Christmas Joy!

We were very blessed to spend some sweet time with both sides of the family this holiday season.  A couple of days before Thanksgiving we drove to Uncle Chris's house in Colfax, WA and spent the weekend with Charity's Mom (Grandma Johnson), Grandpa Bob, Matthew and Charity's two brothers and their families.  It was so fun for the kids to spend some time with cousins from Utah (where one of her brothers lives)  whom they don't get to see very much.  Here is a picture of Grandma, Grandpa, Matthew and (Charity's brother) Chris, (his wife) Brandi (their 2 girls) Brooke and Anne Marie.  I am not sure how much time the kids spent away from the Wii and the Pool table but I do know they had lots of fun.  Thanks for loving on us Everybody!!

 Here is a picture of Annecy and Kenya with thier cousin Maddie.  They sure are cute!

 

Merry Christmas!  I hope you all had as blessed a Christmas as our family did!  We were watching the weather on Snoqualime pass with hopes that it would stay clear over Christmas, so we could make the 4 hour trek to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Lynden.  We had snow a lot of the days previous to Christmas, so we were looking for our window to hit the highway and make it over the mountain.  We ended up finding that window on Christmas Eve Day and shot out of town before the forcast could change.  We spent Christmas Eve to the 28th camping out at Grandma and Grandpa's.  We went to some really cool Christmas light displays, ate way too many "Christmas treats, entertained by rematch after rematch of any card game we could find and ended with overnighters at cousins.  We are truly blessed to have such wonderful family members on both sides.

 

Grandma and Grandpa Scheffer got all of their grand kids (who are all about the age to need them)  a set of shower nessecities with deoderant and body spray.  They all loved them and were so excited to use them as soon as they could.

 Elijah on the other hand, did not have the tact the rest of the grandkids did and decided the middle of the living room was as good a place as any to improve on his hygene.

Every year Grandma and Grandpa take a picture of all of the Grandkids around the tree.  Every year the youngest grandchild (Elijah) thinks he is the only one in the picture.   Another tradition that has started with Grandma and Grandpa is that they purchase a beautiful bouquet of crazy socks for the grandkids to adorn.   Here is a view of the creative foot art.

We hope you all enjoy the rest of your family time until we all go back to crazy schedules, appointments and learning.  I know we will!

It has been another busy December getting church Christmas Programs, Parties and Caroling on the Calander, not to mention getting all of the regular shopping, cards, treats made and having a little family fun on the side.  We just finished up basketball season for the girls.  They did a great job and played hard.  Kenya just finished 3 performances of the play called "Amahl and the Night Visitors"  It was about the wisemen and shepherds that came to see Jesus.  It was an opera, so of course Kenya was overjoyed to participate in it, and we at home enjoyed her putting her very loud, high pitched choruses to practice somewhere besides the confines of our sound restrictive walls. She was one of the shepherds.

 

 

We try to spend time in the kitchen as a family every year making some kind of treat to distribute among our friends and loved ones.  This year I found the idea of covering 3 stacked marshmellows with white chocolate, to make a snow man.  Then using butterscotch and milk chocolate to add facial features and buttons.  As usual my children's creativity outwits my in the box thinking.  I love it when that happens!  They made such beautiful creations, despite my tendencies to squelch it.

It has really started to snow here, we have had about 6 inches and snow is predicted for the next 3 days.  The kids have already been out making piles of snow for a much anticipated snow fort!  I love playing in the snow with my family.  Pictures to come soon!  I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas season and are blessed as much as we are to know you are immensly love by a Great Big God and to be loved by so many people, who bless our sock off on a daily basis. 

We had a fun halloween, complete with trick or treating downtown at all of the stores (unless your a teenager whose too cool for that and you stay in the car) followed by a "Harvest Party" at church complete with crock pot soup potluck, game stations, pie eating contest and lots of candy. Here is how the dress up went down, Dad-Mohawk Punk Rocker, Mom- Baby, Isaiah-Soccer player, Annecy-Zebra, Kenya-Queen Esther, Elijah-Football player

 

 We grew our own little pumpkin patch this year and got 12 huge, waiting to be carved Jack-o-lanterns.  We had a few friends over and here is the end result.  Amazing!!!  Tadd and Isaiah (anti-slime guys) even gritted their teeth and cleaned out their own.

We took a trip to Dusty's Nursery, for a scavenger hunt through the corn maze, then a mix of crazy and cute pictures.

 

 We spent the Thanksgiving day serving lunch at the food bank. Then over to friends for dinner, But
we spent the day after Thanksgiving, sleeping in till lunch time and then waking up ready to deck the house with all the Christmas decorations we could muster.  We started the day off with Santa Claus pancakes, putting up the tree, all while never leaving the comfort of our cozy PJ's.

I love family, do nothing days!  Looking forward to more to come with the holidays around the corner.

The rest of vacation

I promised more vacation pictutes, so here is the last of them.

 

When we got to the condo, we had to do first things first!  Get swim suits on, fill the jet tub with bubbles and see how high you can get them.

 The thing about thrift shopping is that you don't always find a treasure, so you make the best of it by finding the weirdest thing and putting it on.

While hiking to a waterfall we found this hollow tree stump and the kids (of course) needed a picture in it.  We took a nice one and the one they really wanted to take.

 We finally got to the waterfall and it was so worth it.

 We got a chance to go to crater lake, the day before it snowed to much they did not recommend anyone going.

Right outside our condo every morning, deer would gather and wait to be feed.  The kids had so much fun feeding them out of their hands.

