Christmas

Yet another christmas has come and gone. We had a great time this year (despite having colds) and really appreciated everyone coming to Seattle to join us in our new home. Moira had a great time seeing everyone, and after a little coaching was a real pro at opening presents. We feasted on both christmas eve and christmas and managed to squeeze in all the relatives. Moira couldn't hide her delight when it came to the party hats in the christmas crackers.

To top it off it even snowed on christmas. Luckily it was pretty warm so it didn't impede driving to terribly, but it was beautiful. It's always hard to get everyone together with such a large family and so many different things going on, but it's well worth the effort. I feel very fortunate to have met Nick and to be so warmly accepted into the family. Regardless of all of the differences it's a family full of love.

Kess manages to take a break from staring incessantly at the frisbee

Ross and Paul enjoy an afternoon cigar

Our big gift to Moira was a play kitchen, some assembly required was a bit of an understatement, but luckily we had lots of help.

Hmmm . . . maybe we should look at the directions

Our big day downtown

Well since Santa was a bust we decided to head downtown for some other christmas fun. First stop was the christmas carousel. This was a big hit with Moira who requested another ride after the first, and wanted to stay on longer but mom and I were both starting to feel sick from all the spinning. Moira got really excited every time she caught a glimpse of the carousel for the remainder of the day.

Next stop was the teddy bear room. This is in a fancy pants hotel in downtown, and it's pretty much what it sounds like. A room decorated up with lots of teddy bears. We were the only ones there at the time so we had a full on photo shoot. It was also a nice break from the pouring rain and cold outside. Everyone had lots of fun and I look forward to going again next year.

Pretty Funny . . .

My mom e-mailed me this link. It takes a little bit to load up, but it's worth the wait.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1425354485

Pretty cool . . .

The first thing that's pretty cool is that I managed to catch chaos. He had traveled to our old house again. After a week in the cold he seems to be a little more content to stay inside. Unfortunately he has a really bad ear infection, so it's off to the vet today. I'm not sure how long he's had the infection, but I would guess at least a week, as it's very swollen. Having suffered from ear infections my whole life I know just how painful these can be, and perhaps this is the cause of all of his wanderings.

The second thing that's pretty cool is the Bellevue Botanical garden in the winter. We had lots of fun there at various times in the summer, and were delighted by our trip last night. They put up Christmas lights to mimic the flowers, they're all LED and they are only on for 5hrs a night, so it's even fairly environmentally friendly. It's also free to go, which is always a plus! Moira was pretty excited by the whole thing and ran around at top speed squealing with delight at each new set of lights.



The third thing that's pretty cool is that Nick's Cousin Abbi has moved to Tacoma from Atlanta, and she came with last night. She got to meet Moira for the first time and escape the motel six she's been calling home for the evening. Luckily she gets her apartment today so she can start moving in.

Maybe next year santa . . .

Well mom convinced me to give pictures with santa a try. After one look at that jolly fat man, Moira declared no, no ,no and headed outta there. Despite trying to entice her with candies, she wasn't going anywhere near Santa. We all had a good laugh, and even though we don't have pictures with santa here's the rest of the christmas pictures to supplement what went out with the christmas cards.

Back online

Well as of yesterday we were once again able to get online. We've finished several projects around the house . . .

-Nick installed a dog door to the garage so we could keep the pets food and cat box out there. The only problem is that Moira also fits nicely through the door so we have to keep it closed all of the time. It gives us some incentive to finish unpacking the garage so it wont matter if she makes it in there.

-Nick, with a little help from Moira, finally managed to fix all of the leaks in the bathroom. This project had become much larger than it's initial appearance. The most frustrating part was knowing that we plan on remodeling the bathroom next year and all that work would just be removed, but we really needed a downstairs toilet and sink!

-We also got the front door painted and the new locks installed. This had become more pressing since Moira liked to play with the old key (it had an led light in it). She had wandered off with it a few times and it was always an adventure finding out where she'd left it. We got to use a gizmo at the store which used a green paint chip from the outside of the house to tell us what the best colors to use would be. It really only confirmed my choice which was purple, and convinced Nick I wasn't insane.

Our little wandering kitty has left us again. After spending five days in the house he dashed out the door sat. morning and failed to return. Hopefully he's headed back to the old house again. We plan to try one more time to convince him that this house isn't evil. If we find him Nick's going to set him up with a deluxe hidey hole in the garage and one in our bedroom. If this doesn't work we'll need to find him a new home, so if you have space for a kitty let us know.

Tons of other stuff has happened, but I'll just leave you with a little preview of some Christmas card cuteness . . .