First post since weeks before Christmas...

It all went way too fast!!! On the day after Thanksgiving when I go Black Friday shopping and we pull out the holiday decorations, Christmas feels so far away. And, I love that. I love knowing that we'll be "in the season" for weeks. I love my decorated house, the smell of cinnamon candles, the kids' infectious excitement and of course all of the pretty white lights!! But I seriously get post-Christmas blues. The weeks fly by and now it's over. Yesterday Quinn and I started by taking down the tree and everything snowballed from there. We got EVERYTHING put away and cleaned up in one day. And, now I'm sad.

Our days got pretty full as Christmas got closer (and then the snow craziness of course!!!) so I haven't posted for two weeks. So, here's what's happened...

Grandma Lorrie turned 60!! We took her to Ken's Truck Stop for breakfast. What? A loving daughter can't take her mother to a truck stop for her birthday? You wouldn't question it if you've ever eaten there. Their breakfasts are to die for (plus they have an awesome game room for the kids!).

Lots of milestone birthdays in December. We celebrated our friend Armand's 40th birthday with dinner at Gianfrancos (AMAZING italian restaurant in downtown Snoqualmie). Great food, wonderful friends, lots of drinks and a crazy blizzard outside. We ended the night at Finaughty's pub, but the power went out during our first round of drinks. The snow was blowing so heavily that I completely missed two turns and our driveway on the ride home (and I hadn't even been drinking!).

Nathan finally got the Rock Band II for Wii that he'd been waiting for since his birthday. He saved up all of his money to buy it but it didn't come out on Wii until December. We lucked out and Quinn's friend Tia at Nintendo got one of the last two in stock for us on the day it came out. THANKS TIA!!

Then of course our lives were turned upside down right before the holiday by the massive snow fall (well at least massive in my "i've lived my whole life in the NW and have never seen this much snow at once" experience). Quinn and I both made it to work when we needed to and luckily had the week of Christmas off. The kids of course loved it, every minute of it. Lots of sledding. In the beginning the snow was light and really cold which isn't great for snowballs or snowmen. But, we have a great sledding hill right down the street from our house. The snow got so deep by Christmas that the kids were able to snowboard. Pretty cool since Santa brought Garrett a snowboard for Christmas.




We celebrated Christmas with Jeff, Ginger and the boys in between snow storms at their new home in Kirkland. We had a great dinner, exchanged gifts and mostly watched the kids run around like crazy.


For the most part being housebound was pretty fun, but it snowed so hard on Christmas Eve that we couldn't get to my uncle Chris' house for our traditional Grigg family get together. This was the first time EVER that we haven't been together on Christmas Eve. We tried to make the best of it though. We went sledding, then came inside for hot cocoa. Later, I surprised the guys with a DVD slideshow I put together of pictures from 2008 - pretty cool. I missed being with family but we still had a great Christmas Eve. It did make for an early and much easier time though getting ready for Santa's visit. I'm usually up until at least 1:00 am wrapping presents and packing stockings.

Santa came...he brought Gater a snowboard with boots and bindings (SO cute!) and Nathan a trampoline. The boys got a few presents from us too - board games, DS and Wii games, new cell phones, a Spongebob guitar, snowball shooters (it was SO hard not to pull these out when the snow started to fall!), nerf guns, and more...


Now it's Sunday night, Christmas is over, and I have to get up and go to work tomorrow...so, so sad! But we've got a fun New Years Eve party on Wed to look forward to. Happy holidays!

The flu and lots of basketball

The flu, or a nasty cold, ran through our family this week (Quinn got the flu shot this year and still got it - lucky guy!) Garrett got it first, then Nathan, and finally Quinn and me. Nasty stuff. I'm just glad we got it over with before Christmas.

So, not a lot of activity here this week other than basketball. Practices for Nathan on Monday and Friday, tryouts for Garrett on Saturday morning, and a game for Nater on Saturday afternoon. The highlight was definitely Friday night when Nathan's coach, Ken, let Garrett and one of the other little brothers practice with the big boys. I was amazed (and so touched I almost cried - although I cry at everything, doesn't take much!) at how sweet the big kids were with the little ones. They were giving them high-fives, and yelling and clapping when the little guys got a basket. They were shooting on the 10 foot rim so it was not small feat for the little ones. Garrett was in HEAVEN. Coach also let them play during the last 5 minutes of the scrimmage. Thanks Ken!!!

The Snoqualmie Rebels had another tough game this week (all the way down in Federal Way - we travel all over heck and back with this new league). Although, silver lining, we did score almost twice as many points as last week. We lost; but we're getting better and the guys are having fun.

