Christmas 2009

Having a toddler made Christmas so much fun this year! We spent several days in Seattle seeing a few friends and spending lots of time with family. I only have about ten photos from the entire 6 days we were there which is quite frustrating since it's rare that my whole family is together at once!

It has been a tradition in my family for years to travel to our Aunt & Uncles House in Hansville for a big family Christmas Eve dinner. We have taken the Edmonds ferry across every year, but decided to drive around this year. With two toddlers nap schedules, a long ferry line and Andrew having to do chemo, making the drive was the better plan. It was a beautiful drive, but took 2 hours and by the time we got there, we were only there for 2 hours then took the ferry home. My aunt is a gourmet cook, so the drive was worth it just for the food! We also only see our cousins once, maybe twice a year, so it's fun to catch up. It's a fun tradition, especially because a few of us cousins have our own children. Here are a few shots of the kids. It was hard to get 7 children all under the age of 6 to look at the camera...

Christmas morning was spent opening gifts, eating a big breakfast and then the rest of the day was spent watching movies, taking a walk...then ended with a big dinner that night:

It was a nice several days spent with family - laughing and telling lots of jokes, getting annoyed with e/o and also remembering many sad/happy events. A year makes such a difference in the life of my family (especially the month of December!) and we were especially aware that at this time last year we just learned of Andrew's diagnosis. It is a sad memory for our family, but we are committed to each other and God and the journey that lies ahead. We look forward to and anticipate lots of good news in 2010.

As a side note, I would like to include a few other pictures. The following pictures were taken of Riley's hair (a.k.a. the most awesome bed head ever) right after she woke up this morning:

And also, Riley and I have been sharing a car with Tyler the last 3 days due to mine being in the shop so we had to take the bus a few different times to get around. Talk about dry and cheap entertainment for a toddler! Riley was thrilled by the whole adventure of it and asked about every sound, what everyone was doing and told Tyler tonight that the bus ride was "real bumpy". She even got up at one point and stood in the middle of the aisle and acted like she was on a ride, laughing and squealing as she was tipped over every time the bus turned. So needless to say we will definitely take the bus again!