December 2018

We've had a really great December to end the year 2018.  Our little old elf friend Jingle is back in business and entertains us with his antics when we wake up every morning.  Here are some of our favorites from this year...

 Carly has a good group of friends here in Renton and we had a rainbow themed birthday party for her when she turned 13.  They had a lot of fun playing games and eating rainbow foods all night.

We did a little dream building as a family and toured a couple multi-million dollar homes near us.

We also found a really great Nativity Display at a church near us as well - we love those things.

 Here's my official teenager - now we have two.  Carly is really good at braiding her hair, loved playing volleyball this year in middle school, is doing great at school, has good friends, enjoys church and is beautiful inside and out.  So glad she's ours.

We had some really cool frost one morning - found these frosty leaves on our way to the bus stop.

 To keep our hummingbird nectar from freezing, Matt suggested I wrap it with Christmas lights to keep it warm - works like a charm and is very festive for the little birdies now!

These two pretty girls have begun the long process of getting their teeth straightened out and their bites fixed - yup, two girls in braces for the next two years.  Joy.

The boys discovered the magnifying ability that my photo app has - kept them entertained for awhile!

 Matt's mom sent these darling pictures of my little kids with the stockings she made for each of them

Our Christmas tradition is to make and decorate sugar cookies on Christmas Eve.  The twins dove right in to it!

A lot of our Christmas Eve was spent playing lots of games together as a family - loved it.

 During the day on Christmas Eve, it was almost 50 degrees - my kind of Christmas Eve!  We went to a nearby park and had a great time playing Frisbee Golf.

  And Matt made easy-to-see numbers for the front of our house - pretty cool!

We all got Incredibles Pajamas for our Christmas Eve gift - what an incredible family.  :)

Merry Christmas!

Matt's big surprise for the kids (okay, he admits it's a lot for himself as well) was to construct a cool BB gun range in the big crawl space under our house!  This guys sure comes up with so many creative ideas and pulls them off so well!

Here's our Christmas dinner (the turkey I had wasn't thawed - and this was SO much easier!)

5 days after Christmas this awesome husband of mine joined me at the ripe old age of 38!  He can't make old lady jokes for the next 6 months - phew!  Caught him making a great face while reading the really neat book his sister gave him and he always wants Razzleberry pie with vanilla bean ice cream for his cake - yum.  We sure love this guy.

 Matt's other sister gave us a cool puzzle made from a picture of ourselves - Alissa loved putting it together - it was funny how much we weren't able to recognize various chunks of each other's faces!

And this is how we rang in the New Year!  Instead of watching a ball drop in New York City, we watched a cool fireworks and light show on the Seattle Space Needle.  Our antenna wasn't working well so Matt held his arm up like that for quite awhile - made me remember my childhood a bit there.

 With recent changes to the youth program at church - it made it so my just-barely-turned-13 Carly suddenly became a Mia Maid and was invited to attend church dances with Alissa!  So both girls joined a big group of youth from our ward to enjoy dinner and a 6 stake New Year's Eve dance - they loved it.  We were sure to take the little kids out to eat as well - they loved that too!

That sums up our December and the end of our 2018 - so many fun memories and a wonderful year tucked away in the books with a brand new one just arrived that will be full of adventure as well.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!