Eleeyse's newest obsession....PUZZLES!!!! We got her some 25 piece ones and she was bored with them in a couple of days. So we got her several 50-63 piece ones. She has no problem putting them together even on the first try. Here she is with her first 3 that have 50 pieces. We have bought several since.

Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas 2008!

Eleeyse was very happy to pose under the tree with her full plate of cookies for Santa that we baked throughout the week.

I think her favorite Christmas movie that we watched was "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer." Besides Rudolph she really liked Bumble...the snow monster.

Eleeyse was very excited Christmas morning and woke us

up at 6:01. She was quite in awe that Santa ate all the cookies and drank all the milk we left for him!

After opening presents with Uncle Larry, we headed over to Auntie Diana and Uncle Kenny's house for the rest of the day. Don't you just love the picture of Eleeyse and Courtney? I sure do!

After Eleeyse got through opening about 1/4 of her gifts she proclaimed, "I'm all done."

We coaxed her back down and helped her get the rest of them opened. Once all the wrapings were gone her favorite thing was her new umbrella. She put her new purse over her arm, along with her camera and told us all, "I'm ready to go to church."

9.5 Inches of Snow

The snow started falling at 2pm on Saturday. There was a time overnight when the snow stopped but it started up again around 8am Sunday morning and kept at it all day long.

We all bundled up and ventured out yesterday. Eleeyse fell forward just as she stepped of the deck and did a face plant in the snow. She just stayed there, not moving and said, "I can't get up!" When I got her up she made a very nice "reverse" snow angel print.

Our local covey of quail came for a visit...that is until Bill scared them away! On accident...he thought they had all flown away already. Its neat to see all of their little prints all over the yard.

We took the quad down to the creek. With the weight of all the snow on all branches we couldn't get all the way to the bridge but we could peer between them all. Bill had gone out on saturday and found even more trees down. I think we have enough down firewood for a few more years.

A Christmas song to you from Eleeyse

Weekend Trip to Blaine, WA

We took the weekend and went to Blaine. We missed the ferry by four cars, but it actually turned out just fine. We ended up being the first car on the next ferry so we got a front row seat as the ferry went bouncing across the Sound. The windshield got sprayed a few times by the water coming on board.

We continued on our journey to Stanwood, which is north of Everett. We went to Warm Beach
where they have a huge Christmas light display to see. The advertise 1,200,000 lights... sounds about right!

Eleeyse got to ride a pony, and pet a goat, sheep and rabbit at the petting zoo.

If it weren't so wet, rainy and windy it would probably have been more fun and we could have stayed longer. We did have tickets for a play so we did get to go inside and warm up for an hour.

On to Blaine. It was very cold (in the high 20's) and windy (0 degress with the wind chill). Saturday we tried to venture out on foot around the resort but it was just too cold. We hopped in the car instead to do some exploring. We found this Bald Eagle nest pretty soon after we left. We found this neat Orca sculpture at a park right by the US/Canada border.

Sunday morning we got a very early wake up call. At around 4am the fire alarm went off. We were not told it was a false alarm till after we got all bundled up and carried Eleeyse down 4 flights of staris. Here is the Fire Truck outside the office looking down from our deck.

Reindeer Cookies!

Eleeyse and I made reindeer cookies today. Well I did more making and trying to keep two little hands out of the M&M's.

Our little artist!

This is a picture drawn by Eleeyse on Thanksgiving. She is 2 1/2.