Christmas happenings....

We usually get our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, but since Amanda wasn't home from college yet, I promised her we'd wait until the next weekend (when she was home). SO, on the way home from the airport we stopped to get our tree. There are lots of U-Cut Christmas Tree farms around here, but it was raining (more like pouring) and we didn't necessarily want to wade through the mud and then kneel (or lay down) on the ground to cut it down. So, yet again, we broke a tradition and went to a tree lot with already cut trees. The guys at the lot even tied it to the top of our car, which I thought was very nice of them.


Amanda's favorite ornament.

Sam's favorite ornaments.

All decorated and the customary photo taken.

Every year during the Christmas season we talk about taking a little day trip to Leavenworth, which is a Bavarian village, but we never have done it. This year, we decided to go. It's about a 3 hour drive and we have to go over a couple mountain passes to get there, so the weather has to be just right (with no major snow on the road) to go. It was totally worth the drive though. The Christmas lights are so pretty and the shops are lots of fun to look through. There's always alot of snow and there are little hills in town to sled down. Although we didn't take our sleds with us, we had fun watching the little kids go down the sled runs, laughing and giggling all the way down.

Crazy girls!

Pre-Thanksgiving snow!

We've had the craziest week! Sunday night it started to snow.....enough to cause school to be delayed 2 hours on Monday morning. It snowed all day Monday, but didn't build up much on the roads. After I got home from work, Sam and I headed for the grocery store to get some last minute food items for Thanksgiving. When we went into the store, the snow was starting to come down faster and it was starting to stick a little. When we came out (45 min later) the parking lot was completely white, the roads were snow packed and hard to get any traction going. By the next morning Western WA had anywhere from 6 - 10 inches of snow! This is the first time since 1985 that Western Washington has seen this much snow before Thanksgiving. After not getting any snow last year and hardly any the year before, this is has been so much fun! School was canceled both Tuesday and Wednesday, so this has turned out to be a very relaxing week. (Our school district boundries cover 215 square miles and has lots of backroads and hills, which makes it very difficult for the buses to get around.)

Sam had a great time sledding down the drive-way.

Sam's white snow pants and the snow covering her coat makes her almost blend in with the snow.

Halloween

Halloween was really low-key for us this year. Sadly, we didn't even carve pumpkins. I didn't think much of it, but now that Halloween is over, I feel like we were "robbed" of a holiday. Well....there's always next year.

Sam went to a Halloween Party at her friends house a week ago and had alot of fun. She decided a long time ago that she wanted to be Peter Pan, so she had it all planned out and she looked really cute.