Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

For two days straight before Christmas Eve, I was shut up in my mom's room with sisters, and sister-in-laws to sew the grandkid pajamas. Whew! It wasn't a big job when I volunteered to do it 2 months ago when I thought it was just for my kids and one other family. We buy some extra, XXL pj pants that match the adults (gotta love Old Navy) and then I take apart those pants and use the material to make a few kid ones. We were running out of fabric so I decided to make dresses for the younger granddaughters by sewing a skirt onto their shirts. They turned out alright. I just love to see the whole family matching. After the pj's and helping my mom finish up some chair covers for her nice dining room chairs, I was a little "sew-ed out" but the first crazy days on the machine helped the rest of the trip feel pretty relaxing!

Christmas Eve we visited a nursing home and sang a lot of the same numbers we did for my aunt and uncle's Musical Evening. 

Then for our traditional Christmas Eve activities we gathered with my extended family at another aunt and uncles house 20 minutes from Betteridge Bluff. Aunt Beth and Uncle Marse have such a beautiful home, I am always excited to get a chance to visit. 

We ate ham and other deli meat sandwiches on croissants, frog eye salad, vegi tray, chips, and cheesy potatoes. And then gathered in the living room for the reenacting of the Nativity Story, narrated by an older cousin reading the story out of the Book of Luke.

Then it was picture taking time in everyone's matching pajamas. 

I wish I had better photos, but this is all my iphone was giving me. Below is all 17 grandkids and 13 adults who were home for Christmas.

We also took the tallest to shortest grandkids/greatgrandkid picture which I will not include a picture of since it is one my least favorite Christmas-time experiences....I'm ALWAYS next to the 10 and unders. Then time for the favorite cousin pyramid. 

Then the traditional cousin gift exchange, opened one by one from the youngest to the oldest. 

Another picture time, with Grandma, Grandpa and all the grandkids:

As you can imagine...our kids were tired at this point. Especially Frederick. Poor guy, he fell asleep even before the pictures!

We ditched out on the dessert and birthday cake/singing for Jesus so we could put the kids to bed sooner. Time for the last minute Christmas morning preparations. A lot of stockings and Santa gifts in one spot! I remember thinking that we had done most of the wrapping and stuff the night before so we could just hang out together Christmas Eve, but there was still lots to do and by the end most everyone was tired. But I had had such a busy day that I needed to unwind and some of my siblings were kind enough to chat and play a few rounds of "inReverse." Its a cool iphone app/game where somebody sings a bit of a song, then the app records it, reverses it and breaks it up into segments. Then the rest of the people take turn listening to and learning a segment well enough to sing/record it and then the app strings all of the resung segments together and reverses it once more so you can try and guess what song it was. Kinda confusing to explain but really fun and short to play. 

Christmas morning!! We tried to keep the kids to a 7:00 start time and actually managed to keep them to it. We line up on the stairs youngest to oldest and wait for Grandpa to say goodbye to Santa before filing into the room to find stockings and gifts. 

It was so fun to see all the kids happy with the various presents they received. With so many young kids getting all different things, we worried about some being jealous of others, but (at least on the surface) everyone seemed quite happy and grateful for what Santa brought. All the Santa gifts were wrapped (which is different than how it usually is for our little family) so I think that helped ...everyone was busing unwrapping and enjoying their stocking surprises to really watch and see what other kids received. 

We played with the Santa gifts for a little while and then set up the tables for a nice breakfast before even touching the mountain of gifts under the tree downstairs. We made overnight French Toast casserole and cut up fruit and cooked the sausages and bacon all the night before so it was just warming things up. I remember thinking after breakfast... what a complete morning! The kids don't even need to open any presents from siblings, parents or grandparents...they're happy enough with their Santa gifts and stockings!

We ended up opening everything anyway. I think one of the older cousins stopped all the adults talking at the breakfast table and asked about opening up the other presents. Aunt Hailey kept up her tradition of handing out the presents, one at a time. The kids were incredibly patient to wait for their turn to open something. Towards the end, Hailey started handing them out at double speed to make it go faster, the kids were loosing interest. Towards the very end, we would have to call children back down to the living room to open their last gift! 