We had so much fun and can't wait a whole year to do it again. Did I mention I love my family!

I just found this post from July that I thought I had posted but apparently it was only a draft. Here's to belated posts  :)

Kenya was in the play "Annie" this month. They performed in an older thatre that had no air conditioning during a 104 degree hot streak. Her make up was mealting down her cheeks and she was miserably hot, but did great and had lots of fun non the less.

 

We got a chace to go to the Yakima Bears game with Elijah's cub scout troop, the package came complete with hot dogs and pop. It was also breast cancer awareness week so all the girls got pink t-shirts.

 Annecy can never figure out what she wants to do with her hair, we will twist extentions in it and after a week or two she wants then out (even though they last a couple of months) then she want to do something else with it because she hates brushing it out every morning.  She really wanted to straighten it but you have to use the really fancy straightners that heat up to 450 degrees.  So she worked so hard for a couple of weeks and made 37 dollars to buy her own straightner and ta da.  She is so cute no matter what her hair looks like, but I really think this do is one of my favorites.

Loving the summer and wishing it would never end, hope we can post some more pictures of our summer fun soon.

Vacations and what nots!

We just got home from the best vacation yet! We love our family!!! It is so nice to take time with just our family and remember how fun it is to just be together. We went to Southern Oregon and stayed in our Trendwest timeshares in Redmond and then a few days in Klamoth Falls. We hiked state parks, played lots of board games and Wii. Had "slumber parties" (which really just mean stay up way too late and every one gets to pick thier own candy) we also scavenged every thrift shop we could find, looking for cool treasures. (we love doing that) We found out the kids really like finding new spots to pose for pictures so I am really cutting down on the full spectrum of what we took, but here is a few.


Here are a few pictures of us hiking at Smith Rock State Park

 Isaiah loves to find cool spots to pose and then get Elijah to jump in with him.  Elijah got on the branch and then said he needed help getting down.  Isaiah wanted to show him how close he was to the ground so he gave him a small push and the next picture is what became of that.

 Every cranny in a rock had to be posed in, but it sure was cute.

 Elijah made money doing chores on vacation and purchase an adorable "Teddy Bear Hampster"  he loves snuggling with it and apparently it is very relaxing for the hampster as well.

 I think Isaiah got tired of posing with Elijah and just decided to discard him.

 Tadd and these three kids got to go to an old logging mill.  Unfortunatly Annecy was not quite done with her school, so she and mom stayed in the car to finish. I did not know I was the mother of so many strange posing kids.

 One of the reasons we go to Oregon for vacation is our favorite church is there.  They meet in thier amphitheatre in the summer and we happen to catch their last day outdoors.  It was very cool but so beautiful.

Well I think that may be all I can fit right now, but I will try to do a second vacation post soon with more pictures.  We should have some great ones of Isaiah and Annecy's soccer, as well as Elijah's football.  Kenya starts her new play soon called "Amahl and the night visitors" it is a Christmas play about the wisemen.  All of this should give us plenty to post about, not to mention our Harvest Party this week, the kids are still not sure what they are dressing up as, so it should be interesting.

I just got the last 2 years of our blog published into a book and was very convicted as to how thin the book was compared to the 2 years before that.  So I am so sorry I have been so bad at publishing lately.  We had a really busy May and all of the pictures were on my phone that did not transfer to my memory card but got stuck on my sim card.  So I have had to build up pictures and try to find some time to squeeze in blog time.  I am going to try to be better this month at posting.  Now I have to try to some up a lot of lost time, so here goes.

We have had a fun summer of visiting Tadd's family.  We spent a week with them in Levenworth to celebrate Tadd's Parents 50th wedding anniversary.  The kids had lots of fun playing in and outside the shops, as well as hanging out with cousins.

Annecy saved her money and bought a straightner hot enough to straighten her hair.  She loved it until she realized you have to get up and do it every morning.  It was really cute while it lasted though.

The kids have also been having fun serving with the chruch once a month at the local food bank in town. They do such a great job and we love having them help out.

 Kenya got made it for the play "Annie" this summer.  She had so much fun and did a great job as a homeless New Yorker and a Hooverite.  The only problem was the 2 weeks the play showed it was 104-107 degrees and the play was held in an old theatre with no air conditioning.  So for 7 performances she went on stage with make up melting and sweat pouring, but never missed a line or lost her smile...except here of course.  Great Job Kenya!

Our bunnies also had babies this summer and the kids have so much fun with them.  Their favorite thing to do is hold them cupped in their hands until they fall asleep (which takes all of about 20 seconds) then the take one hand off and say, " look, it's a dead bunny." Morbid I know, but they love it.

We got a chance to go to the Yakima Bears Baseball Game with Elijah's cubscout pack.  All of the girls got free Breast Cancer Bears T-shirts.  We had lots of fun even though thye lost!

We are getting geared up to start the school year and go on our family vacation in October.  So we will have lots of stuff to post and so stay tuned.

Fishing fun

Spring is on its way and the kids are enjoying seeing the sunshine more. They have been outside practicing their basketball and baseball, as well as a little bit of soccer. We took advantage of the great weather the other day and all went fishing. We didn't end up catching anything but we had fun none the less.

The girls have been taking a sewing class and they have really been getting busy making pillows, blankets and simple bags. I think they have sewn more in the last week than I have in my whole life, even though I had a wonderful mother who taught me to sew, play the piano and many other wonderful things I have left by the wayside, on the road of life. Sorry Mom!!

Never the less we are having fun and looking forward to many more projects to come.