A New Christmas Tradition

Shortly after Thanksgiving we were in a store and saw a kit for a gingerbread house and Gabby mentioned that she used to do them with Grandma Doris when she was little. So when I was walking through Sam's Club a couple of week's ago I purchased the kit that they had which was less expensive than the one in the grocery store and had way more candy, frosting and ginger bread.

Last night we decided to decorate it and put it together. It was a lot of fun! I (Teresa) had never done one before. Here are some pictures of the process...

Putting the walls together was the most difficult step. At one point all three of us were working on it. But we succeeded!

Right side of house.

Back of house.

Left side of house.

Front of house.

This was much more fun than what Scott was doing the night before...

Which then after we took this picture it snowed another 2 or 3 inches in the night.

What's Christmas without lefsa??

This is one of my absolute favorite Christmas traditions...we get together and make lefsa!

For those of you that don't know what lefsa is it's kind of like a tortilla only made with potatoes so they are light and VERY yummy. It is Scandinavian in origin and while traditionally it was made to put lutefisk in we NEVER eat that we put butter and sugar. After the initial making of them we've been known to put peanut butter on them or use them to put sandwich fixings in.

Here's what they look like after they've been cooked.

Anyway it's also a lot of fun to spend time with family and be silly together with the fringe benefit of something yummy to eat as well.

Here are a few pictures...

6 of us were working on lefsa...Noelani took a nap at least for a portion of the time and this is what Scott did. He determined that after 20 years he's finally warming up to lefsa and has decided that it's not so bad. Of course the rest of us don't mind to much because that leaves more for us to enjoy. :)

And of course the other highlight was to spend a little bit of time with Noelani! She was very cute as always.

We think we have a lot of snow??

If you think we have a lot of snow...check out my friend Kim's blog with pictures of their snow. They are over in the Spokane area where they are getting record breaking snow fall.

Gabby's New Do!

Gabby got her hair cut today and it is so CUTE!!! So we had to share pictures of her.

Stealing pictures again...

...but I just couldn't resist because she is so CUTE!!!!

Thanks Kim for sharing!

Now that we're all well again...

We decided to have an early Christmas of sorts and we purchased the furniture that we found at the Old Cannery. Scott finally turned the corner last Saturday and so we went and bought the furniture that we had picked out. Then on Wednesday Alan went down with us and picked it up. Tomorrow the old furniture will be picked up taken away by the Goodwill.

We appreciate our folks giving us their furniture but it was time for new. Now lets hope the dogs don't barf on it. :)

Could be a quiet Thanksgiving...

We may be at home recuperating from being sick this year. Teresa is on the mend but Scott came down with the virus that she had last week. Gabby went to our church's Thanksgiving Family Feast with Carol and Scott's mom Elsie. She performed one of her recital pieces from last year. This morning she said that she didn't feel well and that she thought she was getting sick again. She doesn't seem to be as sick as last time or as Scott is so hopefully she will bounce back quickly.

Hopefully we will be able to go to Scott's niece's for dinner on Thursday.

This last week...

...On Saturday morning we went to see the movie Fire Proof. We all thoroughly enjoyed it.

...On Sunday our friend Kim came over from Spokane to stay for a few days so that she could go to her speech therapy sessions.

...On Monday Kim and I did a little bit of running around and then in the evening we went out to dinner at Famous Dave's

...On Tuesday Teresa came down with the cold/virus that has been going around and then spent the rest of the week in bed.

Unfortunately Kim seems to have come down with the cold that she had. (We hope you feel better Kim!!)

That pretty much wraps up our week. Scott and Gabby have been taking good care of me and keeping up with their stuff.

I should have listened to Laurece...

...When she said maybe we should wait to paint the accent walls until I had picked out furniture. We went furniture shopping again over the weekend only to really confirm that the furniture we like best is at the Cannery (the first place that we looked). However, my dilemma comes in that my green paint clashes with the greenish colored furniture that we are wanting to buy.

So it looks like I will be calling Laurece and asking to look at paint swatches once again in order to yet one more time repaint my accent walls. Of course this won't happen until we actually go and buy the furniture and before we do that we have to get rid of the old stuff.