Kids were so well entertained, this really was the first relaxing day I experienced.  Gwen, Lynae and Charlie made up a song and wanted to perform it for Grandma. She had tweaked her back a few days before Christmas and had to take it super easy for a good while. All of us siblings jumped right in and helped make and plan all the meals and finish up any last projects for mom. She even had a little bell that she would ring, and one of us would come running in to see what she needed. It was almost comical. :) We all love our Mom.

I pretty much didn't see Alec for the rest of the day. He had shut himself in our room to build one of the lego sets he was given and built the whole thing. Such focus!

Family-full Christmas!

About two weeks before we flew home for Christmas, we found out that all my siblings (except Jordan and Estefi -- who we dearly missed!) were able to make it home to WA for Christmas! That meant all 17 grandchildren (the oldest being 11) and 13 adults in one big house. My mom was beyond excited and yet also stayed awake at nights trying to figure out the right configuration for sleeping, eating, playing etc.  

Each married couple had their own room and at least 1 child sleeping with them.  Then the 4-6 year old boys slept in the upstairs laundry room on a queen blow up mattress and a cot, the 5 and 11 year old girl cousins slept with my youngest sister Hailey in her room and the 7-10 year old boys slept on couches and cots in the playroom downstairs. We even had a small laundry room that could fit a pack n play for Frederick! AND it worked out so all of the grand-kids had a TV or computer in their sleeping area so they could watch movies as they settled down in their beds. Grandma loves movie time! 

 We had planned to use the downstairs kitchen for some cooking and eating, but found that we all just wanted to be together and it was simplest to do all the cooking in the main kitchen upstairs. We added a long table to the dining table for adults and had the kids spread out, some at the long table, some at the bar and some at a shorter folding table set up by the couches. 

The Saturday after Chris and I got back from our Seattle trip we had increased in numbers. The first two families joined us at Grandma and Grandpas. Justin and Radene and their kids drove in from California and Sarah and German drove from Utah to make it in time for my cousin's wedding open house. He got married towards the end of the summer and I hadn't had a chance to meet the lucky, beautiful bride! It was fun to meet her and see a lot of my other cousins and aunts and uncles. 

Also, on that Saturday, the Talbots came up for a visit so our kids could see each other. I'm sad I never think to take group pictures! I just have this one of little Anne and Gwen and Lynae.

Cousins, aunts and uncles at church provide lots of entertainment! So nice! By Sunday, another brother and his family joined us: Jared and Ashley and their 5 kids. After the first grandchild, it was a long time coming to get some granddaughters but then we had a nice bundle of girls and they all love their grandpa!

The last family arrived on Monday and Monday night my Uncle Loren and Aunt Merlene's annual Christmas Musical Evening. This year was the first year it was at my other uncle, Ben's, brand new beautiful house built just behind my parents home. (For those of you who don't know Betteridge Bluff or 'the hill' is home to my parents, my grandmother, and two sets of aunt/uncle/cousins... we all have houses on property previously owned by my grandparents...its pretty much Heaven). 

We all got to perform in at least one musical number. Todd, Tiffany, Sarah, Mom, and I played on the piano at the same time while the grand-kids jingled jingle bells, and I got to sing with some sisters, cousins and an aunt in a women's ensemble, then my siblings some older cousins, other friends sang the classic "Fruitcake" song where we walk around the audience and occasionally freeze .. super fun! Chris sang with my brothers and other guys in a funny, super fast, Russian sounding song that I forget the name of. And lastly my whole immediate family ended the night with another classic, "Where Shepherds lately Knelt" and did we do "Go Ye Now in Peace" too? I can't remember.  There were a bunch of other things, piano solos and duets, guitar/vocal numbers, karaoke etc. We invite mostly neighbors to come, theres always a good turn out and its always lots of fun. 

One of Frederick's favorite things to do at Grandma's house is look out the windows at the pretty view and point out all the birds or the trains. He's getting so old looking and interactive. 

Frederick turns 1 year old!

Our darling, kissable, tipsy, smiley, tough, patient, adored, persistent, determined, silly Frederick turned 1. Chris and I made our delicious Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake with Chocolate whipped cream frosting for Freddy's first experience with chocolate and sugar. No, I don't think we over did it. That cake is good. 

We served it to him a little late in the day so he was a little bit tired and cried when we wouldn't let him touch the flame from the candle. 

