One last Christmas memory...

A few nights ago, Mark and the girls went out to the porch to eat dinner in the beautiful snow! It was pretty funny to see them get all bundled up to go eat their pizza! And, of course, there was warm up time by the fire afterwards! What a great memory to make with Daddy! The girls can't wait for it to snow again at dinner time!

Cookies!!

The girls and I had a great time today making some long overdue cookies. We haven't made any since we have been at our new house! (That may be a record for us.) We invited our new friend, Skye, over to join in the fun.
Our kitchen has definitely been thoroughly introduced to flour now. But the fun was worth all the clean-up that had to be done! Tomorrow we get to decorate all the yummy cookies we baked.

Some Christmas Highlights...

Julie's mom came to town from Kalispell, Montana and stayed with us the last 10 days. We had a great time! The girls loved having their "Gramda" living here - Jadyn had a few sleepovers, Karina read lots of stories, and lots of other fun stuff happened while she was here.

Some brief highlights of our week:

• We went to the Space Needle in Seattle at dusk and enjoyed the beautiful city lights on a very cold, windy night!
• The girls showed Gramda our favorite park and we all played a great big game of hide-and-seek while we were there - a big highlight, I might add.
• Went and saw Bellevue's festival of lights in the Botannical Gardens (see previous blog entry)
• Mommy and Daddy stayed up way too late with Gramda each night after Christmas playing our new game, "Settlers of Catan" (I think our early night ended at 12:30!)
• We went to Gramda's favorite restaurant - The Olive Garden
• Jadyn showed Gramda her school - (one of her highlights)
• We enjoyed lots of stories, games, and more, too!

All in all, it was a great week and we were sad to see Gramda off last night. After a teary trip to the airport, the girls awoke this morning still feeling sad that the house was a little more empty. So we decided to draw some pictures of their highlights of the week. A few are included here, and the rest of these precious images are en route to Montana for Gramda to enjoy.

Thanks for all the great memories, Gramda!

One final note... at bedtime, Karina always shares one final thought of the day with us. Tonight, with a very serious face, she sadly shared, "Mommy, I'm sad that I didn't want Gramda to go. I neeeeeeeeed her here!"

Priceless :-)

Beautiful Lights

We went to Bellevue's Botanical Garden tonight, a free display of lights that are set up at a city park, with lots of family. It was a great time, though very cold as temperatures dipped to near freezing. But we bundled up and enjoyed the displays, amazed at the creativity of whoever set up the beautiful lights.

For more pictures, check out our family photo link.

You know you have girls when...

Jadyn: "Daddy, did you see the pretty Christmas lights?"

Daddy: "Yes - they were all white and beautiful."

Jadyn: "Actually, they were cream. But you can call them white if you like."

Away in a manger...

At our house, we have a small tree that the girls get to decorate and undecorate however they want, when ever they feel the need arise. This saves most of the ornaments on our big tree from being destroyed so easily. I was very surprised this weekend to find it almost completely bare. There were only 2 ornaments out of about 30 things they usually have on it. I, at first, assumed our sweet Molly Twinkles was the helper of this, and went looking for all of the "hidden" ornaments around the house. (We have learned that our kitten is very good at stealing things and stashing them.) But then, I was quickly owing her an apology. The girls had decided that the stable needed the decorations much more than the tree. I asked them today why they decided to do that, and the response: "Because Jesus needs the party stuff, not the tree. It's his birthday party house. The tree doesn't need a party."So, I guess there won't be any of that quiet nativity scene stuff happening around here. Jesus has a party house to hang out in.

Going bananas!

Our girls were eating their bananas with breakfast this morning. Karina was having a little trouble with her "flaps", making it hard for her to reach past the peel to eat the actual banana, so she said, "Daddy, I can't reach my banana!"

Wanting to be helpful, I said, "just hold it a little lower," thinking that the flaps would then fold down. Karina looked at the banana quizzically, and then proceeded to hold it under the table.

Sometimes we're thinking the same words, but we're just not on the same page.

"Mommy come quick!"

Those were the words I heard at top volume tonight as I dropped everything and ran to see who was bleeding to death in our front room. Today was one of those tough days (that thankfully don't happen very often) where Jadyn and Karina spent most of their time arguing and generally making each other miserable for no real reason at all.

Instead of near death, I found my two girls hugging each other in front of our Christmas tree. "This is so cute, you have to take a picture of us!" Even Jadyn couldn't help but notice the cute moment as it was happening. Apparently, while I was in the kitchen finishing up dinner dishes, they were in having a "big talk" about how much they love each other and how cute they are when they are "really sisters". Sweet words to any mother's ears. (I just wish that they would have had their "talk" earlier this morning instead of right before bedtime.)

Once again, even in the chaos of the day, I find myself being so thankful that we have these two amazing little girls that are not only sisters, but best friends as well.

The perfect tree

We went tree hunting today in between snow storms. We found a great new tree lot by our house where we could cut our own down. We spent a lot of time there searching for just the right one to make our own. This would have been Karina's pick, but we decided it needed to grow up a little bit more before we could bring it home.

