Happy Holidays

We had a wonderful Christmas here at home with our little bundles, friends and neighbors. Christmas Eve, Auntie Suzette spent the night with us after braving the elements to get across on the ferry from Seattle. Thanks to her neighbor Becky for taking her to the ferry on that side and our neighbor James for picking her up on this side. The babies fell asleep about 15 minutes before I was due downtown to pick her up and James graciously agreed to make the run for me. Here is a photo of Auntie Suzette and Peytine on Christmas Eve:


Darin read "Night Before Christmas" to the twins that night - here is a photo and a video clip of that cute event:




Christmas morning we had the "overnight coffee cake" for breakfast that Darin had mixed up the night before and then the adults opened our stockings. After the babies got up we fed them breakfast and then set them on the couch to open their stockings. Here they are - of course first the stockings went in their mouths and then everything in them. Here are a few photos:





The two little huskies (photo taken earlier in the week wearing the outfits from Uncle Jeff & Auntie Bonnita) each got a University of Washington hard board book in their stocking. Elijah's is titled "Little Husky's first football game" in which the little huskies beat the little cougars OF COURSE! Peytine's book is "University of Washgington 101" and includes everything a baby needs to know about going to college at the UW (Mommy's alma mater)!!


Christmas afternoon our neighbors Keith and Jessie and Keith's brother Talon, Jean's old friend from Seattle college days and our neighbor down the street Beth, and Suzette all shared dinner with us. We enjoyed good food and good company and finished it off with a raspberry trifle for desert.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you. We love it when you post comments so we know you are out there keeping tabs on us!

Darin, Jean and the Twins

Let it Snow!

I've lived in Washington 34 of my 38 years and don't remember seeing this much snow on the west side of the state EVER! (I'm told that there was more than this once when I was a toddler but that was a long time ago!) We've had snow on the ground for 10+ days now - very unusual for these parts.

Here are some photos of the fun:

Our house with the snowman Darin built for us:


Our gate & fence - I love how the snow piled up:


Our Street - we got 6 - 8 more inches after this photo was taken:


Family - Thanks Keith and Jessie for being our photographers!


Mommy & Babies:


Not snow pics but had to share...

Daddy & Peytine - Thanks Auntie Megan for the cute outfit!


Watson and Elijah hanging out:

FINALLY - an update

Hello!

Oops - I didn't quite make my promise last week but better late than never right?? And now you will just have to endure a REALLY long post with LOTS of pictures!

The twins are doing great! They really are the cutest babies in the world but then again, I might be slightly biased.

So - here are some pics of the goings on around here...

Kind of embarrasing to be posting Halloween photos in December but here they are...we had two little pumpkins - Thanks to Darin's cousin Sherri for taking the photos!:





Mommy & Elijah:


Peytine:


Here are more pictures from the photo session with Sherri - I LOVE this series and have named it "The Secret"...these are now printed and hanging on the wall in our living room:






The Pumpkins also attended our niece Leah's 18th birthday party on Halloween (actual birthday was the day before). We had dinner at Ivar's on the Seattle waterfront. Here are some pics from that:

Peytine with the birthday girl:


Logan and Elijah:


Tough guy Tyler and Elijah:


Tyson and Elijah:


Darin got the door installed in our bedroom. It replaced a window and makes a HUGE difference in the whole room. It is a "full light" door so we have a nice view of the back yard and what will be a deck sometime in the spring. Here is Darin caulking in the trim with Elijah in the ergo carrier:



After all of their hard work the boys had to take a nap (actually I have to confess it was not the same day but it makes a good story doesn't it?!)


We also attended Leah's final cross country meet of her high school career - she got her season best time!! Congratulations Leah.



The next big adventure was spending the entire week of Thanksgiving in Spokane/N Idaho. Bobpa ended up in the hospital for 3 days to get his dialysis started - he'll be on dialysis 3 day's/week for 4 hours each from hear on out. The good news is that he is feeling SO much better after two weeks of the treatments that he is raring to "get out and do things". Here are the kiddos visiting him in the hospital. They made quite an impression with the staff and other hospital visitors...at one point we had at least 10 people gathered around their stroller in the hospital lobby. We spent several nights at Uncle Tim & Auntie Megan's. Somehow all of the pictures that got taken must be on their camera and not mine...we had an absolutely wonderful time with them.

Bobpa & Elijah:



Bobpa & Peytine:



We also spent a FABULOUS evening at Lisa's place playing with all the kids. You can see photos of that fun time here


Next we went up to Grandma Rosie's for the actual Thanksgiving - the food was great, the company excellent and the babies were completely spoiled by everyone!

Here are 3 cooks in the kitchen:



Uncle Tim & Elijah reading a story:



The table with all of the yummy food!!



From Rosalyn's we went to my Aunt Karen & Uncle Bill's in Spokane where 31 members of my family had spent the day. We spend Thursday evening and all day Friday with the group. It was such a great time with so many members of my extended family. Friday we had an entire day of Norwegian food while kids (and some adults) came in and out of the house to warm up in between 4-wheeler rides.

This is Peytine & Elijah with their cousin Luke (John & Carmen's youngest):



Here are all of the "little" kids...we kind of have two separate groupings of the cousins children. One of teens to twenty somethings and one of babies to 10 or so.



