Private Bloggers PLEASE READ...

My friend suggested that I do this for the pesky but oh-so-enjoyable-to-read private blogs that I like to frequent. Will you add my email address so that I get an email everytime you post? I just get behind on private blogs becasue I can't subscribe to them, and then one of aforementioned private bloggers told me of this fantastic option. THANKS!

rebeccapierce2001@hotmail.com.

First video post...

I've really wanted to post videos of the kids, but I can't get my video camera to cooperate, so I took some video of Chris, Braden and my dad (and one of Braden's friends) sledding over Christmas. My mom and I watched from the truck scared for their oh so important lives.


Here's my dad's biggest run...

Braden's best run...

Chris laughing. He has a very infectious, unique laugh, so this is for anyone who is missing his laugh. Wow, so I was going to post another video that has Chris' laugh on it, but they take way too long to upload!

Family fun...

A few weeks ago we had some fun as a family at a great playplace for kids that isn't far from home. I really like it there because it is cleaner and nicer than most and the kids were pink cheeked and out of breath the whole time. Obviously Chris had a good time too.

Finally, a Christmas post...

In the room where Chris and I slept on Christmas Eve, there wasn't a clock. I could tell it was getting lighter outside and I was happy to still be sleeping (oh wait, I wasn't sleeping) when our little fan (white noise is a must) stopped fanning. You know that sound that is silent that tells you the power is out? That was the sound. I lay awake a few minutes thinking about how bad it would be if the power were truly out (my parents live in a less densely populated area of a very populated city, so they aren't first priority. Their water comes from a well that runs on electricity, so there's no flushing toilets or showers or anything. Shortly after, Heather and Robb woke us and let us know that they couldn't hold their kids off any longer. It was 7AM, and I was really happy I'd slept that late! So the mumblings among the adults were all along the same lines of "if the power is out, we are going to my in-law's". I was feeling the same way since we have our generator all hooked up to keep us warm, our food cold and the television busy entertaining.

We woke our kids up and got candles set around the family room and then it was time for the kids (who were super excited by now) to see what Santa brought for them. Thankfully, the power was back on within the hour!!!!! THANK YOU PUD WORKERS!!!

As unappealing as character clothing is, there is something so fun about seeing Ruby's whole demeanor change as she put on her Hannah Montana T-shirt. She ran right upstairs and put it on with some jeans and came back downstairs to see her stocking. She was also very excited about Oma and Opa's gift of the Samantha from American Girls book series, and a Leapster game and change of clothes for her new doll from Grandma and Grandpa Pierce.

Oma made her a really nice pillow case to match the quilt I made her.

Aunt Pam pulled through again with some homemade tutus for the girls. What a fun thing to have!
Some of you may remember that Alice wore a skirt that I made her daily for months. My mom had the idea to make her another option, and Alice was there when we picked out the fabric. She lay cuddling the fabric bolt on the bottom of the cart while we shopped. She loves purple (much to my dismay, I actually don't like that color a bit) and so this is what we picked out.

Enter the red kitchen of Alice's dreams. It has been so fun to have, they play with it a lot. Between both sets of grandparents, she's outfitted with quite a dish set and pretend food to satisfy any imagination.Sweet Carson was thrilled with his little car!
Little baby Mason on his first Christmas cuddling with Oma.I got Chris a pressure washer he's been talking about for six months. He didn't expect it at all, as I've always acted very disinterested in the topic. I also got him a few new ties and he got a white shirt and new tie from my folks and his parents paid for two years of clearplay subscriptions.

I had a good Christmas. I really needed a new robe because since getting one last Christmas and discovering how lovely it is to walk around the house clothed in a blanket that doesn't fall off (and because the missionaries live here and I can't streak around the house anymore), it was time for a new one so I can rotate. I also got Wii Fit and I LOVE IT! We are playing everyday and it's fun and gets us all some activity while having a good time together. I got a 4MB CF card and a bluetooth headset from my sister-in-law Pam and my mom and dad got me a dish set that is red and white at Target so I can fill the glass paned cabinets in my kitchen with something more appealing. From my other sister-in-law Heather, I got the Wii Fit Yoga mat!

I was a really nice Christmas. I know I'm not remembering everything that everyone got, but we are enjoying it all!

Christmas Eve...

Christmas as whole this year was really nice. My parents didn't have cable (no sports on TV) and we had constant snow fall and cold enough weather to keep it around, so there was only one vehicle that could venture out for errands. Everyone was here except for Jeff's family (we really missed them) so we really got to enjoy lots of Wii playing, game playing, and just being together. I loved the slow pace of it all.

