Alki

We have been having great weather the last few weeks in Seattle. John and I went with his parents to the home show a couple of weeks ago and then afterwards we headed to Alki to have dinner. We got some great pictures with downtown in the backgrouns.

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.