This picture

I love this picture and it's hard to explain why. There doesn't seem to be a good reason by just looking at it. It's blurry and overexposed and hard to make out. But there is just something about it, a feeling I get when I look at it. It reminds me of my childhood. Happy and sunny and bright. The picture does seem like a memory, just a glimpse of one that you can't pin all the way down. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like a dream when you know the people but you can't really make out their faces. Maybe if you could capture on film God's love that surrounds us and hugs us tight it might look something like this. :)

Christmas Eve

Seth was scheduled to work Christmas Eve but one of his co-workers offered to work his shift for him. What a great Christmas present!! It was nice to have him home so we could enjoy some family time and read our advent story together.

We hosted Christmas Eve at our house this year. Seth's mom, my parents, Aunts, and cousin all came over to celebrate with us.

For dinner we had nachos and quesadillas. I prepared the meat and beans and set out the tortillas, chips, cheese and toppings then everyone got to make their own, put it under the broiler for a few minutes to melt the cheese, then added their toppings. This was a super easy and very yummy dinner. (It was also great for snacking later on :)

My mom (Nana) brought over some frosting and cookies for the girls to decorate.

My Aunt Sharon, my cousin Shawn and 3 of the girls.

My Aunt Katherine and Emma

After dinner we had a white elephant gift exchange and then played Canasta.

We had a great time visiting, playing games, and singing along with Tennessee Ernie Ford. We opened one present with Nana and Papa. The girls opened their nutcrackers and consumed far too many cookies. Here is a picture of us with Nana and Papa.

We hung our stockings above the nativity. There are two additional stockings. One is Seth's mom, Sue's (she spent the night with us) and one is for Emma's stuffed animal rabbit friend (she loaded it up with baby carrots and celery from the veggie tray :).

We are very excited to see the baby in the manger tomorrow morning!

The Nutcracker

We had the privilege of seeing The Olympic Ballet's Nutcracker with our homeschool group.

The 3 big girls with their hair in ballet buns, dressed in their princess dresses and ready to go! (Elsie had a fun visit with Nana and Papa while Seth and I took the older girls to the ballet.)

Some friends got to ride with us. It sure was a lively drive to the ballet! :)

This is a blurry Megan picture. Unfortunately I didn't get any decent pictures in the auditorium. Megan's favorite part was the Snow Queen dancing in the falling snow (that's my fave part too). Emma liked the mice and Rat King the best. She's all about action. (The ballet isn't really her favorite thing.)

Here are two of our friends after the performance showing off their ballet poses.

Dancing and general silliness...

Loading everyone up. Cookies were dispensed after everyone was in their seats and buckled up.

All the girls had so much fun. I did too. I LOVE the ballet. Seth sure was a trooper helping me escort 6 giggling girls to the ballet.

On Christmas Eve we surprised Emma, Megan and Katie with their very own nutcrackers.

Here's a video of the girls opening their gifts. They were a hit! :)

Craft Supply Bandit CAUGHT!

There has been a recent crime spree in our normally peaceful home. Glue sticks have gone missing. Mommy's craft drawers mysteriously left open. And just recently a more serious crime...

No need for alarm fellow crafters. The suspect has been apprehended and duly charged.

Elsie Anderberg has plead guilty on all charges. Although, when Mommy saw this pitiful face the charges were dropped.

Here is the evidence: A mysterious trail of tracks leading away from the crime scene.

A craft drawer completely removed from it's shelving, contents scattered, and flooring vandalized.

Fingerprinting not necessary. Hand prints were an exact match.

We do not anticipate any further incidences.

The First Day of Snow!

This is the sign that hangs by our front door. We always hang it up on December 1st and anxiously await the first snow of the season. The girls have been asking why our sign has not been working. They thought it would make it snow. We told them only God can make it snow. So they have been praying for snow. :) We woke up this morning to snow and everyone was excited. We had already brought in the tote of snow clothes a couple weeks ago. We keep their snowsuits in big ziploc bags labeled with their names. They just have to look for the bag with their name and start getting dressed.

The very first thing Emma did was start a snowball fight. She likes throwing snowballs better than making snowmen or snow angels. Note the fierce determination in her face. She got me too, just after I clicked the picture. :)

Katie went out to play for a little while, then she was content to play puzzles and magnet bears with Daddy in the warm cozy house.