Christmas Eve was nice. We had a nice dinner of various soups and then the kids acted out the Nativity. We just read from the Bible about Jesus' birth and the kids act it out and we sing Christmas carols as we read. We usually have lots of girls who want to be Mary, but this year, there were two angels and two Mary's...only one angel changed her mind. Then we had little Mason to pose as baby Jesus for a minute. Alice picked all these sparkly fabrics and I think she wound up looking like she was ready for a role in a Baliwood movie. Then we played Santa BINGO and put the excited little ones to bed.

That's when Braden and I got to work assembling Alice's biggest Christmas present, a play kitchen. All she wanted was a "red kitchen" and thank goodness for Costco for having one! It was no easy task and took us like two hours or more to complete, but it was all worth it. There's something really special about being a parent at Christmas, and I was just filled with excitement as I wrestled with the complicated instructions and dozens of different sized screws. It is so worth it!

With so many families celebrating together, and gifts from both sides all in one place, it got a little busy around the Christmas tree to say the least. What a blessed bunch of people we are.

This is what Santa left for Ruby. When Ruby talked to Santa, the only thing she asked for was the Hannah Montana movie. That's it. That's all she wanted. I'm not opposed to Hannah's music or her performances for a young girl, but Ruby is way too young for the actual Hannah Montana show. Let's just say she doesn't need any encouragement in the boy crazy department. Sooooo I talked to Ruby a lot about how the movie was actually just Hannah on stage and in concert. I had recorded the movie when it aired on TV, and she didn't pay attention for five minutes, so I knew she didn't really want the movie. So she wound up asking for the dreaded Hannah Montana shirt, and Santa went with it. He also got her a HM Barbie and nightgown, a Hopscotch game and an 18" doll that she fell in love with when I took her shopping for other family members. He of course left a nice stocking as well.

Alice got a like doll, a Hungry Hippo game and a Tinkerbell nightgown along with her stocking. I had to email Santa to let him know that I was buying her the red kitchen she wanted. At our house, Santa does NOT get all the credit!

CHANGE OF PLANS...

I can't blog without using the kids names. I just have to do so much editing and over thinking and I don't really think that doing so really disguises me all that much anyway. I am glad that our name isn't in my blog address anymore, but I never talk about specific locations anyway. Frankly, someone can know a lot about me just because my router gives some info away. I am sure I could be more protected if I went private, but I like blog stalking and I like to think that I have some blog stalkers. Also, I think the 100 reader limit is fairly limiting when you have been collecting friends and acquaintances for 31 years. My blog address cannot be googled, and I can see every hit that my blog gets and when there are random hits, they usually came by accident and only stay like ten seconds, never to return. So that's that.

Happily Snowed in...

A and R ready for a snow eating fest at home, their first outing in the snow. (Thanks Sand and Kel for those darling hat and glove sets you got them for their birthdays, they were well used.)

It started snowing maybe 10 days before Christmas and it barely stopped after the New Year. It snowed and didn't melt for some areas to accumulate three feet of snow. We had two dumpings that each added up to about 8 inches, so some of my ambitious holiday plans to deliver things to friends and neighbors and get shopping done, go see Santa with the kids, etc...just went by the wayside. It isn't typical in WA to have it stay cold enough to keep the snow dry and present. We usually get snow, it warms up enough that it starts to melt and then overnight, it all freezes creating a really treacherous black ice situation that doesn't go away for days, even after most of the insignificant snow has disappeared. This year, we had record low temps that stuck around for like two weeks, so the snow fell and stayed, then more fell and stayed and...you get the picture.

While snowed in at home, we decided to put together our gingerbread house. I love that tradition!

When snow is dry, it's much easier to drive on than when it is wet, so it was kind of a new thing for us Washingtonians to consider that we might be able to drive on top of packed snow, but for fear of getting stranded in our community for the holidays, I ventured out between dumpings and headed to my mom and dad's where I joined my siblings for Christmas.

My big girl wanted to walk to her friend's house (rather, her grandparents' house that shares a driveway with my parents) all by herself. She didn't even want me to watch her or anything. It was perfectly safe, but just the fact that she is old enough to insist on that kind of thing threw me...what a big girl! She also insisted on wearing Opa's Santa hat.
The big snowman we made with the Stimmels. The snow didn't pack for like a week because it was so dry, so as soon as it warmed up a little and the snow was wetter, we were able to roll the snow really easily.

