Christmas 2006 in Video

A compilation of our 2006 Christmas festivities, featuring Louise, Tim, Naomi, Esther and Silas as well as Hannah (Tim's sister).

Happy Christmas!

Hello everyone and we hope that you have all had a very happy Christmas! We have had a peaceful and fun couple of days.

On Saturday, Hannah, the children and I went shopping to buy the last few things that we needed for Christmas and in the afternoon we were about to leave to meet Vanessa, James and the children at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens to enjoy the Garden d' lights when our neighbours arrived with a present for Silas. We had a lovely hour or so with them but it did make us late to meet the others! Unfortunately they were leaving as we arrived and so we didn't see the lights with them. However the lights were beautiful and we all enjoyed them. Even Silas was awake enough to enjoy looking at the lights above him for a while! The lights were somehow sculptured into flowers that were so realistic in some cases that you could define the flowers themselves!

On Saturday evening once the children were in bed, Hannah and I assembled the Ginger bread house cake ready for the children to decorate in the morning. This took a bit of doing as we had to wait until the icing stuck a bit before we could let go! I also made the trifle and filled the stockings that night.

On Sunday we agreed to meet James and Vanessa at Vanessa's church in the afternoon as I wanted a service that would sing lots of very traditional carols! In the morning the girls, Hannah and I decorated the Gingerbread house with icing sugar and sweeties! I discovered hat I quite enjoyed piping the icing onto the house and may even be quite good at it if I was able to do it without the help of the children! Sill it looked OK and the girls enjoyed making it!

After lunch Hannah made a lentil loaf for her Christmas Dinner and I made the Christmas cake (don't worry it isn't a fruit one!) before we set off to go to church. Unfortunately we discovered that my car had a flat battery (we had had the lights on in the car on the way home on Saturday so that the girls could eat their tea and they had been left on by mistake)! So, Tim and I jumped out the car and managed to jump start the car in about 5 minutes, which made Tim comment that we should get a job in Kwik Fit!! We have had to do it so many times though that we have got quite practiced at it!

The service was lovely and we did indeed sing lots of Christmas Carols, so that was good! It was a little bit too long and the little ones got a bit fidgety -Naomi and Maddie were OK though. I fed Silas in the ladies toilet and had many funny conversations with different children during this! One Mum of 2 boys (about 6 and 8) said that they wouldn't even notice me feeding Silas and then was proved very wrong as the older one came and stared and stared and was asking
"what are you doing?". I didn't mind answering his questions but his mum was rather worried none the less! He left saying to his mum in a voice of wonder "she is feeding the baby with her breast!" It was very funny! Thankfully the car started as we left!

In the evening, Hannah and I wrapped up all the Christmas presents whilst Tim finished off the Christmas letter. This took quite a long time and it was late by the time we were about to go to bed; unfortunately Silas then woke up and so I went to feed him before I went to sleep. We weren't in bed very early at all! Never mind!

the girls slept well and I didn't hear them until just before 8am, when Naomi came rushing in to tell me that Father Christmas had left a Satsuma in her stocking! She found this so funny and was so excited about this that it took a while before she told me what else she had in her stocking! After about 5 minutes, Esther had obviously also got to the bottom of her stocking as I heard a triumphant "'suma" from her too!Honestly, they were more excited about the satsuma than anything else for a while!

Christmas morning passed quickly really after we had made a few phone calls and gone for a walk. After lunch we opened all the Christmas presents which was lovely and it was good to see the girls enjoying looking at the presents in turn rather than just ripping off the paper! Naomi was especially good at this! Silas slept through it all and the girls opened his for him! We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your lovely and thoughtful gifts and there will be a thankyou card in the post soon!

yesterday evening once the children were all in bed, we watched a lovely film called "Little Miss Sunshine" which I can recommend! It is funny and sad and witty all at the same time and one that appeals both to men and women! We even watched it all the way through which shows how much we were enjoying it!

Silas didn't sleep too well last night and must be having a growth spurt I think! He fed every 3hours and was starving! He is asleep now and had a lovely awake afternoon, playing under his gym and watching the children. He loves to look at his hippo when we change him and smiles adn talks to that a lot! he was a grand 13lb 10oz on Thursday by the way! he is even trying to roll over and I think is going to be one of these babies who does it early!

