The most solid party ever!

Every year I so look forward to Andy's work Cmas party. This year was no exception (you'll find out why this year was extra fantastic further down in the photos). We were at a lovely Mexican restaurant, the food was SOLID. That's Stewart's word that I dig. And that's Stewart there with his wife. A solid group indeed.

Stewart is one of the biggest fans of my blog so I wanted to make sure to feature him. I also wanted to use my wide-spread power with this oh-so-popular blog to help spread his word. How solid is that?!
Um,
no comment.










(I don't think that this would be considered solid. Not so much.)

An open bar and all the mojitos I want? Now *that* is solid!


















Stewart likes shiny boxes.


















Dan thought this red bag was "ta die foh!"
































Andy's boss, Paul, is in the middle. We won big at the party (tickets to go river rafting AND the grand prize of 160,000 airline miles. Yippeee! I think it'll end up being a big trip for just Andy and me instead of a smaller trip with the kids... Afterall, I really think it's important to give the grandparents a chance to have special bonding time with their grandchildren! So really us leaving the kids with the grandparents is our gift to them. Good times.) so we were feeling lots-o-love towards the Brandners!!















Sharing the love with Boss Wife too! Thank ya, thank ya. Happy Holidays indeed.

Everybody Rocks

Kindergarten rocks!














2nd Grade rocks too!!














Heck, even GRAMMAR rocks!!!

This picture was taken for my mom who was my middle school English teacher :) Asia's teacher asked me to create a bulletin board about grammar and here is the finished product. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you might be able to read the sentences. I went with a "rocks" theme so every sentence is about rocks. Rock on!

We heart Emma

So she's too cool to actually look at the camera (she's almost 13 afterall ;), but we don't care!

You know I care about you deeply when...

...I walk not one but TWO big dogs for you!!












Our dear neighbor friend has been sick so I've been trying to help her out a little and walking the dogs was something I could do for her. I am SO not a dog person, you have no idea. The truth is that these dogs walk me, not the other way around... Oh goodness.

It's raining, it's pouring...

9:30 a.m.












This is what the 9th wettest day in the Pacific Northwest looks like. Actually, at 9:30 a.m. it was the 9th wettest day but in the end it turned out to be the 2nd wettest day in the history of our area!

More of Greta

Don't get any ideas of more grandchildren! Babies like Greta are as close as she'll get to more grandchildren... They are sort of related, afterall. Greta is her son-in-law's brother's baby. Close enough.

My work holiday party

Andy finally got to meet Alayne, my boss/the owner of ParentMap. It was fun getting all dressed up and fancy!

A lovely evening...

It snowed (for about two minutes)!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... Mom/Gramma was here visiting and we went downtown to our local Winterfest festivities. We got to listen to kids from our school performing and while we stood there it started to snow! It was so, well, festive.

We love snow!

Gingerbread Lane

As a ParentMap employee I helped decorate a gingerbread house for Gingerbread Lane at a mall near us--it was a fundraiser for a great Children's Museum. ParentMap partnered with Treeswing (two ladies from Treeswing did most of the work on this) and Green Halloween.














These first pictures are examples of the very impressive competition!! LOTS of details and colors...

Hello, this one is three stories!!
















(this was done by professional chefs, thank you very much)


















A cool twist on gingerbread "houses"--these guys (the architects for the museum) did bird houses.

TA DA, here's ours!












Here's the deal. Ours isn't very colorful, right? That's b/c it is 100% (or maybe 99% is more accurate) organic! How cool is that? I love the mirror surface and check out the seaweed trees reflecting in that pond...
A closer-up view.












Believe it or not, we WON! There were four local celebrity judges and apparently we won "Best of the North West". To be honest, I haven't heard if everyone got some sort of a prize or if there were several catagories or what, but hey, we're pleased :)

This was a first for ParentMap, we've won lots of awards but this is the first award for a gingerbread house!

An evening with Kirk and Sharon

We love "Uncle" Kirk!



























And we love "Auntie" Sharon too. Asia and Sharon did a little light reading that evening... There were a lot of comments like "Mommy thinks he's yummy."

Good times :)

Serious gamers

The boys are so serious about their gaming!


















Star Wars Lego on the Wii, Ezra's favorite thing in the whole world.

The reader

After his bath the other night Ezra and Andy were reading books and Ezra ended up reading his first whole page from a Dr. Seuss book! He was SO excited and proud of himself. He loves reading and is doing so well at it, what an amazing milestone!!

Happy Everything

Now that's what I call being PC!

