St. Nikolaus in Seattle

Because I'm choosing to work on Christmas day, I celebrated an early "St. Nikolaus Tag" with the girls in Seattle. This is a European tradition where boots/shoes are left by the door, and the next morning they are either filled with coal or goodies. I usually just turn it into my Christmas gift giving so I can watch their faces. But, before the older girls got home, M and I had to entertain ourselves.

We went for a walk, and chatted with this cat for a good 15 minutes before she would move on.  

The morning opening the gifts

Wrapping paper makes a good hat, too!

These girls LOVE to color/draw, etc.  This was shortly after receiving some stickers in the mail.  They had to draw some cards so they could put the stickers on the cards.

So, CC was skyping with Oma in Germany, and set up this one man band to entertain her with.  We asked her to play "Away in a Manger", but she didn't have "music" for it, so she wrote it out according to what she thought the notes would look like.  Then she played it.  I didn't get the video of that, but caught a bit of "Row Your Boat"

I know this is blurry, but I got to go to a Christmas party with these little girls all playing very nicely together.  They were cracking me up!

All-in-all, a very good visit.

New House Christmas Decorating

After celebrating Thanksgiving last weekend, we started decorating the house for Christmas. This is the before picture:

and after.

This nativity set is under the little Christmas tree by the front door.

This one is on the "mantel"

This is what the house looks like from outside at night.  Not too exciting, but at least it's lit up, right??

At least the front door is welcoming.

I really don't like this dust collecting shelf, but it is a nice feature to have at Christmas!

It's a very comfy room, if we do say so ourselves!  (Tabatha)

Thanksgiving 2015

I had to work on Thanksgiving day, but I got to fly to Costa Rica (Liberia). This was about the most exciting thing I saw, but, hey, at least I saw something!

Because it was Thanksgiving, I went to the hotel restaurant with 2 of my flying partners and had a tropical salad.  Good pineapple.  

Today, though I actually had a full-on turkey dinner with my house-mate, Tabatha, and her family.

They had little puppies there!!!!!!!!!

3 of the 4 dishes that I made I had never made before.  They all turned out good, so I'm pleased!  AND, there's leftovers!!!!  You wanna' come have some??

Early Thanksgiving

Because I visited during weekdays vs. weekends, I didn't get to interact a whole lot with CC and G. But M and I spent some quality time together!

This one's blurry, but that SMILE!

She's very much into blocks right now.  She loves to have you make towers so she can knock them down.

CUTE shawl!

I wish you could have seen this in person, but the sun was shining just right on the water droplets of this leaf.  It was beautiful.

SOOO Cute!

Ok, so this little girl is a CUTIE!! I still can't understand 90 % of what she says, but when I do, she is THRILLED.

My Girlies--FINALLY!!!

Why the title? Well, I haven't seen my girlies since July, and I was going through withdrawals!!! I was so very thankful to have almost a week with them this visit, longest visit in a long time. We had a make-your-own-pizza night. Even MM participated!

Notice our mouths. . .we're making sound effects together.  ;)

We went to the pumpkin patch together. . .Shar got some better pics, but I got a few cute ones of G.

Such fun to see them all playing something together!

Visit to VA

I snuck a quick visit to Virginia this weekend so I could see some friends and catch up with them a bit. It was BEAUTIFUL there all weekend!

The leaves were just beginning to turn.

Got to go to church here on Sunday night.  Good stuff!

Monday was in city center. . .

. . .to join a bunch of churches and pray for that city, our churches, and our nation. 

It was called the 2nd annual Washington prayer gathering.

Then I went to visit my great friends from my small group.

One, I won't mention who, didn't want her pic taken.

But then she found a cute puppy to smile with!

All Creation Sings His Praise

I took some pictures of some beautiful creation this month. This first one was a vibrant rainbow right over my house one day. The colors were incredible, hard to see on camera, but I think you get the idea.

This next pic was taken the evening of Tabatha's birthday, right at sunset on Lake Houston

I got to go to Cancun, Mexico, to spend the night, but I got there after the sun went down.  I didn't know I was staying at such a nice location until dawn the next morning when I came down to catch the hotel van to the airport.  Unfortunately, these two shots were all I saw of the place in the "daytime".  I think I'll have to go back!