We also spent a long time playing tag, chasing dogs, drinking hot cocoa, eating candy canes, warming up by the fire, and talking to some new friends. It was a very fun day!

You can find a few more pictures from our day on our Foree Famly Photos page.

Snow!

We woke up to beautiful snow this morning! It quickly melted, but then came back later on in the day heavier and willing to stay around long enough for us to play in.

I am sure it will all melt away by tomorrow, but we will be enjoying the covered trees around us as long as we can.

Twister anyone?

Jadyn has decided that Twister is one of the best kept secret games ever. She was shocked to find out that I knew we owned this game and haven't been playing it everyday.

Truth?

We often wonder if we are really getting the truth of following Christ through to our children - especially around Christmastime when everywhere you look, you only see what the world (meaning all of the stores and ads) wants you to. Our girls answered that question well this week:

As we were driving home, we passed a house that had a large blow-up Santa and a reindeer on their roof. Karina very excitedly exclaimed: "I see Jesus with a puppy on that house!" It is true that God can be seen anywhere if you look for Him!

We were shopping at the store today and stumbled across a store Santa that was offering free pictures if you wanted. Jadyn was hesitant, but then gave in when they offered a free candy cane with the deal. As she was sitting on his lap, he asked "So what do you want for Christmas?" She was quiet and seemed to be thinking very hard about her answer. But then to our amazement, she replied: "You don't really bring the presents" with a very "I told you so" kind of tone and attitude. Poor Santa didn't know what to say. His next words were something mumbled about looking up and smiling for the picture.

I love that amongst all the Santa and gift giving craziness of this holiday, my girls are most looking forward to celebrating the birthday of the One we truly should be celebrating.

A day at the park

In our new neighborhood, we have many "parks" around to make up for the absence of yard we all have. We went to a couple of them yesterday just before it started to rain. It is nice to be so close to many fun play areas. We just need our warm weather back to really get good use out of them!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

We had a very good day. The sun was out (as well as the ice everywhere), so we got to go outside and play with our new friends in the neighborhood. Scary that my 2 year old was driving a jeep today!

After lunch and a short rest, we headed over to Grammy and Grandpa's house for dinner. Thank you to Grammy for doing all the cooking...it was delicious!

To see a few more pictures, go check out our Foree Family Photos link.

School Celebration

Jadyn had a Thanksgiving program at her school yesterday. We got to hear a few songs and poems that they have been working on learning and then we had a very good potluck lunch. It was especially fun because we all got to go as a family. Jadyn's favorite part: the frosted cookies; Karina's favorite part: collecting all of the pencils (from the holders on the back of the pews) and laughing at the singing. If you want to hear any of the songs, just ask Jadyn. She has been singing them everyday!

School Pictures

Our little Jadyn is looking more grown up everyday!

Hello, Genesis 1:1...???

We were teaching Jadyn a Bible verse today - Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

Later this evening, Jadyn was in the bathroom and we heard her little voice repeating over and over, "I'm Genesis 1:1, I'm Genesis 1:1." I went in there to see what the commotion was about, asking, "Jadyn, what are you doing?", to which she replied, "I'm not Jadyn; my name is Genesis 1:1!" and then she burst into laughter.

All night we kept hearing, "I'm Genesis 1:1, I'm Genesis 1:1." We're still trying to figure out why it's so funny, but then I guess you have to be 5 to get that one. Jadyn thought it was the funniest joke in the world tonight. Ah.. to be 5 again :-)

We're here!

Wow! It's hard to believe, but we're actually in our new house now! The kids were very excited to sleep in their own beds in their new rooms on Saturday night for the first time.

The kids ate their first meal in the house.

The girls had a blast playing with the neighbors one night last week as we were working on getting the house "move-in" ready.

Thanks to all those who helped us move in. Lots of hands definitely make light work - we were all moved out of the storage unit and into the house in only a couple hours.

Although most of our rooms look like this, we're very excited to be in the house and begin unpacking our boxes and getting settled in.

Check our family photos link for more pictures from the last month. We're slowly trying to get caught up, so bear with us :-)

Brief update...

Wow! It's been a very long time since we've updated. Here's the quick skinny...

1) We have a renter for our old house - praise God! They moved in last Saturday. It's great to be done with all the work to get our old house ready to sell/rent, getting moved out, fixing things up, etc. Many, many long days in Covington!

2) Our new house is scheduled to be done Nov 5th and we're planning to move in on the 10th. We're waiting for final approval from the underwriter's on our loan, which we should hear today or tomorrow...! It's been amazing to see God work and take care of the details many times we couldn't see how things were going to work out.

3) The girls are doing great! Jadyn had her 5th birthday a few weeks back and is looking more and more grown up every day! Karina is having a blast and growing like a weed, too.

4) We've had a great time living with Mark's parents this month. The kids (and us) have loved having Grammy and Grandpa there everyday and getting to spend so much time with them.

Here are a few quick pics from the new house visit last week. We'll try to add more soon of kids and other things, but internet access has been sporadic this month and we've been crazy busy living between two different cities. We'll recap a little more of the last month when we're with pictures we can post alongside.