Merry Christmas!

This is the Christmas card Jesse made for us this year. I was pretty happy with it. :) We only sent out a few, so don't feel bad if you didn't get one. It pretty much went to grandparents, great-grandparents, and a few long lost friends.

We've definitely had a crazy year and I don't see it slowing down anytime soon. We're incredibly grateful for Jesse's job and the opportunities it has provided us. I definitely still miss Utah with all my heart, but hopefully I'll adjust better this year. Supposedly the first year is the hardest.

More than anything we're grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ! We're grateful to celebrate his birth this season. We hope you all have had an incredible year filled with blessings, and we pray that this next year will provide you even more! We love you tons!

Bellevue City Hall and a Gingerbread House

Two blog posts in one week!
Christmas must be coming... there's no other explanation for this magic.

I had to post Abigail's performance today. Her preschool was invited to come sing songs for Bellevue City Hall's tree lighting ceremony today. She was so excited! They played hand bells, sang songs, and even did a dance to the Nutcracker Ballet. They were super cute! Her teacher didn't really say much about it before, so I didn't know what to expect. I wish I had had the video camera though. Next time!

So mom, Rosa Hasini is the cute girl in the authentic Indian garb. Now you know who that is. Also, thank you for the beautiful Christmas dress! Abby calls it her "fancy, fluffy dress". I told her to pull her sweater sleeves down, but she'd been running around so she was super hot. At least she kept the sweater on! That's a milestone in our books. :)

Claire was having an awesome time trying to keep up with the big kids as they ran around. I snapped her going by on the benches.

Abby and her cute friend Iris. I don't know what it is about little girls these days... Did I hold hands with every girl I played with at age four? Probably not. I was too busy digging in mud and catching worms. Fancy dresses? What were those??

We don't pull normal faces. Ever.

Abby is definitely making the most of this Christmas season. She INSISTED we make a gingerbread house. And since I'm such an evil mom, I totally gave in. Ha. I'm such a pushover...
I told her she had to wait until papa was home to help because I KNEW it would be a mess. It so was.

THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE PROCESS:

Ta-da! Gingerbread house!
The girls loved making it with Jess. I was just disaster control woman tonight--grabbing paper towels, confiscating candy from Claire, wiping up spilled frosting, taking pictures--you know... the usual mom stuff. ;) Lots of fun!

Gobble, gobble, gobble!

Anyone else have an exhausting weekend?? We sure did! It was crazy loads of fun, but I'm definitely tired.

The whole week felt like one long holiday. Jesse had work until Wednesday, but he pretty much came home halfway through each day because NOBODY was in the studios and he didn't have an assignment. He was so bored that he would just come home. I won't lie--it totally rocked that he got to be home. I hate that he missed the hours, but we had fun.

SO! Fast forward Monday through Wednesday, and that bring us to THANKSGIVING! We watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the girls danced to the marching bands and the musical numbers. I was in love with the Newsies number. Not such a fan of Daniel Radcliffe singing in another number, but it was still fun. While the girls watched and I cooked, Jesse helped them make turkey hats. These pictures also show their adorable Thanksgiving outfits from Grandma Jenkins. Thank you Grandma!

What we would we do without our friends?!? The Brazells invited us to have Thanksgiving with them. I'm so glad they did because A) the texts from family were starting to kill me and I could not have handled being alone, and B) I could not have made a turkey to save my life. Brittany made an awesomely killer turkey. So moist and scrumptious. Perfection.

So here is Kevin carving the turkey. Hooray for Thanksgiving!

You should have seen our spread: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, homemade rolls, bacon wrapped green beans, orange-glazed carrots, stuffing, oreo truffles, ice cream pies, a pathetic excuse for an apple pie (made by me), and sparkling cider to top it off. It was a meal fit for royalty. :) Because we totally are.

This is my pathetic apple pie. The crust tasted awesome. We just don't know what happened on the inside. It didn't cook.... weird. But Jesse pulled the whole pie out of the pan without it falling apart. Something is wrong with that. So here's Jesse finishing off our pie.

