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The snow just keeps falling around here.  We’ve easily gotten over 16″ of snow so far.  I’ve been shoveling the driveway and I’m running out of places to throw the snow.  It’s turned out to be a great winter exercise routine……

I’m off until the 5th of January so Emma and I have been hanging out and having fun.  We went over to Grandma Joan’s yesterday and shoveled her driveway so that she can get in and out.  We spent most of the day with her and had a great time.  We all went to Costco, which turned out to be a zoo.  I think everyone has been cooped up around here so they took the opportunity to all go to Costco at the same time.

It continues to snow today, Christmas eve.  While we love the idea of a white Christmas, it is proving to be more challenging logistically speaking.  Mom and Aunt Jean are at mom’s house and aren’t sure whether they are going to try to drive over or not.  Tomorrow we are going to Sarah’s house and then over to mom’s.  The plan was to then go to the cabin after that, although that is in question now due to the snow.  We’ll decide how adventurous we are going to be on Christmas morning.

Anyway, here are some pictures of Emma out in the snow, as well as a couple pictures so that you can see how much snow we have here.

The weather here has been a bit abnormal for the last week or so and that abnormality continued today as it started snowing in the morning and by the end of the day we had about 4 inches of snow.  School was canceled today for Emma so she spent part of the day at Patty’s (friend of ours that runs a daycare next to Emma’s school).  I quit work a little early today and after we got Katie home from work, I went over and got Emma.  After coming home for a bit, I took Emma over to the school where we spent a couple hours sledding down the big hills on the playground.  We had an absolute blast.  A few of Emma’s friends were there as well.

Earlier in the day the kids had made a jump at the bottom of the hill and because I haven’t quite come to terms with my age, I decided to try it out.  I got a good running start, picked up speed down the hill, and went flying off the jump.  The time in the air was really fun.  The landing: not so much.  Needless to say my back and other major parts of my body are in recovery.

Anyway, it was a really fun day today and I think tomorrow will probably be a repeat because the snow doesn’t appear to be going anywhere and I think they have already canceled school.

I stumbled on to this picture of Emma and Jena after a hard night of Trick or Treating.  We could tell Emma was beat so we called it a night after this photo.

We haven’t been very good about updating the blog lately.  That doesn’t mean that nothing has been going on.  Where do we begin?

Last weekend Emma went to the zoo with Alex and Sydney.  Polly bought everyone an annual pass to the zoo and NW trek!  If you are dying to go to the zoo or NW Trek, let us know.  We can take up to three guests in with us each time for free.  Thanks Polly!

Emma had her friend Jena over last Friday night after the PTA sponsored “Family Fun Night”.  Jena spent the night and they both slept in Emma’s room.  They both really wanted to sleep on the floor next to each other but the “party pooper” parents made each of them sleep in their own spots.  (Emma had to sleep in her bed).  I think they both had a great time and enjoyed the pancakes the next morning for breakfast.

Last week, Emma had an action packed schedule at school.  On Tuesday both kindergarten classes hopped on a bus and headed to Remlinger farms for their first field trip.  I think the kids were much more excited to ride the bus than they were to go to the farm.  Needless to say, they had a great time doing both.

Unfortunately, as the week went on, Emma got sick.  She had a fever of over 103 degrees so we took her to the doctor.  She is now having to take a couple medicines for the next ten days to get over it.  She was very disappointed to miss school for two days, including the “Harvest Party” on Friday.  We had volunteered to help at the party so Katie went in and helped while Jeff stayed home with Emma.  (Katie brought some things home for Emma which helped.)  Last night, we let Emma do a little trick or treating around the neighborhood but kept it fairly short since she wasn’t feeling well.  She had a great time.  The picture below looks more like a “Heroes” episode than anything else.  Darth Vader and the Cheerleader are such an interesting pair.

We’re a little late posting this but we went to the pumpkin patch weekend before last.  We visited the Carpinitos Farm down in Kent.  Apparently we just missed the Earle’s that day.  It was fun to wander around all the pumpkins and we spent quite a bit of time finding the PERFECT pumpkin.  After we left the pumpkin patch, we went over to Joan’s to clear out her sprinkler system and we had dinner over there.  Aunt Jean was there too, although she left before dinner.

Here are a few shots from the pumpkin patch.  As you can see, Emma has started taking pictures too!

I have been working on a new craft - crocheting.  It started by me wanting to make a tea cozy for Jeff.  I went into my closet and found a stash of old Crochet needles, and instructions that my mother gave me several years ago that I tucked away.  Anyway, Jeff wanted a tea cozy for his tiny tea pot which he uses daily.  I started with the books, and went stitch by stitch trying to capture as much information on the stitches and train my hands as best as I could.  I made a few attempts at trying to read a pattern, and felt paralyzed by the hieroglyphics in them.  I decided to try to create a tea cozy without a pattern, and made about 3.  Looking back, they were awful, but a good start.  With our trip to Montana coming up, I called upon the help of Joan, and she helped me learn to read the pattern, and crochet the tea cozy.  Thank you Joan!!!  I could not have gotten as far as I have without your help.

So, fast-forwarding, I have made several cozies, based on the same pattern.  I have given some away - to my sister, and her mother-in-law, my mother, and made several for myself and Jeff. 

