Christmas in Spokane - Part One

 This is Part One of my Christmas post about our AWESOME Christmas in Spokane Washington.  We haven't gotten together with the Smith family for Christmas for 15 years!  It was time.  My sister, Kelly, and her family live in Spokane, so we bought tickets back in October to go for Christmas.  My parents came and my brother and his daughter came too.  It was so great!

 We went sledding the last day we were in Spokane after all the other family had gone home.  It snowed the night before so it was a perfect day for sledding!

 It took a few hours for all of us to find clothes for playin' in the snow...

 we thought we had come prepared!  But no.  We ended up borrowing some essentials from Kelly's friend (thank you Lexie!)

 This was Sophie's third time playing in snow, and again, I found her eating it up.  We had to remind her about the yellow stuff.

 Even Crew came in his car seat.  (Crew, can I have your eyelashes??)

 Matt probably made the most runs...even if it meant pulling cousins uphill afterwards.

 This is Matt after he and I hit some powder and inhaled and swallowed all kinds of snow.

 Matt and Uncle Jordan had a bit of a snow fight at the end of our sledding...I remember snow wash days at recess.   YUCK.

But they liked it so its all good.

count down to this...

6 more days...Pierens here we come!!  Love these kiddos! 

Monday!!  Spokane!! Sadie, Norah, Jude, Crew!!  YUM!!

Most Excellent Christmas Sweaters

 LOVE Christmas sweaters.  AWESOME!

 So festive :)

This is for sure Steve's color.  Love him.

Amber...I may need to borrow that one next year...SA WEET.

We met up for dinner wearing the BEST Christmas sweaters ever.  Dinner and a movie...so fun.

caramel apples

 ...with peanut butter cups of course.

YUM.

Advent Activity Calendar

 I don't want to miss any Christmas family traditions so last year we started an "Activity Advent Calendar."  It really helped me keep track of all of the activities that we wanted to fit in.  In each of these little pockets, I put an activity we will do that day.

Today, the kids will pull this out of day number one..."Start an Advent Calendar."  Usually I forget to get these until I am at Trader Joe's and it is the middle of the month and they are handing these out for free.  LAME.  But because it is in the Activity Calendar, we are on time!!  And I only had to pay .99 cents each.

Time to Decorate!

So fun! I love decorating the tree. Christmas music comes on, hot chocolate and cookies...woo hoo!!
I used to want to have a color scheme or theme for the tree. But now, I love putting up all of the kids' homemade ornaments; the ones they made at church or school are my favorites!!
So the decorations on our tree have nothing to do with one another, except they all bring back memories which I love.





This one wasn't homemade...got it on our 17th anniversary trip to San Diego last year...I love it!
The kids love the colored lights. We had a little fun with them before putting them up in the windows.

Merry Christmas!!

Getting the Christmas Tree

On our way to pick out a tree, we had to help Sophie with her school assignment of picking 4 of her community favorite places to visit and photograph. First we stopped at the park (took picture with another camera). Then we went to the beach. On our third (and final) stop, Sophie was disappointed we didn't get her a hamburger (no time).
She wasn't happy.
She perked up when we got to Home Depot though. The girls decided to do a little photo shoot while Matt stayed in the van to rest his back (he has a back muscle spasm he got from wrestling).

We got a cute tree, but it has, as Steve puts it, scoliosis. I like to think of it as a Dr. Seuss tree. I love Christmas!!