We have had Vanessa and James and the children here this afternoon and have had a great time with them! The children played on their own for a while and then we played games or read stories together! It was good fun and we enjoyed eating Vanessa's gorgeous Squash and spinach lasagne and leftovers!

Tomorrow we are going to go down to North Bend to the factory outlets and then hopefully take Hannah across to one of the islands on Thursday as the weather is supposed to be good!.

Naomi was funny the other day; she was talking to Silas and turning my lamp on and off saying "this is the sun (lamp turned on) and this is the moon (lamp turned off!) It was very sweet! When we were at the lights on Saturday there were some over the door way of a small door that looked like a hobbit house door! I mentioned to her about it being a hobbit house and then spent ages trying to explain who a hobbit was and so on! She was fascinated by them and I am not sure that she grasped that they are not real!

Esther was both funny and frustrating yesterday afternoon! I bought her some Elmo Slippers that I thought she would love but something has upset her about them and she refuses to wear them! One minute they are too 'mall and the next they are too big! We have a very funny video of her explaining to me why they have to go in the cupboard and she is very funny! It is when she uses words like "actually" that she sounds so funny!

Well, that is it for now! Will write over the weekend, I hope!Lots of love to you all!

Thankfulness!

Hello! Hope that this finds you all well and looking forward to Christmas on Monday. For a variety of reasons we are very late with Christmas this year but have now got our Christmas tree up! It is an enormous (about 10 foot!) real tree that Tim, Hannah and the girls bought today! It was a bargain and looks very good from where I am sitting right now!

It has taken me all week to catch up from the power cut last week! It is hard to imagine this evening with our Christmas Tree lights and outdoor lights on that this time last week we were in pitch darkness! Electricity is so commonplace that it is not until it isn't here that you realise how much you need it!

So, I promised to tell you the saga of it all, so here goes! Last Thursday (14th) we had the most tremendous storm. It must have been close to what a hurricane is like and quite frankly, it is scary. The weather service had accurately predicted that the storm would come and would be fierce but it is hard to imagine before hand what a 70mph wind is like.

The storm started in the afternoon with torrential rain and some wind and by bedtime, it was quite blowy but nothing worse than we have seen before. I had managed to get out in the afternoon to see Vanessa and had made some preparations before I left as they were predicting power cuts. We had had our cooked dinner at lunch time and I had left the door hook undone and torches out. However, although the lights flickered on and off all evening, the power stayed on and so I thought that we had escaped the worst.

However, I woke up around 2 am to hear the wind and it was fierce. It was so strong that it was blowing up our heating air vents and we had no power. This means that we also didn't have any heating. I could hear though that the wind was coming down from the mountain which meant that the trees were less likely to come crashing through our house, which was good. Tim's colleague was less lucky - a tree came through her house at 3:00 am that morning and they had to salvage what they could and move out immediately.

When we woke up in the morning, we were able to listen to our wind up radio and soon realised that we were not likely to get power that day. There were over 1 million people without power in the region and many roads were closed due to fallen trees. Our neighbourhood survived very well with no fallen trees or visible damage done. WE have lost a fence panel but that was about it.

It was cold in the house and so we decided to go and find somewhere warm for the day! we met up with Vanessa and James and the children and actually spent the day at their house as they had a log that they could burn on their open fire and a fuel cell that enabled us to heat up soup and baked beans for the children. During the day, Tim and James were able to buy a camping gas stove each and several little canisters of gas, which was great and we had plenty of torches, candles and batteries between us.

By mid afternoon we knew that it was likely to be Sunday or Monday before we got power again and so we decided that it would be best if we all came back to our house for the time being. Tim and James were able to cook a meal on the camping stoves ( I think we had pasta) and I managed to get the beds ready - this was not easy in the dark! Although the house was very cold by this point, we were able to keep warm by using blankets and wearing loads of clothes! We also discovered that we had hot water, which was great and so we were able to bath the children and get them into bed early.

