Goodbye 2008!!!

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

Are you all ready to kiss 2008 goodbye and welcome 2009? I am! Even though it's been mostly a great year for us! 2008 has been jam-packed full of fun, and here are some of the highlights and best moments from our year:

January was a sad month for us, because Stephen's mom passed away from cancer. We miss her so much. I love this picture of her with Stephen as a baby.

February:
Our cute little Valentine's baby! Kirsten used to be so good at posing for the camera. Now we can't get her to sit still long enough!

I also took Kirsten to the Seattle Aquarium that month. . .

And she started crawling! Sometimes I miss that cute little crawler!

In March we celebrated Kirsten's first Easter! She was such an adorable bunny!

April was a great month to go to the beach!

May:
Kirsten turned one year old!

We also went on a road trip to Portland for Memorial Day weekend. We saw beautiful Multnomah Falls. . .

And we also stopped by Seaside, Oregon!

June:
Another month of seeing new places, one of my very favorite things to do! My cousin Jessica and my friend Carrie came to visit, and we took an unforgettable trip to the Olympic Peninsula.
We saw Cape Flattery. . .

We hiked around with Kirsten in the baby backpack. . .

Saw First Beach, La Push, and Ruby Beach. . .

And the Hoh Rainforest! I felt like I was in the Twilight books the whole time!

July:
We got to see fireworks by the Space Needle!

And Kirsten had a fun 4'th of July too!

August:
We took Kirsten to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, and had a fun day there! Also, Kirsten started getting really good at walking this month AND we found out I was pregnant with baby #2!

September:
We visited my parents in San Diego for a couple weeks and spent three days at Disneyland!

We also went to the San Diego Zoo and Sea World! It was such a fun trip!

October:
We enjoyed the gorgeous fall in Seattle and took Kirsten to the pumpkin patch!

And Kirsten was an adorable butterfly for Halloween.

November:
We went on a short trip to Phoenix to join our extended family for Thanksgiving!

December:
Of course, we got the big snow storms in Seattle and barely squeaked out of there to get to San Diego before the airport shut down for a few days.

Number of round-trip flights we took this year: 4!
Crazy year, huh?!! It's been full of all the things I love. . . family, friends, new experiences, and new adventures! I hope 2009 brings all those things too!

All This Fun Stuff!

Every year, I get a little sad when I realize that Christmas is over. At least we still have the tree and the decorations up, and we have New Year's Eve to look forward to! After that is when the excitement really is gone. I haven't uploaded Christmas pictures onto my parents' incredibly slow computer yet, so until I do I'll just show you what we've been up to. We're still in San Diego, and we're all having LOTS of fun with all of these things. . .

My new Flip Video Ultra! Thank you Santa! It's adorable! I really love this Christmas decoration my parents bought me from Disneyland. I'll be excited to put it up next year!

Look at all the great stuff Santa brought for Stephen! We've already watched both The Dark Knight and Kung Fu Panda, and Stephen is a little bit obsessed with his new portable GPS device. Boys never outgrow their toys! They just get lots more expensive!

Posting my Christmas Wish List on my blog really did work! I got lots of the stuff on it, and I love it all! I didn't get the piano or the dog. . . but my husband is so wonderful he got me not just one but 365 dogs to love, every day of the year. I'm so lucky! (And yes, he totally told me to write that!!)

Santa was really nice to Kirsten this year. . . she got spoiled by everyone else too! Too bad she didn't really care about the presents too much. She plays with them now, but on Christmas morning she had no interest at ALL in opening presents. Here are just some of the cute things she got!

I love all the Little People sets, especially the Nativity. And that stuffed panda bear I gave her is the softest, biggest, fluffiest thing! I seriously think I'm going to sleep with it every night!

So we've all been having a great time with our presents. The soundtrack to our entire San Diego trip has been the Christmas Eve on Sesame Street DVD. Kirsten adores it, wants to watch it a million times a day, and it calms her down when she's fussy. Needless to say. . . we are getting sick of it! But Kirsten loves it!

On Christmas Eve afternoon, we saw Australia at the theater. It was really a good movie! Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman were both SO awesome in their roles, and we all really enjoyed it. I love long movies! I also love long books. You just get so much more of your money's worth out of them! Know what I mean? You pay the same amount for a short movie/book as a long one, but you just get so much more out of the long ones!!!

Stephen and I saw Marley and Me yesterday, and we really liked that movie too! It was better than I had expected. Owen Wilson is always so funny. How could you not just love him?

We're also playing lots of games, and just enjoying our Christmas vacation! I hope everyone else is too! I'll post Christmas pictures soon!

Have a Very Merry Christmas!!!

