Our resident Storm Trooper playing the Nintendo DS

That's one relaxed Storm Trooper!

Sharing the love...

...with the teachers.

I volunteered us neighborhood moms to do a "Thank you for all you do. From the PTA" holiday crafty thing for all (ALL) the teachers at school. It only took us about two hours to pump out 96 reindeer rootbeer bottles.

Working hard...












Festive, eh?!






























The finished products--rootbeer bottles decorated to look like Rudolph.

Super Exciting Carousel Ride

Okay, so it actually was so *not* exciting. There was a grumpy old man working that day and he had the thing going so slowly that the pictures weren't even blurry! Yeah, this was taken by another mom, Michelle, while we were moving. Good times.

Gingerbread Man Day!

Today was Gingerbread Man Day in kindergarten!

Everyone got a turn putting candy on him...











The finished product, ready for the oven.














All the kindergarten classes got to make their own gingerbread man but then after they'd put it in the oven it ran away! The excitement!! He left a note on the oven door and after a few clues the kids found out that they wouldn't find him til the next day.

That next day the principal happened to see the Gingerbread Man running around and he managed to catch him. Phew! Wow, was that exciting.

Pretty sunrise

The view of the sky was so pretty from our kitchen window this morning!

Happy 1st Birthday, Michael!

The birthday boy, Michael (our neighbor)

















Woo hoo!
















We're not sure who had more fun at the bouncy house place--the adults or the kids. (this is where Ezra's birthday party is going to be in a few weeks)
Yee haw!!!!













Whazzuup?!













See, there really were kids there too! Michael's dad tried to get a picture of all the moms and kids. We think this looks like a life raft full of women and children, as if we left our husbands to die on a sinking ship or something...

Asia and her girlfriends hangin'

Craftyness for my friend

I've been eager to post these pictures but wanted to wait til my friend got this in the mail. Now that she's gotten it I can share with the world.

A dear friend of mine who lives near Calgary, Alberta, has been having some tough stuff in her life so I wanted to send her something that she could keep around as a reminder that she is loved.

Here's the front of the box "card"













The first inside page



























The whole thing pulls out like an accordian. You can click on the photo to make it bigger so you can see more of the details.

I was pretty proud of my craftyness on this one! And it made my friend cry, so that means it was a successful project :)

Lego party

Ezra said he wants every birthday party for the rest of his life to be Star Wars themed but since I did that last year and since I like to mix things up, I pulled rank (as the event planner/mom) and we're going with a Lego theme for his 6th birthday party.

His favorite things in life are Star Wars + Lego + Wii so I figure we're good going with one of the three. And I have an inkling that he just might get some Star Wars Lego sets for his birthday. Just guessing since I helped someone pick some out for a birthday gift for him... ;)

Check out the invitations! I'm quite proud of myself if I may brag a little. I thought using actual Lego for the invitation would be rather cute and effective. Not to mention these are the big Lego blocks that A & E have quit playing with, so what a good way to start getting rid of them! Creative recycling, don't ya think?

Babysitting practice

We had two of our little neighbor friends over for the evening, Asia got to practice her future babysitting skills... Gabo kept wanting her to throw him on the big bean bag again and again. Lots-o-giggles.

Buddies.

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.