On Saturday morning the house was bitterly cold and we knew that we needed to get somewhere warm for the day. Silas had so many clothes on, he was hard to get hold of! He had on:  a vest, a long sleeved top, socks a thick fleecy baby grow, Grandma Beads' new cardigan, his sleepsac and was wrapped up in 2 blankets that were doubled and he also had a hat!! However he was warm and that was all that mattered! However Tim and James also managed to get the gas fires working which was brilliant and once we had bought a Carbon Monoxide monitor and knew that they were safe we basically left them on all the time!

By bed time, the house felt much warmer, although it was bitterly cold outside and we were getting the hang of no electricity! IT had taken this long to stop turning the lights on in the bathroom for example!

On Sunday we heard that it would be Thursday before we got power back and so we had talked and made plans around this and so we were very surprised to see the electricity come on at 11:00 PM that night! WE were so happy!!

We were very thankful for lots of reasons though. Firstly that we were safe and that our houses were in one piece. Secondly that the two families were able to stay together which meant that we had company and that it had more of an adventure feel rather than a miserable experience which it would have been if we had been on our own! Also the children played so well together that it helped them too. We were thankful that we were able to have heat and a means of cooking hot food even though that most of our frozen and chilled food was thrown away. We were thankful that one of the shops was open so that we could buy groceries and we were thankful that we don't rely on the television that much anyway!! Lastly we were thankful that Seattle had electricity so we were able to go and spend the day in the Children's  museum on Saturday!

We actually had quite  a few funny moments in all of it too! The girls loved carrying their light sticks and lanterns around with them and Esther spent ages standing the sticks up on the torch and singing "happy birthday to you" and blowing them over when I was trying to make the beds! This was not helpful when she then leant over the torch, sending the room into complete darkness whilst she restood them up again! In fact all of them were fascinated by the candles and sang "happy birthday" all meal times! We didn't mind until they started blowing out the candles!

IT was funny playing Taboo with Vanessa and James on Friday night and laughing at our descriptions of words like Cascade and camping stove! It was funny going into the garage where the men did the cooking to see Tim and James cooking by torchlight and lamp and to smell cooking smells when you went to throw the rubbish away!

It wasn't funny washing up for 8 people and not having the television for the children to watch at the end of the day to enable you to do the cooking and sorting out! It wasn't funny not to be able to do the washing and it certainly wasn't funny to throw away all the food that we had to ditch and to wash out the freezer! however, my fridge now sparkles at me every time I open the door!!

It has really taken me all week to catch up really! I had to restock the fridge and freezer on Tuesday and catch up with all the washing and the ironing. I did just about get ready for Hannah in time for her to arrive yesterday!

I took the girls to a new inflatable bounce place on Wednesday and today and they loved it! Esther was a bit nervous but Naomi thought it was great! Today they had a special session with craft, games and a  visit from father Christmas which was great!

Yesterday morning we took Silas to have his first set of injections, poor boy but he has coped very well apart from yesterday afternoon and having bad tummy ache today!

Well, that is about it for now, I will try to write a quick blog on Sunday to tell you about the weekend! hope that you are all well!

Power Cut!

Hi there. This is just a few lines to let you know that we have had a major storm here last Thursday night which resulted in a widespread power cut. We were without power for 3 days and nights,  but we were fine. Some areas are likely to be out for another week, so we are thankful that ours came back yesterday.

Thankfully our house was not damaged in any way and our roads were not full of fallen down trees. Others were not so fortunate.

Although it was awkward, we had heating (thanks to our gas fires), torches for lights, camping gas stoves for cooking (it reminded me of French holidays all over again!) and hot water, so we did very well.

As you can understand though, I have a lot to do now!! I need to do 4 days worth of washing, clear out the fridge and freezer and restock as well as getting ready for Christmas! So, you will forgive me, I hope for not writing much about our adventures now, but later on in the week when things are a bit calmer!

Oh, and I forgot, we had Vanessa and James and the children staying with us, so the house is chaos! will write soon ....!

Just the children and me .......

Hi there! Hope that this finds you all well. We are fine and the children and I have had a good first day just all of us together! Even though I was still dreading it up to a fortnight ago, I felt ready yesterday for it to be just us and today was fine! I got Naomi to school only 15 minutes late which was very good going when you consider that they didn't wake up until 8:00  this morning! The house this evening is no worse then it usually is and so I feel a sense of achievement! The washing is done and I have the ironing to do this evening too! Currently the children are asleep although I think I can hear Silas stirring; he might just need his dummy though! It is the small things in life!!

