Our Christmas

Our first night

stockings before Santa came

(first dusting of snow-I will post the good pics when I get them)

We had a new experience for Christmas this year. My mom and dad own a little property with a trailer in this place up at a lake in Washington. They just remodeled it this year by adding a huge covered deck, new living room area, and loft, it is so nice and cozy now so we decided it would be so much fun to spend Christmas up there this year. It started with me, my mom, and the girls leaving around 2pm on Friday with a truck full and a van full of stuff (you would have thought we were gonna be there for a month!). We stopped on the way up there to pick up our Christmas tree from this little private nursery that served us warm apple cider and let us pick our tree, dug it up for us, potted it, and loaded it in my moms truck so we could continue our short trip up to the lake. We picked a very cute Colorado blue spruce that my parents can plant on their property in the spring. We finally got there after dark and got what we needed for that night unloaded from the vehicles and left the rest for the next day. We got our fire started right away, ate some pizza for dinner, and went to bed. That night was sooo hot! My mom had that fire roaring all night long and we were sleeping on the hid-a-bed right next to it. The girls were sleeping up in the loft and must have woke up 3 or 4 times that night to come down and go potty, which meant one of us had to get up and help them down the ladder. Then Addy had a very restless night too, she woke up several times and spent about an hour rolling around in the bed with us. Needless to say it was not the best nights sleep I've ever had. The rest of our nights was much better, we got the fire figured out so it wasn't dreadfully hot and the kids seemed to do better sleeping the more comfortable they got. We spent one day cleaning up the place from being worked on and one day decorating the place and the tree for Christmas before Justin and my dad got there on Sunday. We had a lot of fun just us girls hangin out! We spent a lot of time playing games like Yahtzee, eating, talking, playing with the kids, and just enjoying the peacefulness of the woods. It was very relaxing and restful. Christmas morning the girls woke up to a humongous pile of gifts and full stockings. Justin's mom and dad came up and my little brother had stayed the night before. We all had breakfast together, Papa Steve read The Christmas Story (the real one), and then we opened gifts. It seemed like right after we were done opening our gifts God gave us a little gift of his own, SNOW! It started snowing pretty light at first but then just kept getting heavier and heavier. It was so neat, I don't remember a Christmas in Portland or Washington that it has snowed. The girls were so excited, they had been hoping for snow on Christmas day! As the snow kept coming down though my brother decided he had better leave before he got snowed in (My dad had just told us a story about the previous owner of their trailer getting snowed in for two weeks after coming up just to check on something!) So he packed up and got in his little Mazda and headed out with my dad and husband following him to make sure he got out okay. It is a lot of steep uphill switch backs to get to the top of the hill to get out of the property. Well he got up about 3 hills when he couldn't go any further, had to leave his car on the road, come back and take my moms Toyota Rav4 out so he could get to work the next day. This made Justin's parents decide they had better get going too because there was no indication the conditions were going to get any better. They chained up and made it out okay. We ended up having our ham dinner together and then going up a little higher and building a really big snowman in the foot of snow that had accumulated already! It was so beautiful and fun and the kids had such a great time! We stayed one more night and packed up, cleaned up, and headed out the next afternoon. The snow was still there and it was a very surrealistic drive home (until we hit amboy and all the snow was melting). We had a great Christmas enjoying family and time away from the city and work and the things that keep us so 'busy' most of the time. It was very refreshing and I was wishing we could stay longer! The kids go back to school next week so we will all be back to routine very soon. It's been a nice vacation but I think it will also be good to get back to routine. We are hoping to get a day of skiing in tomorrow and take Katrina with us to get her started! I'm keeping my fingers crossed, I'll post it on the blog if we do! Merry Christmas to anyone we didn't get to see or talk to, we love you and cherish you!