A very merry Christmas!

We had a fantastic Christmas visiting both our families on the island. It was really nice to have a few days at home, we felt like we got good visiting in with just about everyone! The only person missing was Nate who was with his dad for the holiday. This was me and Kevin's first time spending all of Christmas together, and it was very nice! In years past, we would spend the holiday with our own families and get together at some point in the day to exchange gifts with each other. This year, Kevin stayed with my family on Christmas Eve and most of Christmas day, and then the rest of the weekend at his parents house. It was very different for both of us, but I am glad we have figured out a way to spend time with both families and each other!

We both got many excellent gifts, favorites being the awesome digital camera from Susan and Mark, and fly fishing rods from my parents! Hooray! We love the new camera, and can't wait to go fishing! I also got a sewing machine, which is very exciting and I can't wait to relearn all the skills I learned in my high school Fashion class! And Kevin got me two exquisite paintings from Erin's good friend Kelcey, which I am totally and completely in love with! The perfect gift!

Back to earlier in the week, we enjoyed much sledding in the vast amounts of snow! Some of our friends from high school were all in town and braved the elements and crazy buses to go sledding on the awesome hill near our house. I think everyone thought it was well worth the hassle of getting there! Some photos from the week:

Me and my boys!

And the whole gang!

Notice my husband contorted in the background...pushing people off jumps, not always the wisest decision!

There I go!

Christen gets a stylish push from Danny!

This poor, crazy hummingbird's food was frozen!

Prettiness!

Jackson and I get some face to face time

Hanging out with his favorite present, a bear teether/rattle from me and Kevin! So cute! Corbin got one, too, shaped like a frog.

Off the Kevin's parents, where a darling Corbin arrived!

Fancy picture style on the new camera

Neal made us all awesome pizza!

We had a great time, and are looking forward to ringing in the new year tomorrow! Thank you to our families for a wonderful Christmas!

Oh, and I finished a sock! The other one is nearly complete, and they are a gift for Susan! I am very pleased that I can make socks!

Fun with snow!

Well, we have had quite the week with this crazy weather. On Thursday, my morning commute started with a long, long wait for a bus to show up. Finally one did, and for some crazy reason the driver did not take the snow route. We then slipped and slided all the way down Fremont Avenue, with a lot of very tense people aboard. But we made it, and headed onto Aurora, which was not nearly as icy and snowy. When we were almost downtown, there was a truck coming down one of the side streets, and from my vantage point at the very front of the bus, I could tell that he was not going to be able to stop coming down the hill. It was like slow motion, me yelling that we were going to get hit, and then the long scraping sound of the truck along the whole length of the bus. His whole front end was mangled, but luckily it was a slow enough speed that no one was hurt. There happened to be another bus behind us, so we all piled onto that one and made it into downtown. Yikes! What a morning! I ended up leaving work early that day and yesterday to make sure that I could in fact make it home. I didn't really want to do anymore urban hiking!

Capriel's brother was one of the students aboard the buses that were hanging over I-5! He's okay, but what a scary thing to have happen!

Then this morning, we awoke to frozen pipes. Booooooo! We have cold water in our bathroom faucet, and our toilet still flushes, but no hot water. I am ready for a shower.

However, we have had a very nice time with the snow as well, going for walks through the neighborhood to enjoy the Christmas lights, and today we went sledding at Woodland Park. BEST SLEDDING EVER! It is fully awesome! Here is a video of the nearly one minute ride we got!

The next time down we negotiated that last bend and made it all the way to the bottom, probably added another 20 seconds to the ride. Woowee! We are excited about more snow to make it a little less bumpy of a ride.

Waffles, walking, and a winter wonderland!

Kevin and I embarked on an in-city adventure today. A couple weeks ago, there was a ribbon cutting for the new completed trail loop around Lake Union, and we thought it would make a great walk for us! Adding in the length to get down to Fremont to meet up with the trail from our house and get back, it is a ten mile lollipop loop from our house on the Ridge. After gorging ourselves on these delicious waffles Kevin made this morning, we set off at about 10:45am to hike through the lovely layer of snow we got last night!

