The Rest of Christmas Day

Christmas morning, full of smiles, also took us on a trip to the ER with Elizabeth. When the hustle bustle was finally over and we were sitting down to eat breakfast, Elizabeth didn't want to eat and started complaining about her throat hurting. Grandma took a look at her throat and she had large white puss pocket on her tonsils... Awesome... especially since the dr office was closed and so was every walk-in clinic. Luckily Josh was at work and one of the ER drs. agreed to take a quick look at her. So, I drove her down to Josh's hospital and turns out she had a double ear infection and some kind of infection in her throat. The dr wrote a script and we headed back home.
Then, about 2pm all my family showed up from Ellensburg! We had a blast! Tons of people in the house, more presents from Grandma and Grandpa Peacock! What a crazy day!

Christmas Morning

Oh, Christmas Morning! I think my favorite part of Christmas was opening my eyes and hearing, "Santa Came! He really came!! Look he ate our cookies! And he drank the milk! And look he brought us presents!" It was so fun to listen from bed and hear how excited they were!
So here are some random pictures of Christmas morning. Jorgan was pretty overwhelmed so I paid most of my attention to him as he was opening every piece of candy in sight and trying to lift and carry presents around. I was really proud of the girls being so patient and waiting their turn to open presents.








I think the ultimate present came last of all. Both sets of grandparents helped us buy a trampoline for the kids. They were so excited and spent much of the next 2 days begging us to go outside and play. Unfortunately it has been raining and now snowing since Sunday night. Hopefully it lets up soon so the kids can spend some more time out there!


Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas Eve

I think we have created a new Christmas Eve Tradition! Prime Rib for Dinner!! I've been experimenting with cooking different foods lately. Trying new recipes and new flavors. So for Christmas Eve Dinner I decided to try a Prime Rib Roast. Luckily the butcher at the grocery store told us when the Roasts were going to go on Sale and even gave us suggestions for cooking time. I found a a recipe online for Blackened Cajun Prime Rib that tasted wonderful! We all enjoyed it... except for the fact that it tool longer to cook than planned so dinner was an hour late and the men were getting quite grumpy!
After dinner we bathed the kids... and while in the bathtub Santa dropped off his traditional pajamas! It was fun to watch the kids get a chance to open a present Christmas Eve. Then we performed our Christmas play one more time, read "Twas The Night Before Christmas" and the kids shouted "Hooray" when we finally told them it was time for bed.
What a beautiful day!

Getting Ready for Christmas

I decided that for the whole month of December I would devote all of our Christmas lessons to learning about the Birth of Jesus Christ. I think it was successful because Rachel definitely knows all about when Jesus was born... she never fails to correct us if we say something wrong! So, to prepare for Christmas we practiced a Christmas play. I found a little poem about the birth of Christ online, added primary songs where they fit and the kids put on this little production. I had originally planned on Elizabeth memorizing all her parts and the kids being able to sing the songs on their own... but I had a cold that would not go away for the 2 weeks before Christmas. We still did our play and the kids had a great time, we used the primary songbook CD to help with the songs, since I had lost my voice and couldn't help, and I whispered the words to Elizabeth's parts in her ear. It was really fun to have them practice the play and especially fun to help them learn some new songs. For a couple of the songs I made up hand gestures and Jorgan did those instead of singing. He was pretty cute!


Josh's parents have a recording of the play. If I get it from them, then I will post it too! Until then just enjoy the pictures! This is Rachel and Jacob as Mary and Joseph, then below is Jorgan as an angel, or shepherd, or mostly just wandering child!

Mom! Come Look! I'm Decorating!

This has been Elizabeth's favorite past time lately. Maybe it's because we were just decorating for Christmas. But she'll get out several boxes of toys and line them up all over the fireplace, TV stand, window sill... everywhere. When she's finished she has us come an look at her artistry! She's so fun to have around!

"To Infinity and Beyond!"

This is the kid's new favorite game. They drive their cars/trucks across the fireplace and then sail them through the air screaming "To Infinity and Beyond!" It's really cute to watch them! I love it when the find something fun to do together that doesn't involve fighting!

A Sick Little Man

This week Jorgan has been a bit under the weather. Not quite sure what the problem was, but for several days we couldn't get him to eat much, I had to coerce him into eating ice cream, and he was really grumpy which is completely not like him. One night after he had hardly eaten anything all day and after not napping at all he wouldn't go to sleep at bed time. After letting him cry in bed for about 10 minutes, which he never does either, we got him up figuring he must be starving. The poor little guy was really shaky and just sobbing. We were finally able to get him to take a bite of cheese and then before we knew it he was shoving down everything we gave him. Once he got started we couldn't stop him! This is him taking his first few bites of cheese. It was so cute because he was sobbing and chewing at the same time and he wouldn't let go of me.


Once he was pretty full of cheese, bananas, and milk, he was ready to play. Here he is enjoying his mommy and daddy alone time, walking on the counter and getting into cupboards he usually can't reach. What a cutie!