Our home away from home.

I'm no nature photographer, but my favorite thing to look at in nature is the juxtaposition of weather. I love it in the NW when the sky is grey and dark, but there's sun coming through somewhere and it lights up the trees against the dark sky. I loved the clouds at play the day that the sun came out for awhile. It made the white snow so bright and shiny, and the blue sky surrounding the white snow was really beautiful.

Sledding with Uncle Braden

One beauty of so much snow was being "stuck" in a house with Robb and Braden and their families and Jordan and my folks. We were missing Jeff's family, but thank goodness we hadn't planned on them because it would have been very hard for them to travel from where they live to where our parents live. Anyway, another HUGE BLESSING was the lack of television. My parents turned their cable off not long ago, and while that has been annoying for some reasons, it was really great that my predominately jock family members couldn't bore me with endless sport channel surfing. Whew! I would have wanted to come home on Christmas Day had that been the constant! So we played Mario Cart Wii pretty much non-stop for two weeks. I got Wii Fit for Christmas, so that got in the mix toward the end, but wow, that Mario Cart...can't get enough of it.

Braden's Baby M was a main attraction for my girls. He's such a sweet little one with so much personality!

My friend Kelly, well okay, her 18 month old son Aksel bought the girls a gum making science kit for Christmas. This is a very interesting gift choice for someone with kids because I know where loud toys, messy art projects and cartoon character clothing is sold, and I WILL REMEMBER THIS! No, it wasn't that bad. We had lots of time on our hands before Robb and his family arrived with their kids (who successfully distracted my kids from me for 15 hours a day for like a week, it was amazing the fun they had), so we pulled out the gum making kit after being begged over 900 times to do so. Wow, the next time you chew a piece of gum, be very grateful for those who made that chewing possible! I exhausted myself kneading the gum forever, and my kids were like, "see ya mom, let us know when it is done!" The intention wasn't to make black gum, but that's how it went. It actually was pretty chewy and yummy, and the next batch will be even better. Thanks Kel (no really, thanks)!

Thanks Oma and Opa!

For our anniversary, my parents are always willing to watch our kids...well, not just for our anniversary, they do it all the time. Anyway, we have gone fun places in the past but last year, our plans were ruined due to significant flooding so we decided to stay home and enjoy some laid back time together while also getting a project done that we feel is hard to do with the kids under our feet. It was a good time, so we did the same thing this year. We napped, went out to breakfast, took in two movies and got some work done in the house.

Meanwhile... the kids had fun with Opa outside!

They got to see Santa at my folks' church Christmas party, which due to crazy snow, was their only Santa visit this year.

Best friends...

R and A got 18" dolls from Santa for Christmas. They were on sale at Target for $19 and R really wanted one because she's getting into the whole American Girl thing. She and A are really sweet with them and asked me to take some pictures of them with their new best friends. R wants to wear her hair in a ponytail like her doll, and is asking for matching clothes. Of course I will never shell out the American Doll cash, so looks like I'll have to start sewing.

A and Jenny

R and Sandie

Old Friends, New Friends...

I was so lucky this Christmas to see the friendships of my childhood extending to the lives of my children. First, we had a Christmas party with our lifelong friends in Everett. We do this every year, and this year Kelly and Danny's little one, A. was old enough to play with R and A and then Sandy and Adam's little one was there for the first time! There's something really special about seeing friendships extend to a new generation.


Deanne, my closest cousin on my dad's side, lives really close to my parents, so we had them over to play games and I don't have any pictures, but their youngest played with my R and A all night and boy did they have fun together. When they were leaving there were repetitious embraces exchanged and they vowed to get together again. It was so cute to see them because Dee was older than me, but we were very good playmates and I cherish her friendship and loved to think that our kids will be friends too, not just family.

Last but not least, our family has been longtime friends with the Stimmel family. Fourteen years ago (after being friends since the early 80s), our families built homes on neighboring lots and so it is always fun to see them when I'm home. I had called over there for some reason and discovered that Grandpa Stimmel was outside with Taylor's kids building a snowman, so my dad and I took the girls down to play. We had so much fun in the snow, so I invited the girls and their mom down another morning to play. R came to me and said, "Mom, where does Oma keep her dresses?" I said, "I don't think she has dress up." Then she clarified, "No, where does she keep the Oma dresses?" I said without thinking (I was busy taking pictures of my nephew), "in her closet." Soon, the girls came back wearing my mom's clothes!

Anyway, yet another reason to love being a mom! What fun to seeing relationships span another generation!