Christmas #2 - 2015

 We had Christmas with our kids and grandkids on Dec. 26th.  While we waited for the Young's to arrive, Ken showed Seth his new helicopter, which Seth was able to catch on his hand.

 After dinner, opening gifts was a high priority, especially for the kids!

 Annika's turn to open a gift.

 Annika loved her new fuzzy boots!

 Kari and Kyle are waiting for their turn to open a gift.

 3 kids with the last 3 gifts!  They opened them together because...

 ...we had gotten each of them a remote controlled vehicle.

 Luckily it wasn't raining so everyone was able to take their new remote controlled vehicle outside and play with them for awhile.  Saben had asked for a fast one, so his is very small, but it was quite fast.

 Annika wearing her new boots and getting some coaching from Kyle on driving her vehicle.

 Papa gave Seth some pointers also.

 They all got good at driving their vehicles pretty quickly.

 Picture number 1 with a normal face...

 ...and picture number 2 with their mean faces.

 New games to play is always a fun way to spend the afternoon.

 This was a challenging game that Betsy and I played.

A special new necklace with the grandkids birthstones on it.

Christmas Day - 2015

 This was our year to celebrate our Lord's birth with our kids and grandkids on the 26th, so the 25th was a quiet day with just Ken and I... until Ken unwrapped his helicopter that he can fly in the house.  If you look closely, you can see the helicopter hovering by the picture on the wall.  (Look for a little blue light!)

 The helicopter sitting on the counter.

 I got a coloring book along with some colored pencils and markers, so I started working on that.

 You can't see the helicopter in this picture, but I included so you see the cat's reaction to something flying around their house!

 An actual picture of it flying!

 We did have to make a trip out to our friend's house to pick up one of Ken's presents.  I got him a smoker, but I just wrapped up some wood chips and a picture of the smoker was underneath the chips.  At first all he saw was the wood chips and he was wondering why I'd gotten them for him!
  So, part of Ken's day was spent putting the smoker together.

The finished product!  Our kids and our friends who stored it for me until Christmas are almost as excited as we are to try the meat we smoke!  (Wenatchee family, we're bringing some smoked pork for our get together on Friday!)

Former Mentor Mom Dinner

 The Saturday before Christmas the former Mentor Moms (FMM's) from 4 years ago got together for a Christmas dinner.  Two of the FMM's couldn't make it...

...but the rest of us had a great dinner and enjoyed our time together!  We even let our husbands join us for this event!

The Rest of Thursday Evening

 Once again, I'm behind on my blogs and will be trying to catch up for a few days!  This time of year, we've been doing more things, so I have more to blog about, and since it has been busy, I tend to get behind on doing my blogs.  This picture was also taken at the Gingerbread house display that we went to on Dec. 17th.  The tree had a woolly garland like Chewbacca fur, round Princess Leia hair buns as ornaments, along with Darth Vader faces/helmets and the two laser swords..

 The other stop we made that night was at the Olympic Sculpture Park where they had luminaria set out along the paths.  It was a nasty rainy night, so we didn't stay long.

 The Space Needle with a Christmas tree on top of it

One of the sculptures in the park.

Star Wars Themed Gingerbread Houses - Episodes 4-6

 This scene is from the 4th episode.

 Jawas on the Tatooine ship.

 A huge R2D2 made of candy!

 This display had several different Star Wars space ships flying around the Space Needle

 A scene from the battle on the snowy, cold planet.

 I thought this candy version of a frozen Hans Solo was very well done!

 Luke practicing using the"Force" with Yoda supervising and his fighter in the pond!

 A close up of the scene above.  This picture makes it look like he's balancing a gift on his foot!

 The trees on the forest moon of Endor.

 CP3O, R2D2, and an Ewok.

Another view of the trees with platforms and huts for the Ewoks.

Star Wars Themed Gingerbread Houses - Episodes 1-3

 Thursday evening we went into Seattle to do some Christmas activities.  We made our annual trip to the Sheraton Hotel to see the gingerbread display, which were all done based on episodes of Star Wars.  The first 3 chronologically have never been favorites of ours, I don't think we've even seen the 3rd one.  This is a city from the first episode, notice Jabba the Hutt at the bottom holding a sign.

 I recognized this as Anakin's podracer.

 A scene from one of the battles.

 I'm not sure what the blue waterfall represents, I don't remember one in the movie, but I thought it was pretty.  (It's been awhile since I've seen the first episode, so maybe there was one in it!)

 I remember some of these characters, especially the blue guy.

 Now, we're moving on to the scenes that were created about episode 2.

 I really don't remember much at all about this episode, but again, I thought the blue stuff around the bottom was pretty.

An Imperial Star Destroyer.

This is the only picture I took of the display about episode 3 because I didn't recognize anything on it.  I'm sure some of you Star Wars fans know what it is, but since I didn't, I moved on to the episodes I was familiar with, Episodes 4-6, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow for those pictures!