I am the worst Christmas tree decorator in the WORLD!!! No joke! My Christmas trees have always been pathetic. All I've ever done is put Christmas balls on the tips of the branches, and scatter a few snowmen around (I had heard people say you were supposed to decorate a tree with a theme) and that's it. I've never even had a tree topper before, that's how bad I am.
Well, in a few weeks we are having a bunch of friends over for a Christmas party, and the thought of everybody seeing my eye-sore of a tree was motivation enough for me to do a little research. I typed in, "How do you decorate a Christmas tree..." and voila! So much information, I didn't know where to begin. For the past two days, I've been decorating, re-decorating, watching videos... and still don't have anything spectacular to ooh and aahhh about, but I did pick up some good tips! I didn't know you were supposed to put decorations deep inside your tree to create depth, didn't know you were supposed to use large over-sized ornaments, and never for the life of me could ever figure out how to put ribbon on our tree. Now I do. And I finally have a tree that is not anything special, but at least it's not embarrassing.
Not the greatest of pictures, but you get the idea...
The thing I love about it is that it's not so matchy matchy that I can't bring out my ornaments that have special memories. When Brad and I got married every year we would buy one ornament that symbolized a major event that took place in our lives that year. In fact if you look at the picture above, there is a white house in the middle of the tree; that symbolizes the year Brad and I built our first house in Cda. I also have pregnancy ornaments, baby ornaments, work ornaments, vacation ornaments... one of my favorite parts of unpacking all the Christmas decorations is taking a trip down memory lane and looking through all the ornaments that have brought so many fun memories to our family.
Madelyn is hilarious! She loves to take the ornaments on the bottom half of the tree off, then put them back on again. She makes up little songs about how fun it is to decorate the tree, today I even overheard her patting herself on the back, "This looks WONDERFUL!"
For the first time in our married lives Brad and I had our own Thanksgiving dinner at home. It wasn't planned that way. We had intended to go up to my parents, but Josiah got really sick, and we thought it would be best to stay home and let him heal up completely. At first I wasn't looking forward to it, okay, who am I kidding... I cried. Then, I talked to my grandma who said, she thought every family with school-aged children should start their own holiday family traditions. The more I thought about it, the more I was inspired. It would be fun to make lasting memories with the kids. So I enlisted their help too, see below. I also found a free 63 page Martha Stewart Thanksgiving cookbook online. So fun! Every single recipe I have tried from that cookbook to date, has been hands down awesome! I highly recommend it. We ended up having a friend that I grew up with come over which made it all the more fun.
Josiah's Thanksgiving hand-print napkin holder he made in Royal Rangers.
Reagan helped write everybody's names on their place cards.
Thanksgiving ended up being way better than I anticipated, and it reminded me of how much I have to be thankful for...especially my mama! Preparing a Thanksgiving meal is hard work! I was up until 2:30 the night before prepping stuff, and getting everything ready! Fun, but exhausting all at the same time.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
My poor neglected blog has gone by the wayside, much like my well intentioned scrapbooks. Never fear, I won't give up, I'll keep chipping away at them. It may just be every six months or so... =0) Our sweet little Maddy turned 3 back in August. I was too busy and unorganized to put together a birthday party, but since my dad was over here visiting my grandma we decided to throw a little family birthday party together. Super fun! Madelyn insisted on wearing her "princess". Which is kind of a shocker, considering just last year she threw a temper tantrum for a full 30 minutes,"NOOOOO!! I WEAR JEANS!!!!" when I tried to dress her up as a bride for Halloween.
My kids love going to Grandma's! Not only is she the best gift-giver, (always has been, when I was growing up Grandma's presents were always the most anticipated present to open), but she always has the cutest little gadgets. Take this blooming flower candle for example. Plop it in the middle of a very ho-hum ordinary chocolate cake that I made.
It twirled around and around singing the Happy Birthday song, and at the end, unfolded into this huge flower with a lit candle on every petal. And look how cute that boring old cake just became! The kids loved it!
Madelyn loving being center stage for once in her life! =0) What a little princess. I'll post more pics of her real birthday during nap time, but at least this is a start!