But he got over his sadness pretty quick when he tasted it! 

He was still tired, though and it quickly dissolved into a chocolaty mess in Grandma's nice fabric-lined high chair! We had to relocate his party to the kitchen sink and with a running stream of water in front of him and a knife in his hand, Frederick didn't mind one bit. 

Next was pajama time and then opening presents. I was surprised with the patience and interest he had in unwrapping! This kid is smart, he knew fun things were behind the paper. 

Frederick currently has 2 bottom teeth and 4 top teeth. He took 7 steps, a personal record, on his birthday and loves to be held, and played with. He loves watching the birds outside with his Daddy and pointing at other things in the room. He says "suh suh" for Jesus and "Da da" for Daddy and 'uh' for 'uh oh'  and I think maybe once said 'ma' for 'milk' and "ah da" for "all done." I've heard him make the sounds "mama" but not really for the word Mama. He sometimes gives kisses by leaning forward with his mouth open, but you have to catch him at the right moment, usually right after he wakes up. He likes to engage us in games of peek-a-boo and read books. He dances so cute sometimes when there's music playing by bouncing up and down or waving both arms up and down at once while running. Also, he loves to dive onto soft things from across the room --sometimes missing them completely and hitting the wall, or floor, or baseboard, or hard piece of furniture next to it. Poor kid constantly has at least 1 nasty looking bruise on his face or forehead. He doesn't really perform tricks for onlookers, he does things when he wants to do them and doesn't seem overly concerned with pleasing people. 

He is unbelievably patient with his older siblings. They fight over who gets to take him out of his crib in the morning and after every nap. (Charlie has to pull a stool over to the crib and Frederick is pulled/dropped out). They still want to carry him everywhere and show him how his toys work by playing with it in front of him. After a second or two of squirming in their arms, he'll go limp and resign himself to whatever they have in store for him. Seriously. One time, Charlie was feeding him some applesauce or something and Frederick didn't even TRY to take the spoon away from him. Chris and I remarked on this surprising feat since Freddy usually screams to hold the spoon himself when we feed him. Chris tried an experiment and took the spoon away from Charlie to give the next bite and within a second, Frederick was throwing a fit about needing to hold the spoon. HA!

We thank God daily for bringing Frederick to our family. We all love him SOO MUCH. 

10 year anniversary trip: Seattle

We took my aunt and uncles advice and rode the hour-long Bremerton Ferry to Seattle so we could approach the city from the water. I almost felt like I was back in high school having my dad drop me and my date off at the ferry terminal. Chris had some last minute work emails to respond to while we rode the ferry but without 4 kids clamoring for my attention, I completely enjoyed the quiet and the beautiful view. I. LOVE. THE. NORTHWEST. 

We had an early start to the day and couldn't check into our hotel for a few hours so we took our time walking from the ferry terminal in Seattle to the hotel. We took a few blocks detour to a cool toy store and purchased some puzzles as a Christmas gift to Gwen. We walked by a yummy looking teriyaki restaurant and stopped there for lunch. It was quite fitting since we had teriyaki for our wedding lunch. Our walk took us past Pikes Place Market and we made a mental note of the shops there, intending to find a bookstore after we checked in since we were pulling around our suitcase. 

The Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel is so nice! The guy at the counter was very pleasant and polite even as he told us that since our names were not on the reservation anywhere he couldn't check us in. HA! I explained that my dad made it for us, since he's giving us this hotel stay for our anniversary. The guy still looked uncomfortable so I offered to call my dad on the phone. My dad spoke to him and smoothed it out and that was the last of our worries for a few days! Since my dad is a platinum elite gold diamond king member whatever, we got the royal treatment with a top floor, balcony room right next to the concierge lounge where they served a free (for us) breakfast, snackbar, appetizers around dinner, and nightly dessert. I wish it would've had a hot tub or spa or something but alas, it was not meant to be. 

Once we got settled in our room we left right away to find a bookstore in Pikes Place (it was actually kinda of tricky to find!) but it was fun to roam the city alone with Chris. We found a used book store and each picked out a light read. We shared a dinner at Anthony's right across from our hotel before tucking ourselves in for a night of reading. Still tired from our trip out, I fell asleep around 8:30pm! The next morning we woke up and finished reading our books while the TV was on. Then made reservations for later that night to eat in the Space Needle restaurant. We grabbed a light lunch as we shopped at some stores in the downtown area and then took the monorail to the Space Needle.