Yummmmmmm! Love these waffles, thanks Adam for showing us their deliciousness!

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Here is basically the trail that we followed, with a few little detours here and there.

We got a good 2-3 inches at our house, a good layer to make everything look pretty...even Kevin's car! Or at least cover up how dirty it is!

We set off on our slick icy streets. Our road is always really slippery when it snows, and Kevin loves sliding on his feet!

The mountains looked spectacular this morning, this photo does not do them justice.

Looking onto snowy Ballard.

Here we meet up with the loop in Fremont. Lots of great bridge viewing along this urban hike.

Enjoying the water along West Lake Union.

A strange art piece, I got a good listen in!

This portion is called "Garden with a Secret." It was a lovely little respite from the asphalt, and I love any trail with railroad tracks involved!

Some poor little ducky with chilly little feet wandering around!

Here is the southernmost part of our walk, very close to downtown!

One of the trolleys that services Lake Union passed us by, we were doing just fine on foot, thank you very much!

Tada! Lake Union!

Many, many great houseboats were seen! These were some of the newer, fancier ones we saw. We stop on a nice little rock near these to feast on turkey sandwiches for lunch.

Very nice signs pointed us in the right direction the whole way. The trail is called Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop Trail, after a Duwamish Indian chief.

University Bridge, here we come!

This is underneath the north side of the University Bridge along the Burke Gilman trail. I can't seem to find anything about who put it there, but it is odd for sure. Kevin bikes past this everyday to and from school.

Midge TV! Woohoo! This is next to the JP Patches statue that you can hang your own buttons on, of which there were surprisingly few.
Here we returned to Fremont, and stopped off for a much needed rest and some hot chocolate before heading back up the hill to the Ridge. By this point, our legs were very worn out! But it was really quite a fun hike for being in the city! There are definitely portions that needs some improvements, which are in the works, but all in all, it was very cool to be able to walk all the way around and see some parts of the city we'd never seen before!

Hope this crazy cold doesn't burst too many pipes, and maybe we'll get a little more snow midweek! I'd like another adventure day!

Getting into the holiday spirit!

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Kevin and I picked out our Christmas tree from his parents' yard, where they once upon a time had a Christmas tree farm. Since we moved to Seattle, we've made it a tradition to get our tree from them, get it back home and then the next night decorate it together while listening to our vast collection of Christmas music and sipping eggnog! It is one of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving weekend, and so great that Kevin and I are developing some traditions of our own for our little family!

Mark had some trees in mind, and the first one he showed us was the big winner! It was probably a 20 foot tree that we just took the top off, but it was crowding out some other smaller trees, so we hacked it!

And by "we" I mean Kevin. He got the saw going and had the tree down so quickly, this was the only picture I got of the whole thing! I nearly got beheaded by the falling tree!

And the guys did the hard work of lugging it back to the house. I am merely the photographer.

Here is our cute tree! We managed to only have to bring it in the house once due to our genius idea of actually measuring how tall it could be this time. Last year, we brought it in and out like three times. Yeesh. We had a lovely evening decorating, listening to music, and getting into the spirit!

This weekend I went off with my friends Jeff and Kate to Swanson's Nursery in Ballard. They needed to pick out some new shrubbery for their front yard, and since Kevin's is in the throes of finals week, I tagged along. This was the view that greeted us as we pulled into the parking lot. I love winter skies!

We also met the reindeer. They are very short. I had no idea! And antlers are truly a strange thing.

Then on Sunday I went to Bainbridge again to celebrate my sister Lauren's birthday. I had a very nice visit, good food, and we all spent bits and pieces of the day decorating the tree there. Lots of Christmas going on! :)

Kevin had three finals today, and has one tomorrow, and a last one on Wednesday. I am very excited for him to be done with this quarter, and to get to hang out with him again! Now I'm off to hopefully finish up a Christmas knitted project!