Garrett had his final basketball tryout this weekend and LOVED it again. He'll find out what team he's on after Christmas and start games in January. Quinn bought Garrett new basketball shoes on Sunday and he didn't take them off all day. "They make me jump higher, see Mom." :)

Then, the boys tried very hard to play outside in the half inch of snow we got last night. Not enough to sled; but enough for Nater to pull Gater around the backyard on a tobogan. Not a better big brother in the world!!

Basketball and a decorated tree (finally)

After more than two months of practice, Nathan's basketball team, the Snoqualmie Rebels, played their first game. Didn't turn out exactly as we expected. When we showed up with 12 players and the opposing team only had 5 we actually felt sorry for them. Well....they kicked out butts.

I finally figured out how to adjust the lighting on my camera so hopefully my pictures will get better as the season goes on.

BUT...our boys played tough - really tough. We were in it but our shots weren't falling. In our defense, the other team had already played several games going into our match on Saturday. A lot of it was first game jitters for our boys. Plus, we are seriously playing up this year. Last season, we won all but one game, and most of them by double digits. So, getting to play in a more competitive league is going to be fun for the boys.

Garrett also started basketball last weekend (no pictures yet!). But this was only the skills assessment/practice. They don't get assigned to teams or start games and practices until January. Since he's a July birthday he was one of the smallest kids there. But, basketball is a natural sport for him so he did great. Other than the pure craziness and chaos of the process he loved it.


And...we finally found matching lights for the Christmas tree. Even with all of the ornaments we have it still looks a little sparse because it is HUGE.

The good part of having a gianormous tree is being able to fit ALL of our ornaments on...especially my most favorite - the personalized glass ball ornaments handmade by my brother-in-law Justin. Love these.



Lots of stuff going on this week (especially crazy since we've all been sick at one point or the other). Usually colds will only hit one or two of us at a time; but this one hit all of us. A definite highlight of the week though was watching Nathan play the saxophone in his first band performance at the CVES Holiday Festival. Even though we were in the front row I still only got one or two pictures (and they weren't very good)!


That's it for now...only 16 days till Christmas!!!!! :)

Oh Christmas Tree.....I *heart* Clark Griswold

I look forward to this day every year!!! Picking out our Christmas tree!!! We always go on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and always to the same tree farm up in North Bend. It's usually a fun and easy process - we search for our tree (usually takes 15-20 minutes to find a good one), Quinn gets the tree up onto the truck and then we go inside the tree farm cabin to see Santa.

BUT...this year not so easy. The trees were totally picked through. After almost an hour we still hadn't found "the one". So, we went inside the cabin there to warm up and visit Santa. BUT...Santa wasn't there yet and they didn't know when he'd arrive. So...out for more tree searching.



Then we found it! Our tree! It was kind of hard to gauge because they had cut the branches off the bottom few feet of the tree; but the top of the tree was perfect. Quinn started cutting. Once we got it down we could tell it was much bigger than it looked! It took the two of us to get it in the truck and down to the baler (this story is already way too long so I won't go into the details of how funny and frustrating it was trying to get it into the truck! :) We got it baled, and tied onto the truck and went in to see Santa. Garrett gave Santa a handmade pipe cleaner bracelet with 9 jingle bells on it (one for each reindeer) that he made. Garrett asked Santa for a tent trailer (he loves camping) or a snowboard, Nathan asked for a trampoline or an Xbox 360. So sweet!


We finally got the tree home and when Quinn took it off the truck we started to worry about just how tall it really was. We pulled out the tape measure and realized it was 2 feet too tall to fit in the house!! Hysterical. We are SUCH Griswolds! Quinn chopped a foot off the bottom and a bunch of branches off the top and it fit within a quarter inch of the ceiling. It is huge. It totally doesn't fit in the living room. It is SO funny. It's so big that the four sets of lights I had wouldn't cover the whole thing. So, we've put on lights and decorated about 2/3s of the way up. The top of the tree is bare. I've bought two more sets of lights but neither set matches the ones already one the tree. Beyond frustrating! Seriously! I will post pictures once the tree is completely decorated.




I need to take some pictures of the lights on the house too. Last year I bought a cool light system that syncs the blinking of the lights with Christmas music that it plays through speakers on the front porch. We covered the house of white lights. SO PRETTY! Quinn is my Clark Griswold. Love him! (especially when he climbed on the roof to put the lights on the eaves!). He didn't even get upset when the lights burnt out fuses the first three times we plugged them in.


I love Christmas!