Snow days 2

Last week was all about the snow days; schools cancelled, roads covered in ice and snow. One of the days Chad came home early from work. He took Jenna outside to make a snowman! It is the first snowman we have made since we have been married. And is possibly Chad's first ever snowman! They did a great job. After he was all put together, Jenna kept whispering into the snowmans "ear". I heard her say "I want a pink castle for Christmas"!! (This is all she has been asking for since before Thanksgiving) So, Santa/Snowman whats the difference??? Snowmen are made out of magic Christmas snow, right?!! It was really cute.
And who thought, living in the Seattle area, we would need a sled? Not us, so Chad creatively used the snow shovel (which he borrowed from his office). Looks like we will be having a white Christmas afterall! Oh and I added a pic of our Christmas lights. I realized I had forgotten to post it. All of the credit goes to Chad, he worked hard getting the lights up on the second level.

Christmas baking

I found this mom and me apron set at World Market and had to have it! It has the cutest little ruffle along the bottom and is quite festive. Jenna loves to wear hers and even wears it when we go out. So fun!

Running for cover

Here are two little videos of Chad and Jenna playing in the snow. One is what Jenna would do every time the wind came. She would stay that way until the wind was gone.

Such a wonderful daddy!

Snow Day!!

We have had very cold weather lately that brought us snow!! Our church was actually cancelled yesterday due to the icy roads and cold temperatures. Too bad we didn't find out until we arrived at the building to see the parking lot empty.

So, Chad and Jenna decided to enjoy the snow. They made a snow turtle, had snow ball fights (hitting mom with quite a few), and running for cover when the strong winds came. It was so windy that it would almost knock you over. Jenna would run into Chad's arms for protection. It was the cutest thing. I'll have to post a video of it.

Little snow bunny.

Afterward they warmed up with some hot cocoa and sat in front of the fire!

Christmas Rush Fun Run

Last Saturday I participated in my first 5k! It was in celebration of my friend Katie's 30th birthday. What a way to celebrate right?! I thought it was such a great idea and I had a lot of fun. Out of the group, two of us ran the 5k while everyone else ran the 10k. I figured I would take baby steps into this new race world, since I've never really thought of myself as a runner :) But, after Sat. I can't wait to enter another one. I loved having a goal to work toward. I suprised myself by running/jogging most of it, and I felt great afterward. Here is a before pic of us girls. It was so cold, it had snowed the night before but wasn't snowing or raining during the race thankfully.

Finishing strong. So I am no speed demon, but I beat my finishing time goal of 45 min.!


Jenna and Chad came to cheer me on. Jenna was happy the whole time until after I finished, poor thing was really cold.

Still smiling after the race. Happy Birthday Katie (#99)! I am so grateful for such wonderful friends and family, who I called on regularly for support and advice during my training. You know who you are :) love you guys!

decorating the tree

Can you tell what Jenna's favorite color is? They are the ornaments that are all clustered together :)


Putting the angel on the tree

All done. What a good lookin' tree! Every morning Jenna turns on the lights for the tree. So far we have only 1 broken ornament, she is getting better at leaving the tree alone. Oh what fun!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

Last weekend we went to a local tree farm to find our Christmas tree. Jenna was so excited, she would stop at every little tree and say "it's as big as me!!" She would then go on to say "but it will grow bigger and bigger as high as the sky." It was cute to listen to her talk about the different trees.

Where is Jenna? :)

While looking for our perfect tree we ran into our friends, the Tyler's. Here is Jenna with Riley. She was so excited to see her, she misses her old nursery friends.

We finally found our Christmas tree! This pic looks a little funny, Jenna is hanging/balancing on Chad's arm.

family at the tree farm

Santa was there too! Jenna was so excited to tell him what she wanted for Christmas. She got a little nervous, but managed to tell him she wanted a pink sand castle??! I don't know where the sand part came from, she has been asking for a pink castle though. In the pic above she is showing Santa the rock she found. This was as close as she would get to him.

3rd annual Gingerbread house party

Last night a group of us friends got together and decorated gingerbread houses. This is the second yr. I have participated in it, but it was the 3rd annual party. We hope to keep it going for many yrs. to come! :) This year however, a little monkey (Jenna) snuck some bites from my gingerbread house so I decided to make cookies! Turns out the girl can't get enough of gingerbread. Pictured above is the final product, a little alien looking, but oh well it was fun.
I had a great time decorating and chatting with everyone. A big thanks to Katie's parents for letting us use their house. And to Katie and Heidi for the delicious catering!

Thanksgiving Vacation

We spent Thanksgiving with my family over in Spokane. It was fun to see My sister Chelsea (she is a freshman at BYU) and my sister Lexi and her little boy Talan. I hadn't seen my little nephew since he was born! What a cutie.
Thanksgiving dinner was amazing, thanks to my Mother and Grandma. Afterward we went to the movies. Chad and my Dad went to "Transporter 3", My sisters saw "Twilight", and My mom, Grandma, Grandpa, Connor, Jenna and I saw "Bolt". We don't normally take Jenna to the movie theater, so I was curious to see what she would do. She was great, her attention was divided about 50/50 between the movie and the fact that she didn't quite weigh enough to keep her seat down. She would bounce up and down trying to make her seat stay, then it became a game! If I tried to talk to her she would Shush me and tell me to be quiet. Silly girl!
Then there was Black Friday. Last year was my first experience braving the early, long lines and I loved it. So, I was pretty excited for it this year. My Dad and my Sister Chelsea also braved it with me. We got up at 4 am to stand in line at Walmart. Side note: Always swore I would never go to Walmart the day after Thanksgiving, it was C-R-A-Z-Y!!
We had a lot of fun together though and we made a great team navigating the diff. stores and checkout lines.
Another fun event was bowling. We love to bowl(Chad is way better than I am) and have passed it on to Jenna. She had a lot of fun, even though she didn't have the bumpers, she did really good. Jenna is also a really good cheerleader :)
Here is a quick slide show of our trip.