I love to make snowmen. Never mind there was not even an inch of snow on the ground. If you can form a snowball you can make a snowman. And that is what Megan and I did. She is adding a pebble eye to Frosty and the little snowman she named Button.

We do not have a mud room so we use the back porch. When the girls are ready to come inside they can strip off their snowsuits and boots and leave them there so they don't track wet snow into the house.

I just thought their boots looked cute all in a row and had to take a picture.

Once everyone was inside we showed the girls the giant snowman cookie Nana made for them. They were very surprised and excited. But the first question Emma asked was if it had dairy. This is a new thing for us, but Emma has developed an intolerance to dairy so we have to be careful about what she eats. I had some dairy free ball cookies waiting to be dipped in chocolate so we decided to use them to make snowball cookies for Emma.

We gave her a cup of powdered sugar and she rolled her cookies to look like snowballs.

Then we all enjoyed our cookies and hot cocoa.

This is how the girls spent much of the day. Sitting on the back of the couch looking out the window at the snow falling.

It was a very fun first day of snow. We can't wait for it to come again.

Homeschool Christmas Choir Concert

Emma and Megan started taking choir this quarter. I was curious to see if it was something they would enjoy and want to do again. Their teacher, Laurie Hinman is very gifted. She is also funny and makes the girls laugh. It was nice to see them having so much fun at practice.

This was their final practice the day before the concert.

Sweet Megan waiting for the concert to begin.

Emma and her choir buddy

The younger girls performed 6 songs by themselves and one song with the older girls. All the girls did such a great job.

Elsie and Auntie Brenda

After the concert our family went to La Hacienda in Stanwood for dinner. We were amazed at how much Elsie likes salsa. I thought it would be too spicy for her but she loves it!

We got home after 10pm but the girls were still full of energy. Mom, not so much. :)

They are already looking forward to doing choir again.

Our Christmas Tree

We don't have a specific day we get our tree each year. Sometime between the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. :) But we do have an artificial tree/ real tree schedule.

Seth grew up setting up an artificial tree and has fond memories of tediously straightening branches. I, on the other hand, have very fond memories of beautiful real trees and that lovely fresh pine smell. So, when we were newly married (a good ten years before I read the Helpmeet book) we came up with this compromise of alternating years. And this year is my year. Yipee!

One thing Seth remembers of tree decorating day when he was little is that they had cookies. Lots of cookies. And they even put cookies in the tree where he would find them and eat them. So, each year we have a big baking day the day before we get our tree so we have plenty of cookies to set out while we decorate.

Unfortunately, this year we did not have plans to get our tree on the 30th. It was a last minute decision. We were able to pull off baking one batch of gingerbread cookies that morning. The rest of the cookies came from the store. But they were still yummy!


The girls rolling out the dough and cutting out the gingerbread men.

Then the girls took turns adding sprinkles.

Emma-

Megan-

Katie-

And Elsie, with a little help-

I've had this Pampered Chef pizza stone for over ten years. I always use it for baking cookies. I use to own cookie sheets but my cookies never turned out as well as they did on the stone so I eventually got rid of them.

With our cookie baking taken care of we're ready to go!

On the years we get a real tree we go to Cheryl's Tree Farm in Marysville. They have lights and cocoa and nice fresh trees and best of all it's less than 10 minutes away from our house.

When we arrived we got right down to business and picked out our tree. We all agreed on the cute tree behind us in this picture.

After we picked out our tree we came inside for our cocoa and cookies. The girls loved looking at the frosted trees. I don't know. Beautiful, real trees sprayed with chemicals so that they look and smell like fake trees. Hmmm.

After we warmed up with our cocoa we went back outside to look around at their cute lights and decorations.

Here is Megan with her cocoa admiring the nativity.

When we got back home we set out our tray of cookies and turned on our Charlie Brown Christmas music CD.

Seth cut off a few inches so it would be nice and fresh and filled our tree stand with water. We need this tree to last until Jan. 5th, over a month!

After Seth and I hung the lights, the girls were ready to add decorations.
We only give the girls one rule when hanging decorations: Breakable ornaments need to be put on as high as they can reach. Non-breakables can go anywhere.

Seth tried to put the angel on top, but there were three tops and none of them could support the weight of our angel. We went with a star instead.

Only one out of four looking at the camera. That's how it goes around here.

Megan took this fuzzy picture of Seth and me. I like how all the lights on the tree are curly cues.

It sure makes the house cheery and cozy having the Christmas tree up!