Simpsons in Seattle

When it's rain rain rain all the time, it's exhausting thinking of new fun places for the girls to let out their energy. Good thing these girls LOVE dumplings and noodles and have tons of fun at the library. Saturday afternoon plans - done! Gimme some food, mama! oooh, new flap book at the Library! Reading time

Every night during December, the city of Bellevue hosts a fun little event called 'snowflake lane' where they play Christmas music and dance in the streets...and of course snow! Evie loved the dancers and Nora enjoyed the snowflakes in the air swirling around her.

I have fond memories of going to watch the Nutcracker at Christmas time and have been looking forward to when I can take my girls to watch with me. After Evie sat through Frozen on Ice so well, we figured she's old enough to sit through a ballet. We invited our pal Blakely and her mom Lauren to go with us, and we made it a girls trip. The little tykes did amazingly well! We got there early enough to grab booster seats for the two of them, and also splurged a bit on nicer seats to make sure they could see the dancers. They asked some questions throughout (like, what are those rats?) but for the most part watched quietly. Towards the end, Evie fell asleep but not before enthralled by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her sparkly dress.  I can't wait to do it again next year!  Pretending to be a ballerina. Palsy walsy. These two are the cutest! Mommy daughter picture Waiting for the show to start!

This tired pup will fall asleep anywhere, even at Costco! I'm getting sleeeeeepy.... Her head kept bonking forward and hitting the handlebar so I had to give her a makeshift pillow.

Good speller!

We've been living in the PNW for (gasp!) 8 years now and have never gone to cut down our own Christmas tree. Since this past weekend had beautiful, dry, sunny (but cold) weather, we decided to finally try it out and headed over to Trinity Tree Farm.  If you've never gone to cut your own tree, let me tell you - it is surprisingly hard to agree on the perfect tree! We walked up and down the aisles, searching for the one that's just the right height (taller than Daddy!), not too fat but not too thin, isn't crooked, and doesn't have many bald spots. You'd think it would be easy but it's not. That's okay though, it was a beautiful day and we had fun stomping around among the trees.  All bundled up! See anything you like, Nora? We found "our" tree! Daddy's strong enough to cut down the tree! And, here's the final product! Pretty nice, huh? It was a fun day but I think we might just stick to Home Depot next year!

We had a wonderful Turkey Day! I'll post more on other shenanigans that weekend, but Thanksgiving itself was an uneventful, nice day. We were lucky enough to have Grammie and Grandpa spend the holiday with us which means guaranteed yummy food and lots of giggling with the girls. I didn't get a good picture of the Turkey dinner itself but here's some pics from the day: Nora's selfie Grammie's homemade apple pie! Doesn't it look deeeeelish? This was the first time I've ever seen Evie fall asleep in a random spot! Scott's homemade hot buttered rum clears your sinus quick.

This was all because she get ice cream!

Whoever ran the numbers on adding car-carts to the grocery stores is a genius. My guess is that it was a boy who thought of it.

My parents and I left at 5am to catch an early ferry to Orcas island. It was a chilly 25 degrees. The pre-fab house is going up fast now, 3 walls were put up in the ~2 hours we were watching. I can't wait for a lot of friends and family entertaining with that view...and I can't wait for them to rip down more trees! Living room window Basement Facing west to Vancouver island Ian, fork lift! Back doors

Fall is finally here. Last weekend while may worked I took the girls to the mall and a couple nearby walks. At the mall there are climbing structures that the kids love. It wore Nora out! Cookie disaster on the floor after dinner. The wolves were fast to feast on the spoils.

Every toddler needs a spaghetti video. Here's Nora's:

We surprised Evie with ticketes to Frozen on Ice today. She didn't understand the concept of a show really so Scott was trying to explain actors and actresses. Good thing Evie didn't pick up on it because she was enthralled by the show and was SO excited when the princesses came out. She exclaimed "I've never seen a real princess in person before!!" and pretty much shouted "ELSA! It's ELSA!!!!" for everyone around us to hear. It was so adorable - I can't wait to see her reaction if we go to Disneyland.  Both girls couldn't tear their eyes away from the show. There's Kristoff, Anna and Sven. Let it GO!!! Grand finale with all the princesses. For the last 15 minutes or so, she sat on my lap and was a happy camper!

Since Evie likes to write and color, of course Nora wants to write and color too! Most of the time we give her a pencil that hasn't been sharpened yet so she can pretend to write. Sometimes (like at restaurants!) she gets crayons and gets really happy about being able to write. Here she is at Rainforest Cafe, coloring her menu. Hard to work I wasn't able to capture it on video, but she started to stab the paper and make lots of dots. She thought it was the funnest thing ever! It reminded me so much of when Evie was close to this same age and did the same thing. Here's a video from 2 years ago - don't they look so alike?

Evie's been going to swim for about 1.5 years now and while she's down to only one floatie, she's still pretty uncoordinated in the water and a bit fearful of "swimming" by herself even though she knows how to blow bubbles, do scoops with her arms and do ballet kicks. She even likes to jump off the diving board so we know she can do it, it's just a matter of her confidence. Well, we went to Evie E's birthday swim party at the Y last weekend and guess what? Evie surprised us all by wiggling around like a little fish! She wanted to wear floaties but I'm really glad I made her go without. After splashing around and getting comfortable, she was swimming around like it was no big deal, and without any of our prompting. I'm so proud of her! Here's a short video - she's in a little blue suit and goes around the pole.

I'm late on my Halloween post but I couldn't not share the wonderful time we had in SF that weekend!  We flew into Oakland nice and early on Halloween, ready for the trick-or-treat bonanza that Way, Kevin and Ian had been promising us. Evie couldn't wait to put on her costume and show it off to everyone. Who can blame her? I'd want to wear a puffy, glittery dress if I could get away with it. At about 5pm, we stepped out all decked out for a night of fun! We were the first ones out trick or treating in Way's neighborhood so got to pick the cream of the crop from all the candy piles. Police escort for the her royal highness. Our fearless dragon. or maybe lizard?  Going around Ian's neighborhood was just prep for the real thing though. At about 5;30, we headed over to Ian's Nana and Papa's to take part in the festivities at their house. Their neighborhood really gets into the holiday - the streets are blocked off to cars and all the ho