It's been a while...

And I apologize! I've had several of you asking me to blog again, and I have really been wanting to. I just don't usually have the time to sit down and write something.

So, here I am. Chad is diligently working on a presentation for tomorrow and I figured now would be a good time.

What's been going on? Let's see, besides the CRAZY weather here in the Pacific Northwest??

Right after Thanksgiving we got 5.5 inches of snow here at the house! It was simply gorgeous! However, it shut the area down for 3 days! The boys had so much fun tubing down the hill in our back yard and making snow angels!


Then, on Thursday, December 14th we had a severe wind storm that knocked out power to over 1 million homes in Western Washington. We, of course, were included in that group! We stayed here at the house for 2 nights, but when we woke up Saturday morning to a 58 degree house, we decided to try to find a hotel!! We wound up North of here in Mukilteo, but thankfully the hotel was only needed for one night. Our power returned at 4PM on Sunday (12/17). Through all of this though, we were safe!! We didn't have any damage to our home, however some of our friends and many people that we've talked to did have serious damage. We are truly thankful!

So, that brings us to our rush to catch up on 4 days lost due to no power with only a week until Christmas!!! AAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!! Somehow, we managed to get almost everything done. It was nothing short of miraculous!

My parents flew in on Christmas Eve and we headed out to Crystal Mountain near Mt. Rainier. The hope was that we would have a White Christmas and that we would get to see Mt. Rainier up close and personal. Well, one of those came true, we had a beautiful White Christmas! We woke up to a nice dusting of snow all over our cars:


Here is a picture of us in our Christmas PJ's! We usually take a picture in front of our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve all dressed up for church. This year, it's PJ's on Christmas Day at the chalet!


We had a wonderful Christmas and an awesome visit with Mom & Bobby! I was sad to see them go! Bobby left on Wed the 27th and my mom stayed until the 29th. We took my mom to the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery in Woodinville before she went home. It was a nice tour and we were able to taste 3 wines. They were all delicious! We had to bring a couple bottles home with us of course!! LOL!

On New Year's Eve we had our friends Dave and Linda and their kids over to celebrate on New York time! We had so much fun! I'm so thankful that we've made such great friends up here all ready!

So, that pretty much sums up the last couple months! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we brought the snow home with us from the mountains. The night we got back to the house it snowed all night and most of the next day. We got about 3" from that snow. I mentioned to someone this past Sunday that we were told it didn't snow here and she laughed at me!! I guess that was a lie!

So, tonight I drove to Bellevue to meet my cousin Alexis and her friend Jason. They were an hour and a half from the end of their cross-country journey. My cousin took a job with a company in Bellingham, WA. She's supposed to start on the 15th of this month. She and Jason were driving here from Texas. We met at Starbucks and had some coffee. We didn't get to visit very long b/c they were trying to get to Bellingham by 6:30 to pick-up the keys to her new apartment. I think we're going to get together on Saturday though to do some sight-seeing. I can't wait! I'm so excited to have some family up here! We're already making plans to get together regularly. I'm sure there will be more to post on that topic soon!

Okay, this has been a VERY long post so I'll end it here! Thanks for reading if you got this far!

Oh, and to quote my husband, "Happy New Year, Y'all!!"