Just Playing

Tessa and Cali spent the day with a friend doing a photo shoot.  When she got home from the shoot Tessa had her hair ratted and then had tied a scarf around her head and put on some nerdy glasses.  She looked so cute I just had to take her picture.  I had been wanting to play with my 50mm 1.8 lens so she was a good subject!

Cute!!

Such lovely pink lips!

Now a little more crazy!!!

I wish you could hear the voice that goes along with this face!!

Game Night

We've been playing a lot of games over the holiday break.

Santa brought us a new family game - Carcassonne.  The directions were a little complicated so we decided it would be easier for someone who knows how to play it to just teach us.

We had our friends the Ellsworths over to play games on Sunday night and fortunately Alison knew how to play it.  We had a table playing Carcassonne and a table playing Settler's of Catan.

Here's some of our families favorite games lately....

The Pickle present this year was the card came Sleeping Queens which we have had a lot of fun playing.  It was acutally invented by a 6 year old girl who had a dream about it!!

Monday night we had the Best family over for dinner.  We had a Cafe Rio night complete with sweet pork, black beans, lime cilantro rice.  You could make a burrito or a salad with the Cafe Rio Cilantro dressing - yum!  Grandma brought dessert and Aunt Tracy brought appetizers.

We don't see our Best cousins very often so it was fun to get caught up.

We played the game Whoonu which was fun!

Cousin Drew

We're off to another game night tonight at some friend's house!

Christmas Dinner

It was just our family for Christmas Dinner.  We had a standing rib roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, cashew honey green beans, spinach salad, raspberry jello salad and garlic cheese biscuits

After dinner Hannah came over to take a few family photos for us.

After dinner the boys headed out to the Blazer game.  Logan had bought four tickets so they invited our neighbor Brock to go with them.  Brock was so excited!  Tessa let him borrow her new Roy jersey so he would be appopriately dressed!

Go Blazers!!!

Presents

Christmas Morning!!  Ready to go!

Both the girl's wanted boots and Santa found the perfect pair for both of them!

We had spent weeks and weeks looking for the perfect pair for Cali.  She would send me pictures of boots she saw on other people that she liked and I would take photos in stores of boots I thought she might like - but no luck!  Fortunately over Thanksgiving, thanks to a little help from Aunt Tricia, we found the perfect pair!!

Tessa gave Logan an air popper

and he got a yoga mat and a Dancing with the Stars Video from Cali.  Cali pointed out that "No partner was required" to do the video!!

Clark gave Tessa a Blazer jersey - she'll be well dressed for the two upcoming Blazer games she is going to.

Cali gave me a beautiful photograph of herself that she had taken at school!  Love it!

Tessa surprised me with two tickets to the upcoming Michael Buble concert.  She will be my date!

Logan gave Jim and Clark tickets to a Blazer Game that is tonight - Christmas Night!

Cali put together a wonderful picture collage for Jim and his office.

Santa brought us a new family game we are anxious to learn how to play.

The kids and the mess!

Stockings

Years ago, when the kids were small and they woke up early on Chritmas morning, we started putting their stockings outside their bedroom doors in hopes that it would buy us a few more minutes in the morning before we had to get up!

Even though we now have to wake them up, the tradition continues. 

Clark doesn't look too excited.  He should have gone to bed before 1:30 a.m!  He did look cute in Cali's new hat though.

Logan was the first one up!

Cali got her hat back!

The girl's both got lots of new colored tights in their stocking.

And Cali got a stocking full of spices for her college kitchen!

The gift cards in the boy's stockings are always a big hit - Happy Panda,McDonalds, Subway....

Grandma had fun watching the action.

and the mess....

Sisters, Sisters, there were never more devoted sisters.....

The girl's and I are watching White Christmas.  The boys are downstairs watching yet another ball game.

I love the scene where the two girl's sing "Sisters, Sisters..."  It made me think of these two cute sisters!!

Here they are  modeling the cute scarves and fingerless gloves Grandma Best made for them for Christmas.

And here they are with their cute Grandma!!

For Christmas Tessa put together a fun photo collage canvas for Cali - it turned out great!

Sbe used the words from the Jack Johnson song with the pictures....

It's always better when we're together....

Things are always better when we're all together!!!