Christmas and Sickfest 2008

Here are a few belated Christmas pictures. We celebrated on the actual day with my family and extended family.
Princess Evey

Grandma and her grands

visting GG Mary on Christmas morning

Will and his new toys


Christmas night marked the beginning of Sickfest 2008 with ear infections, high fevers, and lots of stomach flu. The kids don't have great aim, so needless to say we've been doing some intense carpet cleaning, furniture cleaning and bleaching. Thankfully, the kids got it first so we were able to care for them before John and I both took the brunt of it yesterday. And although we're feeling a bit better today, the trip we had planned with my family to Leavenworth has been cancelled as not only are we still likely contagious but my mom came down with the stomach virus this morning. Sorry, Mom!
Here's a good shot of what's been going on in our house lately:

O Holy Night

After a wonderful afternoon with John's parents, we headed to the 5pm Christmas Eve service at church. The parking lot was a skating rink and our little Corolla wasn't fairing so well. After getting assistance from a kind stranger who brought a shovel over to help us get unstuck, we managed to get pushed into a parking spot. Then, we walked into church to find out there was no child care for the wee ones. I'm thinking, "Let's just get home--the kids won't last 5 minutes in church and we're going to need a shovel to get our car out the snow."
But, my dear husband insisted we stay and I'm glad we did. My heart was warmed sitting in the service with Dirk, Nedra, Johnny and both babies. We only stayed for the singing, but that was enough to remind me what a joy it is to sit around with other people and to simply sing about our Saviour, the reason we celebrate Christmas.

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Merry Christmas!

It's still snowing!

We had planned to head over to Wenatchee for a weekend getaway with the Painter family but decided instead to stay west of the mountains due to the impending snow and wind storm. What a great decision! It started around 2 pm yesterday and has continued almost without stopping ever since. We have literally at least 9 or 10 inches and that's not counting the really deep snow drifts caused by the wind.
Instead of going to Wenatchee, we spent Friday night up in Monroe with Bryson, the Painters and their new golden retriever puppy, Fonzy. Their place felt like a mountain lodge paradise as they already had over a foot of snow and got another 10 inches today up there. We made sure to get home early yesterday to beat the storm and it's a good thing as we are definitely snowed in right now--John will have to do some serious shoveling if he wants to attempt to go into work tomorrow.

What a fun memory this is and I'm SO thankful that we didn't lose power during the storm. Today we mostly stayed inside but did venture out a couple of times to gather snow to make snow ice cream (milk/cream or egg nog+snow+sugar+vanilla+food dye and sprinkles if you have a toddler) and marvel at how beautiful the snow is.

Here are some pictures from our weekend:

Snow in Renton

What a beautiful day (helps that I didn't have to drive on the icy road or sit in traffic). Johnny came home early and we had a great time running around in the snow.
Will hated having mittens on and kept taking them off every time I put them on, but he still managed to have a great time with ice cold hands.
The only bummer about today was that we didn't make it to our Christmas celebration with the extended Simon/Farley fam due to the road conditions. We've had some bad experiences with the Issaquah Highlands and snowy roads in the past. We'll look forward to a good time with the fam soon.

Here are a few pictures from the past week:

Typical weeknight at the Simon house: John running around playing chase with Janie and Will (yes, John is wearing Will's sweatshirt on his head)

Yet another picture of Will with his buddy, Pooh

Enjoying the snow


Visit with Breezy

Week O' Christmas parties

This past week has been very full and while we loved seeing so many people and had a great time, it's nice to be laying low this afternoon! Here are a couple of recent pictures.

some of the kids at our CBC Christmas Party (9 boys and 2 girls in all--with one babysitter while the parents attempted to eat dinner!)

Will enjoying Kidsquest-hope he didn't bring home a virus like last time

with Janie, who turns 6 months on Tuesday!

Cookie Exchange with some of my favorite girls

Library Dance Party

Random quick story...
For some reason our local library is a hang out for all sorts of random crowds of people with nothing better to do (that's a story in itself). I guess a library parking lot is as good a place as any to loiter. Anyway, today we went to the library for our weekly exchange of books/movies. On our way out, there was a group of oblivious teenagers standing in the middle of the parking lot as teenagers like to do. As we're walking past the group, I see out of the corner of my eye a purple cadillac with spinner rims, tinted windows and who knows what else pull into the lot. You better believe that car had some major bass going and REALLY loud rap music playing. I'm thinking "fine, okay, this is fairly normal..."
Meanwhile I'm trying to cross the parking lot before the cadillac gets to us because it's obvious that the car is friends with the group of teenagers and it'll likely stop in the middle of the lot, blocking our path. I can only hold Will and Jane at the same time for so long you see (I am strong, but I am also human), and I don't want anything blocking my way. We just make it past when Will leans over, causing me to almost fall over not to mention almost drop Jane. He manages to wriggle loose from me and run back towards the cadillac. Luckily the car is already stopped, but I'm thinking--"Will, what the heck are you doing?"
Let me tell you what he was doing. Will had run up to the car and started dancing to the music as only Will can do. This just made my day---so funny. I love my son.

Chris Brown and Elmo

Staying updated on the current music scene is pretty low on my priority list right now so I am not really familiar with Chris Brown. I am, however, up to date on Sesame Street characters. This number with Chris Brown and Elmo was fun--we saw it on Sesame Street a while ago and Will loved dancing to it. I found it on-line so we can watch it at our leisure. Will calls it "Signs" and loves watching it. I must say, it's rather catchy and will be in your head all day if you watch this video.

Annual Clam Lights at Coulon Park

(Janie was strapped to the photographer but she enjoyed the lights too!)

Orange & Green

Now that we're getting pretty good at naming colors, maybe we should work on swallowing before we talk.

Thanks to Jane's latest hairstyle, the resemblance is uncanny...