Family Christmas Pictures 2010

Cabin Fever

It gets a lot more wild here than the pictures let on...!

Mt. Spokane

Mo, Ava and I went up to Mt. Spokane a little while ago with the Junior High Youth group, and had so much fun! Even though the only snow I touched was walking from the car to the lodge and back, our friends Josh and Audra kept me and Ava great company.

Eventually, Mo and Josh took Ava out sledding, here's a couple of pictures:

I have a better video that I'll post later, I accidentally did the wrong one, but I'll have to wait til I get to a different computer that's not so slow. *sigh* ya gotta love dial-up... ;)

A Lovely Christmas...

Christmas this year was definitely different from all the other years we've had-- It was every one's first time spending it here in Spokane, which makes it way more low-key than when we go to Seattle, and I actually got to spend Christmas Eve with Mo, since usually I'm in Seattle by that time and he can't leave until early Christmas morn (usually 4am!).

We started our morning with pumpkin Belgian waffles (sooo yummy!), then had a few gifts to open.

(Ava loved the doll she got from her Grandpa George & Grandma Anna!)

Then off to Dan & Cerissa's to celebrate with the whole fam. We read from the Bible, ate lots of great food, the kids danced to Grandpa's jazz music on the piano, and of course, more presents were opened.

Our last stop for the day was to my Mom & Dad's to spend the night there. We all watched Horton Hears a Who together in our new Christmas pajamas, and just enjoyed each other.

Our day was wonderful, and I hope yours was too!

Snowflakes...

Yesterday morning Mo, Ava and I were going out to the car to take Mo to work, and we were amazed by the snowflakes that were falling! It actually looked like we lived next to a cotton field, and we literally just blew the snow right off the car!

These are the best shots I could get, but don't they look like the snowflakes we all saw in the cartoons growing up?

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but the snow was actually "fluffy".

God is so amazing, if He makes each and every snowflake differently, how much more does He care about our lives!!

What a day!!

For those of you not from Spokane, let me just say these past couple days have been crazy!

It started snowing Wednesday morn (if I remember correctly), and didn't let up til Thurs evening. It was also dumping this (Fri) morning, but stopped after a couple hours. It's the most snow we've had in history in a 24 hour period!
Thurs morning, Mo was determined to go to work (& we didn't watch the news telling us to stay home unless it's an emergency!), so thank God it only takes us about 2 minutes to drive there, because he ended up walking --in knee-deep snow, might I add! There were only a few others there that live just across the street and one that drove in her big truck, so she was able to give him a ride home after a few hours.

Around 5, when the snow stopped falling, we all bundled up to go out and PLAY!

Some cars in the parking lot:

And this is Mo's normal ride to work (yeah, that thing's not going anywhere!):

The snow was knee-deep, and extremely powdery, which was kinda nice since it wasn't really wet.

I think this was Ava's absolute farvorite part of our time outside, Mo taking her to the top of this hill. Although, Ava referred to it as "Tall Mountain", because she has a Dora book and a movie that talk about Tall Mountain. Poor Mo ran up that steep hill with her I don't know how many times! Everytime they'd get to the top, Ava would yell "Hey 'erybody, LOOK! Taaaall Mountain!"

Then, of course, the ride down is a thrill!!

And finally, some pretty pictures from yesterday and this morning:

One of the things I LOVE about Spokane as opposed to Seattle is that when it snows here, the skies clear up and are blue again, while the snow still stays fresh and powdery.

Hope you all are enjoying your weather!

Yummy winter morning...

We started off this morning with delicious pumpkin/egg nog pancakes, then followed that up with crushing candy canes for some peppermint bark I needed to make for a cookie party I'm supposed to be attending tonight.

Ava had a blast crushing and pounding the candy canes, and to my surprise, she didn't even try to sneak any! Next came melting the chocolate chips in a homemade double-broiler --so far, so good:

While that's melting, we sip our chocolate milk, and I get a genius idea to pour a splash of chocolate milk in with the melting chips.

Anxiously waiting for the chocolate to melt. ...And waiting. ...And waiting. ...And waiting.

It's time for Ava's nap, so she goes down, while I try to figure out why the heck this chocolate isn't liquefying like it's always done in the past... --The chocolate has now been "melting" for about an hour and a half. I figure that maybe I tried to melt too much at once, so I take about 2/3 out. Still no luck! I've determined the culprit to be the chocolate milk.

The finished result:

Needless to say, I'm not going to the cookie-exchange tonight. Does anyone have any good ideas for these solidified clumps of chocolate that don't melt?? I can't just throw it all away!

On a brighter note, Ava woke from her nap to this:

Although the day didn't go quite like I had planned, I still enjoyed it because I got to spend some quality time with my girl.

I guess better luck next time with the peppermint bark.