Christmas at the Himes' homestead

I'm going to write very little in this post and let the pictures do the talking. I think they do a better job anyway! :) We spent our 2 week Christmas vacation in Oregon, with lots of people, but mainly our immediate family members. This picture set was taken on a variety of days spent at Brant's house.

Adalie is super excited that we are all together again!Brant loved being the train conductor with an old train set from his childhood.It wouldn't be Christmas without sugar cookies!Maddie having fun with some sleigh bells.Cousin love. (Adalie was out shopping when this picture was taken).We went on a late night Shari's run on Christmas Eve-eve. Don't ask why; ask why not? Merry Christmas! Its not terribly early, so we're pretty happy!Grandpa Doug with sweet Zoie, ready for a fun-filled morning!
Grandma Marty made this beautiful apron for Maddie. She loved it but, surprise surprise, was too busy to pose for a picture. :)She was also given a super cool flashlight - her new favorite fascination: "light."Mmm...things must be winding down... (either that, or Maddie has lost interest).
Enough said. :) Thanks for all the special Christmas memories, everyone!

Special Christmas in Eugene

My family traveled down to Eugene to see all of my grandparents while we were in town. Actually, only part of my family traveled down; Justin had to work, and Ellie came down with a bad case of the stomach flu, which in turn kept my Mom at home to take care of her, allowing my sister to come to Eugene with me, Brant, Dad and Maddie.

It was a short visit, but well worth it. We enjoyed a wonderful meal at my Grammy and Pop-pop's house, and my Grandma was able to be with us as well. Normally, when we go down to Eugene for Christmas, we are there with about 30 other relatives, which is great fun, but I really enjoyed the sit-down meal we had together and the chance to connect and have lengthy conversations together. I love all of my grandparents so much and wish I could see each of them more frequently.After dinner, Maddie charmed her great-grandparents with all sorts of fun tricks and games, including peek-a-boo!This one was the biggest hit. She would throw her blanket over her head (well, I would), and then she would turn and walk right for Pop-pop, who would grab her up and tickle her. She thought it was a hoot - so did we! She played this game consistently for about 20 minutes. We finally had to stop the game because she started missing her aim for Pop-pop, and walking into pieces of furniture! Oops.
This picture was taken after my Grandma had already gone home. Thanks for hosting such a special evening, Grammy and Pop-pop!

All dolled up

It has become a wonderful Himes' women tradition to go to the Nutcracker every other year, when one of "younger Himes' women" turns 6. We all get dolled up, put on our fancy shoes and head out to the ballet to enjoy this magical evening together.

Aunt Jackie with Kylia (6) and Adalie (8). Both girls were very excited for our festive evening!
Almost all of the Himes' women; Amber was on her way when this picture was taken.
Grandma bought the girls beautiful tiaras before the show. They felt like true princesses!
Me and April, waiting for the show to begin.Amber, me and April, happy to be continuing on with this tradition!
I'm excited to go again in 2 years, when Zoie can join us!

6 glorious years is something to celebrate!

We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary this past weekend, and had a grand time! Our actual anniversary was on Friday, which was a fairly typical day for us (I mentioned this in a previous post). I came home to a beautiful surprise, and very unexpected, as we were not going to be doing anything out of the ordinary that day - we were saving it all for our Disneyland trip the following day. These roses still look this great, even after 5 days. Nothing better than my favorite flowers, in my favorite color, from my favorite guy!
We woke up bright and early on Saturday in order to get to the park at a decent time and have a good start. We were walking down Main street by 9:15, ready to take on the fun! We headed over to Tomorrowland, where we parked our stroller and got in line for Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters ride. The ride was entertaining and we enjoyed ourselves. As we turned the corner toward the stroller parking area, we both silently noticed our stroller wasn't around. Without saying a word, we both looked around the area, desperately trying to find the stroller, as anxiety crept in that it had been stolen. The most important point in this story is that this very thing happened to the Himes' family back in 2002 when we came to Disneyland over New Year's; the stroller was stolen. We could not believe it!! We are very careful to take everything out of our stroller with us (ever since the incident in '02), and we have our name written on the stroller. Over the course of the next 40 minutes, we spoke with some employees about the situation, were given a rental stroller from the park, Brant filed a claim for our stroller and Maddie and I stayed put where our stroller had been taken. I had been on the phone with my sister during the peak of my frustration, ranting and raving about what a bad turn our day had taken as Brant returned from filing his claim. I hang up the phone, he fills me in on the information from the claim, and just as we turn to leave the area, a confused and fearful looking family walks up...with our stroller...!! Yes, they had mistakenly taken the wrong stroller. We all breathed a sigh of relief, apologies were offered, forgiveness was given and we all went our separate ways with only an hour set-back to our days.

