Santa Does Exist!

Christmas came late this year thanks to the local weather. Santa wasn't able to deliver all the presents to the good little girls and boys in our area until today when a snow plow and FedEx finally made it down our road.


McKenzie and Matt's final Christmas present arrived today and was a huge hit, as you can see from McKenzie's face above, even though we only got to play with it inside. When I was trying to figure out what Santa would bring for McKenzie I remembered something that Matt had said jokingly earlier in the year - that he wanted to rig up a remote control car that he could drive McKenzie around on. When I put this query into Google what to my wondering eyes should appear but that very item! I had so many different models to choose from it was hard to pick until I saw the Mini Cooper and I knew it was the one.

For years I have wanted a Mini Cooper but I could see how impractical it would have been for my life with two big dogs and kids. I even went so far as to make my sister meet me in Fife home of the only Mini dealer in the state a few years ago so I could try putting one of her car seats into a Mini to see if it would be possible. I finally decided to give up that dream (for now) and got a cross over SUV that can handle the amount of stuff I am now required to haul on even the shortest trip from home.


So this car can be driven by McKenzie or controlled by remote by Dad - fun for everyone especially Mom who was glad to sit on the sidelines and watch the two of them enjoy the car. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to take it out for a spin in the neighborhood now that the snow plow has been by.

Silent Night!

• Doll Stroller from the Variety Store in Chelan $4.99
  
• Setting Up McKenzie's Big Girl Room Free from Grandpa & Grandma C
• Monkey Sheets from Pottery Barn $59.99

• McKenzie sleeping in her big girl bed Priceless!

Yesterday my mom spent all day over at our house helping me clean and organize the old guest bedroom into McKenzie's big girl room. Then my Dad and Uncle Eric came to deliver her big girl bed. We got it all set up and made some adjustments today and got it ready for the trial run.

McKenzie has been a great sleeper her whole life - I'm praying to the sleep gods that I'll be as lucky this second time around. She started sleeping through the night in her own crib in her own room at a month and a half and has only had a few hiccups on that sleep schedule since. The biggest issue actually has been if we aren't at home and she has to sleep in the same room as us. She is definitely not a co-sleeper, she doesn't want to just cuddle up and lay with us instead if we try to bring her into our bed she seems to go crazy, jumping on us and laughing. Not too funny for us when all we want to do is keep sleeping. I was a little worried about how the transition to a big girl bed might go given her desire to just play while on real beds.

Matt headed out to the gym and I got McKenzie ready for bed, we brushed her teeth, put on her pj's and then gathered her stuff - multiple babies, flat monkey and a blanket and headed for her big girl room. We read three books laying down in her bed and then I got up and told her goodnight and I'd see her in the morning. She sat up and waved at me and so I closed the door... and went into the office next door with the baby monitor and started scouring the Internet for articles on how to make the transition from crib to bed... better late than never I figured. I could hear her in her room playing, knocking on the door and just making noise for about 45 minutes and then the action slowed and gradually became silence. It's pretty typical for her to play for that long before falling asleep, we usually hear her in her crib for that long.

Matt called on his way home from the gym and I told him to call again when he reached the driveway so I could let the dogs out without them barking, terrified we'd wake her up. When he got home we got the camera and crept upstairs, pausing to peek under the door thinking we'd see her laying on her floor. We were pleasantly surprised to find her fast asleep in her bed with her many babies and her beloved baby stroller.

We'll see how the rest of the night goes and the morning but I'm relieved that is is possible for her to fall asleep in her own bed by herself! Here's hoping for a silent night!

Yes, we did remove the baby stroller from her bed after taking the picture.

Christmas!

Christmas 2007

Christmas has gotten a lot more fun with the addition of McKenzie in our lives. It's so exciting to see her experience the different elements of the season from the music, food, family and the presents! Last year's Christmas she was much more interested in the ribbons and wrapping than she was what was inside. This year she was a little more interested but clearly she was easily overwhelmed with multiple new things at once. She was able to open presents on her own but often became distracted before she got it open and wandered off to play with something else. Next year will be a whole different world.