So I had a feeling our little Chloe would be an early mover... starting with when she was 5 days old and our pediatrician said, "You definitely don't want to leave this little munchkin alone on the bed, or any high surface. She's a strong one." Not only is she strong, but she's also left to fend for herself all too often, as I'm hurrying from place to place or busy with one of the other kids. So when she started rolling both ways at two months, I joked with Brad that if she started crawling or getting into things at an early age I was going to shove her back down. At the time I was more serious than joking! But yesterday when I put Chloe on the living room floor, and later turned to find her next to me in the kitchen, it was just as cute and just as exciting as it was with all the others. Thankfully, she's not "technically" crawling, (more of an army crawl), so she's not quite to the destroyer stage, and for that I'm thankful.
It's 2:30 in the afternoon and I'm sitting at our computer, enjoying the peace and quiet that comes from the mandatory "rest/nap" time in our house, when I get a phone call from Brad. Wait. Let me back up... The night before I noticed that my cute hubby had changed his facebook status to how excited he was to celebrate his 10 yr anniversary (2 days before our anniversary). I was pretty sure he remembered we were married on June 10th, not June 9th, but just in case he happened to space it, I left him a comment the next morning that ever so subtly hinted around that, "Yay, I'm excited to celebrate too...TOMORROW (hint,hint)!" I guess at that point I should have started becoming suspicious, but I didn't. Okay, back to the story...I get a phone call from Brad and he asks me what I'm doing. When I tell him I'm on the computer he says, "Perfect. Look under the keyboard." Curious I look under the keyboard to find an envelope that says, "Do not open until Wednesday, at 2:30pm. I rip it open and read... that I have exactly 30 minutes to pack a suitcase for an anniversary getaway and that a babysitter is on their way! Now I'm just keeping it real... my first thought was not, "YAY! Let's get outta here!" It was a little more along the lines of, "Crap. People are going to be living in our house for two days, and it's a mess!" I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the next 30 minutes were NOT spent packing. They were spent in a mild panic, scrubbing toilets, vacuuming, and grabbing a laundry basket and stuffing all the random toys, clothes and miscellaneous items laying around the house into it... then covering them with a blanket! Yes, I actually did that!
Thirty minutes later when I hear the sound of cars in our driveway, I peek out the window, hoping beyond hope that Brad did not ask some of my clean freak friends to come watch the kids. I see the top of a grey SUV, and don't recognize it. Oh man, this is not good. The door swings open, and out steps...my MOM!!! Heaven! She "gets" that with six kids under the age of 7, my house will have piles of laundry that need to be folded. She understand that my refrigerator was in desperate need of cleaning... a month ago. She doesn't care that my floor has sticky spots that I've been meaning to mop. Yay, Mom. In all reality, I actually shrieked, "YAY! MOM!!!!" and raced outside. It was the best surprise!
Once everybody made it inside I started rambling about where all the diapers were located, what the kids schedule was, but Brad had everything planned to a tee. He had even printed out a schedule of all the kids activities, and mapquested directions for them! Before long my parents were shooing us out of the house, and our journey began...
We started driving down the freeway, both excited about being virtually kidless (except for Chloe, which after having a house full of constant chaos, one kid is pretty much like having no kids). I kept trying to weasel information out of Brad, but he was not caving. As we started heading into downtown Seattle I said, "I know where we're going! Are we staying downtown?!" (For Pastor Appreciation last year our church gave us a crazy nice hotel package at the Westin for two nights, $100 gift card to Daniels Broiler, and each one of the kids got a $25 gift card to Target. The gift cards to Target were used as Christmas gifts, and the only thing we hadn't used yet was the hotel and the restaurant, which we had talked about saving for a special occasion.) Brad smiled and said, "Nope. We're catching a ferry." Now I was really stumped. He tried to throw me off by telling me we were going to go camping, but I knew with his great love for camping he would not have voluntarily used up his vacation days to "rough it" in the great outdoors.
Lucky for me I didn't have to wonder too long... twenty minutes later we pulled up in front of the Westin.
Liar! =0) Brad tried to ease his guilty conscience by saying he had to throw me off somehow, and that I was still in for a surprise. Boy, was I ever! He definitely had some major brownie points coming... He had called a friend of ours who used to raise funds for a professional athletes association, and I guess he must have some amazing connections, because we had killer hotel rooms before, but they upgraded us to just plain insane... for free.
