Amy's 1st Pigtails

Cute sisters!

The Date

Well, here are some pictures from our date to Seattle. We started out at the Nutcracker, then checked into our hotel room. Everything was really close to each other, so that was nice. This is the view from our hotel room. This picture was taken from our window...we stayed a block away from the Space Needle. How cool is that?

This is the view from the observation deck. The restaurant that we ate at revolved so that we had a 360 degree view of the city and the water. It was so cool and the food was equally wonderful....hence the massive dollar amount that was on our bill at the end of the night! :)

This is the fountain at the bottom of the Space Needle.


Here we are again at the bottom of the Space Needle. If you look closely behind our heads, you can see a bush in the shape of the Space Needle. I think I've said "Space Needle" in this post like 20 times now!

Surprise

Well, we are still in Washington and having so much fun. Brandon surprised me on Christmas with a special date. Today we are going to the Nutcracker in Seattle, then having dinner on top of the Space Needle and spending the night in a motel--kid free! Just what I need! I am very excited and love Brandon so much!

Foxy Ladies

The Peterson girls decided that the boys get to have lots of fun, so why shouldn't we? We all went out to breakfast the day after Christmas in our PJ's. I love these girls!

Cousin Breakfast

The same day that the Peterson Girls decided to go to breakfast, all of the cousins decided that they should have breakfast too--Grandma style!

Christmas Eve - Nativity

It's tradition with Brandon's family to go to their Uncle Willy and Aunt Carol's house on Christmas Eve. All of the kids act out the nativity, we play Christmas songs on the chimes, eat dinner, and of course, play games. This year we had numerous Mary's and angels, but it didn't matter because all the kids loved it. Samantha loved being Mary so much that she wouldn't take her costume off for days.



Cute little angel--or is she?

The narrators--I don't know what they are supposed to be dressed like!

The three Mary's riding the donkey aka Randy.


Dylan the Wise Man, Maylie the naked Angel, Samantha as Mary #1, Azyha as Mary #2 (or an Angel, I'm not quite sure), Ariana as Mary #3 and Amy as another Angel.

Christmas Eve

Uncle Joe was having fun flipping all of the kids onto the bean bag.



Brandon was the biggest kid of all!


And Kate got exhausted from all the madness!



An intensely large game of pirates. Guess who won????? Scott! And it was his first time playing!

Christmas Party

My wonderful roommates from college organized a Christmas party for us and our kids. We got there a little earlier than everyone else, so we made Graham Cracker houses. Katie had the brilliant idea to use a hot glue gun instead of icing to make it stay. Brandon got into it a little more than maybe he should have....and Lincoln just kept eating all the candies off that Katie put on!


She looks so sweet and innocent, doesn't she? The key word here is "looks".

A beautiful work of art.

Best friends in the making. Their mom's taught them well.....when friends get together, you must always EAT!!

Hailey and Samantha with their presents. Hailey looks like a giant compared to Samantha. I think she must have had her boots on! They kids drew names for a gift exchange. It was really fun to see them all open their presents at the same time! Thanks for a great party girls!

Snow Angels

Samantha has been begging me to play out in the snow, so I bundled up the girls and we set out in the backyard.
Doesn't she remind you a little of "Christmas Story"?

Making her first snow angel.

Amy thought the snow was funny....until I actually set her down in it. She was mad because she wanted to ride the bike, but it had cold wet snow all over it!

Flashback

This is a video of Samantha when she was Amy's age right now. It's so funny so see how different and similar they are....and how much they look alike!

Winter Wonderland

We had a pretty good snow storm and I'd been waiting for it to snow to take our Christmas pictures. Well, we decided to go out in the middle of it, which wasn't the best idea I've ever had, but we did none the less. I'm not putting our picture we used on here. You'll just have to wait and see!



Notice Amy holding a cookie. Does the girl ever stop eating?

We saw Santa at Brandon's Christmas party and Samantha just giggled at him the whole time. We have a cute picture of her on his lap. And an even better one of Amy screaming on his lap. If I can figure out how to scan it in, I'll post it! Here's Samantha by our tree.

