Elliot to mom: Someday I will be big, when I grow up and have a face like you.

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving in Moscow, as we have every year we've been in Washington and it's great fun for us. This year the girls loved having their cousins Drew, Jessi, Kassi, Nathan, Easton, Sydney and Kendall to play with. YouTube on mom's phone was a popular activity (below). 

 Ahhh.

Nothing more fun than a big pile of leaves!

Making gingerbread houses at the church. The girls had SO much fun doing this but were a little bummed that we left the gingerbread house in Moscow before they could eat it!

 

Future piano virtuosos Norah and Nathan.

One of the fun traditions we've begun after Thanksgiving is stopping in Leavenworth on our way home from Idaho. Leavenworth is a mountain town that's adopted a "Bavarian" theme and is completely decked out for Christmas. We call it the Christmas Village. We stop at some shops, usually "Kris Kringle" to find an ornament and then also find a place to get hot chocolate. Norah loves ornament shopping. It's the ONLY thing that makes her smile.

St. Nicholas, or Sinter Claus, or Kris Kringle. One of those, smile.

Let the Christmas season begin! Yay!

Halloween and some of November

The girls both went as felines for Halloween. Avery was a Cheetah and Elliot was a "purple cat." We opted to go "reverse Cheetah" for Avery, as finding a black shirt and stretch pants and contact papering on yellow spots was easier than black spots on yellow. As you might imagine, finding purple cat accessories was difficult, so I made Elliot's ears and tail. My theory was that the movie-quality face makeup would make up for the slapdash costuming, smile. 

Pumpkin cheetah, screamer and baby pumpkin with two teeth!

 Yay Leah and Sam! Leah and Sam came to visit us the weekend after Halloween. You can't tell AT ALL, but Leah is seven months pregnant in this picture. So we thought we would take her and her two year old son on a treacherous, 5 mile (maybe not quite, but felt like it) hike.

Steep descent on a wet, slippery trail? No problem, I'll just put my baby in my jacket give you all a hand.

Cousin fun!

This was about 3/4ths of the way into the hike as we realized that the end point was about 5 times farther than we thought. Mike has already left to run back to get the car and meet us at the end of the trail. It was long, but really fun and the kids were good troopers. Sam was so cute, he would keep walking as long as he saw a new puddle to jump in up ahead. As you can see below, the destination was definitely worth the walk.

 Happy Birthday Mike!! This year we made him a football cake (basketball, ping pong and foosball left and then we'll have to branch out into other genres. crown molding cake?!!).

The high school did a production of James and the Giant Peach which was actually really good! The girls both loved it, and the peach punch with ice cream at intermission didn't hurt either.

Early Fall Activities! Another month, oh my. So below is an assortment of pictures from our activities the last few weeks. I tried to limit myself to the most informative and visually appealing pictures of all those that I took, smile.

 Avery's first "fun run!" Although it ended up being more like a "glum run" because Avery twisted her foot and had to walk half of the way. But she kept going and I'm proud of her being willing to try new things. p.s. she has a little crush on the boy standing next to her. He's in her kindergarten class and she thinks he is "scary" because he is "so handsome." Although, when I asked her about him the other day she said "Mom! I only liked him the FIRST day of school." If any of you repeat this to her I will officially be on Avery's bad list and never get any more information about boys, so shhhh.

 The weekend of Sep 30th (I think it was, hard to remember now), we all went on a little day trip up north to a "Dutch town" called Lynden. It was a great trip for the kids because the town had a skating rink and a really fun historical museum (pictures below).

 As you can see, Elliot is going through that awkward phase of not knowing exactly how to smile on demand. Remember having to practice in front of the mirror for picture day?!

 Here's the museum and I have SO many more great pictures but selected this one so you could get a sense of the amazing main street replica they built, complete with multiple stories. They also had a ton of old timey wagons in the basement like stagecoaches and fire wagons, fancy limo-type wagons and milk wagons. I thought it was pretty cool and the girls had fun too. Elliot was a big fan of the replica jail. Did you know that lollipops are technically illegal in Washington? So is "bedding a virgin" but enough of that.

 Here's a windmill, just so you know we were really in a real Dutch town! he he

 The first Thursday of the month is free at the Seattle Art Museum, so I packed up the girls a couple weeks ago and we met Mike downtown for some culture and pizza. I believe Mike is checking baseball scores while keeping Elliot from jumping on the artwork. You can lead a horse to water . . .(I'm talking about Elliot, Mike, not you!).

 The next day we drove out to the Cascade Mtns (Cle Elum for those in the know) to hang out with some of our friends at a church-run ranch. It was so fun for the kids, with tons of activities. We stayed in cabins with wood-burning stoves and it was reasonably comfortable.

 Avery was a natural rock climber.

 It was a little chilly, so we kept Norah boo in her snowsuit for most of the morning. Smiley as always.

 Horses even!! Elliot asked questions NONSTOP during this ride. "Where is the horses tummy?" "What does the horse eat?" "Does the horse have a mom?" "Where is the horse's mom?" "How many horses are there?" "Does the horse have friends?"

 Canoeing even! Some of our friends are there in the background. There were four families who went up. One of our friends moved to central WA, so this was a fun way for us all to get together in the middle.

 Just a couple cute pictures of the girls.

 Gosh I love these girls :)

 Pumpkin patch time! I love this season and a large part of it is because I love pumpkin patches so much. There just something so wholesome about a pumpkin patch; the farm, being with family, buying apple cider. Not even the funny faces could break the spell, smile.