Other than that we had a fun game night at Carol's with family on Friday night and then just caught up on chores around the house.

Best friend and answered prayers

Kim and Gabby when we went out for dinner.

Teresa's best friend Kim came and stayed with us from Sunday until Wednesday. She came over to go to the University of Washington to see a speech pathologist to help with the breathing problems she has been having for the last two + years. They finally diagnosed her with vocal chord dysfunction which was causing the breathing problems. This is the answered prayer part. The appointments went very well and she is seeing improvements already. Also an answer to prayer.

We had a lot of fun having her here. Gabby gave up her room for a few nights and slept on our new aero bed.

We are very thankful for the time we got to spend with Kim and the encouragement that she is as well as the opportunity to have her stay here.

Christina Tagged Me

So Christina tagged me so here is my picture...

This is Holly holding my great nephew Kavan last year at his sister's birthday party.
Here is what he looks like now.

Now I'm tagging... Kim Fijalka, Kim Watland, Mom & Jerry, and anyone else who reads this regularly that wants to. (leave a comment so we know to go to your blog and look). For those of you who have been tagged go to your 4th file of pictures and find your 4th picture then post it.

Couldn't Resist

Noelani is so adorable in this picture that I couldn't resist posting it on my blog too even though it's on her parents. Enjoy!

Highlights from the day

Well not a very exciting week but busy as usual....
Today Gabby helped out at wedding at church and then went to a birthday party at the local bowling alley. I went inside to take a picture of her bowling but she had just finished her last turn so I missed that opportunity. She had a fun time at both events.

So while she was otherwise occupied Scott and I decided to go look at furniture because of course with the new paint we now need to do some decorating. :)
Our parents have given both of us furniture over the years and that still mostly what we have in our home so we decided that since most of the what we sit on is from the 1970's it's time to start looking at replacing it. (OK it's past time)

We went out to the Old Cannery in Sumner and found several sets of furniture that we liked but since it was our first outing we decided to look a bit more before we purchased anything and we need to make sure that the colors of the furniture will go with the new paint as well as fit in our rooms.

So here are our favorites...

This set actually has more of a green tone than the picture shows and it's the one that we liked the best but I'm not sure if it will look ok with the new green walls.
Of course Scott's favorite part of the trip was not the furniture but the model trains that they have running over head and in between the different rooms. It was very fun to watch them because there are several different trains running at the same time. As you can see from the picture below you can also climb up some stairs and look like you're in a train. This also takes you up high enough to see the models up close.

Fun afternoon!

Today I had the great privilege & pleasure of spending several hours with my niece Noelani. It was a blast! Her parents went to the Seahawks/Packers game (Ray is a Packers fan) for their first outing with out her. So we got to babysit.

She is so cute and sweet too!!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is Elsie's birthday so we went out to dinner for Mexican food to celebrate. She's 65 again. :)

We want her to know that we appreciate her and are so thankful for her love and support. We wish her many more!

Gabby's 18th Birthday

Yesterday was her birthday but we were quite busy so I didn't get this updated until today.

We started the day with her opening her cards and present and then had cinnamon rolls one of Gabby's favorite breakfast items.



At church Alan (our pastor) had everyone sing Happy Birthday to her (which she loved) :o) After church we went to the Cheesecake Factory and then to the mall shopping because of course she had a gift card for her birthday to use.

She received several phone calls from family wishing her a happy birthday.

In between the mall and youth group Scott helped her set up her new Ipod. Which she is very excited about.

We stopped and picked up some cupcakes for her to take to youth group and then it was off to there.

All in all it appears that she had a great day.

The Celebrating has begun.

Tonight we went over to Teresa's step-sister's to celebrate October birthdays with family. This month Teresa's step-brother Jeff, Gabby her niece Amelia and her brother Steve (who wasn't able to come tonight) are having birthdays. We had a fun time and of course a YUMMY dinner and then they opened presents and we had cake and ice cream.

More celebrating to come tomorrow.