Getting In the Christmas Spirit

We went on our annual tree cutting trip the weekend after Thanksgiving.  I think this year might be my favorite!

Look how beautiful it was!  No one is even wearing a winter coat?!

All I need is a little shipping tape and some postage

The beautiful pointesetta tree at work

Macy dressed up for her Christmas Concert.  Nothing like a bunch of 4 year olds singing Away In A Manger to get you in the spirit.  It was so sweet.

Morgan is enjoying Tenor Sax.  She had her first concert of the year this week and did great.  She also had a piano piece.  She had a piano recital today too, but I haven't downloaded the pics yet.

Happy Thanksgiving from Michigan

 We spent Thanksgiving up north at the cabin. We were outside most of Thursday tossing the football and soaking up the sun.  When we woke up in the morning on Friday, there was a foot of snow on the ground!  We took our family pics for our Christmas card so I included those here too.

The girls weren't real happy about wearing hats and coats on a 60 degree day.  The lengths one goes to for a good Christmas card photo;)

Definitely needed those hats the next day!

On our way up, we stopped by and picked up Grammy to take her out to lunch.  We stopped by Avant Garden to pick up some flowers (for an arrangement I wanted to make for Thanksgiving) and Morgan fell in love with all of the photo-opps.  Here are a couple of her favs...

Here is the (kind of odd) arrangement.  It is inside a head of cabbage.  Turned out ok, but I loved that it was homemade.

I used a pie plate and upside down bowl as a "vase".  Up north, you work with what you've got;)

We spent the morning making Oreo Turkeys ...

So ugly, they're cute!

Trick or Treat

I'm not exactly sure what you would call Morgan - a goth punk rocker maybe?  Our neighbors were blown away - they didn't ever recognize her - so out of character for her - hee hee.  Brooke was a bee - very fitting considering we call her "B" - lol.  And Macy was Buzz from Toy Story.

Our Jack-o-lanterns on the front porch

Updates Galore....

You know it's been too long since you've posted when you can't remember the log-in information - OMG!  I've been meaning to post pics for the last 6 weeks and just haven't found the time.  Soooo, these go back a ways.  Thank YOU Beth and Ashley for a great weekend.  It was so nice to catch-up with some dedicated adult time:)

More fall....

I haven't been the best picture taker lately, but here are a few more photos of what we've been up to this fall...

Ashley and Matt at Broder with bloody mary's

Heather and Matt with beverages at Timberline Lodge

Random, but our japanese maple this year has been really really bright red and pretty.

Carmen on Halloween waiting to greet trick-or-treaters. I can't believe you all haven't posted kiddo costumes yet!

The weekend before last I went soaking at these really old, rustic hotsprings out in the gorge with  our neighbor Merritt - this is the main building from the late 1800s. Turned out to be a great girl's day: soaking at a spa, lunch at Everybody's Brewing (one of Fritz's favorite brewers!) and shopping in Hood River (Mom and Morgan know that place!).

This last weekend we had our bay area guests: Hector, Juanita and Sophia stayed with us, and Amanda and Andy stayed with Michelle - one of their friends from the bay area that moved up here that we've become really good friends with. Here is Juanita and Sophia at bathtime the first night on Friday. On Saturday, we all went out to brunch and cooked all day - 12 people for dinner: the 4 out of town guests, Michelle, Bryce/Heather (Bryce is Hector and Ashley's childhood friend and an usher at our wedding) and Letha/Michael (Bryce's sister and her boyfriend).
Our friend Michelle took tons of great photos over the weekend and I'm waiting for her to share them. Such a fun, fun weekend filled with all sorts of laughing, indulgences, wine, pool in the basement, good meals out, etc. etc.

Went to Portland Meadows to watch horse racing on Sunday with the whole group - here's part of the group checking out the horses before one of the races.

Pretty murals in one of the hallways

Dinner at Pok Pok with 9 of us - here is part of the group - Hector, Sophia, Juanita, Amanda and Michelle.  After this we went to Pix Patisserie with part of the gang for desserts and played pool in our basement.

 More photos to come! Fritz/Susanne and Dad/Jean get here next week - can't wait! Sending good healing vibes Mom's way as well. Love you!

Birthday dinner

Heather and Matt are in Houston on their way home as I type! Thank you guys SO MUCH for everything, we had tons of fun. Heather has more and better photos on her phone than I do, so I'm going to post just some photos from our birthday dinner last night, and let you post other trip photos if/when you have time : )

We ordered a family style tasting menu for the whole table and it was a pretty epic amount of food. I hope all the food photos aren't too annoying. These don't even include all the courses - we're all pretty food hungover today:

Matt's girlie drink : )

Round 1 -  some of the starters

Pasta course

Part of the main course

Dessert - I think this was my favorite...

And this is what happens when you wait too long for your check... Ashley and Matt made little men out of toothpicks and wine corks.

We have leftovers in our fridge, but I still can't even imagine digging into them - still so full! Thank you Heather and Matt for being such good sports. We're off to take Carmen on a looong dog walk to burn some of that off.

More photos to come of our "hike" near Mt. Hood, Timberline, etc....

Becky's visit

Becky arrived late Wednesday night and I had four straight days of such good girl time.

Lots of eating - both out and at cafes, drank chai lattes in the sun in the park, went to Powell's, met my girlfriends for lunch, had dinner at our neighbors, went to fabric and antique stores, wandered around the Japanese garden, went for lots of long dog walks. Here's a few photos from the long and epic girls weekend (the last Becky will have for a while! She is due early January).
 

Becky (and her belly!) eating lunch at a cafe on Hawthorne : )

We went to so many fabric stores - so much pretty fabric.



Becky and Carmen on the bed (with the fabric Becky bought for the quilt she's making for the baby - its a boy!)



Ashley took this one - we played with lots of fabric planning quilts

Becky's cousin Jackie lives in Eugene - she came up mid day Sunday and went to the Japanese garden and wadered NW Portland with us. We made a big dinner, she spent the night and took Becky to the airport in the morning.

 Its hard to go back to normal life with her gone! Thankfully we have lots of other visitors coming up to look forward to....

Fall Fun

Grandpa visited a couple weekends ago and we took them to the pumpkin farm down Silverspring - unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of them WITH Grandpa:(

Morgan must have taken a hundred pictures of all of the beautiful gourds, indian corn and pumpkins.

Last weekend we went up to the cabin, and yep, we hit a snowstorm already on the way up.  Morgan brought her friend Amelia, we spent time checking out the land which is in the process of being select-cut/logged, and Grandpa and Jean came over for dinner:)

One of the many piles of logs across the area.

We watched them load for awhile.  It was like watching a toy truck; he was so good a maneuvering the crane.

The girls had lots of fun bopping around on the four-wheeler.

Then I took Wednesday off to go on a field trip with Macy's class.  I went when Morgan and Brooke when they were 4 and didn't want to miss it for her.  I'm so glad I went.  Not only was she happy to see me, but half the class was crying wondering where their mom's were and the teacher had to tell them they couldn't come because they had to work - ugh.  So glad I could be there.

This was my threesome to keep track of - Julianna, McKenna, and Macy.

Class Photo

On our way home.  Macy was pretty...

...Tired!  Here she is sleeping on the bus on the way home.  Lots of fresh air and fun:)