December 26th

 Our family Christmas was on the 26th at our house, where everyone arrived by around 11:30.

 Annika showing off her pillow making kit.

 A friend from MOPS makes these hats and I had her make a hat for Annika that looks like her kitten, Stella.

 Seth got a couple of Lego kits, which is one of his favorite things to do these days.

 A ribbon covered Annika posing for a picture.

 Unwrapping more gifts.

 Saben got some Legos also.

 For Saben's last gift, he had a code to figure out in order to find the actual gift.  (When he decoded it, it said, "You have a gift in the bedroom where Annika sleeps.")

 The gift in the bedroom was this bean bag type of chair.

 Lots of Lego building took place during the afternoon!

 Hard at work!

 Later in the afternoon everyone played "Pictionary".

 It was girls against the boys and ended up being a tie.  It's hard to see unless you zoom in, but see if you can figure out what each of the kids drew!

 Seth's turn to draw.  Since he's the youngest, his was the most challenging to figure out.

 Seth also got a "Leapster" to play games on.

 Another group playing "Settlers of Catatan".

Annika, Betsy and I taught Seth to play "Go Fish".

Christmas Day - 2013

 Christmas day was a quiet day at our house, it was just Ken's mom, us and the cats.  Dec. 26 was when the kids and grandkids arrived and quietness was a thing of the past!

 The cats enjoy sitting under the Christmas tree.

 My Christmas cactus had a bloom grow under the doilie the pot was sitting on.

One of my Christmas gifts was this necklace that belonged to Ken's grandmother and was given to me by his mom.

This is a picture of Ken's grandmother who owned the necklace.  Her name was Hermenie M. Halsey Voelker.

Christmas in Wenatchee - Dec. 21

 The clan is gathering!

 Sadie and her parents.  Matt has a funny frown on his face.

 Jayden loving on the snowman.

 Another picture of Sadie in her Christmas dress, so cute!

 More of the clan.

 Great-grandma and Jayden.  (Notice the bruises on Great-grandma's face from a fall she took a week earlier.)

 Caleb eating an orange.

 He stuffed his cheeks full of the orange.

 Issac loved his new helicopter.

 Time to open gifts.

 Sadie's turn to open a gift.

 Now Jayden's turn...

...then Isaac, and he was very thrilled with his gift, because a cousin of his had just gotten the same gift a week or so ago for his birthday and Isaac had enjoyed playing with it.

Lara had  one special gift, (she's a part of the adult gift exchange now).  One of the dogs had destroyed the booklet I had made for her a couple of years ago with pictures of Deanna in it, so she was happy to get another set of those pictures, plus a few others.

 Kiera loved her new watch.

 Play time - the younger kids played in the totes...

 ...while some played some games of spoons...

 ...Ken and Isaac played "Rock em' Sock em' robots...

...and another group played "Settlers of Catatan".

 We tried to get a picture of great-grandma and all her great-grandkids that were there and awake.  (Sadie was taking a nap and 3 weren't there.)

Melia and little brother, Caleb.

 Caleb is happy!

Going Over the Pass on Friday

 Friday, after lunch, we headed out to go over Stevens Pass to Wenatchee.  The roads were the worst between our house and the freeway, with the roads on the way up Stevens Pass a close second.  We didn't see a snow plow for a long time and when we did it was coming towards us, not clearing the road we were driving on.

 It continued to snow all the way to the top of the pass.

 There were lots of icicles along the road also.

Sunday in Seattle

Sunday morning, we headed out to see the annual gingerbread house display at the Sheraton Hotel.  The theme this year was Nursery Rhymes.  This first one was "Hickory, Dickory, Dock, the mouse ran up the clock".

 I remember my grandmother having a clock like this.

 This one was one of my favorites, the ship was actually moving back and forth a little bit.

 This one is "The little old woman who lived in a shoe", an upside down shoe, no less.

 This is a close-up of the rooms in the shoe.

 The toe of the shoe was open with a kid sledding off the flap.

 We thought it was clever, the way they made this part of the shoe a cover for the entry way to the shoe house.

 This was my other favorite one and illustrated "Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle".  The cow at the top was moving around the moon and I loved all the decorative touches to the building.  This is the back side of it and...

 ...this is the front of it.

 This was "London bridge is falling down".

 This one was "Jack and the beanstalk".  The beanstalk was growing up in Seattle, so you can see some familiar buildings and landmarks below the beanstalk.

 Sunday was Ken's birthday, so we met up with the kids and grandkids for lunch to celebrate his birthday.  After lunch, we went geo-caching for awhile.

 It took us awhile to locate the geo-cache.

 Kari was the one that finally spotted it.

 It was a micro cache...

 ...made to look like one of the bolts on the post.

We never found the second cache we looked for, so we finally gave up and headed to a dessert place called "Hot Cakes" and had a yummy molten lava type of cake with ice cream to end the afternoon activities