Here's McKenzie at Christmas last year checking out some presents under the tree - it's amazing how much she has changed and learned in this past year.

Christmas 2008

We spent Christmas Eve at Aunt Kacey and Uncle Eric's house for a fantastic prime rib lunch then on to Matt's Uncle Dick and Aunt Gayle's house for a fun filled evening with the lots of extended family. Christmas morning we were at home and we opened our presents. Minus the 'big' gift for Matt and McKenzie which still has not arrived - stay tuned for a future post once that arrives! Then we headed out to Monroe and spent the rest of Christmas day at Grandma and Grandpa Z's house. We were beat when we came home and were happy to be home.

McKenzie got spoiled with fun gifts the highlight so far seems to be her new babies (twins!) and a mini stroller. She loves babies so much and just wants to 'help', I'm going to have my hands full when baby boy arrives in 32 days! She was very helpful with cousin Claire, always trying to give her a bottle and even tried to pick her up twice! We're going to have to really work on that once we bring the new baby home. Here's McKenzie helping Aunt Jennifer with Claire while we opened presents.


It snowed every day here through the 26th - while it was really nice to have a white Christmas it gets a little old trying to drive around in the snow. We were really happy to see some rain today which melted some of the snow but there's still a lot out there! Let's hope the weather continues to warm up.

Here's McKenzie on Christmas morning looking at her stocking - I love black and white pictures and the contrast that you can get in them. Picasa is such a great tool to work with photos in!


Hope everyone had as merry of a Christmas as we did!

Virtual Christmas!

Since the Northwest has turned into a 'Winter Wonderland' just in time to delay almost all our holiday packages we are celebrating Christmas minus some very important items we ordered online. In the spirit of the season I'm sitting up late on Christmas Eve printing out 'you would have gotten this...' letters to the family. The one gift I can deliver on that is delayed is the yearly addition of photo books featuring the grand kids that we've been making for the Grandparents.

Photoworks has a great feature where you can make your books and then without even purchasing them you can share them with people. Since the real copies didn't arrive I'm posting the links here for the Grandparents to check them out while they wait for their real copies!

Merry Christmas to all!!

Click Here for McKenzie and Claire

Click Here for McKenzie, Kayla and Nathan

Dreaming of a white Christmas...

What is this white stuff? This is not McKenzie's first snowfall, we had a couple of snowy days last year and then we took a trip over to visit Grandma and Grandpa C in Chelan where they had over three feet of snow! Last year McKenzie really didn't appreciate the snow since she wasn't even crawling at the time it wasn't that much fun. Here she is clearly having the time of her life riding in a sled - good thing we strapped her in since she couldn't even move in that snowsuit.


This year after some initial hesitation and a little frustration at the snow for getting onto her boots she has learned to love it. Thanks to Kayla and Nathan for showing her how much fun snow can be.

Behold Our Family Christmas Tree!

Clark: "The Griswold family Christmas tree."
Ellen: "Isn't it a little big?"
Clark: "It's not big. It's just full."
Russ: "Dad, that thing wouldn't fit in our yard."
Clark: "It's not going in our yard Russ. It's going in our living room."
~ National Lampoons Christmas Vacation

McKenzie 'helping' her Daddy cut down the tree! Not quite as big as the Griswold's tree but still huge!

We love to get our Christmas tree early in the season and enjoy it for as long as possible. This year we headed out after have a 'Thanksgiving brunch' on November 30th with Grandma and Grandpa Z, Uncle Chris, Aunt Jennifer, Aunt Anne, cousin Patti and cousin Claire. We met up with Aunt Kacey, Uncle Eric, and cousins Nathan and Kayla at the tree farm.

