Christmas Visitor

Oh......did I mention we had a Christmas visitor???

Oh yeah......straight from Forks, WA.........he couldn't stay long. He had to go "hunt".......

Cookies for Santa

It is our tradition to make sugar cookies Christmas Eve for Santa. The girls always have a lot of fun.....and Santa REALLY enjoys the cookies. Especially the ones with LOTS of frosting!! As you can see.....Kinsey FINALLY got festive and put on a hat!!

Doggie Tug-o-War

O.k........just HAD to include this video of our beloved pets (Nestle & Zoe) playing tug-of-war.......

Let It Snow...Let It Snow...Let It Snow!!

The one thing we really enjoy about the Pacific Northwest....the mild climate. Normally, IF it snows it doesn't stay around for very long. However, this year was the exception. The girls had an extra long Christmas Break because of it. And....we happen to live on a hill....thank goodness for 4-wheel drive vehicles. We only got stuck at the bottom once......of course on Christmas Eve! A few of the neighbors came out to help shovel us up the hill. After we got home safely, we set back out to rescue another neighbor at the bottom of the hill. Everyone was feeling so "neighborly" we all enjoyed a glass of wine (in front of the fire) at our house.......it made for a very special Christmas Eve.

This was just the beginning......

Trip to Leavenworth, WA

I'd heard from many people (since moving here), that Christmas just isn't Christmas without a trip to Leavenworth. Now, we've been to Leavenworth during the summer....so I wasn't sure what all the "hoopla" was about. It's a cute little Bavarian themed town ( check out the website at http://www.leavenworth.org/) nothing REALLY out of the ordinary........until the sun sets......and the Christmas lights are turned on....

Wouldn't you know.....the batteries went dead.....but I think you get the idea. The lights were on all the trees as well as all the buildings.

We even had chestnuts that had been roasting on an open fire! O.k.....so that's a cookie in my hand....but I DID try the chestnuts.....yuck!

Kiera and I stood in line for 30 minutes just to get IN the hat shop. We had a lot of fun trying on several of the hats. While we were having fun in the hat shop, Kinsey and Jeff wandered around looking for a restaurant with a SHORT line.

Yep! You guessed it........Kinsey wasn't really "in" to the whole hat thing!!

The pics above and below just give you an idea of how many people were there. LOTS!!