Merry Christmas!

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love,

Chad, Lindsey, Jenna (6) and Leah (16 months)

Garden d'lights!

The Bellevue botanical garden is one of our favorite places to visit this time of year.

Jenna is old enough that she remembers the different animal lights and enjoys searching for them.

Leah enjoyed looking at the lights as well, pointing and saying "Wow!"

This dragon was new, it had smoke blowing out it's nose. Pretty cool!

Jenna was keeping her eye out for the bunny the whole time. We finally found it!!

Little Leah girl all bundled up!!

She would have much rather been showing off her new walking skills. But was a good sport to be carried around.

Holiday Fun

This weekend we made our traditional Gingerbread house. Jenna decorated it using her left over Halloween candy, nice!!

We also made salt dough ornaments. We have the tradition of giving a personal ornament each Christmas. I thought it would be fun to make this years. Jenna picked out the cookie cutter shapes. We had a great time painting and adding glitter to the ornaments. Such a fun craft!



We even made a replica of our dog, Emily. Now the whole family is represented on the tree :) Oh, except the fish...maybe next year!!

O Christmas Tree

Our tree has been up for a couple of weeks, but I am finally getting around to sharing pics of the decorating process! Leah tried to help but got distracted by a Christmas box. She has been pretty good about leaving the ornaments alone but every once in awhile those ornaments are just too tempting :)
Jenna's favorite is hanging her ornaments from past years. She was a big help in hanging most of the other ornaments too.
Both girls spend a lot more time in the front room playing in front of the tree. Especially in the evenings when the lights are on!

Reflections Art Contest

Jenna entered her school's Reflections Art contest. This years theme was "Diversity means to me..." We talked about what diversity meant to her. Her idea was how we can find diversity in nature, with all of the different colors of leaves outside. We went for a walk while Jenna took pictures. She then picked her favorite to enter.

And she won first place in photography for her division, K-2nd grade!

The school had an evening celebration to honor the participants. She was so surprised when they called her name. This is her first trophy, which she is quite excited about.

Here is the whole group of students with their projects. Jenna is down on the bottom left. A picture of the group was also featured in our towns weekly newspaper :)

This is Jenna's photo, "Leaf Rainbow"

Her photo was also chosen, among 8 others from the school, to go on to compete at the state level (that is what the green ribbon is for). We are so proud of her. It was fun watching her make all of the decision in this process. I think it made the reward that more enjoyable!!

Boardwalk Lights

A trip to Spokane isn't complete without a stop in Coeur d'Alene.

We walked around the boardwalk viewing all of the Christmas lights.

Trying to stay warm with my sisters Chelsea and Shannon.

Our family all bundled up. Little Leah was such a good sport!

Cool Sea Monster lights

There's Leah peeking out!!

Most of our whole group

Jenna and Talan in front of the cool Castle lights

Love my Jenna girl!

Coeur d'Alene is always a favorite during the Summer or Winter!

Thanksgiving

This year we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family over in Spokane.

My whole family was together, which was wonderful.

Here are the kids with their mini pumpkins from Gma's garden.

Not pictured was Bailey, she was taking a nap!

Here are my cute Grandparents. I always love visiting with them!

Playing games :)

Aunt Gretchen brought Shrinky Dink's for the kids to make.

The girls are showing off their finished necklaces.

We had such a great weekend. On the Sat. after Thanksgiving we had a girls craft in the afternoon. I had a blast hanging out with my Mom and sisters. I forgot to get those pics off of my Mom's camera. There's never a dull moment when all the girls get together :)

On our last night at my parents house Jenna says to me, "Mom, I really want to live at our house for the rest of my life. But I also want to stay here at Grandma's. Isn't that weird?" We all had a great time hanging out with family. I am grateful that we live close enough to visit often!