Let it snow!

Rolling the big balls.
Our new friend!
Exploring the snow with Randy.

Over the weekend it snowed quite a bit at our house. Sabrina has been reading about snowmen and making paper ones at pre-school, so she was delighted to make one in our front yard.

Happy New Year

Walking along the path on the Deschutes River.
Sitting on a rock with Randy.

Between Christmas and New Year's Day we travelled to Eagle Crest for some family time by the Deschutes River. Sabrina loved walking by the river, exploring the trail and looking under rocks. New Year's Day we dressed up and went to a neighbor's for a holiday party.

More photos from Papa and Mama's house

Papa's train and village..Sabrina and Arthur loved watching this go around the track.
Hanging out in the living room.

Cousin President McKinnley reading to Sabrina.

"Mama" cooking dinner.
Papa modeling his new hat.

Christmas Morning photos

Christmas tree on the deck in the early morning.

Our tree top.

The stockings before they are discovered.

A birthday balloon given by Grandma.

Before anyone was awake in the house I took some photos before the fast paced day started.

Fun Hopping around

Jumping with Snoopy! Hold on tight!

Stretch move which has morphed into climbing onto the bar and almost swinging around like uneven bar routine.

A little break from all the morning excitement to check Chef Snoopy to make sure he is ok after the jump.

Christmas morning was fun for me as a parent. I waited on the couch for Sabrina to wake up at her normal time and come around the corner in to the living room. We had waited to put gifts under the tree until she had gone to bed the previous night and so she was shocked when she walked in the room and saw all the wrapped gifts. For our aspiring gymnast, rock climber and all around monkey, she was in heaven when she saw a little trampoline under the tree. She immediately went to jump on it and then saw a Snoopy chef in her stocking. So then it was jumping with Snoopy on the trampoline. It was fun to watch her. She even went and jumped after a bath before clothing herself, but those pictures will not be posted...

Christmas Eve Run

This Fall Julie has been running with a friend while our daughters are in pre-school. At first it was just keep moving for thirty minutes and then it was thirty minutes of running and about thirty minutes of walking. Gradually, we worked up to running 10K distances three times a week. However, we discovered that tying running to pre-school is dangerous as when there is a break the runs are hard to get into the schedule and have supervision for the children. Thankfully, Randy watched Sabrina so I could run during the break. The first was the morning of Christmas Eve and then others were at Eagle Crest along the Deschutes River. We lost a little ground over the break but thankfully are not back to square one when we could not run down the block! (not really!)

Meeting a new cousin

Julie's side of the family had a Christmas party where Sabrina (and Randy) met Sophia, one of the newest members of the extended family.

Cutting our tree for Christmas

We saved one tree in our back yard for Christmas this year. Randy and Sabrina went out on a foggy night and cut the tree. We ended up havingto use only the top part of it for inside the house but it made a lovely little tree.

Cookie Baking

Getting the dough ready for rolling.

Rolling out the dough and cutting the cookies.

This Christmas season Sabrina learned that she really likes using the mixer and measuring ingredients to make cookies. Her favorite cookies were sugar cookies as she cut out figures using cookies cutters and used her little rolling pin. These were made with our friend, Doris, and on another baking session with her cousin, Arthur.