Two years ago we waited until two weekends after Thanksgiving to get our trees and we got turned away at our usual tree farm because they were out of trees. So we set out exploring for a new place to get a tree and stumbled across a new tree farm that was down by the river and had been flooded a bit with all the rains. The price was right but we all discovered our trees were two toned from the flood waters. This year we tried that tree farm again and were surprised at the size of the trees - no need to worry about two toned trees since we would all have to cut several feet off our trees to get them in our houses. We got a beautiful tree and had an adventure trying to get it to stand up in our tree stand because the trunk is very narrow but it looks great and McKenzie is enjoying looking at all the pretty lights and ornaments.


McKenzie loves to look at the pictures on a digital camera - unfortunately she doesn't always allow you to actually take a picture because she's too interested in looking at them!


The cousins scouting for trees...

Matt loading our trees onto the tractor bed - these things were huge!

Christmas Elves!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Grandma Hunter's Christmas Cake

This is my Great Grandma Hunter, she is my dad's mom's mom. She lived in Victoria located on Vancouver Island in British Columbia while my Grandma was growing up. After my Grandma passed away my Aunt Renee became the owner of many of Grandma Hunter's recipes along with many other priceless family heirlooms too numerous and 'valuable' to list. One of the recipes from Great Grandma Hunter's collections was for 'Christmas Cake' aka fruitcake to us Americans.

My Dad is a huge fruitcake lover - it's the thing he likes best about the holidays, perhaps the only thing he likes. We have always purchased him store bought fruitcake during the Christmas season and I can remember going up to Victoria as a kid and going into bakeries where they always seemed to have something similar to fruitcake available throughout the year.

Probably four or five years ago Aunt Renee asked me if I wanted to try making fruitcake with her for the holidays and of course I agreed. We have been making it ever since - each year is a new experiment and adventure. We took the original recipe which was written all in pounds and converted the things that needed to be converted into cups. Each year we are shocked by the pound of butter and the dozen eggs and then the many many types of strange candied fruit we add. It's amazing to think of Great Grandma Hunter making that recipe in an old fashioned kitchen.

This years fruitcake creating was no exception in terms of our shock at the bulk of ingredients we needed and the time it took to make the cakes. Each year we write down what we added the previous year, how long we baked them, how many the recipe made and the cost of our ingredients. We did have a special helper this year. McKenzie didn't join us last year for the fruitcake making she was home in bed but this year she was right there in the action - minus the two hour nap.

Here's the fruit for the fruitcake - a mixture of lots of raisins, currents, candies cherries, orange peel, lemon peel, slivered almonds, crushed pineapple and a whole lot of Brandy. This is only one batch - we made two!! I wonder what type of bowl Great Grandma Hunter had that held all this fruit.


Here's Aunt Renee with an even bigger bowl stirring the fruit mixture in with the batter!


McKenzie's helping Aunt Renee measure dry ingredients - such a good helper!

I wish I had a picture of the finished fruitcake - they turn out very pretty. We bake them into assorted sizes of decorative bundts. I'll have to take some pictures and add them to a later post if my Dad doesn't eat them all first!

People might dread receiving a fruit cake during the holidays but I think it's a great tradition and one that I look forward to continuing as long as I've got my Dad to eat the results : ) McKenzie also tried the fruitcake and thought it was pretty good!

Family Traditions!

Way back in the late 70's my Grandma 'Big E' started a family tradition of writing on a plain white table cloth after holiday meals and then having someone embroider in the messages. You can watch your hand grow over the years on the table cloth and remember back to different times in life when you start to look at the different areas of the table cloth. For some this is more painful than for others. You always have to think carefully about who you bring to Thanksgiving there are many who eat their dinner with a message from a past love interest staring back at them.

Since the extended family has grown from Grandma and Grandpa and their original five kids to include their spouses, ten grand kids and six great grand kids with another on the way we had to start a second table cloth back in 2000. This came about not just for the need for more room to write but also from the need of another table cloth to cover the table which this year fed 28 at Kacey's house.

