Happy Birthday...

Happy, happy birthday to our 3rd child, and youngest son, Jon!  In my eyes he only has one thing I wish we could change...he lives waaayyyy to far away from us in Michigan.  I do love Michigan, and it's a really fun place to visit, it's just not close enough to Idaho!! 

It's hard to believe that this chubby little toddler is all grown up!! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JON!!

It's beginning to look....

...a LOT like Christmas!!  Our Christmas tree is up, decorations are out.....

and, we have SNOW (OH MY GOODNESS, do we ever have snow) !!! Jamie sent these pics of "K" having a great time outside in the snow this afternoon! 

I even have our advent calendar up and ready BEFORE December 1st this year!  Ready for the season to begin!!

Seattle, Shopping, Special Times....

Jamie and I returned this morning from our weekend in Seattle (we were at SeaTac at 6:20 AM...very EARLY wake-up call)!  Our Christmas shopping excursion was FANTASTIC...we are thinking we need to make it a yearly tradition!  Our hotel, The Westin, was in the heart of downtown Seattle...a short walk to Pacific Place, and Westlake Center.  Every time our arms were full and the load became too heavy to carry we could bring packages back to the hotel, drop them off, and head out again!  And, there was even a Starbucks that we had to walk right past on our way...how convenient! :0)

We had a beautiful room on the 42nd floor with a unobstructed view of the Space Needle!

Also, from our window we saw these guys doing the scariest job in the world...can you even imagine lowering yourself over a 50+ story building to wash the windows!  YIKES!! (Sounds like a challenge from "The Amazing Race!!")

P.S. The "2 bags free" policy on Southwest Airlines came in very handy...we were able to carry all our "goodies" home for free!

And...."5" years ago today this special little guy joined the family!!

Happy, Happy Birthday to "L"!!

Holly Jolly...

We had a little "skiff" of snow this morning...it's gone now (yipee!!), but it does help me get in the Christmas "mood!" :0)  I had fun scrapbooking some Christmas 2009 pictures yesterday!!

And, tomorrow morning Jamie and I are headed to Seattle to do a little Christmas shopping and have a fun mother/daughter getaway!! (Luckily I had a free airline ticket that was about to expire, so we decided this would be the perfect way to use it!!)  And, the bonus is that Southwest lets you take "2" bags for FREE, so we can carry home all our treasures !! :0)  Leaving soon to head to Spokane....

Hello November...

SO happy to have November here...not because winter is just around the corner, but because our house completion date was end of October!! :0)  It's finished, we're in (YIPEE), and slowly getting unpacked and settled!!  So far, we have moved in everything that we had with us for the past 9 months in our temporary housing...our basement is FULL of boxes of things we packed away and had in storage.  Our quandary now is "Do we really need all those boxes and boxes of things that we have managed to get along just fine without for the past several months??"  (Probably not!) :0/

And the den (my scrapbook room), still in need of some TLC!!