Christmas

Everyone at my parents

Brody with his Uncle John

John giving Cameron and Brody a ride, in the best toy ever, a cardboard box

Mocha and Pepper ready to open their gifts

John giving the dogs their new toys

The dogs enjoying their gifts

Mocha already tired out from all of the excitement

More treats for the dogs

On Christmas Eve, we went down to my parents house to open gifts and have dinner. My parents got us an HD camcorder so now we can record all of our favorite moments. On Christmas Day, my parents stopped by and John's parents came over for breakfast. We then went over to John's parents house to open more gifts and have dinner. The dogs were spoiled this year, with lots of treats and toys that they have mostly already destroyed trying to get the squekers out.

Christmas Tree

Christmas Cards

I just finished making our Christmas cards. This is one of my favorite things to do every year and I love just picking out the paper and putting it all together. I found this really cool product called Tape Swell. It basically is clear tape with a pattern on it. The one I picked had a black pattern on it and I used on the blue paper and it turned out great.

Christmas Tree Hunting

With Chris and Andrea and Pat and Mary

Cutting down our tree

Here is a video that my sister in law made of the day.

We headed up to Vladimer Farms in Silvana to get our Christmas Tree. This has become an annual Ellinger tradition. We always stop at the same restaurant in Marysville for breakfast then head up to get the Christmas trees. This year the choices were a little sparsel, but we did find a great tree. Now all that is left is to decorate it.

Halloween

Riley with Pepper

Brody and Peyton with the dogs

This year for Halloween we dressed Pepper up as a bumble bee and Mocha was a Shark. Jim and Megan stopped by with Riley, Peyton, and Brody and John had made them some special treat bags for Halloween. We gave out 120 treat bags within an hour and then had to break into our emergency candy stash. We probably ended up having around 160 kids stop by our house by 8:00 and that is when we were almost out of candy and decided to turn off the lights.

Pumpkins

This weekend we went to Stocker Farm in Snohomish to get pumpkins for Halloween. John's parents came with us as we searched for our perfect pumpkins. It was a little cold, but no rain. Our pumpkins are all carved and ready for Halloween.

Seahawks Sunday

This year's Seahawks season has already started off great. We had terrific weather at the game and the Seahawks won 28-0. Hopefully the season will continue this way.

The Doggy Paddle!

Mocha loves to play catch and he loves it more when he gets to swim and bring back his ball. Since I was staying with my grandparents last weekend, John brought the dogs by, and we took them to the park next to my grandparents. Mocha could swim forever and we have even seen him out swim labs and retrievers. Mocha is a bichon/shih-tzu mix, but even though he is small he could spend all day in the water. Pepper on the other hand would rather hang out with me on the sideline.

30th Birthday

Last week was my 30th birthday. My parents, John's parents, and his brother and wife came over for dinner.

Thirty Years of John

John had actually had two birthday cakes when he turned two

His first birthday

Born July 24th, 1979

As John turns 30, here are some of my favorite pictures of him as a child. From the stories I have heard about John growing up, he was quit the inquisitive child who was in to everything and not scared of anything.

John's 30th Birthday!

On Sunday night, we went out to Space Needle for dinner with John's family to celebrate his 30th birthday. Mary reminisced about how they had come there for dinner to celebrate John's grandparents wedding anniversary, when John was a child, and how excited he was to be there and he had ordered the special Space Needle dessert that has been on the menu since it opened and has smoke, from the dry ice, coming out from it. John decided to pass on ordering that dessert again and went with creme brulee.