Christmastime

I absolutely love the holidays. It is fun to finally have a house to decorate. Benson was nice enough to put lights way at the top of our house. They look wonderful but I don't think he will ever do it again. I am not sure I ever want him to do it again. There were a couple of times I was a little nervous about him falling. So, thanks again Bens for doing it for me.

One of the days we were outside the kids were drawing with chalk. Brooklyn drew Baby Jesus in the stable. I thought she did a fantastic job. I don't know where she got the talent for drawing because Benson and I are horrible.

Christmas tree hunting

One of our newer traditions is to go cut down our Christmas tree. We go with Kathi, Zach and Ashli after Thanksgiving. I really enjoy going with everyone. I remember growing up in San Jose and we would go cut down our own Christmas tree. It was so much fun. I hope the kids enjoy it as much as I do.

Ryan and Ashli

Jeremy was so excited to go and find mushrooms. Luckily Mother Earth did not disappoint.

We found our tree.

Ashli, Ryan and Kathi

The place we got our Christmas tree had a cool barn so I tried to get some pictures of my kids. This is the only semi decent one.

Thanksgiving

The sign above says it all. I feel so blessed to spend Thanksgiving with family. We love that it has become a tradition for Kathi, Zach, and Ashli to come to our home every year for Thanksgiving. It started back when we lived in New York. This is our 4th year of having Thanksgiving with them. Thanks guys for coming, it means a lot to us.

This is our traditional picture at the dinner table before the feast. It was really yummy.

Ryan loved it. This is him letting me know he is done.Of course we had to end the night with some yummy pie.
Ryan chose the peanut butter pie.

I think he liked it.
I am in a craft group with some friends here. The Thanksgiving sign at the top of this post and this wreath I made at 2 of our craft nights. I love getting together with the group and creating something. The wreath was hanging on my front porch for the last 2 months. I was so sad to take it down.

Brooklyn's bedroom makeover

Ever since we moved in we knew we were going to redo Brooklyn's room. Because of that I have never taken the time to hang anything in her room. (The shelves that are up are from the previous owners.) Anyway, we thought the purple they used was ugly and the border was peeling off and they did a terrible job painting. The paint had leaked over onto the ceiling and baseboards. They also didn't do enough coats. So anyway on Tuesday I told Benson that we should redo Brooklyn's room. He wasn't so sure and then after a few minutes he came to me and said let's do it. We already knew what color we wanted we just needed to get the paint.

So this is Brooklyn's room as of Tuesday morning.

I know, it was kind of a disaster but I didn't care much because it needed work done before it was worth hanging pictures and making it cute.

So we finished up on Wednesday while Brooklyn was at school. It was fun to surpise her with the results. She was so excited and absolutely loves it.

Apparently the dog loves it too.

I am so happy Brooklyn loves it. I think it is adorable. I know in a couple of years she will grow out of it but I will worry about that then. Oh, and thanks Mom for the old shower curtain. Don't you think it works great as window curtains!?!

Nor Cal

And now to finish up our trip to the golden state...we decided to make the trek home a little more fun. So we left So Cal on Saturday and drove to San Jose and stayed with Zach and Kelly. (Thanks guys for letting us stay!) We had a really good time with them. We were supposed to leave Sunday morning but we were having such a good time that we ended up not leaving until that afternoon.

Tyler was teaching the kids how to play the guitar and they had a performance for us. On the way down the stairs Jer was heard saying, "I will talk because I am the biggest rockstar." So we would stand on the stair and play his guitar and jump off and would "jam" on his guitar. Wrestling with Uncle Zach. The kids loved it.

Tyler even lucked out and got to participate.Zach, Benson, Ryan, Me, Tyler, Kelly, Brooklyn and Jeremy

Thanks guys for everything we had a really good time.

So when we left their place we headed north through San Francisco. It was a really nice day. We stayed the night in Eureka and then on Monday headed to the Redwoods. The weather wasn't so great so we didn't do as much there as we had wanted to. But it was still really pretty.

Jeremy hugging a tree. Brooklyn refused to get out of the car.

We also saw the ocean and got to see some elk. After all that we headed home. We had a great trip. It was so good to see all of my family. Hope we can do it again sometime soon.

So Cal

One of the days we were in California we went to the beach for a little bit. It was way foggy, but it was kinda cool. Brooklyn wrote this. I thought it was cute. It says "M+B=love."

Dylan and JerBrooklyn and Syd

Where's Michelle, you might be asking yourself...... I'm in the background in my bikini looking hot playing volleyball. (If only!)

We had a blast in the pool. Benson never gets in a pool, I mean NEVER! The 2 years we lived in our apartment I think he only went to the pool area a couple of times. So this was a real treat. It was so much fun. We played all sorts of games.

Thanks for the good times everyone!

Disneyland

Last week we headed down to Southern California. It was a grueling drive, 17 hours but once we got there we had a blast. We had so much fun in Disneyland. It is so fun to be there and watch the kids' excitement. Jeremy thought everything was "awesome." Here is a picture of the whole gang. The one and only picture of everyone. There was 18 of us. I don't even think we all went on 1 ride together. The closest we got was Pirates of the Caribbean we were only missing Steven and Dylan. This was the first morning. On Wednesday when we got there this pumkin display was taken down and the winter one was up. It was kinda cool to see Fall and Winter things.

Ryan and Me waiting in line. Ryan was a champ the whole time. He took naps in his stroller and loved going on the rides. On the third night we were in Fantasyland and he saw Dumbo and was reaching towards it whining. He wanted to go on it. Ahhhh....I love it! The line for Dumbo was too long though so we went on the Carousel, which he also loved.

All of the cousins, Brooklyn, Ryan, Dylan, Avery, Sydnee, Cohen, and Jeremy.

Jeremy was carrying Avery.

Jeremy was totally into seeing the characters. I wasn't going to do the character thing but he really wanted to so how could I say no. It was actually fun to watch Jeremy's excitement when he got to give them a hug and he got kissed from Mickey.

I think Brooklyn only took a picture with Mickey. Other then that she was not interested.

Jeremy was called up on stage. It was really cute.

Jeremy and Woody. He got this drawing of Woody for going up on stage.

Ahhhhh.....so sweet.

Jeremy wanted to go on the Ferris wheel really bad. Benson took him on it and they had a blast.

Brooklyn on Dumbo.

Ryan in heaven on the carousel.Ryan liked the characters but this one made him a little nervous.

Brooklyn earned an ice cream cone for going on Screamin' California. Of course once she went on she loved it and wanted to keep going on it. Jeremy earned an ice cream cone for riding in the car that had no other kids without complaining. But he was also very brave and went on Tower of Terror. He only did it once. He wasn't quite sure what he thought about it afterwards. He wasn't tall enough to go on Screamin'. Johnny asked him if he wanted to stand over on the boardwalk so he could see all of us as we went and he responded with, "No, that just makes me want to go on it even more." What a cutie.Ryan enjoying the ice cream.

The kids brought their own money and bought these cute hats. This is on Pirates.

Our family in front of the Christmas tree in California Adventure.

On the tram going home on our last night. This was about midnight. We had so much fun. On the second morning of Disneyland Ryan got all excited getting onto the tram. He thought it was a ride. It was hilarious.

What a great trip.

Halloween

Before we headed off to Southern California we had some business to take care of. Luke slayed the bad guys (I don't know their names), we needed to get some good advice from Yoda, and Princess Leia had to do whatever she does. I guess lead the troops into battle (get some candy). We drove down to Tualatin and had pizza with the Williams and then went Trick-or-Treating with them. It was so cute to see Ryan walking down the street in his little Yoda costume.