If you have a reservation, you can go up the elevator to the looking deck 30 minutes before it to enjoy the view for free. My phone died before we could go up and so I just have some pictures from Chris' camera (which was also almost out of batteries) before dinner. 

They require every guess to have a minimum food and beverage charge of $35...which isn't hard to do considering one of the daily specials was going for $120...for a single entree! Chris took this as a personal challenge to maximize our order for the minimum cost. We ended up sharing an entree, each ordering drinks, and getting two sides to total exactly $70. But in the end I wanted to try a dessert so we split one and spent a bit more.  For the prices we were expecting some obviously delicious food and were not disappointed.  The whole restaurant rotates and every table has a view of the city, so by the time we finished our meal we had made almost 2 complete rotations. At one point, they had snow machines shooting out snow from the top and watching the flakes swirl in the air felt very pretty and nostalgic even if it was fake. 

We had an early dinner and by the time we walked back to our hotel we were ready for a movie and watched a DVD we had brought with microwave popcorn and some M&Ms from the concierge lounge. 

On our last full day, we spent the morning lazing around the room some more and then ate some crepes for a light late breakfast and walked a ways across Seattle to a free Art Museum. We spent an hour walking around there discussing technique, aesthetics and naked women although I'm fairly certain we didn't fool anyone. At any rate we really enjoyed the beautiful pictures. We were right by an elementary school group and liked watching the kids too. They had some crazy names! Here are our favorite paintings: mine was the snowscape and Chris' was the ducks.

Then we walked back to the main part of downtown and took the monorail again to the Science Center area where we met some dear friends Justin and Amy (from Grad School but they now live in Seattle) for lunch at a Mexican Restaurant! It was so fun to catch up with them sans kids (at least for us...they brought their beautiful 3 week old baby for me to drool on).  Then we walked back across the city to go see an afternoon showing of The Hobbit. For opening day, it wasn't that crowded. Then more walking back to the hotel. We thought we'd grab dinner sometime but were kind of tired from walking. We popped in the concierge lounge again and barely made it in time for the appetizers. We watched some TV a bit before falling asleep pretty early again. 

Our last morning was lazy again. We watched TV and showered and packed. We had planned to walk along the waterfont visiting classics like the Ole Curiosity Shop and getting fish and chips at Ivers on our way to the Ferry Terminal but it was raining and the shops were closed for construction but it didn't really matter since we found out we had to catch the soonest ferry back so my dad could pick us up and be able to get Hailey at 2:00 from school. 

All things must come to an end and this anniversary trip was no exception. Sigh. Time to get back to real life!

A little back story: My parents have told us ever since we got married that we could look forward to a trip away at a Marriott Resort for our 10 year wedding anniversary. They would provide the points for the hotel and babysit our kids and we would figure out the rest. I'd been dreaming about a warm beach somewhere for many years but as the 10 year mark drew closer and Frederick was still heavily nursing when our anniversary actually happened in the summer, we put off planning anything until we settled in our new house more and for Frederick to be closer to a year old and I could wean him. Because of other events this next summer and the cost of buying a house and starting renovations we realized a month or so before now that it would work best to do our anniversary trip while we were in Seattle. There goes the warm beach idea. I was a little worried that this trip (as amazing as it was) would still seem kind of like a let down. I know I'm showing how whiny and spoiled I am by admitting this, but its the truth so here it is. I tried to prepare for this by expecting to battle sad feelings of not being at a warm beach somewhere and try to enjoy exploring my childhood hometown city. Sometime during the second day, I realized that the whole experience was feeling like a date that never ended. We went from eating out, to museums, to eating out, to shopping, to eating out, to movies, to eating out etc. It was like we had 12 dates in a row and THAT felt so luxurious! So I hung my hat on that thought and really did enjoy it. Those 4 days were the most relaxing part of our 3 and a half weeks home for Christmas. I am so grateful my parents gave Chris and I this chance to focus on just being together. Its the first time we could do that in a very long and stressful 2 1/2 years.