Christmas At Home

We had a lovely Christmas at home this year. We made a red velvet cake for the first time ever as Jesus' birthday cake.

Ryan and Emily made lefse for the first time, something my grandma is famous for making at our holiday meals. They already have ideas for how to make it better the next time.

The kids opened their stockings a little before a delicious meal and Christmas Eve service at church

and rose (surprisingly) not all that early Christmas day to open presents.

Then it was play,

play,

play, all the rest of the day. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Eve Service

All three of the girls sang a special tonight at our Christmas Eve service. It was so neat!

Zoolights

We took the kids down to the Oregon Zoo again this year for Zoolights. Last year we looked for lighted peacocks amongst all the brilliant decor. This year we were on the hunt for Alice in Wonderland characters. We found the Mad Hatter, the caterpillar, the rabbit, and the Cheshire cat, but Alice alluded us. The kind lady at the gift shop took pity on my kids and gave them a prize anyway. It probably had something to do with their sadly pathetic faces when they learned they were one short. We are looking forward to spending the next two weeks together doing all kinds of fun stuff while on vacation from school.

It's Christmas time!!

It's Christmas time and I have a lack of Christmasy posts on my blog. I will get on that right now. Some December happenings . . .

I have tried a couple of times rather unsuccessfully to get a good shot of the kids for our Christmas card this year. These are a couple of outtakes from that. I did finally agree on one, but you'll have to wait to see that til I get it and mail it out. Emily performed in the Longview Christmas parade this year with her dance studio. She is also doing a short recital this Saturday at a retirement home. And this is Rylan enjoying the snow at our house that started falling the day we left for Idaho for Thanksgiving. Only 10 more days til Christmas!

Cowgirls and Horses

Alaina got to have her "friends birthday party" last night. It was kinda belated because of sick kids, but it finally happened.

Alaina asked for a theme of "horses" this year so it was all about cowgirls and horses at our house last night. We had barrel races, ate horse food (apples & carrots) and munched on cake and ice cream (horses do that don't they?)

All the cowgirls in a row.

That's Megan, Teylor, Shelby, Jansi and Alaina.

YEEHAW!

Alaina Turns Eight

Growing

up

so

fast . . .

Happy Birthday Alaina! We love you!

Trick-or-Treat!!

The trick-or-treating crew. If you can't tell, that's a butterfly fairy, a caterpillar, another fairy (whose wings fell off) and a tiger. Those costumes have been recycled so many times, but they always want to be the same thing!

After church the kids brought their pumpkins in to carve.Cleaning out the guts . . .

Ryan found that the dremel tool was very handy to carve 4 pumpkins in a row. Much quicker. It was a fun day and we now have way too much candy in our house. Hope you all had a fun Halloween!