Established 2001
We invited the Drew kids (three of them, at least) over to make candy canes with us last weekend. We read the recipe, talked about the steps, and completed them together.
Then we started grabbing slightly cooled gooey boiled sugar and rubbing it in our butter-coated hands!
Sometimes it was very hot.
In the end, everyone made some lovely creations and we had a super fun time!
Our family left after the holidays and JT wanted to get moving on the Christmas tree, so he offered to set it up. We had two hours before we needed to leave for basketball, and he was a man on a mission.
Then Haley and I went to see The Nutcracker at Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle Sunday evening, and we loved it. It was magical to watch Haley enjoy ballet. She understands the story, the emotion, and the difficulty of the movement. We had such a great time together.
This week I also stopped into Snowflake Lane in Bellevue. It wasn’t crowded at all and I got to see Jim at work for a bit. Impromptu date night!
This year for the first time ever, we hosted family at our house! My cousin Cora and her two children came for the long weekend. We spent Thanksgiving morning walking the neighborhood with friends and family on a gorgeous, cold morning.
Then we made sweet potatoes, hung around in the kitchen talking, finally showered, and made it to my brother’s house for dinner at 2 pm. The table was gorgeous!
The hostess, Gena, and her girls had been working hard all day!
We sat down for dinner all in a row – 18 adults here and 8 children at a different table.
After dinner we took a little walk around the neighborhood in the sunshine.
…and played games together.
Then there was dessert. Some of us had to make tough choices. Some of us just took a little of everything. I’m not naming names!
On Friday, we hosted an Apple Cup viewing party at our house for interested family members. We had – at one point – 10 adults and 13 kids running about!
My cousin Cora and I were rooting for separate teams 🙂 but decided to take a photo to recreate one we took together in college in 1997! So fun.
The girls ended the evening with a little hair party.
Meanwhile, we had such a great time back at our house with cousins! Haley and Heidi had matching necklaces, a gift from Heidi.
We cooked, built legos, colored, made popcorn, and just hung out. It was great!
What a lovely tradition we’ve made with some of our favorite people! Every year we host a progressive dinner style Friendsgiving with our friends from the Drew family and the Lee family. This year, we had an Italian theme!
We barely fit in the photo this year… and there’s one more kid to come!
We’ve been through babies, surgeries, camping trips, vacations, TDY, job changes, and LIFE with this crew. We are sure blessed to have them!
…It’s also known as “Haley’s first car” in our family! Jim has to return his take home car from work this week, so he’s been looking for a commuter car option and trying to decide what is the best purchase long term, given our other plans to replace my car and our children needing something to drive in the next 5-7 years (crazy!).
So this weekend he went to look at the 2020 Toyota Corolla, and came home with one. Haley and I stopped by the dealer and we asked her if she liked the color and how she liked the interior… just for fun. She is super excited to be able to drive it in 7 years, assuming nothing in our plans changes, and meanwhile Jim has a great little car for the back and forth to work. Done!
Haley did an amazing job at her second gymnastics meet, the PJ Classic in Auburn. She improved a ton from her first meet and most importantly had a wonderful time! Her team wore matching pajama pants… so cute!
We had a full audience for this meet, which was super fun.
She got 4th in her division!! We were so excited for her hard work to be blessed with placing at the event.
Her team got 2nd place at the meet, and they were thrilled to earn a trophy for their gym.
Our very special audience for this meet included four grandparents and one great-grandma visiting from Portland!
After the meet, Haley and I met some of her teammates at MOD Pizza for lunch, and then we went to Bellevue to get her ski fitting done for her rentals. And then… we were tired and hungry and had to stop at Mercury Coffee so we could enjoy the hour drive home. It was Haley’s first time at Mercury. She was impressed with the size of the cookies!
Last little gymnastics update: Haley got one of the new practice leos at her gym (she needed one and it was just good timing) so she was featured with her teammate Harper on the gym facebook page. Such a cute photo!
JT and his fifth grade school mates performed at the Veteran’s Day Assembly, and this was the first assembly in his life that he has been moderately okay with being up front.
(Read: didn’t complain for weeks and instead appropriately internalized all anxiety. Ha!)
Grandpa Cole came to watch and he was recognized as a veteran during the “stand if you…” portion of the assembly. It was very nice!
Once again, we hosted a pizza party at our house for our neighbors. It was a fun event with about 25 people all chatting and laughing, and kids getting hyped up for trick-or-treating.
Then we went outside and took a group photo, of course, and one of just our kids.
And finally we hit the streets. We did our entire neighborhood main loop in about an hour and then took our friends Sawyer and Jozie with us to our church Harvest Carnival for indoor, warm fun. When we got home, the kids poured out their candy bags and enjoyed living the dream… piles of candy. It remains there now, on November 1st, waiting to be categorized somehow. 🙂
I think I just set a new personal record for the quickest work trip! I left home at 8:15 AM after I put the kids on the bus, got the airport and parked by 9:30, bought a lunch for later, was on the plane by 9:50, and landed in Las Vegas at 12:50 PM. I had a work video call at 1:00 PM (which I joined while walking to the Uber pickup lot) and a 30-minute drive to the school. I ate my lunch in the car en route because my school meeting started at 1:30 PM. I presented until 3:45 and then a colleague drove me back to the airport. We were there by 4:30. I walked through security, bought some snacks, and was to my gate (and boarding) by 4:45. I flew back to Seattle, landed at 8 PM, and was parked in my garage at home by 9 PM.
Phew! I literally could not have timed the entire day any tighter… and I only used the bathroom on the plane there and back because I didn’t have time otherwise. Ha! This is a photo of me with my Microsoft colleague who arranged the meeting, Kevin.
What I think is funniest (or saddest!) is that I left the house after Jim and got back before him – and he just had a normal work day!*
*Well, not completely. He also rocked a community presentation in front of a ton of people and all of his supervisors, so much that people are still coming up to him talking about what a great job he did. But I’m not at all surprised. 🙂
We headed to north Seattle for Walter’s birthday party this past weekend. He makes an awfully cute four year old!
Then we headed over to the Pacific Science Center to see Apollo 11 on IMAX. It was amazing! On the way, we saw some fun sights…
The Keene Family