It's Christmas Eve! Can you believe it??? I'm sure everyone is so excited for Christmas morning! Thank you ALL for being such terrific blog readers and commenters! It makes me so happy to get comments and know that people actually read and enjoy what I post. You are wonderful friends! I'm wishing you all a Merry Christmas from our family!

These were the two Christmas cards we sent out this year. I did the first ones on Snapfish, but they had to be ordered in sets of 20. So I did the second one at walmart.com and ordered less of those. That's why we have two!

MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone!!!

LOTS of snow!

We are so lucky that we didn't get stuck in Seattle! They canceled most of the flights from the airport there over the weekend, and it stranded thousands of people at the airport. We are thanking our lucky stars that we flew out on Thursday and not a day or two later! Even though our flight was delayed, at least we were able to get out!

Seattle is SNOWY!The snow all over the tall pine trees there is gorgeous. Even though I'm so glad we were able to travel safely and didn't get stuck, part of me is sad to be away from such a beautiful winter wonderland for Christmas!

Lynnwood, the city where we live, got about 10 inches of snow and the snow is still falling there! We got an email that said they canceled church yesterday, and I don't think many people are able to go into work. It seems like everything is pretty much shut down there and people are staying home as much as they can!

Can you believe there's only 3 more days until Christmas? I hope I can get everything done!

The Latest Update!

We are in San Diego at my parents' house! We're relieved to be here! This is what it looked like right outside my house in Seattle before we left. Beautiful and totally Christmasey! They might get a white Christmas and I won't even be there to see it.

I don't like to drive in the snow and it definitely messes with travel plans,
but. . . snow is SOOOOO beautiful!

-Inches of snow we got yesterday at my house: 4
-Number of hours we were at the airport before our flight finally left: 5 (yeah, LOTS of fun to keep a toddler entertained at the airport for so long!)
-Time we arrived in San Diego last night: 10:30 pm (it was supposed to be 7:30!)
-Time Kirsten went to bed last night: 1 am

Pregnancy Update:
-I'm 23 weeks pregnant now and feeling really good! I love the second trimester!
-I know I should post pictures of myself as my belly grows. I always forget to have someone take pictures of me! But I'm definitely looking pregnant now.
-I'm trying to decide what color to paint our third bedroom, that will soon be turned into Kirsten's room. Should I do green like Kirsten's room? Or something completely different? I'm opposed to pink and purple, but open to most other colors!
-It's crazy that I'm past the half-way point for this pregnancy. The second one goes by a LOT faster than the first one!

Here's Kirsten with one of her current obsessions: Finding lip gloss in my purse and sucking on the outside.

Kirsten is 19 months old now!
Some things she loves this month:
-Blue's Clues
-The Christmas tree and all the ornaments and lights on it
-ANY lights at all!
-Dogs, especially my parents' dog Millie (she calls her "Mimi")
-Climbing into boxes and sitting in them (even ones she doesn't fit very well inside)

Santa came early to Seattle and brought Kirsten a little kitchen before we left on our trip! She was so excited to come downstairs and find it!

It's the Fisher Price Grow With Me Kitchen, and it's really small which is great for fitting in our house. It can also be adjusted to a taller height when she gets older. She really likes all the play food and dishes, and her favorite is the blender that spins around and makes noise.

Herbie loved the kitchen too. . . or at least the BOX it came in. We couldn't get him out of it!

Some things Kirsten learned this month:
-How to say "Bye guys!" and "Hi guys!" She says it a lot, even when there's only one of us in the room.
-How to say "Spongebob". She watches it with Daddy on the weekends, and when the song comes on she says "Bob-bob". It's pretty funny, even though Spongebob is really annoying to me!
-How to turn a light-switch ON as well as off.
-How to click a pen on and off.

I thought this picture was cute. . . Stephen and Herbie were trying to take a nap, and Kirsten had other ideas!

That's all our latest news!

The Forgotten Pictures!

I didn't really forget about these pictures, but I DID forget to post them! Oops! As you can see from Kirsten's outfit, these were from October! We went to Leavenworth, the cutest little Bavarian village in the entire country. It's in the mountains, about an hour and a half away from where we live.
I thought this family picture of us turned out so cute!

Stephen and I went to Leavenworth for the first time right after we moved here, for the Christmas Lighting Ceremony. It was absolutely breathtaking! It was much less crowded this time. Even though I missed seeing all the Christmas lights, the town still looked totally adorable. The entire town looks like this!

There are tons of fun shops there, one of the best being the Hat Shop. I bought my witch hat for my Halloween costume there! Kirsten loves hats, so of course she had a fun time in that store.

Kirsten wasn't too sure if this bear was friendly or not. . .

These pictures were just too cute to let them slide by without posting them!