Whoopee cushions, Flarp Blasters, and Harmonicas...

"For, tomorrow, I know all the Who girls and boys
Will wake bright and early. They'll rush for their toys!
And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!"
                                                                        The Grinch

Really though, Christmas was a lot of fun. We learned once again that about half way through the opening of gifts the kids are happy and that they find more joy in the small gifts than the big-uns. We had a pizza birthday party for Christmas dinner and game night with Aunt S. and a friend from daddy's work (Shayne knows how to throw pizza crusts...I was impressed).    

Movie of the week: Guardians of the Galaxy. (good suggestion Aunt S.)
Easiest Food of the week: Jimmy Mac's for date night for Mommy and Daddy. 

Have at the following pictures...And Happy New Year!

 Daddy's favorite gift....

Millie has a new cabbage patch baby...

 Zachery used his Spider-man web shooter pretty early...

Red saber and green saber...very fitting for their personalities and for Christmas.

A Flarp Blaster?..Like a semi-auto whoopee cushion...Don't ask...She wanted one.
 

The mighty bowman takes aim with his Nerf bow. He is actually pretty good. Scary! We are keeping the real one out of reach for a little bit.

 Christmas cookies...

The princesses in their new dresses from Grandma M...
 

Some of the pictures we didn't get from this week were from the "Snowball fight" with marshmallows (our home teachers gave us the instructions) and the Nerf gun battle. I think both ended in some water works from the kids. I am also afraid the action scenes and carnage would be a little too intense to show on this family blog.  

The Dance of the Sugar Fairy

At the Church Christmas party on Friday night there was a variety show and an hour before the party began daddy conned Lon (one of our HTers) and Shayne (a good friend from work) into putting on an impromptu dance performance. Practice lasted a total of about 2 minutes and the verbal choreography was planned a few minutes before the curtains went up...We apologize to people of real talent everywhere for what followed...

Other events this week:

•  Aunt S. and Grandma M. are visiting for a few days. Grandma flies back home to AK on Christmas Eve it is sounding like and Aunt S. is hanging with us till around the 1st. 

• Kids are out of school for their 2 week break. Wish us luck with our sanity. They were deathly ill this last week+ so we pray their little germs are all dead now. The angel of death passed by Mommy and Daddy's room this time (thank the heavens and knock on wood because that doesn't happen often). 
•  Daddy took another trip to Oregon this last week and was stuck in traffic for 2 hours on the way home because of a wreck that occurred in the torrential rains. I am so grateful that I can ride my bike to work.
• There was a Ferrari 458 parked in our next-door neighbors driveway on Tuesday...Merry Christmas to someone! I am not a car buff but I can identify money rolling around when I see it and here in town you spot some spendy wheels on a regular basis. Not in our drive way though. The mighty Kia is still going strong.

Shayne and The Gang at the party.

Merry Christmas to someone!

11 days till Christmas...

This is our Christmas card this year...or as close to sending them out as we are going to get. If you have not seen it yet watch the video below and make this Christmas meaningful.

What else this week...Lets see:

• Marshall man is pretty sickly and we are trying to quarantine him to keep everyone else healthy...we will see if that helps at all. Wish us luck...
• Mommy and I went to the ESI party on Thursday night. Bowling first and then the Japanese steakhouse for dinner was a lot of fun. For the white elephant exchange I received a Chia Uncle Si. 
• Daddy made a trip to Oregon this week and saw one of the brightest rainbows of his life (after being outside in one of the wettest days he has ever experienced).

Madison's self portrait

Food of the week: Spiced Nuts (Mommy is baking them tonight...wow, they're addictive)
Movie of the week: Nova's "The Illusion of Time." it got some things wrong if you ask me (but I'm no physicist).. if you want to warp your mind a bit it's worth seeing...

Time is flying...

 Birthday and tree...check...

We went to the Museum of Flight in Seattle this week. On the 1st Thursday of each month it is open for free and it was a surprisingly light crowd to begin with. We have been meaning to go for months. I figured that the kids would get tired pretty quick as most museums are geared for a more mature audience but they really had some great exhibits that were kid friendly. Cockpits you can climb into, VR hang gliders, and lots of buttons to push at kid level that do things in the exhibits. In the space exhibit you can pilot shuttle landing, and climb all over a real Skylab prototype, and do a VR space walk.  

Daddy had the best score on lunar lander for the day but Mommy was a better hang-glider pilot. Daddy really liked the B-17 exhibit and seeing the original 1916 Boeing barn. Mommy liked seeing the photos and stories of the women of the WWII era working on the production floor.   

Band of bubble busters...

 Thanks Uncle N and Aunt A for the package. The kids even loved the packaging...the little weirdos went crazy popping the bubble wrap after eating the sausage and apple jelly. The girls wore their flower clips in their hair today for church.

Workin' on a crazy idea with the kids...

Mommy told Madison we were going to ride a ferry this week and she thought we meant a real "fairy". I don't think she was too disappointed though because the trip with our friends from Bremerton to Seattle was a lot of fun. None of the photos turned out but the city lights were really fun to see and it was a warm night on the water.

We went to a Nativity program in Maple Valley tonight and really enjoyed the music, activities, and the dress up photo booth. All the cookies were gone thought so mommy told Millie she would make it up to her tomorrow. We will post the picture once they load it online.

Kettel Corn

8 oz Popcorn
1/4 oil
1.5 tea popcorn salt
1/4 cup sugar
10 packets splenda

add oil, heat, pot 2 kernels, add remainder of corn, wait till 1 corn pops, and sugar mixture, shake the crap out of it, almost burn hands, remove from heat when popping slows down, enjoy.

The coloring book...

  HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Our untraditionally traditional Thanksgiving meal actually was turkey this year. Usually we don't eat turkey because, to Mommy's frustration Daddy sometimes just likes to be weird (we were very close to going out for Chinese food this year which Mommy was OK with...) but work bought fresh turkeys for all the employees as a surprise and we had an over abundance of "free" bird in the freezer from Freed Myers.

We received a package from amazon a week or so ago and they did a lousy job of boxing it up. Marshall could see a drawing of Yoda and a light saber inside and he got all excited that it was a gift for him. We had to tell him it was a coloring book to cool his jets.On Thanksgiving day we asked him if he wanted his birthday coloring book so he could work on it during the break from school. I could tell he was a bit disappointed when he said "Sure...". I have never seen him so excited though when we brought it out. The boy played this video game for hours and was sore because it makes him wave a light saber around like a wild man. Even Mommy and Daddy play it and it really is fun.

 We visited a neighbor in the hospital on black Friday and the girls found a fish tank with Nemo in it....It actually had almost all the same fish as was in the dentists office tank in the movie including the puffer fish...

Had a surprise on Saturday morning...

 The rain turned to snow and everything wet froze solid. Sunday morning we couldn't open the van doors but we didn't know that because all day the kids broke out the winter gear and played in the back yard.

Eleanore finally took her first steps...

Food of the week: Too many things to mention...but Daddy's kettle corn on the outside burner ranked pretty high for the family.
Movie of the week: The Giver (Mommy and Daddy give it 3 stars), Earnest Saves Christmas, (our goofy kids loved it), and An American Tail (Millie loves singing the start to the Somewhere Out There song now).
Book of the week: Mommy and Daddy stayed up really late one night and read Darth Paper Strikes Back: An Origami Yoda Book by Tom Angleberger.