I have always loved the table cloth and seeing all the different funny messages from people. Grandma 'Big E' originally sewed the table cloth but after she passed away my Aunt Wendy took over and she continued up until four years ago when I somehow became the one who sews in the designs. Aunt Wendy was so good that she used to sew all the Thanksgiving designs in before Christmas so we could write on it again. I don't have that kind of time or motivation so I pack the table cloth up after Thanksgiving after giving it a good shake to get off any extra turkey and stuffing and then I box it up until just after Halloween when I frantically pull it out and count the number of designs to be sewn in. I then calculate how many nights I need to work on it until Thanksgiving when I have to be finished. Each year I panic as the dates gets closer but I've always managed to finish at least in time to get it washed up for the big day.

Here's a picture of the new table cloth - just after I finished sewing it up.


A closer picture of some of the designs.


And here's the table at Kacey's set for 28 - the new table cloth is at one end then we have a filler table cloth and on to the older one.


If my house was to burn down one of the things I'd save after my family and dogs would be the table cloth. The memories shared by generations of family are not replaceable and I hope that McKenzie and her cousins and second cousins once removed can continue on this tradition for a long time to come!

Once A Coug... Always A Coug!

Here's to hoping that we get a little Cougar pride into McKenzie while she's young and impressionable! This weekend was the 101st Apple Cup game between the Washington State Cougars and the University of Washington Huskies. And despite being tied with the Huskies for one of the lowest positions in college football on the way in, the Cougars managed to pull it off in OT and win the game! Go Cougars! We can hold our heads high at Thanksgiving this year!

Here's McKenzie around half time looking a little bummed because the Cougs were behind... little does she know to never give up hope on our Cougs!



Here she is with a classic 'Touch Down Cougars' at the end of the game!!!


Washington State University is one of those places in the world that you just can't explain to someone who hasn't been there. You share a universal bond with anyone who's attending school there. Matt and I both loved our time there and we have so many good memories of Pullman and the watching the games there in Martin Stadium.

Go Cougs!

Hitting The Hard Stuff...

I have to admit I have been hitting the hard stuff lately... shocking I know for someone who is pregnant. To me the hard stuff of the moment is eggnog. I have a terrible sweet tooth - thank goodness I don't like chocolate but can focus mainly on the pure sugar variations of candy or else I'd weigh a ton. I eat candy year round but there are two times of year when I have special indulgences. I allow myself to have candy corn only in the month of October and then in November and December I have eggnog. I also have strict standards on what candy corn I will eat - only Brach's, no other brand and if I can at all help it I avoid the 'Harvest Mix' bag which includes the candy corn pumpkins and the ones with brown on them. I think the brown taints the whole lot. With eggnog I'm not as picky on my brand.

I actually started this post last week when I bought my first half gallon of eggnog for the season. I had already been having steamed eggnog if I went to Starbucks but having it at home was really agreeing with me. Unfortunately, I ran into an issue with drinking my beloved eggnog last week when the results from my glucose screening came back - my sugar levels were very high and so I had to go back in for a three hour glucose test last Friday which involves not eating anything for 12 hours before the test, then drinking a drink made of pure sugar and food coloring and then have your blood drawn once an hour for three hours. Nothing like that to make a pregnant lady feel great! I was very worried that I would have to watch my sugar intake for the remainder of my pregnancy and in my mind that equated to not enjoying the holidays to their fullest. Luckily my second test came back great with no elevated sugars so I'm in the clear to enjoy the holidays and their sweets! I guess when they said eat normally before coming in for the first test they probably thought I wouldn't be chugging down a glass of eggnog with lunch. I was very careful with what I ate prior to the fasting period for the second test.

Knowing my own sweet tooth as I do, I have been trying to keep McKenzie off the sweets. Luckily she doesn't know much about candy or what it looks like in stores yet so she only wants something if I'm having it. I made it almost all through October without giving her candy corn. It's sad to admit but I was hiding it from her and sneaking it sometimes when she wasn't looking. I can remember my friend Carrie telling me that she did that with her little boy Kaden and I thought that was crazy but now I understand. I also have given her a drink of eggnog and the verdict is in - she likes it! Or should I say loves from the way she held the cup up trying to get the last few drops.

