White Rock on a nice spring night

 Last Friday afternoon we decided to head up to White Rock, B.C. for a couple of hours.  It only took us 20 minutes to get from our front door to our parking spot in front of the beach.  It was a great night to cross the border!  We spent a couple of hours on the beach at low tide, just before the sunset, and had fun playing with a vintage camera app on our phones.

Metsker's Cabin 2011

For the past seven years I have been making trips to Packwood, WA, to stay at Matt's cabin with the rest of the gang.  This year we encountered new territory, as the Terps brought along Kyah.  She now holds the privilege of being the first of MANY kidlets to make the long trip to the cabin, an honor I'm sure she will lord over the rest of the kids many years from now.

The boys all brought their air soft war gear so of course there was plenty of shooting, along with some snowshoeing along the Pacific Crest Trail, an epic snowball fight, lots of lounging and eating, and playing games.  It was a terrific weekend!

If you look closely in this picture you can see about 20 elk crossing the river!

Whirley Ball

This post is coming a little late, but a few weeks ago we celebrated Brett's big 3-0 down in Seattle playing Whirley Ball.  I had no idea what this game was before I walked through the doors to the playing arenas, and when I found out I giggled with glee!  It is pretty much the coolest sport ever invented!  Whirley Ball combines bumper cars with lacrosse and basketball and it is physically trying and oh-so-fun.  If you have something big to celebrate in the near future you should totally throw a Whirley Ball party. 

Wondering how to make a bad day even worse?

Step one:  Decide to go to the mall

Step two:  Make sure it's on one of the busiest days of the year, when it will be a sure bet that all the good parking spots will be gone and there will be lots of screaming kids.


Step three:  Make sure a seagull poops on you right before you head in the door.

Family Christmas Celebrations

In Spokane:

Isn't my nephew ADORABLE?!

In Centralia:

Christmas Events

This year we planned ahead and made it to a few Christmas events that we've wanted to see for years!

We celebrated our sixth anniversary at The Nutcracker (the small local production in Bellingham), and continued celebrating the following week at Handel's Messiah.

We also visited Zoo Lights in Tacoma with Matt and Chelsea.

 
So fun!

Christmas Present Projects

 This year, instead of spending a lot of money buying Christmas presents for family, we talked through it ahead of time and agreed to cut back.  We don't need a bunch of "stuff" now that we're older, and we wanted Christmas to be about being together and enjoying one another's company instead of all the presents.  We set a price limit, and either made gifts or found them for cheap.  We did this with both sides of our family and it worked out GREAT!  It was fun to make gifts instead of spending a bunch of time at the mall, and receiving gifts was really meaningful because of the time and energy put into them.  Here are a few items I made this year:

Sundae Sauce with Toppings

Homemade Cards and Tags

Mulling Spices for cider and tea

An magnetic activity advent calendar mounted on decorative tin

Festive clothespins for holding Christmas cards

Homemade pillows (Thanks for all the help, mom!)

If you have two sides of the family to buy for, or even have a big family with mostly adults, we highly recommend doing Christmas this way.  On my side, we still bought presents for our nephews, but cut way back on purchases for the adults.  It turned out to be a very cheap, yet very meaningful, holiday!