So today, Naomi went to school and I went to the chiropractor this morning. This afternoon it stopped raining and so we abandoned having a rest in favour of getting out and going to the park. Typically though, by the time we got out the house it was raining, so we did a bit of shopping until it cleared and then went to the park for a quick run and play. However, it is getting dark so early that we weren't there long but it was long enough. We came home and the girls played and Silas slept whilst I prepared tea. The girls have been watching Tom and Jerry in the evenings, which they have been giggling at! It is quite funny!

Yesterday we didn't do much in the morning as Pam and Ken were packing; Tim took them to the airport at lunch time and the children and I went in to Bellevue Square to meet Rosie, Caitlin and Cameron at the boat! The girls had a good run and play on the boat and Cameron is starting to walk holding onto things so he enjoyed it too! Silas slept!

On  Monday, we had our usual busy day of Gym class and school in the morning and Ballet in the afternoon. Pam and Ken enjoyed watching both girls do their activities and the girls enjoyed having an audience!

That is about it for now! I will write again on Sunday!

Pantomime!

Hello! How are you? I hope that this finds you all well. We have some fun christmassy days this week, which was fun!

On Wednesday, I took Naomi to school in the morning and then in the afternoon we went with Ulrike, Fritzi and Felix to the Dolls museum in Bellevue, which we all enjoyed. The girls enjoyed looking at the Christmas Tree and Snowman too! Felix and Silas slept through most of it! Ulrike, Leif and the children have left to go to Germany for 4 weeks today and so they were very excited when we saw them! 

After a late start on Thursday we went to Seattle to see some of the Christmassy things that they had there. We started off in the Seattle Center where we saw the train but it was not running well, which was a shame. However there were some very good schools' performances on the stage though, which were extremely good. There was an elementary school first that sang Christmas carols and this was followed by a senior school brass brand. We enjoyed both very much!

We wanted to go on the monorail to the shopping centre of Seattle but it was unsurprisingly broken! Honestly, it has only been working for about 4 months during the 2 years we have lived here! I think we jinxed it! Anyway, instead we took a bus, which was not an experience I want to repeat with a stroller for a long time! For some reason, the bus drivers wouldn't lower the lift for me but would for a lady with a trolley! It was very odd! Anyway, once we got off the bus, the girls went on the Carousel and then we went to a very posh shopping mall to see the Gingerbread Village. There were 6 scenes all made from Gingerbread and sweets and they were brilliant. Each one depicted a different part of Seattle, so there was one of Pike Place Market, one of the Smith tower and one of the Puget sound. They were very clever and we spent a long time looking at them. Esther was a pain though and kept on trying to take the sweets off!

We had a great day out, but my highlight of the day was that Silas started to smile! He was lying in my arms and gave me 2 big beams! It was lovely! He isn't very smiley yet but we have all had at least one each now!

On Friday, Pam and Ken went into Seattle whilst Naomi went to school and Esther and I went to dub dub! Silas was very good during his first dub dub class and Esther was very good at singing. We did a few jobs on the way home and then in the afternoon we attempted to make a Happy Christmas banner and then went for a walk around the neighbourhood to see the lights! Silas went to sleep but the rest of us enjoyed it!

Yesterday we didn't go anywhere at all really! In the afternoon a friend from church came for a while to take some photos of us as a family. He is a semi professional  photographer and had offered a photo session at an unmissable price! It was good because the girls know him from church too and they were relaxed around him. Silas was brilliant and we have got some lovely ones of him  and the girls. There are a few of all of us together, too. It was good fun and we were impressed today with the outcome!

Today we went to church this morning and then came home to a hot lunch before getting ready to go to the pantomime! The girls had  a brilliant time at the panto - Naomi said that it was the best show she had ever seen. It was in fact the only show she has ever seen, but we got the message! We went with Vanessa, James and the children but also saw 2 other families that we knew and Tim saw a few other colleagues there too! At least half the audience was British!