Hangin in Seattle

Andy and Asia went to see the Nutcracker together, they both loved it.




























The sets for the Seattle Ballet version of the Nutcracker were designed by Maurice Sendak, they are really cool!

















During the Nutcracker, Ezra and I had fun hanging out together doing random Seattle stuff like riding the monorail, going on the carousel at Westlake Center and hanging out at the Center House at Seattle Center.

We met back up with Andy and Asia at the huge fountain in Seattle Center. The kids had fun making sure to stay away from the spraying water!

















Such a cool fountain

Christmas is coming...

...time to decorate!











The kids love getting the tree out and the decorations up. Here's Ezra happily hanging his Darth Vader ornament.

Saisho to Saigo**

**That means "First and Last" as in first time and last time.

I remember screaming "Saisho to saigo!" over and over while I was in labor with Asia... While partaking in Black Friday really wasn't nearly as painful as that experience, it was rather painful in it's own way :)

My friend Michelle suggested a few months ago that we do the Black Friday thing and I figured since we didn't have any family in town this year it'd be the perfect time to see what all the hype is about so off we went at...

4:09 A.M.











(can't see the thermometer in this shot, but it said 29 degrees. Brrr.)
Here we are, tired, cold and giggly. Me, Ashley (she's a friend of Michelle's visiting from Hawaii) and Michelle. Tara joined us about 20 minutes later.

ToysRUs was our first destination, we stood in line for 45 minutes before they opened, the line went down and around and across...



















See all those people? I wonder when these first-in-liners got there?!

Oh, and surprise, surprise, we didn't even end up getting the one thing we went to ToysRUs for (they had Zunes for cheap and Michelle's husband was hoping for one...).

Then we headed to Kohls but walked right back out after seeing the line for the cash registers. The line literally wrapped around the entire interior of the store. ALL AROUND THE STORE.
No thanks.







Then we walked into Old Navy and again, crazy line. No thanks. Took this picture and walked back out.











Right before this we happened to be at Bath and Body Works right at the very moment it opened so we were first in line--and, well, the only ones in line :) and THAT was a fun shopping experience. Much more my speed. Some nice sales, relaxing, no lines.

Same deal at Pier 1 and Cost Plus World Market so we did end up scoring some good deals today without having to deal with long lines.

After hours and hours (see the last photo to find out exactly how many hours!) of random shopping and being shocked by the sight of long lines we were a tad bit loopy.

Here's me kissing Michelle under some mistletow at Target.







This photo is a bit blurry, but that's exactly how we all felt at this point!

3:17 P.M.

Remember the first picture with the departure time? Yeah, you do the math. It's embarassing.

We were all tired, but really we had a fun time together. Will I do it again? Nope.

Then again, that's what I said when Asia was being born and she *does* have a younger sibling... ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gobble Gobble!

We had the quietest Thanksgiving EVER! Just the four of us celebrating together. As much as we love our friends and family, it was a treat to have such a mellow day.

I said I was thankful for TIME, it was nice to have a day with nothing at all planned except for being together and, well eating.

Andy cooked up a fine turkey. Yum.













The annual "Cynthia loves meat" photo :)

Wii Time

I love this picture of Ezra and three of his buddies playing Star Wars on the Wii.

Weekend getaway

We spent the weekend with Andy's family in a nice little rental house on a random lake just north of Seattle. I hardly took any pictures this weekend, oops. Here's Asia being a wonderful big cousin babysitter to Day--enjoying the view out the window.




















We were basically on vacation in our old neighborhood which was really cool! We ate at the wonderful breakfast place right next to our old apartment, it was really nice being back there after several years.
We used to be such regular customers that we were in photos on the wall! We found a picture of me with the owner's wife and Ezra when he was about a week old. My, how he's grown!



Then we all went to the aquarium and the kids had fun being brave by touching the star fish and other sea creatures. Good times.

School Assembly

I love how the kids' school could be an ad for the United Colors of Benetton (is that even around anymore?!). In that way it reminds me of my childhood...

I went to the end of the first trimester school assembly. I managed to get both kids in this one shot, can you find their blonde heads?!



















Ez got an extra certificate from his teachers for being an extra good kid. Aww, he sure fooled them! Er, I mean, he sure is a good little schoolboy!!

Error Message

This is what you do when you get an error message on your new computer when you are married to a computer nerd who (gasp) doesn't answer his cell phone on your first try. You panic, take a digital picture so you can relay the info to computer nerd husband when he's available then you restart the computer and hope for the best.

How do people survive without computer nerds in their lives?!