Here's a couple of recent pictures of McKenzie. The first is playing video games with Daddy in the game room and the second is with Grandma Z who came over today to watch McKenzie for the morning while Aunt Kacey went on a field trip.

Time to Give Thanks...

This is the time to reflect back on all the things that I have to be thankful for. This year more than ever the thing that I am most thankful for are my friends. I am also lucky enough that I can be thankful for good health in my family, my job, my house among many things. Not all my friends are so lucky this year. We've had some tough times this year but through it all our group of friends sticks together and helps where we can. Each of us has something different, something special and something critical to offer.

I know I've posted in the past about my best friend Carrie and my hopes that McKenzie someday will find a 'forever friend' like her but I also hope that McKenzie is blessed with a whole group of long term friends who can stick together through thick and thin. It's not often that I meet people who are still close friends with people from high school, let alone from preschool. I have been very lucky to have people in my life who are friends and not just acquaintances - here today but gone tomorrow.

Here's a little photo tribute to my friends and all the memories we've shared and the ones we have yet to make. Hang in there - things have to get better!

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween - not as many Trick or Treaters as we would have liked but maybe next year now that the word might be out that we gave out full sized candy bars! McKenzie was feeling a little under the weather but she rallied for the end of the day and seemed to enjoy going out after dark all bundled up.

Here's our pumpkins in the day time as well as at night. Matt did the really intricate one with the witch stepping out of the cave and I did the two face ones. I think I make basically the same pumpkin every year but that's okay by me.



McKenzie wore her dog costume for Halloween and we had Matt's family over so she got to show off for Grandma and Grandpa Z and Aunt Jennifer, Uncle Chris and best of all cousin Claire. First we have McKenzie getting ready to go out doing a little last minute clean up with her lint roller and then we have our little doggie trick or treating at the neighbors. She just kept taking more and more candy... Matt finally had to pull her away.




McKenzie really enjoys spending time with all her cousins - Nathan and Kayla get their fair share of 'loving' from McKenzie but at least they are bigger and can love back if they want to. Baby Claire has to just put up with it. There is no doubt that there is a big kiss in Claire's future!




Here's another picture from last year - with McKenzie and one of our pumpkins.

Party and the Ghosts of Halloween Past...

Last Saturday night McKenzie and I attended her second Halloween party. Last year Matt and I took her along with us to a party we attended. She was really well behaved and just fell asleep shortly after arriving. It was a much different story this year! There were other babies, some three-year-old girls and best of all dogs in costume. There couldn't be a much better party than that!

Here's McKenzie dressed as Piglet. She is going to be a dog on Halloween but that costume fits a bit weird so she dressed for comfort on Saturday. She is loving her dog friend Muki who has appeared in other blog entries with her.


The other girls that were there were a bit older than her and they were running all around and had taken their shoes off. McKenzie saw this as her opportunity to help out. Here she is doing one of her favorite things - bringing people their shoes. The girls just yelled 'that baby is stealing our shoes...'.


Here's some pictures from past Halloweens. First McKenzie and me last year all dressed up as a monkey and a banana. Who would have thought I'd get to wear the monkey costume twice!


Then Matt and me as King Kong and the Empire States Building!


And probably the greatest couples Halloween costume ever - the Teletubbies!


Followed by the classic double couple costume from Dad's weekend in college. Sprout and the Jolly Green Giant along with some bags of frozen Green Beans and Sweet Peas.
And my all time favorite... Little Bird.


And a classic from Matt's childhood... Little Red Riding Hood and Dracula!


And who could forget the 'Bud Girls'... was there not sun in Pullman???


I could actually include more but I'll restrain myself before anyone gets too scared!