Foreshadowing

Can anyone have worse luck? I want you all to appreciate about how warm and cozy you are in your homes right now! Not only did we have a flood 2 days after Thanksgiving, but we had another one within the same week! We all had the stomach flu the day before this incident, so I set out to do laundry the next day. I was just about on my last load and washing towels from our previous flood, when I heard the washing machine go off balance. Not thinking anything of it, I continued about my business and then heard the buzzer from the dryer, indicating that the laundry was dry. I walked over to my laundry room and saw this:


A big puddle was on the floor of my laundry room and the carpet. Then I had a horrible thought. The people that lived in our house before us had their laundry room in the basement, which meant that they had re-routed the dryer tube up through the ceiling, or the floor of our laundry room. That means there's a hole there. So, I went to investigate my thought and this is what I found:

Notice the soap on the ground from the washing machine? The drainage tube had come out of the wall when it went off balance and wouldn't you know it, that it flooded right down that hole into the basement bathroom and everything else down there.

Here's an attempt at moping up the mess. The pictures really don't give it justice.

This is where the waterfall occurred from the hole in the ceiling. Notice how the water caressed the wall ever so carefully and took the paint with it. We ended up calling our insurance company and they paid to have some things fixed, but some things we still have to do ourselves. We have always wanted to remodel that bathroom and knock out a wall, so it looks like now we are getting our chance, and at least some money to do it with. I'm trying to be positive about this. Poor Cody & Laura have been sleeping on our futon because their room got flooded for the second time. Hopefully we will get back to normal soon and it will look 10 x better than when we started. So, if some of you are feeling neglected that we haven't been in great contact, this is why. When it rains, it pours at our house!!!

The Perfect Tree

We usually get our tree the day after Thanksgiving, but this year we were a little slow and got it 2 days after Thanksgiving. We decided to go to the same place we've gotten our trees before......Lowe's. Exciting, I know. Maybe one day when we own a saw, we will cut one down!
Is it weird to be in a shopping cart when you're getting your Christmas tree?
Cutting the branches.
Wrapping up the tree.

The finished product. It only took me a couple days to finally decorate it. Read below and you'll see why!

It's Raining.......Something!

2 days after Thanksgiving, my father-in-law was gracious enough to install a new faucet and valve in our kitchen sink. Well, apparently while he was gone in the afternoon getting the new valve, there was a leak that no one knew about. It wasn't until about 11:00 that night when I was doing my lesson in our office for church the next morning (not procrastinating at all of course) that I heard a funny sound. I went into our guest room and heard "drip, drip, drip, drip" only 10 x faster! Upon turning the light on, I witnessed a small waterfall coming from the ceiling directly under where the kitchen sink is. I yelled for my father-in-law to come and everyone else that was in my house. All I could do was laugh the entire time. The flood really could have been much worse, but luckily (or not) the mattress soaked up most of the water. And, ironically enough, my brother-in-law, Cody, who happens to be living in that room, works for a restoration company that cleans up floods in homes. Unfortunately he was in Arizona at the time, but arrived home the next night. This is the time when you wish you could still call a landlord to come fix everything!

Here is the mattress drying on a tarp in our entry way. Notice the lovely yellow stains. Anyone want to come stay with us?
Here is the ceiling where everything was leaking. Mostly it was coming out of the vent, but there were some bubbles on the wall and ceiling that we had to pop to get the water out.
When Cody got home, he had to poke holes in the ceiling and put a big fan underneath them to make sure everything dried. It really could have been a lot worse. We just have to patch the holes and repaint a little, but you all know of my love for painting!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had Thanksgiving at our house this year and all of Brandon's family was there except for Cody & Laura, who actually live with us, so that was kind of funny. We had way too much food, but luckily got away without having any catastrophes. It was a great day with an even better company!

I made these pies myself. Aren't they pretty?


Table #1: Maylie, Joe, Kimm, Amy & Brandon, Leah, Shelby, Jana

Table #2: Amber, Shawna, Brandon & Amy, Samantha, Blake. Wait a minute, weren't Amy & Brandon at table #1? Hmmmm.

All the cousins with Aunt Leah.