being posted on Craig's list today!  Good to have a little cash in our pocket since Gabe's been dropping cash on important "necessary"(?) items to get his Subaru through DEQ.

Next up...THANKSGIVING!  We have so much to be thankful for!

Treats!

Trick-or-treating goal of 2013 was accomplished!
Levi said he wanted to "fill his bucket with treats".

A bucket full of treats makes Halloween Levi's favorite holiday.
(Although I think Mom and Dad have had more treats from it then he has!)

October Update

Here we are at the end of October!
The last few weeks have been so busy.  I've wanted to get on here and let everyone know what we've been up to but it's just easier (and faster) to do Facebook updates these days.  (The super old computer I have to edit pictures on also doesn't help.)

Let's see...what have we been doing this month?
Celebrating our 9th anniversary with a kid free weekend "camping" at Nehalem Bay.

(Yes...that is Gabe reading a BOOK!  He actually almost finished the whole book during the course of the weekend.)

Levi went on his pumpkin patch field trip with Grandma G and his class.
Levi has been taking swimming lessons 2 mornings a week.  Silly kid still hates to put his face in the water but can float on his back for 10 seconds!

When I asked Levi what he wanted to be for Halloween months ago, his response was "Something scary."
For awhile it was a ghost and he finally decided it doesn't get much scarier than a skeleton.
So here's our little scary skeleton dressed up at the zoo on Saturday.

And the elephants, including baby Lily sure were playful.
It was so much fun to watch them splash and wrestle in the pool!

We carved our pumpkins.
Levi and Daddy wanted to make their Jack-O-Lanterns "scary".  I decided mine needed to be happy.

As you can see, this kid is really excited about Halloween and being scary.  It's all he talks about these days!

Last but not least, we took Gabe's project car for a spin this weekend!  His smile might not show it in this picture, but Gabe is very thrilled to have it driving.  (I won't tell you what his top speed down Multnomah Blvd was...) Now to get it to pass DEQ and get the new tags, renewal and such.

We're looking at another crazy week around here but I'll try to be a little more prompt with pictures from trick-or-treating.

Pumpkins!

Not such a beautiful weekend to head to the pumpkin patch.  But since the month of October is turning out to be busier than we'd hoped, yesterday was about our only choice.  Foggy, drizzly weather and all.

We did manage to find some nice pumpkins.

Levi took a "quick" spin around the patch on the tractor barrel train.

He looked a little worried while the "train" was going but said it was fun when he got off!

Someone at our house is getting really excited about Halloween!  He was also not very happy when he was told he'd have to wait a few weeks to turn our 3 pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns.

Apples!

This weekend we've had the most amazingly beautiful fall weather.  I think it's been especially sweet since we had that crazy rain/wind storm last weekend!

Saturday we went east to Hood River to pick apples.

Like I said...BEAUTIFUL!

We picked some Jonagold and Gala apples for apple sauce.

We picked some Empire apples for baking.  (Currently there is a dutch apple pie cooling for dessert tonight.)

And of course we had to pick some Honeycrisp apples simply for eating! 

The sunshine has been a blessing since it also allowed us a chance to clean up the garden and yard in preparation for the next 6 months of rain!
We're hopeful for more fall weekends like this.

Rockford & Chicago IL

We were able to explore a bit of Rockford's Riverfront Museum Park on a beautiful Saturday morning before wedding rehearsal started.

Apparently our filter (or lens) has some fuzz we didn't know was on it!

Rockford has a pretty neat natural history museum.  They have an adolescent T-Rex fossil skeleton they call Jane.

And some really neat triceratops fossils too.  This near complete skeleton is Homer.

There are no museums like this here in PDX so it was fun.  We were pretty amazed!

The finale of our weekend in IL was a quick trip to the Windy City for an architectural boat tour.  We heard from many people that it was their favorite thing to do when in Chicago.  Since we had a very limited time, we decided to give it a try.  The weather was PERFECT!  It was a great day to be on the river.
Here's the tallest building in North America.  The Sears...no...wait...the Willis Tower.

And the view of the city from where the river goes into Lake Michigan at Navy Pier.

Such a whirlwind of a trip.
Hopefully we'll get back to Chicago again at some point!
Maybe a house on the lake with some Cubs baseball and deep dish pizza.  Anyone want to join us?

Bryan and Jackie

got married on Sunday near Rockford, IL.
It was quite a whirlwind of a weekend.

But it was a beautiful wedding.
And we are so happy for them.

The weather was amazing.  The orchard was beautiful.  The bride was stunning.

There was a really cute ring bearer and flower girl too!

Levi did a great job helping little Brooke down the isle.
But he did spend a lot of the wedding doing this...

Levi did drop the glass ring box on the ground while Bryan was saying his vows.  Nothing was broken and the pass off to the bride and groom went just fine.  Thankfully!

I love this picture because that's Bryan's parents in the foreground.

And I can't leave out these handsome groomsmen.

We were able to squeeze in a few non-wedding adventures.  (Like swimming in the hotel pool.)  I'll try to be back this week and share about those.  We all came down with a cold and are very exhausted from a long weekend of fun and very little sleep.

Pre-K First Day

First day of Pre-Kindergarten Interview:
Age: 4

What is your favorite color?
Blue

What do you want to do when you're a grown up?
Well, probably put boosters on rockets.

What is your favorite music (or song)?
Robyn
(This kid loves to dance!  And his dance moves are getting even "better".)

What's your favorite book?
Jack and Annie
Is there a Jack and Annie book you like the best?
Ghost Town at Sun Down

What was the best thing that you did at school today?
I don't know.

What do you want to learn about in school this year?
science
crocodiles
rocket ships
astronauts

What are you really good at doing?
tracing letters

Birthday Weekend

I wanted to get out of town for my birthday weekend.
So, we drove 45 minutes south to Champoeg State Park to camp and celebrate my 35th birthday.
It was great!

We spent a few hours tasting wine at a couple wineries.

Enjoyed a sunny picnic lunch and a nice bottle of pinot gris.

Our time at camp was spent napping (me-since my shin splints are still healing), and hiking to the river (Levi and Gabe-so that I could nap in peace).

I think the cookies we baked in our "oven" in the trailer were Levi's favorite part of the weekend.

Of course, Gabe and Levi made my requested carrot cake with cream cheese frosting when we got home this afternoon.

I sure do look exhausted in this picture.  I guess a week spent on crutches and not being able to work out really caught up to me.  Hopefully this isn't how 35 is always going to look on me!

It was an awesome weekend.  Lots of quality time with my guys...just what I wanted.

Check back tomorrow or Tuesday.  Levi has his first day of PreK tomorrow!