Our Christmas 2009

We had a wonderful Christmas this year with the kids' Nama and Papa in town. They were hoping to see some Seattle rain, but to no avail it was sunny the whole time they were here. Last time they were here was the summer and it didn't rain either. Sorry Nama and Papa, you'll get to smell the fresh smell of rain in Seattle some times.
We started the holiday off with decorating the house with first, the Christmas tree, then the wreath with bells, then the stockings with felts, and then we made the garlands out of the branches from our tree. I went to the House of Hope and taught a baking class and made bon bons, pretzel rolo turtles, and ginger snaps. We shopped, mailed presents off, sent Christmas cards out and opened lots and lots of presents. The best part of our Christmas this year was a visit from the kids' Nama and Papa. They sure made our Christmas very special. We love them so so much. We took them on the Light Rail train ride into Downtown and had a little walk to Westlake center to feel the excitement of the Holiday. There were rides for the kids and such but we got distracted by a professional street performer busking his juggling skills with the chain saw. Pretty impressive. Christmas Eve we made lots of food and ate 'til our tummies hurt and then celebrated with the puppet show Nativity to commemorate the birth of our Savior. Christmas day we opened presents and then went for a sweet ride to the Cascades for a winter wonderland experience. Here are the pictures from our Christmas this year.

We bought a real tree and decorated!


Reena got to make her first stocking. She was super creative, too!






Nama and Papa got into to town late Tuesday so the kids woke up to a wonderful surprise. Reena was a bit shy but Debrie was whispering things to Papa apparently and was smiling as always.

All she wanted for Christmas were butterfly/fairy wings (why didn't she say so around Halloween!?!) All he wanted for Christmas was Spongebob's DVD's. So it looks like they got what they wanted! I got my Glee soundtrack! Yay!

A 20 minutes drive towards the mountains bought us this! We took Nama and Papa on this beautiful drive before they left.

We had no snow on the plateau, but we only had to drive close to the Cascades to see this beauty. God lives. He loves us and his creations are beautiful.

Nama and Papa have gone home. Our house is empty until December 30th when the kids aunt and uncle will be here to celebrate the new year with us. We've been so blessed to have had families visit us or us visited them every month this year. Seattle is a fun place to live and location means a lot to us. We love Issaquah because it really is close to everything. We could've stayed in Spanish Fork, UT and with the money my parents gave us, pay off the house in a couple of years and though that sounds tempting, we're city folks! We're having so much more fun here. Look at my 2 cute kids! 2 little brunettes. WHO WOULD'VE THUNK? 2 brunettes among 19 grandkids, most of which are blondies. So weird to see that my dark hair was weakened by his light hair gene. What's weirder for me to think is that Dan's hair used to be blond and most of his nieces and nephews start out blond and slowly their hair get darker. What a weird phenomenon! Allah loves wondrous variety I guess. Happy New Year everybody!

Christmas Pictures 2009

We are so excited for this Christmas. We hurried and got our tree and it is now completely decorated. Speaking of which, my bad on the price. It was incorrect. The price listed earlier included the stand and delivery, my hubby told me. The frustrating thing is I looked in the paper today there was a tree the size we got the was on sale for half of what we bought ours for. It's killing me inside and yet I still see lots of people leaving Noel Trees with trees on top of their car and I'm thinking "you're getting chipped!". We were told that our tree was cut that day so it's really fresh, but I think next year we'll do something different. Like the u-pick raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, pumpkin and such farms around here, it is a whole lot cheaper to go to a u-cut Christmas tree farms and cut your own tree. How exciting! Something we'll learn for next year and something we can do together for an FHE activity.
I just want to say again how thankful I am that we listened to the spirit and came up here. I cannot imagine living my life without God and without the companionship of the spirit. It's truly a blessing in my life.
I spent a whole day designing the new header for our blog. Unfortunately it's being shrunken down to fit the header so it's quite blurry. Here are the pics in their true pixels. We put the camera to its Max by taking the pictures in the dark and tested out the night setting. Still not too bad. Merry Christmas everyone!

Sunshine in my life

14 days of no rain and clear blue sky! What??!! Are we still in Seattle??!! My strange husband who likes the rain (because it keeps it fresh and warm - his reasoning) can't wait for some rain to come. Apparently el nino saw it fit to hit us with this dry cold air to get us in the Christmas holiday mood. Well, at least a lot of people here are happy for the blue sky.
We had a great week with a visit from my dad. He hadn't seen Debrie so he flew in Friday, hung out with us Saturday, and flew home Sunday. We took him to a ward Christmas breakfast, to our favorite Alki beach and shopping at the Pike Place Market. We decided to have him help us pick out a real tree this year. I love everything about it (i.e the thickness, the sweet smell) except I could not believe the cost. 'Isn't this Emerald city, the land of the evergreen' I asked the lady there at Noel trees. We spent $120 that day on Christmas decor and that just included THE TREE. Oy!

The kids woke up to greet Ong Ngoai in their cute pjs




The Ward's Christmas party. Debrie with Santa. She was more interested in the ornaments on the tree.

We hardly saw her as she was being passed around by everybody! Ong Ngoai had to compete



A touch of salt water so close


Shopping on Pike with my dad. Great deals! My favorite gift store in Seattle!


This is the tree before it was decorated ...and it is still being decorated so no complete picture yet.

The last meal with ong Ngoai before he left to go back to Philly



Features of the week

Debrie can sit up on her own without support. She started out saying "dadda" so I got jealous and taught her "mamma" and now that is all she says. Yeah!
Reena. She has got to be the cutest little talker there ever was. We were sitting down doing craft and she asked me "Mamma, can I tell you something?" I told her "yes". She said "Next time you say a prayer you say daddy drives the car and come home to us ok?" I said "yes mam" I forgot to mention her daddy in our lunch prayer and she chastised me. She is a big time daddy's girl.
Me. I've done some modeling in the past and have recently purchased a nice camera to practice some photography. So far I have 6 families scheduled for family photos.
Dan purchased some new old games and is enjoying some spare time (which is very little nowadays) playing with them. He is a wonderful husband and the only one I know of that helps his wife make Christmas cards. I don't know what I did or what he did, but I like this new Dan.

We love having families come visit us. We'll even fly you to come see us if you just tell us you love us. We're pretty generous people I think. In the end, what's money good for if it doesn't bring families closer together. We've been blessed this year to have had so many came and visited us. We love our families and friends.

Some favorite sites I waste my time on

This site has super cool craft ideas.
http://kheaney-writeitdown.blogspot.com/
This site is my new photography site.
http://seastevensphotography.blogspot.com/
I always have food in my brains and this site has amazing recipes!
http://www.cakeonthebrain.blogspot.com/