We hope everyone enjoyed their Holiday and we look forward to seeing more family during this Christmas season!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jenna made the cutest turkey hat at preschool today and I just had to share! She drew a face on it and legs. The other turkey project she made last week at school. The feathers are imprints of her fingers in paint and the body is her palm and thumb traced! She can't wait to wear her hat at Grandma and Grandpa's for Thanksgiving!

A little Thansgiving song, courtesy of Jenna :)

Twilight Mania

Before attending the midnight showing of Twilight, a group of us "twilighters" got together for a pre-show party. It entailed a twilight trivia game, ravioli, the best ever pretzels, and of course T-shirt decorating! Everyone was "Team Edward" except for Shelbi, who was "Team Jacob". However, by the middle of the movie she had turned to our side :) The movie was...very entertaining. Obviously not as good as the book, but I didn't think it would be. We were laughing a lot through the movie, partly due to giddiness/excitement and then the "What was that??" moments. I won't get into all of my thoughts, for the sake of time! But here are a few, I thought Robert Pattinson played Edward very well. I actually like all of the actors, it was the writing that could have been better for me. I wish the movie flowed better. However, I will most likely see it again in the theater because I have heard it is better the second time. I am hopeful!
On the other hand, I had a blast hanging out with everyone 'til the wee hours of the morning. Not pictured, but present at the festivities was Shelbi's husband Bryant. I didn't want to leave him out, he made the yummy pretzels!! Thanks for putting up with us crazy girls.
For those of you that saw the movie, I would love to hear what you thought?

DIY Project

Here is our latest DIY project. We found this cabinet in the clearance section at Home Depot, added the trim and feet, and the granite top. It was Chad's idea to put a granite top on it. Being inspired by many HGTV shows, he called around looking for scraps of granite. We ended up getting a great deal! The cabinet now holds our china that was passed down from my mother in law. I believe she gave it to us when we lived in Logan, so somewhere around 5 yrs. ago?!! And this is the first time we have had a place for it! Now I just need to find a decoration to set on top of it :)
(the coloring is better in the second pic.)

October fun

To save space and time I combined all of the events for October. First, we had a preschool field trip to V2 farm in Enumclaw,WA. The farm had a lot of activities for the kids. They went on a tractor ride around the farm and got to pick corn. This was a first for Jenna and made me think that we should visit real farms more often. What a wonderful learning experience right?
Second, we carved our pumpkins. I got Jenna's pumpkin idea from a Wonder time mag. Jenna had a great time using the hammer.
Lastly, are photos of Jenna in her costume and of Halloween. I had lots of fun curling her hair! But just like her moms hair, all of the curls were gone by the end of the night. (even with lots of hairspray) Chad was a trooper at our ward trunk or treat. He sat behind the door handing out candy to the kids. If you look closely at the pic. though he is smiling!! I think he secretly had lots of fun!

O.K. I am all caught up on my blogging now. So I think I am off the hook for awhile :) Enjoy!

Friday Harbor

At the end of Sept. Chad's parents came and visited us for about a week! We went up to Friday Harbor for a couple of days. We had a lot of fun and were lucky to have great weather :) One of the highlights was the Whale watching tour. We were on the boat for 4 hrs. and Jenna did amazing wearing her life jacket the whole time. She got to use her very own binoculars, which she loved! We were able to see 2 killer whales. It was very exciting! Thank you Grandma Lonna and Grandpa Rick for a wonderful trip! Jenna still talks about seeing the killer whales!

Jenna's jungle bathroom

Finished bathroom


Bathroom before


This was one of the first projects we did on the house. When Jenna gets older we will add a counter but for now it works great. I am quite proud of my animal silhouettes (inspired by pottery barn). Above the toilet we have added a close up pic of Jenna's face tinted in sepia. She has her Monkey hooded towel on in the pic., very cute.

First day of Preschool

Ok, so I am making up for lost time and starting back in Sept. :)
Jenna started preschool this year. She goes 2 times a week and loves it. A lady in my ward teaches it out of her home. She has a room all set up as a classroom.
Jenna loves her princess backpack! It was hard to find a small one, it is almost as big as she is!

long over due fish pic

This is the first day we had the fish. Jenna is very cute with them, she always tells them "good morning fishies"! And is very helpful in asking "are they hungry?" when they all bunch up against the side of the tank :)

May we recommend...

We recently came across "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert at our local library. It is a very fun, creative book. Jenna is obsessed with it. So, yesterday we went out collecting leaves and made our own "Leaf Men" for FHE. You can see the results in the slide show below. But, don't take our word for it!
Side note: My wonderful husband worked on the computer forever last night and solved our uploading problem. So, there will be lots of pics to come :)

Leaf girl

Happy Halloween from Princess Belle

We hope everyone has a spooky Halloween!

Our computer still won't upload photos, but here is one that a friend just emailed me!

Jenna is with her friend Dana. I love how happy they are.

This was taken at our ward halloween party last night. The ward did an amazing job with lots of fun carnival games, hots dogs, chili, and of course trunk or treating. Jenna had a great time dancing to the fun lights and music and then getting lots of candy. By the end of the night she was dragging her bag of goodies behind her saying "Mom, its really heavy"!

She was pretty tired from a day full of halloween fun. Her preschool halloween party was earlier in the day, so that also added to her tiredness.

Happy trick or treating tonight :)