I've done enough talking for a bit, I'll let the pictures tell more of the story. :) We enjoyed Its a Small World, in all its holiday glory!
Happy in the warm weather! :)Holiday magic, Disney-style.
We had a marvelous dinner over in California Adventures Park. It was calm, not crowded and Maddie had plenty of entertainment to keep her happy, with the live ducks swimming in the water next to her and the huge face of Mickey Mouse smiling at her from the ferris wheel! The red button on Brant's shirt says, "Happy Anniversary!" All day long, whenever a cast member passed us, no matter what they were doing, they wished us a happy anniversary. It was awesome. :)
Our new favorite family photo!Maddie enjoyed practicing her mad-jumping-skills while waiting in line for the ferris wheel. She was pretty animated, alert and happy, for only taking a 30 minute nap and being up way past her bed time!How cute are they?!Around 8:30, we decided to leave California Adventures and head back over to Disneyland for some more holiday fun, and of course some night time magical pictures!
I think this ice-castle is the prettiest thing I've ever seen. It is absolutely enchanting and hard not to keep staring at it. Beautiful!
Happy Anniversary to us! We had such an unbelievably fun day, despite how it got started. We got home around midnight, went to bed and woke the next morning to find ourselves making the crazy (but awesome) decision to go back for round 2!! That's right. We packed our lunch and headed out the door for a few more hours at the park. We hosted a Christmas party that evening at our house, so we only stayed at the park for about 4 hours, which was just the right amount of time to get our fix in. We had to, you know, because we will be away for several weeks and won't be back to Disneyland for about a month! Somehow, I think we will manage.

Christmas craft revealed

Okay, the wait is over. I have been busily working on our family advent calender for the past month and it is practically done. Whew! It has been quite the labor of love, it makes me tired just thinking about it! I took these pictures quickly before I left for work this morning and the location of the tree on the wall is in a bad place for me to get directly in front of it for a good picture. I think you can still see it okay, though.

The idea came to me when I was desperately searching for a craft to do for Christmas. I have a lot of free time while at work, when both of the kids are napping, and I was bit by the craft bug! This was the perfect thing for me. I started by sketching out all of my ideas for each of the pockets you see on the tree. Each pocket is 3 inches by 4 inches in size, with the tree measuring just under 5 feet (including the star and trunk)! Wohoo!

After I sketched out my ideas, I started the task of creating and cutting out little designs for the pockets out of felt. I glued each piece on to the pockets with felt glue, which worked wonderfully. Next, I cut out the tree and pinned the pockets onto the tree in the order we wanted them in. I found a fabric pencil to lightly sketch my numbers onto the tree, and individually stitched each number onto the tree. After I added the numbers, I stitched the pockets into place. Did I forget to mention that I do not own a sewing machine? As I said in the beginning, this was a true labor of love. :)

Unfortunately, (or fortunately), I am a serious perfectionist. I found several numbers and pockets that were not straight enough for me. Knowing I was going to be living with this on my wall for years and years to come, I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't fix the "imperfections," so I took apart about 10 numbers and 15 pockets and repositioned them in the right places.

I did what is called a "blanket stitch" to sew the front and back of the tree together, the star and also the trunk. This took an incredible amount of patience, as it was tedious and annoying at times, but I accomplished it! This helped give the tree a nice finished look, especially without a sewing machine to help me out.

The only thing I have left to do is come up with an appropriate "counter" to mark each of the passing days. For the time being (since we just put it up yesterday and are leaving town this week), we are using a red ball-point pen. :) We have all sorts of ideas for the coming years, but this will do just fine for now.

I am very proud of my advent tree and hope it will be a treasured heirloom for years to come. For all of you living in Portland, I will be packing it into my suitcase so I can show you when we see you - I have to show it off a little bit. ;)

Still here!

To my faithful blog readers, I apologize for my severe absence as of late. I've been incredibly preoccupied with a Christmas craft and it has been consuming all of my time. I promise to post pictures of it within the next few days. Which brings me to the other reason I have been so lame with posting lately. I don't know if you recall, but my camera broke about 4 weeks ago, leaving me with nothing to take pictures with for several weeks before we were able to get a new one.

Additionally, I have not neglected the fact that today is our 6th wedding anniversary!! We can hardly believe it has been 6 years. That's really "getting up there!" We had a nice day, complete with me going to work and Brant turning in his final term paper to close off the quarter. :) My sweetie didn't forget that it was a special day and gave me a beautiful bouquet of red roses (my favorite!). We spent our evening frosting sugar cookies for a Christmas party we are hosting on Sunday evening, and watching a movie. Simple and sweet. :) We will be continuing our celebration tomorrow, when we head off to our Happiest Place on Earth!! We haven't been in 4 weeks, which is the longest we have been away since we first got our annual passes (go ahead, make your comments, we're not ashamed). We are ready to celebrate our love, our marriage, our family and Brant's completion of his first quarter in the PhD program!

Next week we will close things up around here and head up to Portland for 2 wonderful, fun-filled weeks with family and friends. We are excited to see so many of you, and only wish we could see all of you. Just so you know, the weather down here is fiiiiine, and anytime you need a break from the seasonal weather you all are having elsewhere, give us a call and come for a visit!

Anyway, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to let you know I'm still here. Keep a look out for many more posts in the coming days!

A little friendly family competition never hurt anyone...

Two families.

Two teams.

One game.

Beavers = Jackie's family. Ducks = Brant's family.

As devoted children, we want to be sure our daughter is favored by both sets of grandparents. And so, we wait. Will the Beavers take the victory in tomorrow's civil war football game? Or will the Ducks take the win? Maddie is playing it safe and staying neutral. :)