Here is a picture of Kim and her girls (Emily & Katie):



Here is Peytine with the "girl" cousins:




No Thanksgiving family gathering would be complete without singing a few Christmas Carols around the piano:



Saturday morning before heading back over the mountains to the homestead, we spent some time with our friends Scott & Kelly and their amazingly cool family. They have 14 kids. Scott & Kelly have adopted the 12 youngest and they have two adult daughters from Scott's first marriage. Unimaginably, the level of chaos in their house with 12 kids all under the age of 14 is pretty on par with our house on any given morning with just two. I really have no idea how they do it but the kids are happy, well adjusted and BEAUTIFUL.

Here is a photo of our two with their 12 (Left to right: Carter, William, Kiki, Zella (holding Peytine), Emma (holding Elijah who you can't really see), Malachi, Bektu, Adacia, Wyatt, Ginny, Selena, Koby



Here is Scott with Kiki (holding Peytine) on the right, Bektu on the far left and Adacia on the near left.



And here is my wonderful friend Kelly with her youngest boy William (Kelly and I used to work together at the Nextlink Spokane office and have stayed in touch ever since)



If you want to read more about the adventures with their family you can check out their blog here.

Other happenings....

During our week in Spokane we had some family photos taken with Lori Brown at Mystique Photography. We have worked with Laurie previously and took advantage of being in town to have her do a photo shoot with the twins. These are their 6 month photos and 10 year anniversary photos for Darin and I. We are having a dickens of a time choosing which photos to order. So - if you have some extra time and want to take a look check out the photos here and post a note to tell us which ones are your favorite.

Finally - last Sunday my siblings and I had the great pleasure of hosting a 50th Wedding Anniversary Celebration for my parents. So many of their old friends and many of our family members made it to the reception (in Snohomish). It was a really lovely time for all of us. What a wonderful gift to have them both still with us (in spite of all Dad's health problems) and to have their example of learning to love each other beyond human annoyances and failings. I didn't have time to take a lot of pictures during the reception but would love to have some from those of you who attended took. Thanks to each of you who were able to make it from near and far and to those of you who were there in spirit.

Here is Mom and Dad starting out the food line - don't they look great?!:




Mom & Dad and all the kids (from left to right - Stan, John, Dad, Mom, Jeff, Jean, Scott):




Luke & Elijah in their matching outfits:




Laurie N, Mom & Julie Y - Mom worked with these two lovely ladies at the Marysville School district many moons ago. I was a candle lighter in Laurie and Dave's wedding when I was 11. I think it was my first long dress I ever had and I LOVED IT. If I remember correctly it was light yellow eyelet material.





Oh - and one more picture - I snapped this of the babies this evening sitting in their little booster seats on the bed in my office. Aren't they just the sweetest little cuties ever??!!

Sorry for the long absence

Hi there - so sorry for the long absence from the blogosphere! We've been a tad busy around here (hard to imagine I'm sure!). I do hereby solemnly swear to post some photos of the last month with our two little munchkins THIS WEEK.


Also, for some reason, my notification of comments posted wasn't working properly so I just discovered SEVERAL from the last 6 weeks that I hadn't read previously. Thanks to all of you for the notes of encouragement and support.

So...stay tuned for more in the next few days.


D, J & The Twins

Weekend Visit to Spokane & Sandpoint

We had a really great weekend visiting friends and family on the "other side" of the mountains. Last Thursday we drove over to Spokane and spent the night at Tim & Megan's. Friday we had a nice relaxed morning with Auntie Megan and then stopped by the Spokane XO office to visit my co-workers there. From there we went to John & Carmen's to meet Mr. Luke (and visit the rest of the family). He is a darling baby and so quiet compared to our two wiggle worms!

Friday evening we had a delightful dinner and visit with Doug, Debbie, Connor, Nathan and Debbie's cousin Brenda. It was so fun to catch up with them again - it had been far too long since we spent any time together.

Friday and Saturday nights we spent with Grandma Rosie near Sandpoint and Saturday for lunch we went to Sandra, Alberto & Gene's place for a WONDERFUL REAL ITALIAN lunch. For those of you who don't know...Sandra was raised here but lived in Italy for many years. She and her husband Alberto moved to the US 6 or 7 years ago to be near her mother Gene. The babies got cooed over in Italian and renamed! That's right - some American sounds/names are too hard for Alberto so Elijah was given the Italian pronunciation (El - ee - ah) which we both quite like and Peytine Melody-Ann was called Anna (ahh-na).

Sunday we had lunch at Stan's new place in Couer d'Alene - he has it fixed up really nice even though he's only been there for 3 weeks and let me tell you the steak he fixed was FABULOUS!

I should just say right up front that I didn't do a great job as a photojournalist of our weekend...I got a few pictures but not nearly enough. So here are the pictures I have and hopefully will get a few more from Uncle Tim & Auntie Megan since they took several while we were at their place.

Here is Mr. Luke ... looking so adorable sitting on Mommy's lap.


Caelyn holding Peytine:


Carlee holding Elijah:


Thing 1 & Thing 2 at Doug & Debbie's place:


Grandma Rosie has her arms full:


Sandra & Alberto with El-ee-ah and Anna:


Elijah looked so cute in both of these that I just couldn't resist putting them both in:



Oh - and to make things a little more interesting, we brought a new kitty over for Grandma Rosie. Her name is Sweat Pea and she is settling in quite nicely!:


And for those of you who wonder how I work with two babies at home:

(Actually, I have to confess, the real answer to how I do it is our neighbor Kay! I'll try to snag a picture of her and the babies soon.)

Here is one final picture - not from the weekend but I just found it on my cell phone and thought it needed to be posted. This is Uncle Todd holding Peytine at Aunt Velma's.