Christmas Recap

Our community Christmas event calendar was a bit lacking this year, but oh well. We did take the girls to the Nutcracker, which was the highlight- theirs and ours. Being the penny pincher that I am, we drove clear to Enumclaw for the performance- about an hour away. It was a fraction of the price of tickets closer to town. Of course it wasn't the level of performance we would have seen in the city, but a 3 yr old and 5 yr old really don't care. The best part was watching their mesmerized faces as they sat on their knees in their seats and watched all the ballerinas. They know the Nutcracker story well, so that helped.
Other holiday notables: I had my first annual Favorite Things Christmas Party with about 15 ladies. We all picked our favorite thing under $5 and bought 3 of them. Then we drew numbers and swapped at the party- lots of fun.
The girls got to see a darn good Santa at the primary Christmas party- they loved telling him what they wanted for Christmas.

After the party, we went up into the mountains with another family in the ward to cut down our $10 Christmas tree (turns out being cheap is not always the best idea) and due to the amazing amount of snow, the blizzard conditions and the stuck nature of many vehicles surrounding our friend's truck, we were there for hours and I decided a nice Christmas tree farm is maybe the way to go next year. I had to chuckle that our friend with his small truck and chains on his tires pulled out huge truck after truck who hadn't planned and then gotten themselves in all kinds of pickles. It was fun to watch the Jeep Wranglers who were outfitted to seriously do major off-roading drive up and over huge drifts and then orchestrate all the towing and manuevering of vehicles to get us all down the mountain with trees. Stephen had to practically army crawl across the snow to pick out our tree- the mountain was so steep and the snow so deep. Not our finest tree ever, but everyone was just so happy to get out alive, we didn't care what our trees looked like one bit. Here are a few photos of the house- we have loved decorating with the pine boughs and holly from the trees in the backyard.


We attended a lovely dinner party with about 50 other people at a gorgeous home in West Seattle . . . whew- such a fine house and such fine food! And we finally hit downtown on Christmas Eve and saw the gingerbread houses at the Sheraton hotel (I almost passed out waiting in line- that was fun). The girls and I did the Seattle Center one day without dad- we breezed through the main building with Christmas stuff and spent most of our time at the Pacific Science Center.

Christmas Eve they opened pillow cases and PJs, then we headed up to Everett for a super fun night spent at the Romneys.
Lots and lots of favorite foods and got to meet some new friends too.


Christmas morning looked like this:
I got a dollhouse at a thrift store and decided I would like to furnish it with Playmobil furniture, so all the grandparents and aunts and uncles who bought for our family pitched in and purchased one or two rooms to the tune of 7 furnished rooms for the girls! They opened each room separately and we put them all together afterward. All the pieces are adorable- moving parts, lots of tiny details- note the sink full of dishes already. LOL
The other favorite gift was the long-coveted music/jewelry boxes with dancing ballerinas. However, I have listened to the same 3 bars of Swan Lake SO MANY TIMES it's kind of going to drive me nuts . . .

Christmas night we had take and bake pizzas and about 4 billion other foods with 2 other families in the ward and the missionaries- we seriously should have tried to get the whole mission zone in there to clean it up- thankfully everyone took leftovers and we were able to give the other food to a family who needed it.
Because . . . . Sunday night we had our good friends from our previous ward over for a formal dinner! Whew. It was a great dinner- they are kind of our "Seattle grandparents" and also we had our friend and real estate agent over- it's so fun to show your home improvements to the person who saw your house and yard at it's very lowest points. lol
They all spoiled us rotten with side dishes and presents- the girls got some coveted books! Hooray! To finish off the weekend we got to see our friend Hermes for a long over due visit. And that was the whirlwind that was Christmas weekend. I was DREADING this morning- Stephen going back to work and me starting my work projects again as well, but it hasn't been as bad as I thought and we have my parents visit to look forward to this week. Plus I am still listening to Christmas music- the season lives on!