Holiday Weekend

We had a great, family filled holiday weekend. Here are some pictures:

Grandparents with their grands
At Pike Place Market

Family game of Sequence

I Love Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is great. At our home it means low-key family time, food, naps, football watching, maybe some sort of physical activity and time reflecting on the blessings in our life. Not much fluff or over-preparation which means I'm never disappointed. I also find it special that Thanksgiving is a holiday unique to our country (well, maybe Canada celebrates it too, but on a different day). Oh, and I can't forget to mention that I LOVE all Thanksgiving foods! Mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, cranberries, sweet potatoes, especially when they're all mixed together.

We're celebrating at my parent's house in Issaquah this year. Mom's oven just broke, so we're all pitching in to complete the meal. I've got my 20 lb bag of russet potatoes ready to go for the mashed potatoes and the Remlinger Farms pies are in the freezer.

Will helped me out at the grocery store today while I picked up a few items. Crowded grocery stores are the only thing I don't like about Thanksgiving, so I was glad to have my sidekick with me for support.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.

Leaves keep falling on my head...

While our yard is pretty low maintenance, we spend a lot of time outside raking this time of year. Here is Will enjoying a pile of leaves:

p.s. Congrats to Todd & Laurel, we can't wait to have another niece!!

Yes, Halloween is over

Halloween is not an important holiday in our book, but we couldn't let it die tonight and had an impromptu costume try-on at Andrew Barfoot's house down in Auburn. Maybe it was that yummy creole food that Andrew cooked up that got us in a festive mood, or maybe we're just a little weird. Either way, Will enjoyed it, and apparently we did too.

Moving on to more important holidays, hope everyone has a good Veteran's Day weekend. Don't forget to honor those who have served and are serving our wonderful country!

First Halloween

As promised, here are some pictures of Will dressed as a tiger on his first Halloween. I'm sure that in in years to come I won't have as much of a say in what he wears, so I decided to make the most of this Will's first Halloween and get him a cute cuddly costume.

Sorry Dad, time to jump off the bandwagon

What a beautiful weekend we had! Thanks to the nice weather, we got to do lots (and lots) of leaf raking and mowing and strolling around the neighborhood with Will. Charlie and Lyssa (& Clicquot) Cole spent Sunday afternoon with us and brought homemade mac n' cheese with them, which was yummy (thanks, Lyss!)
This will be our first year as a family where trick-or-treaters will (hopefully) come to our door. We got the candy ready and Olive's got her bark finely tuned for a night of fun door-answering. We'll be sure to get Will in his costume this week and post some pics.
Oh, and sorry about those Rockies, Mom & Dad (they jumped on the bandwagon last year when living in Denver).

Impromptu bbq on the deck during our 70+ degree day last week

Lyssa, Will & I

Clicquot and Olive

Willy J

All-American Weekend

This weekend was filled with some of America's favorite pastimes: football (flag football game in the fields of Monroe, Huskies, Seahawks), baseball playoffs, and ice cream at our local DQ (see below for highlights).