 I figure this picture is so cute that Sandy will have no choice but to put it up on one of her picture boards. We'll see if I'm right about that.

 The obligatory wheelbarrow picture. With the sun setting, surrounded by nature and family, you see what i mean?!

And this just capped it off for me. A super neat Halloween-looking spider on a real pumpkin! So fun.

Till next month! . . .

Negotiating . . .Elliot style.
E: Mom, give me chocolate when I count to three. One . .two . .three . . .
M: Now what?
E: Now I'll count to five. One . ..two. . .three. . .four . . five
M: Hm, now what.
E: Give me chocolate when I count to two. One . . .two . ..
M: How about applesauce.
E: Applesauce will make me sick. See these claws (outstreatches her foot to show me her boot), these claws make me sick with applesauce.
M: Hm, those claws on your boots? What would happen if you eat applesauce?
E: I would die.
M: You would die? How about grapes?
E: Yep, grapes would make me die.
M: Well, it seems like we're stuck.
E: Yep, we're in jail. We're in jail so I need to eat chocolate.
M: Oh . . .okay. (gets Elliot chocolate).

We don't reward whining but I can't resist a good argument. smile.

Party Animal! Yesterday we had a birthday party for Elliot, little miss 3. The theme was "Wild Animals." I know there are a LOT of talented cake and cupcake decorators out there, but I'm pretty proud of the little cupcake toppers we came up with!

 Gift boxes - the animal bums are on the backside :)

 Pizza and friends! A great combo . . .

Doing my best to convince kids to put on a blindfold for the game. I got a lot of refusers :) Jessi, babysitter extraordinaire, has Elliot and friend William on her lap in the background. We also made binoculars out of paper rolls and went on a safari to find wild animal finger puppets.

Lighting the candle!

 Happy Birthday Elliot Dee!!!

Elliot-speak

While we are driving on the freeway . . .

"Dad, go faster, the police are coming!!"

August! It has felt like forever since I last updated, but when I looked back it was only about a month ago. Our August/early September was jam-packed with family and trips and fun and we're finally getting back regular life.  

 Mom came to stay for a few days and her trip was fun for all. We went on a short hike to "Steven's Island," where Elliot had a nasty run in with a blackberry bush. But other than that, it was a fun time.

 Happy Norah

We also went to the Everett Botanical gardens - I love this spot. Avery took the camera and went around shooting pictures of flowers. I have about ten of them, but I thought I'd just post one.

We also had an early birthday celebration for the girls (Avery and Elliot) while mom was here - and she made some really delicious cupcakes with homemade chocolate buttercream frosting.

A few days after mom left, Mike and I went to New Mexico for a weekend. We left Elliot and Avery in Moscow with Monte and Sandy (thanks!) and headed down to the Land of Enchantment with Norah in tow. We stayed in Alburquerque and explored Old Town a bit; a salsa festival was going on the weekend we were there so we were able to catch some outdoor dancing and music. 

 We checked out the Petroglyph National Monument as well; it's kind of mind boggling that these are thousands of years old. Mike tried to resist the awe of it a little bit and insisted that they were just an early form of graffiti, smile.

 We also spent a day in Santa Fe, which is a bit (alright quite a bit) more posh than Alburquerque (are you impressed that I'm spelling this correctly? wait. . am I?). We walked and window shopped, checked out the Cathedral and went to the Georgia O'Keefe museum. The museum was really cool. I don't think it would be super interesting to post a whole description of it, but if you plan a trip to Santa Fe I think a visit to the museum is worth it. We also found a city golf course and hit a few balls. One of the main things that struck us on this trip is that you can really fit a lot into a day when you don't have to worry about feeding and napping kids or working on a house.

 Leaving Santa Fe we ran into a huge thunder storm; nothing like our perpetual mist storms here in Washington. I thought the sky was so beautiful.

 Four days after New Mexico, we had the wonderful privelege of going on a vacation to the San Juan Islands with Mike's family. I only have pictures of the last day posted here because my camera battery was dead most of the trip. I also got some cool shots of Orca whales from our whale watching tour, but those are on another camera and well, this is as good as I can do right now, smile. The picture above was taken in Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. We stayed in cabins on Orcas Island and explored San Juan Island on the last full day of the trip.

 Playing Bocce Ball.

 Happy Norah

 Scoot cars! The families took turns riding the scoot cars and mopeds around the island. Here Elliot gets a little ride around the parking lot.

 So . . .my pictures of Avery's first day of kindergarten are on my phone because I couldn't find my camera in time. But I'll get them downloaded at some point. Anyway, the picture above is from this Saturday, Avery's birthday. We usually do presents at night, but Avery was eager to get a start on things. Here she is finding presents from the front room and bringing them into the family room. She wanted either a hamster or an easy bake oven . . .can you guess, from the picture above, which one she got?!

 Then at noon we met my lovely friend Denise and her husband (lovely too), James. They just came back from a cruise and stayed a day in Seattle to visit with friends and family. We went to a beach in Edmonds and it was a VERY warm day!

 After the beach, we celebrated Avery's birthday at Buca di Beppo's in Seattle where we got spaghetti, Avery's favorite. The waiters sang to Avery and she got to blow out some candles and got a BIG piece of cake. Next Tuesday we're taking one of Avery's friends to Jump Planet to end the birthday celebrations : )