merry christmas from our family!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

We are 4 school days away from Christmas break.  Both boys have Christmas performances on Wednesday, and parties on Friday.

My dad flies into Oregon tomorrow afternoon, and we are excited to have him here.

We have weekend plans for a quick trip to Portland to see the lights and enjoy some holiday music, then an early Christmas celebration with the Muhly's before they fly away to Hawaii on Christmas Eve.

Both boys, but Ben especially, are very excited for Santa's arrival next week.  Ben can barely stand the anticipation.  I suspect if he had gifts under the tree they'd be unwrapped by now.  Owen has learned some great Christmas songs on the piano and we have been enjoying listening to him perfect them.

They have been opening their advent calendars each morning- Owen is using his traditional Playmobile set, and Ben has a new one this year from the Rice's- a Star Wars Lego advent calendar.  Probably more weaponry than traditionally used for the holiday, but he loves it.

Richard and Owen put the lights up outside yesterday, and thanks to several days home due to a snow storm, the house and tree are up and decorated.

Hope you have a wonderful holiday season! Highlights from our year are contained in the previous posts.

snow days!

Well, I appear to have caught up, thanks to an assist by Mother Nature and a touch of a cold.  We had a pleasant surprise on Friday morning- 9 inches of snow and cancelled school.

Richard has taken the boys out for sledding and playing in the snow.  Apparently the slide is very fast when frozen.

School has already been cancelled for tomorrow, since its stayed below freezing all weekend.  It should warm up later this week, and be back to regular Corvallis rain.

Since we've been home bound, we got the Christmas tree up and decorated, the boys made their gingerbread house, and Richard and I have been online ordering Christmas gifts.

I'm sorry this year has been in fast forward, with all the blogging done in the past couple of weeks.  I will try to keep up better next year!!!  Happy to at least have the pictures and what I remember of the stories out for this year, just in time for Christmas cards and New Years!

thanksgiving

The boys celebrated Grandparents Day at Zion the day before Thanksgiving, with our neighbors the Bentley's standing in as grand-neighbors.  The boys did some songs in the Wednesday morning service, and then Owen had Ruth and neighbor Owen in his class for the morning.

That night the Rices drove down from Washington to spend the long weekend with us.  The boys all had a blast- with Owen and Henry picking right up from a year ago, and Ben adopting Jackson as his friend.  We took them to "Frozen" to get out of the house while Richard prepared a truly amazing Thanksgiving feast.  On Friday, we drove up to the Evergreen Aviation Museum and enjoyed looking at the rocket and plane exhibits, then concluded at the water park.  Ben was tall enough for the water slides this year and he and Richard went on each of them together.

It was fun to see how much Kate had grown, and she warmed up to us after a little bit.  All the boys share a love of legos, electronics, and Star Wars, and burned a bunch of energy running around the house.

november fun

Not much to caption on these pictures, other than I think the last one will make a great cover shot for Ben's first hip-hop album.   And to note that he's a wee-bit obsessed with Angry Birds and Angry Birds Star Wars.

happy movember!

fall

 For Halloween, the boys decided to be Ninjas.  Ben is a blue Ninjago, Owen is just a generic Red Ninja.  They both loved playing in their costumes, and picking out their Ninja weapons at the dollar store.  And the biggest win was that no one got hurt.

Ben's class went to get pumpkins at the local farm, and then we went as a family.  Both times we enjoyed the tractor ride. Ben got to drive the tractor with Richard.  I was 1/4 of Abba, with my friend Russa.  We went trick or treating on Halloween, first at HP, then at downtown.  That was enough for Ben, but Owen and I went around our neighborhood with Laurel.

In non-Halloween events, the boys went with Richard to a Lego show in Portland and had a blast with the large models and events.  We had some nice weather in October and went up bald hill one afternoon with the tress were still changing.

germany!

My "year of weddings" concluded with a 8 day blow out- my cousin Mallorie's wedding in Germany.  Susie, Dad and I flew out to celebrate her wedding to Fred Seiffert, in Munich, Germany, where she has been living for the past several years.

She planned an entire week's itinerary for her friends and family who were visiting.  The three of us connected with Uncle Curt and Aunt Linda, cousin Chris, and the rest of Mal's aunts and uncles.  We saw a lot of Munich, did a bus tour to Neuschwanstein Castle, and had lunch on top of a mountain in the Alps.  Mal and Fred reserved a table for us at Octoberfest, and we brought appropriate garb for an afternoon of beer and singing.

The wedding location was on Lake Chiemsee.  First they had a official German wedding in a courthouse, on an island, on the lake.  We got there and back by a rented ferry boat, with a cruise after the ceremony around the lake.  The next day was the more American version of a wedding, a beautiful ceremony followed by a long and very entertaining reception / dance party.

We had a wonderful week in Germany and loved meeting Fred's family and getting to spend some quality time together and with Mallorie's family and friends.  It's an experience we won't ever forget.

anniversary weekend

We rented a house in Waldport for a weekend through the Zion auction, and decided to use it for our anniversary weekend trip.  We enjoyed some sun and the ocean views- especially the views from the enclosed hot tub.  Richard decided he was going to jump into the ocean at sunset.  The tide was really low so he had to walk a long ways to get wet enough.  We all played on the sand, founds rocks and shells and jelly fish on the shore.  Made for a fun and memorable 13th anniversary!

back to school

Owen started 3rd grade this year, in Mrs. McNamer's class at Zion.  He's with the same kids that he's been with since kindergarten, a close knit group of ten.  He still is very close to Sophie, which whom he shares an interest in space and rockets, and Isaac, which whom he shares an interest in being silly.  Third grade has proven to be a good year for Owen- he has been working very hard and acing his spelling tests and his timed math quizzes and loving science.

Ben started pre-K in Mrs. Swanson's class.  His close friend Sterling is in his class, and they have been playing with Oliver and occasionally some of the girls.  One of the girls he may or may not be engaged to, depending on the day. Ben's loving learning how to read and all the activities in his class.  Ben played AYSO U-5 soccer this year, which was 30 minutes of skills practice and 30 min of mini games.  He had varying interest in it and varying level of participation, but mostly it was a positive experience.  He is continuing soccer weekly at school.