Singing Christmas Tree

 On December 4th Chris and I celebrated another Anniversary (won't say how many...just trust me when I say it has been many!!)

Anyway this year I decided to make our Anniversary a family thing and we took our family to see the Singing Christmas Tree.  It was such a wonderful production, it was far better than what we had expected. We hope to start a traditon and take our family every Christmas /Anniversary

to see this performance.  We heard about the performance through our Ward because 3 different people from our ward participate in it. As it turned out we ran into some good friends of ours from our ward, the Peterson's.  We took a family photo of them and of course Audrey just assumed they wanted her in their family photo and  so she jumped right in! 

So this week we have had 6 snow days in a row and school has been cancelled everyday this week, you can see we don't have that much snow either, it is so funny, coming from Michigan and Utah where it literally takes a huge act of God to cancel school due to Snow.  We have had a great time though sledding with our neighbors and the Evans family! This would be the reason why I have had time to do my mega catch up blog session as well.  So here is a little of what we have been up to the past month or so...

Ok this was so funny, at the ward Christmas party Chris and his 4 men's choir performed 4 songs together.  This was there very first time performing together and Chris was really nervous about doing it.  They all wore matching ties and santa hats.  It was really quite cute but one of guys was really sick that night so he was struggling to stay in tune and it was a bit funny at times as they were trying to hit some of the high notes.  I was chuckling a little bit, but only because they were so cute.  Chris is the third from the left.  I think we have video and a sound track but Chris threatened me with my life if I posted it, so you will have to settle with the photo! Good times!!

This was our family Photo with Santa at our Ward Christmas party! Audrey was so excited to see Santa, she told him she wanted a pink acoustic guitar like Daddy.  We all got a chuckle out of that!

Sorry about the horizontal picture, I am still learning how to "work" the photos!!

My friend Anita made this amazing cake for Audrey!!   We didn't want to eat it, because it was so beautiful, but of course we did.  In fact after we each had a slice I put the cake away and went in the other room, when I returned my little stinker Audrey was hiding under the kitchen table, she had take two fist fulls of cake and was trying to eat it as fast as possible.  After I composed myself from laughing I quickly assigned her clean up duty and a time out.  Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the "attacked" cake or Audrey hiding, but it was quite funny !

Audrey turned 4 on November 24 and we decided to throw her a little party to celebrate.  She wanted a "princess party" so we invited 12 of her best friends to come and enjoy the festivities with us!

We played a bunch of princess games, like pin the crown on the princess, frog, frog, prince (I made up this one, like duck, duck goose but they had to pull the green frog off of the girl who tagged them the prince.) We had a princess pinta and then had all the girls make and bejewel their own crowns to take home. It was a little exhausting catering to 13 princess, but it was so nice having my mom and Anita there helping me!!

Here is the birthday girl in all her "princess" glory!!  I took a couple of pictures of the decorations the night before.  There was way to much setting up to do it all in one morning!

Sorry about the horizontal -vertical pictures, I am still learning how to "work" the pictures.  But here are a few of the amazingly beautiful princess that joined us for the Party.  We had 13 total, everyone who was invited came, we had quite a full house!

One of the first things we had the girls do when they came in was go to the jewelry box and "frost" themselves with anything they wanted to wear.  I filled the jewelry box with a bunch of bling costume jewelry mixed with some of my grandmother Pepples costume jewelry.  It was a big hit with the girls, they all got to take home two pieces of their choice when the party was over.

Another hand out we had were these chocolate suckers I made the day before.  They were so easy and fun to make.

Audrey has been taking ballet classes for a year now.  Here are some pictures of her we snapped just before classes.  I have had so much fun watching her jump and twirl around in class, it is just so stinking cute!

Enjoying some Daddy -Daughter love.  I can't believe how grown up Audrey looks in this picture, my baby is getting all grown up on me!

This tree that fell over was so ginormus, and they were all over this trail. It was so beautiful. This was one of the gorgeous ocean vistas.

On day two we went hiking all day around Ecola state park.  We had fog in the morning but it quickly burned off and we were so fortunate to have sun and fairly warm weather in October!  We really loved the Indian trail hike that had gorgeous vistas of the ocean with the hilly back drop and gorgeous tree lined beaches, the scenery was really something!

This was the view from the Hotel. Our favorite part about the hotel, besides the view was this "parlor"time they hosted where hotel guests ventured into the parlor and had free champagne, of course sparkling apple cider for us and a wonderful cheese and cracker spread.  We visited with this great couple who come every year for their anniversary, we enjoyed it so much the four of us stayed about 40 minutes after the "parlor" time ended and we were just having a blast chatting a way with our new friends from Idaho. Hope we see them same time and place next year!!

Chris's SURPRISE Birthday!

Ok so i am way behind on my blogging, but in October I had the chance to SURPRISE Chris on his birthday with a quick two day trip to Cannon Beach.  We stayed at a pretty swankie place which is so not normal for us.  We stayed here at the Stephanie Inn and it was sooo nice.  We had a fireplace and jacuzz,  so fun. We could only afford one night but we squeezed in two days of fun and such a great time.  It was just Chris and I , thanks to my wonderful parents who babysat Audrey and our good friends the Hardy's who took in Nick for two days.  Thanks guys for giving us the much appreciated time!!

The sins of the world

Ok I have to explain Nick's costume...he did not want to dress up and match his parents and little sister so literally at the last second we came up this.  He is suppose to represent the sins of the world...murder(shown by knife in head), white collar crime (shown by black shirt and tie), Immorality (shown by the boxers), love of money (shown by necklace), homosexuality (shown by earring in right ear).

The costume gets points for creativity and not to shabby for the last minute.

Stick'em up

Hangin out at the mall with our cowgirl buddies 

Lily and Isabel.

Ever heard of a cowdog?

Chris has always secretly wanted to be a cowboy!

Halloween 2008

Pal'n around on Halloween with my cowgirl.

We love this picture of Audrey. What a smile!

Chris getting friendly with the lama.

View from the hayride at the top of the farm.

Plummer Pumpkin Patch

Audrey and Anthony riding the tractor

Playing in the Pumpkins

We love to visit the pumpkin patches in Oregon.

Oaks Park!!

On Labor day we took the family and went to Oaks Park, our local amusement park.  We had such a blast!!  It was Chris, Audrey and I first time, we were totally surprised, we thought it was great.  Anyway Audrey is quite the dare-devil, she was willing to ride everything in fact we had to tell her NO to quite a few rides and she did not like that.

Check out Nick riding the little kids ride with Audrey...what a great big brother!!