There are two Westin Hotels the tallest circular tower is the one we stayed in. There are 47 floors, and the whole top floor is the Presidential Suite. We stayed on the 46th floor in the Imperial Suite... ummm yeah...it was almost as big as our house! Only a whole lot more than our mortgage payment, this was a whopping $2,200/night!!! Insane. But oh so fun!
The parlor
Wet bar
Dining room
Master Bathroom
Huge bathtub that for some reason had a glowing red light above it when you turned off the lights! I don't know if it was supposed to help "set the mood" or what, but all it did was make me laugh!
Can't have a toilet without a bidet!
The Westin signature bed, shower, towels, bathrobes and bathtub were all called "heavenly", and I have to agree... everything was, well...heavenly!
The heavenly bed! Seriously. I wish I could have taken it home with me! It was perfect. It felt like you just sank into coziness! Well, to be honest anything feels heavenly after sleeping in our own bed where massive craters have permanently formed on each side of the bed where we sleep.
There were six massive windows and an incredible view from every one...I went a little picture happy... here are just a few.
This is the view that we got to wake up to every morning. So beautiful.
I was trying to take a picture of downtown Seattle at night, but with the reflection of the window or maybe the camera settings, I ended up getting a ton of pictures just like this one. Pretty cool, but not exactly what I was looking for. The Space Needle is right in the middle of the picture (the really long smear!) =0)
I finally got a good one.
We unloaded our suitcases and just as we sat down, there was a knock on the door. In came room-service with a platter of food from our church staff...they know us well. Food is most definitely one of our love languages!
About a half an hour later we had another knock at our door. Brad had arranged for some of our good friends to come stay at the hotel and watch Chloe while we went out to dinner! So sweet! He had also called ahead to Daniels Broiler and made reservations. They had a spot right next to the fireplace overlooking the water reserved for us, and a welcoming committee to boot. Several of the staff came over and wished us a happy anniversary and after dinner a molten chocolate cake was on the house. Can't beat that!
After dinner we made our way back to the hotel. Our friends told us we came back way too early, and that we needed to go back out. Not one to argue, we hit the streets of Seattle! =0)
Here are a few more pics of our anniversary getaway...
Chloe was a perfect angel the whole trip. Barely even made a peep.
A happy little girl!
LOVE the flower arrangements at Pike Place! This is my anniversary bouquet that Brad let me pick out.
At our anniversary dinner, Brad surprised me yet again, and slipped me this little red box. I was feeling pretty horrible by this time. I hadn't even bought him a card! This time procrastinating majorly backfired on me!
My first real diamond necklace! He's a keeper.
I could bore you to death with all the details of things that I thought were super fun, but in all reality most people would think they were really very normal. Holding hands, going to cute little coffee shops, shopping, lounging around watching t.v., taking naps, eating out, talking... Things that most people take for granted, but something our family sometimes forgets to do with a house full of little kids. So, I'll spare you all the details, and just say, we had fun. Lots of fun. We have even made it a goal to find a babysitter every once in a while and have just a date night with the two of us. That way we can remember what each other look like, take the time to laugh with each other, and just talk.
Thank you to all the people who were in on the "secret", and/or helped in one way or another. Brad and I both said it's at the top of our list for favorite memories!
Not the greatest of pictures, but you get the idea...
The thing I love about it is that it's not so matchy matchy that I can't bring out my ornaments that have special memories. When Brad and I got married every year we would buy one ornament that symbolized a major event that took place in our lives that year. In fact if you look at the picture above, there is a white house in the middle of the tree; that symbolizes the year Brad and I built our first house in Cda. I also have pregnancy ornaments, baby ornaments, work ornaments, vacation ornaments... one of my favorite parts of unpacking all the Christmas decorations is taking a trip down memory lane and looking through all the ornaments that have brought so many fun memories to our family.
Madelyn is hilarious! She loves to take the ornaments on the bottom half of the tree off, then put them back on again. She makes up little songs about how fun it is to decorate the tree, today I even overheard her patting herself on the back, "This looks WONDERFUL!"
What a little cutie!