I have now made several dish cloths, and a doll that I saw on the Internet, and attempted to make. 

Here are my some of my cozies:

Here is my doll attempt. 

Here is one of my favorite crochet site on the Internet. 
This lady makes the CUTEST little dolls (and I mean THE CUTEST!!!)         Curls of Sunshine

Anyway, I plan to find other projects to do, since there are only so many tea cozies you can make!!!!!  If you have any ideas for me to try, let me know :)

-Katie

We are so bummed to be preparing for winter.  Summer seemed to go so fast and it’s hard to believe it’s over.  School has been in full swing for over a month now and we are nice and settled in to our new routine.  Emma is still enjoying kindergarten and her reading is really progressing.  She has long since given up on the "easy readers" and is reading all kinds of interesting books.  Needless to say, the library card is getting a lot of use.  Emma even has her own card now and loves to scan the books out at the self checkout.

So, winterizing is in full swing.  We are putting away lawn furniture, insulating hose bibs etc.  Today we will be spending part of the day at mom’s doing some winterizing there too and then will stay for dinner.

Emma has decided that she wants to be Darth Vader for Halloween.  We went online and found a good deal on a Darth Vader costume for kids at Amazon.com and it arrived yesterday.  Emma didn’t have school yesterday (teacher workshop day) so she stayed home with Aunt Jean and anxiously awaited the costume delivery.  It finally came around 4:00 and Emma instantly put it on.  We spent a lot of time last night playing Star Wars at our house, that’s for sure.  Emma’s friend Jena is going to be a cheerleader for Halloween so when Emma went down to show Jena her costume, they both ran around in their costumes.  At one point Emma traded her light saber for the pom pom’s and became the evil Darth Vader Cheerleader  (and the pom poms lit up too).  We all had a good laugh.

Work is going well for Katie and I.  Of course we are keeping our eye on the economic issues going on which has caused us to increase our saving even more than we were before.  You just never know what is coming.  The last couple weeks in the stock market have  been amazing and we’ve certainly seen our investments shrink.  The good news is that we have a long way to go until we hit retirement and have lots of time to make it up.  We are actually kind of excited at how cheap some of the stocks out there have gotten.  You can bet we’ll be buying a bit as the bottom seems to form.

It’s been a little over a week now since elementary school became a part of our lives here.  Things have been going well and Emma continues to be excited about kindergarten.  Each day when I walk over to get her, one of the first things she says is, "We didn’t get to go in the big library today".  Yesterday, she was finally able to say that they did get to go in the big library but she was disappointed that they didn’t get to look at all the books.  Instead they just had to sit and listen to the teacher read them a story.  Emma’s reading skills have been advancing pretty rapidly and she’s now reading books that are not even categorized as "easy readers".  She has to take some time on a few of the bigger words but she’s doing well sounding them out and normally can figure out what the word is.  We are very happy that she loves books so much!

It has been nice to have such great weather over the last couple weeks.  It’s strange how the weather turns nice as soon as school starts.  We have been trying to take advantage of the weather by going out to the lake as much as possible.  We plan on going out there this weekend since it is supposed to be near 80 degrees.  We’ve been preparing both of the lake houses for winter by cleaning the gutters and putting away all the summer type equipment that we leave out each year.  I think we are just about ready for winter.

Polly and Vic made it back to New Orleans on Sunday evening.  They packed a lot of activities in to their visit.  They spent the night out at the lake with us, spent time at Sarah’s, went to Point Defiance park, hiked up near Mt Rainier, and also spent a couple days up in Canada visiting Bill and Renee.  We look forward to the day that they are up here all the time, although it sounds like that will be a couple more years.

The picture below is of Emma after school one day.  They have been wearing different colors to school each day and this particular day was "orange" day.

Today was Emma’s first day of kindergarten.  As soon as she woke up this morning she got dressed and put her backpack on.  She insisted on wearing her school backpack during breakfast and didn’t take it off until she got to the playground at the school.  Needless to say, she was very excited and didn’t show any signs of nervousness.  We started the countdown to this day last week.  Katie made a calendar that showed each day and Emma crossed the days off one at a time.  There wasn’t a day that went by that we didn’t know exactly when school started.

We decided to walk over to the school with Jena and her family.  The two girls held hands all the way there and I think they smiled the entire way!

On an unrelated note, all the Browns came over on Sunday afternoon and we had a bbq at the cabin.  Polly, Vic and Alex spent the night and I think they were all pretty comfortable.  Polly and Vic had the sleeper sofa and Alex slept on a mat on the floor.  Polly and Vic were anxious due to the approaching hurricane in New Orleans.  By coincidence, they ended up leaving New Orleans for their trip up here at just the right time.  It looks like the hurricane largely missed New Orleans and there wasn’t massive damage.  Phew.

On Monday, Katie and Emma went with all the Browns and they drove to Mt Rainier for a short hike around the Naches loop to see the mountain.  During the hike they even spotted a black bear feeding on berries.  It was quite exciting for them.  I was glad to hear that there was a ranger there too!

Here are a couple pictures of Emma’s first day of kindergarten and then there is a link below those pictures to the rest of them:

And here is a link to the rest of the photos:

http://www.jeffkatieemma.com/kindergarten