Christmas Eve

Can you tell life is slowly coming back to a more "normal" pace, I'm posting 2 days in a row...woohoo!
We had an awesome Christmas Eve service at 5:00, we sang lots of Christmas carols and ended the services lighting candles and raising them high.  The amount of light all those candles illuminated was just awesome reminding us all to shine our lights high and bright!  We came home and had dinner and then opened some presents.  Uncle Dave joined in on the fun.
Mia hiding the pickle!  First one to find it opens the first present and hides it next year (Holly found it)

One of the best kept secrets.  You should have seen how Eric had this thing wrapped (or should I say his mom along with some helpful hints from him)  He even dug up an OLD picture of me with a teenie tiny fish I caught (about 18 years ago!)

This is what it looked like.  Thanks to Comcast we had a roaring fire and Christmas music playing in the background while paper was flying.  Can you tell what Mia got for Christmas?  Her face was all aglow the rest of the night.  :)  And a note of clarification, Joey did not receive a case of Corona for Christmas, it was the only box I could find to put his lamp in.
Yes, I did guy my husband a camera for Christmas. (yes, Dad, it's a Canon!)  :)  However, he did ask for one.  Every good fisherman needs a camera handy at all times.

These little guys (Zhu Zhu pets if you haven't already heard of them!)  did not disappoint.  They're awesome and worth all the hype!  (okay, maybe not worth ALL the hype, but so fun none the less, I think our real live guinea pigs may feel a little threatened.)

Lucas spent a lonnnnnng time setting up his new nightstand just the way he wanted it and was a little disappointed when we reminded him it still needed to be moved downstairs to his room. To cute!

Uncle Dave came with his wooden shoe slippers so we just had to have a picture.  :)

Fall is in full swing over here.

Everyone is playing soccer this fall! Lots of fun and it also means lots of time out at the fields. L, T and J have been waiting patiently for their turn to be on a team and this year it finally happened. Can't wait to see what happens, they've got great coaches and a fun little team!

Mia's already had her first field trip of the year. We headed out to Padilla Bay in Anacortes. We all learned a lot of new things about the estuaries in our area and even were able to take some of the creatures we found back to the center to check them out under the microscope.

And yes, I was made fun of (and, yes, I'm used to that!)for taking photos of these huge things (this is a a sea slug I think) They just looked really cool through the microscope, projected onto the overhead.

Holly and Mia are in their second week of the new season. This is the face of Holly at half time running to us for more water.

And this is the face of Holly on the field during the game! :)

We had a little birthday party for Nate tonight to finish off the weekend.

And if you ask nicely I may post the picture of what made all these kiddos laugh so hard. :)

Palm Sunday - Now & Then

Holly singing away

Tyler in the bottom right hand corner
Joey (minus the dance moves!)

(Lucas didn't want to sing so he sat this one out)

The boys were baptised on Palm Sunday 3 years ago. Mia sang with the pre-schoolers, Eric was holding Lucas, Grandpa VH was holding Tyler and Grandpa R was holding Joey. It was a great day!

Sunday Afternoon

No Stroller?!? Not sure we're ready for that!

A couple of our favorite visitors...Uncle Dave and Butch.