Thursday night at 11:00 p.m. I got in line with Brittany for some awesome Black Friday shopping. I've always made fun of Black Friday shoppers, but holy cow, it was so entertaining. We found awesome deals, everyone was loopy tired, and we had tons of fun. ...so much fun I may have to do it again. I wish I had pictures from it. Brittany and I looked slightly ridiculous shuffling our stuff through the forever long line at Kohls because they didn't have anymore carts. So awesome.

Friday passed by with sleeping, more lazy shopping, eating leftovers, and watching The Polar Express with the Brazells.

Saturday: THE SANTA TRAIN!
You hop on a train in North Bend and it takes you three miles to the Snoqualmie Depot where Santa is hanging out at the Northwest Railway Museum. The train is wonderfully authentically old and decorated in lights. Our train conductor sang Christmas songs almost the whole 20 minute ride. It was awesome! We went with Brazells and the Wahlquists.

Waiting at the North Bend Train Depot

On the train!

It truly is a Christmas miracle! Abby sat on Santa's lap! After watching The Polar Express, she decided Santa had to be nice. She asked for a stuff animal giraffe. Seriously?! I've been asking her for two months what she wants and the list has been the same every time. And now she throws a giraffe into it!? No.

So excited for Christmas!!

Whew. I need a nap after posting all this. P.S. My amazing friend took pictures of our little fam and she posted them at www.dandelionlipstick.com. Go look at them! We're absolutely adorable. :)

Thanksgiving Turkeys

My family has this awesome tradition of doing Thankful Turkeys, traced from our hands, every year for Thanksgiving. When I was growing up, I had some pretty stellar turkeys. My mom has most of them still. Jesse thought we were weird when we first made him do it, but I think he secretly loves it. This year he was the one to spearhead the activity in our house! So here are our 2011 Thankful Turkeys!

Jesse turkey. Awesome, as always. Done solely in crayon.

There is a Claire hand in there somewhere...

Abby's Fancy Nancy turkey! She wrote the names of our family in her turkey. But the letters aren't together... and most of them I don't recognize or they're covered in the fanciness.

This is officially the LAMEST turkey I've ever done. But 1) Abby insisted I do it a certain way--like hers and with polka dots and 2) Claire was out-of-control with the markers so I couldn't focus long enough to think of anything creative. At least I finished one.

We're thankful for so many things! We're thankful for preschool, the amazing autumn leaves, the awesome cantaloupe from Costco... so many, many things. Mostly we're thankful for family and for the gospel. If you get bored, I dare you to make a Thankful Turkey. Love you!

happy halloween!!

We had an AWESOME Halloween this year. We kicked it off with a stellar ward party the Friday night before. My friend and I were in charge of it so unfortunately there are no pictures. I was running around crazy and Jesse was on child-duty. But we had a chili cook-off, costume parade, cupcake walk, trunk-or-treat (in the church because it was raining), etc. It was great! People told us we did a great job and it was one of the best ward parties they'd had in a while. :) I'll have to harass my friend for her "before" pictures of the tables and stuff.

On Halloween, Abby's preschool class did a super cute little program at an assisted living center that is next door to her school. She was so excited to sing for all the "grandpa-greats and grandma-greats that need some help"... as she told me. Cute girl. I thought it was an awesome service they did. Afterwards, they had the kids come back to the school and perform for the parents. So this is Abby with her friends at school performing their fall and halloween songs!

And this is Snow White trying to step in on the party. She was so proud of Abby. :)

One of the many perks of Microsoft is... TRICK-OR-TREATING. The building essentially shut down for the families to come trick-or-treat. The girls LOVED it. It didn't take Claire long to figure out what was going on. She'd run to every person or random bucket and yell "Treat-treat!" and then stole five or six candies. I only got two pictures before one of the millions of security guards informed me that pictures within the building were not okay. It's cool. I understand. There's some crazy awesomeness going on in that building that I wouldn't want stolen either.

This picture is awful. Sorry, I was grabbing Claire away from the candy. We went with like four other families and it was a zoo. But not in this picture.... oddly enough... just our own personal zoo.

Halloween re-staged!

After trick-or-treating, we were totally exhausted. We didn't even go out that night. Abby loved handing out candy with us though, and seeing the other kids in their costumes. All five of them that rang our doorbell. I didn't get pictures that night, but today I made my kids go throw their costumes back on. And I put mine on. Though sans awesome black yoga pants.