Putting up the Christmas Tree

We had originally planned on cutting down a tree this year. My dad had a left over tree tag from last year, and they just bought a fake tree this year, so we were going to use the tag and go cut down a tree! Fun, right! Well, except we couldn't figure out when we would have time to actually go cut one... so up with the old fake tree. Next year we are totally making time to cut a tree because at Costco they had fresh pine wreaths and they smelled so good!!!
Anyways, here we are putting up our Christmas decorations!








The next 2 days were spent trying to keep the kids from undecorating and redecorating the tree over and over again. But, alas by the end of the week we have finally gotten over the newness of the tree and it is not being constantly redecorated! Yah! Maybe this week I'll be brave enough to put some presents under the tree... and then maybe not!

Thanksgiving with Grandma and Grandpa Peacock

I didn't really get any specific shots of Thanksgiving. These are just random shots of what we did for 3 days at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

On Wednesday I was in the kitchen making a pie and Jorgan, bless his heart, was just trying to be helpful. Except that really he was tearing out the pages of my recipe book. So thankfully, Aunt Kyla took him over to the book shelf, grabbed a book, and sat down with him so that he could turn the pages. She couldn't find any little kid books, so she grabbed the next best thing, "Ripley's Believe it or Not". He enjoyed the pictures, but it was grossing Elizabeth out. After a few pages she told Aunt Kyla, "It's time to close this book now... I can't look at it any more!" It was so funny!


Here's Jorgan sitting on Grandpa's lap during dinner. I think that he was unhappy about sitting in the high chair and not being up at the table with everyone else because he was being a stinker. He wouldn't eat anything, and was just dumping his eggnog on his head. So Josh cleaned him up and got him down, then he went over and sat with Grandpa. He was fine after that!


Rachel wasn't too big a fan of Thanksgiving dinner either. We don't have Turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes much... she kept getting down from the table and getting into stuff. I told her that if she would stay in her seat and be nice I would let her eat as many rolls as she wanted. And she did! Then she decided to try Pumpkin Pie... she didn't eat that either!


Here we are driving home. As you can see there is green in the background! Yah!! No more snow at home and it was in the mid 40's! Never thought I'd be so glad to see the temperature gauge say 44!


Elizabeth was funny during this vacation because she wanted to be in charge of Daddy's cell phone the whole time. She took good care of it and even left it in a safe spot before going to bed! (After searching we found it in a dresser drawer) So since daddy was taking a picture of her, she had to take a picture of him!

Ellensburg Snow

When we got to Ellensburg it was much colder than we could have ever realized. The temperature stayed between -8 and about 20 degrees the entire time we were there! The kids loved the snow though... I couldn't believe how much they wanted to play outside!
So here are pictures of them playing in the snow at Grandma and Grandpa's house.




















This was so funny! After watching Josh shovel the sidewalk, Rachel decided to take a turn. Except that she wasn't strong enough to control the shovel. She would pick it up and then you'd hear, "whoa.. whoa..." as she was falling over and spinning around trying to gain control. I was laughing so hard!






And of course this is Jorgan at 3pm after not sleeping at all in the car and then tromping around in the snow all afternoon. Josh said he laid him on the bed, gave him his blanket, and he was gone! So cute!

Our first snow

When we chose to move to Seattle, we knew that it was possible to get some snow. We didn't, however, know that it was possible to get 3 inches of snow before Thanksgiving!
This is a picture of the first snow that started last Sunday.


This is a picture of what our house lookied like on Tuesday morning right before we were leaving to head to my parent's house.


We were a little bit nervous because we have to drive over Snoqualmie pass to get to Ellensburg and Monday night there had been closures and accidents because of all the snow. Monday night I braved the snow with all 3 kids to get a set of snow chains and got stuck in the snow at a traffic light! Luckily a nice man gave us a little push and we made it home. Heavenly Father must have known how bad I needed a vacation because Tuesday morning the pass was open, still lots of snow and ice, but no chain requirements. It was a bit slower than normal but we made it there and back without any problems! Yah for vacation!

The Sunshine Girl

I think it is Elizabeth that is missing the sun and the warmth the most. Every day for school she begs me to let her wear a skirt. It's just too cold! I can't send her off to school knowing that she'll be freezing, so I never let her wear them. Sometimes after school she'll come home and change into a skirt and that seems to keep her satisfied. Until Saturday when Elizabeth and I were going to go on a date... She already had a skirt on, but I told her that she needed to have pants on if we were going to go on a date. It was like 30 degrees outside! So after a long discussion about why she had to wear pants, she came out of her room like this!


Josh and I were laughing so hard! Maybe I should have let her wear that! But I guess sometimes I forget that it doesn't really matter what other people think. I did make her take it off.
We had a great date though! We had dinner at Applebee's, then we went jeans shopping. It was really fun to get to talk with just Elizabeth. She was able to tell me about her friends at school and play tic tac toe with my undivided attention. She was so sweet the whole time! I really love her sweet-fun personality. I hope I can always show her how much I love her!