The panto was Snow White and the 3 dwarves and it was very good. The Queen and Snow white had very good voices and the Dame (also British) was very good too. The story and songs were written by the cast and it was just the right length, especially when there were lots of children present. The Dame started off the show by explaining the concept of a British Panto and telling the audience when to boo, hiss and shout "it's behind you!" Funnily enough all the British families that I spoke too had been practicing with their children at home so we were ere all glad that the panto had all the traditional elements to it! It really was good fun and I can see it being a fixture to our Christmases here from now on!

Esther was funny today at church. Her teacher was telling us that she had been telling the Christmas story to the children and had asked Esther if Mummy had had Silas in a stable. Yes said Esther! The teacher expressed surprise and asked if there were sheep too, yes, said Esther!! She was funny! At the panto, when Snow White was hiding under the table cloth, I could hear Esther loudly shouting "She's on the table!".

Anyway, that is all for now! Pam and Ken leave us on Tuesday to continue their trip to New Zealand  and so although I hope to write the blog on Wednesday, I am not sure that I can promise! Until next time then, bye for now!

Portland again!

Hello there and sorry for the delay in writing this post this week! We were away for the weekend in Portland and then last night I didn't get chance to write! Silas was a bit upset and needed lots of cuddles! He is OK now and asleep but he has had a hard day, poor love. Hopefully he will feel better in the morning! He is now over his cold, which is good and I think I must have eaten something that has upset  him which has made him grumpy!

We were able to get out on Thursday and go shopping which was good! We went looking for some bedside chests to go in the spare room but didn't have much luck. In the end we ordered some on the Internet and they will be delivered soon. This will then give people somewhere to put things when they come, which is good.

On Friday after Naomi and Esther went to school or Dub dub we had a wander round the Gilman Village area before having some lunch and then heading to Bellevue Square. We had a great time at Bellevue Square and saw Father Christmas in his grotto, which Naomi enjoyed! Esther was not too sure! I was very daring and fed Silas in the shopping centre without a blanket covering him and my offending mammories!! No-one complained which was good! Honestly, half the population have breasts and the other half are fascinated by them, so I can't really see what all the fuss is about!!

On Saturday we left quite early all things being considered and had a good journey down to Portland, although we had to stop twice, once for lunch and once to feed Silas. We arrived at the hotel around 4pm and then a little while later headed out to go to Oregon zoo to see the Zoo lights. We saw them with Melinda and Chad last December in the pouring rain and had no trouble getting in at all, but this year we ended up turning round and going home as we spent ages trying to park and when we finally found the poorly signed shuttle parking, the queue to the shuttle was so long we would have never got in!  We were very disgruntled and headed home instead.

On Sunday we went to the book store for a little while and then found a very nice place for lunch nearby. Well, Tim and  I liked it anyway! The girls were not too enamored! It was a noodle place that sold pasta, noodles and things and it was very tasty, but the girls were not in the mood to eat it! After this we found a very exclusive chocolate shop and bought 3 chocolates for $9! They were magnificent chocolates though and felt like a dessert!

From there we headed to the zoo and after I had fed Silas we went into the zoo and stayed there for the zoo lights. We saw some of the animals before the lights came on and then were able to get on the train for a tour round the zoo. We walked to see some more of it but it was bitterly cold and so we didn't see it all. I was worried about Silas, although he felt cozy when we got him back to the car. We came home and put the children to bed before we had some tea ourselves.

On Monday morning, we went to the Science Museum which was very good, better in some ways than the Seattle one. We saw a planetarium show and the Antarctica movie in the Imax, which was OK but I think we preferred the Egypt one, really. We had a good journey home but the girls were still late to bed! However they slept really well and Naomi didn't wake up until nearly 8am this morning (Esther later than that!), which helped a lot!

Tim had his first day back at work and once he got over the shock of his colleagues playing a prank on him (they pretended he had to share an office with a new hire!) I had a good day! I took all 3 children shopping which was successful and then we had a great afternoon making crafts with our friends! We made a reindeer fridge magnet, a bauble for the tree, Christmas bells and paper chains and leaves in a photo frame. IT was all good fun! The girls were in bed at a good time tonight as was Silas and so I am hoping for a better night with him!

Well that is all for now, I won't write until Sunday now though! Hope that you are all well!