More fun in the snow on Ezra's birthday

Off we went (minus my mom who has a cough/cold...) to play in the snow with friends from the neighborhood! When you live in an area that doesn't usually get much snow you aren't really well stocked with winter clothing... Asia and Ezra both have too-small snowsuits given by friends a few years ago. Andy wore several layers--with his Christmas fleece pjs as the top layer. A funny looking bunch! :)



















There's a thin layer of ice so Asia pretended she was eating an ice pizza...













Ezra had the best mode of transportation! Being pulled by Opa and Uncle Kevin.














Andy and I on the sled going down the (not actually closed) road. The kids were sliding down the steep hill next to the road on their butts!














Wheee! Andy and Asia (with her capri-style snowsuit!).














Mario has quite the form going down on his tummy!














Kevin and Theresa's turn.


















Andy's outfit was definitely the best--his big colorful stripy pjs and my polka-dot rain boots!














Dad's turn!














Then we all stopped at our house to sing happy birthday to Ezra and to have some brownies--outside the house so we didn't have to deal with all those wet neighbors! :) Lots of fun!

Happy Birthday, Ezra!

The boy is nuts about Pokemon so that's mostly what he got for his 7th birthday...


















The caption for this picture should be: You know you're a good reader when... you can read Opa's handwriting! :) Ezra was able to decipher *most* of what Opa had written on Ezra's birthday card!

Another snow day...

I got the kids a few rolls of huge paper from the printer and they spent tons of time making their own towns.

Round 2

I left the kids at home and joined some of the neighbors for round 2 of playing in the snow (b/c I don't get cold but the kids do--so I wanted to just have fun and not have to worry about whining, cold kids! Can ya blame me!?). Wheeee! The hilly road right by us was closed so we took advantage of it :)














Byung and Gabo sliding down the rocky hill--we got some good speed going!














One of our crazy friends from a neighborhood down the road from us had just driven down the road--nevermind the "road closed" signs and the people playing on the road!! ;) So then he figured him and his family might as well come join us. He got some good speed going down the hill on a snowboard thingie!

Snow Day #1

We got some pretty decent snow so I pulled the kids around our neighborhood and then we got a gang together and played outside. This is the only picture Ez is in b/c he lasted about 15 minutes then was miserable and headed inside where he could warm his feet (he has his daddy's genes when it comes to getting painfully cold really fast!).


















Meanwhile Asia thought she was at the beach and wanted to get buried in the snow!! Funny enough she got up after her friends piled the snow on her and said "I'm wet!" Uh huh.














Wheeeee!!!!














The boys piling on.














Asia and Olivia go for a ride



















Kelly with Yggam, the walking dog ;)














We decided to sand the roads b/c things were getting icy...

2008 Project for the staff

The assembly line (aka: other PTA moms) working on a fun little craft project for all 90 of the staff at our school!














Aren't they cute? Little snowmen take-out boxes filled with chocolate-covered Christmas tree shaped pretzels.


















All packed up and ready to deliver them to school. It was such fun bringing them--the staff were all so touched (and, I might add, impressed ;). Good thing we brought them when we did since today (the day after) is a snow day!!

Mystery Readers...

Uncle Kevin and Auntie Theresa flew in from California and we went straight to school so they could be Mystery Readers in Ezra's class. Everyone had fun (in fact, Kevin said he wondered who had more fun--him or the kids) and Ezra was sooo proud to have his uncle and aunt come to his classroom :)














Auntie Theresa's turn...

Lunch with Tina

A few of us ladies had lunch to celebrate Tina Orwall's landslide win (she's standing next to me). She is one of the State Representatives for our District and we helped her a bit with her campaign. We're so proud of her!! And we love having a friend like her in high places :)

Goofy times

For those of you who have always wanted to see Ezra's tonsils... We decided to see if the kids were too big to play "airplane"--where they lay on my feet and I stick my legs straight up in the air. I can still do it!














I kept worrying that I was going to crack one of her skinny little ribs! But they both enjoyed the flight without any incidents :)


















And then the goofyness continued... Asia put her knees in my Dutch slippers--um, how freaky does this look?! :) We were laughing so hard...

Is this sanitary?

There was still snow on the ground the morning after Asia made her little snowman. I found Asia out in the back yard eating snow off our little back yard table! Hmm.

Snow!

We don't get much snow so when it is snowing we get out there and enjoy it! A little pre-bed time snowman building, snowball fighting fun with some of the neighbors.














This rather pitiful snow/grass angel cracked me up! But this is how we like it--a little bit of the white stuff is plenty. Having lived in Michigan for six years turned me off of "real" winters where it snows for, oh, 11 months of the year!!


















Asia was very proud of her snowman.














Ezra was all business with the snowballs...

An afternoon in Tacoma

Our first stop was at Stanley and Seaforts for a Santa Brunch fundraiser for August's medical bills. It was an incredible success--675 people came for the brunch and a lot of money was raised! The true holiday spirit in action...














Then we went to The Dickens Festival nearby with Sol and Gabo (who were also at the brunch). Here are the kids all doing the craft at the ParentMap booth! It doesn't happen often that we go to an event where ParentMap has a booth but I'm not working it.














There was random Dickens-themed entertainment. Our group was fairly amused and entertained...

Neighborhood Ballerinas

Two of our neighbor girls were in a local production of The Nutcracker. Olivia and Bailey both did such a great job as a mouse and party girl (respectively). I think those nicknames could stick--especially Party Girl ;)

Metal Mouth Mama

Look at my new sparkly mouth!

Fred's first photoshoot

Asia set up a pretend office and posed Fred--a day in the cubicle. She was inspired by a favorite website around here: Cute Overload. The plan is to put some pictures of Fred on that site one of these days.














Fred checking the wall calendar before committing to that date...














Fred enjoys his downtime after a busy day at the office--reading with Asia :)

Cynthia's Work Holiday Party

The evening began with some pre-funking at our house. A few of my co-worker friends stopped over for a little while before we headed to Alayne's house for the holiday party.



















There was dancing at my work party too--but it was kinda, well, TOTALLY different from the dancing at Andy's work party! Hmm.

The wife of our main photographer does Brazillian dance and she just happened to have her getup in the car so we had an impromptu show. Oh my! Happy Holidays to one and all ;)














My boss, Alayne, with the tall guys--Adrian (his wife is one of my best friends, Tara, who also works for ParentMap!) and Andy (who Alayne likes to call Chris b/c apparently Andy reminds her of a boyfriend from back in the day...).

Andy's work Christmas party

It was fun like it always is! (Although this year we didn't win a trip to Europe like we did last year. Oh well :)

This is a picture of Andy's two Cynthia's. I'm referred to as "My Cynthia", the other one is "Work Cynthia". Us Cynthias were rocking it on the dance floor...













...Meanwhile Andy sat back and cracked up at his crazy dancing fool wife ;)


















Boss man Paul got in on the dance floor action too! What a good team player. After all, as they like to say at the office, "There is no 'i' in TEAM." ;) har.