Birthday - Part 4

 

We had a surprise party for Zoe on Dec 20!

Constance & James let us have it their house.

Pete, Constance & James, Ben & Kenna, and Janie were all there waiting in the dark for me and Zoe to arrive. We ordered pizza and had cake and opened a few more gifts.

 

Zoe was really surprised and was excited that she finally got her surprise party.

 

Zoe put all of the candles on the cake.

 

I made a vanilla cake from scratch with cream cheese frosting.

It was delicious.

Birthday - Part 3

 

After the party at McDonald's we came back to the house. Pete's mom, Jo, and Annie & John [boyfriend,] and Constance & James, and Janie all joined us for snacks and margaritas and a piñata!

 

The piñata was made from corrugated cardboard and turned out to be quite solid. We had to lay it on the floor and have Zoe jump up & down on it to put a dent in it. I put a few bags of candy in it.

Birthday - Part 2

 

Here we are at Zoe's birthday party at McDonald's on Dec. 15th.

It was really easy, and that made it fun. I would totally do it again next year.

 

The kids got Happy Meals, cake & ice cream

[Wyatt and Zoe]

 

Zoe is here with Rowan, Madeline, and Wyatt, and Zoe W

 

I remembered the birthday quilt! I had the adults sign it.

Birthday Party: Part 1

 

Zoe and Aunt Annie at our house on Dec 14th.

Zoe got to open one present and it was a beautiful holiday Barbie!

i wish

Zoe is watching a cartoon and she runs to me and says :

mom, I wish I had a camera and when I push a button it takes a picture and the picture comes out of the bottom of the camera and then I can put it in a book.

Zoe, that's called a Polaroid camera.

Oh! Can I have one? Please please please?

Well. I don't know if that's possible.

Santa Train

 

On Sunday we drove to North Bend, WA and boarded the Santa train. I'll tell you, it was disappointing. I still can't figure out why everybody was so excited, and why it is sold out. Second, I will admit that I directed us to the wrong train station - but that didn't really change the actual train ride. We were supposed to get on at North Bend, ride the train 3 miles [30 minutes] to the Snoqualmie depot and then get off, stand in line to see Santa and then get back on the train. We went backwards... and Zoe didn't really care if she saw Santa so we waited in a line for 20 minutes and then just went into the bookstore [gift shop] where she found a little train necklace and said "it's the most beautiful necklace I've ever seen! Can I have it, please, please, please?"

 

I thought the train would have Santa riding on it, and there was reportedly caroling and hot cocoa and decorations involved. But it was just an old, cold, rusty train.

 

I hear that the train by Mt Rainier is lit up and Santa sits in a decorated caboose and there is singing.

 

Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

 

Are children outside of Seattle this comfortable holding a coffee cup?

[It's hot chocolate]

Pete's bday

 

Pete's birthday was December 3rd.  Zoe & I made this beautiful cake.

 Pete picked out a new putter, took the day off of work and had a great golf day.

December

I upgraded our internet connection. We were trying to use Clear 4G and the upload speeds were terrible. Really terrible. And we do so much streaming in our house that Clear actually cancelled our account because we were using too much of their terrible service. So we are back to Comcast and now we can stream movies in HD and upload Zoe videos and play xbox all at the same time without anybody crying [Pete] because everything keeps buffering.

 

We went on the new Great Wheel on one of the piers in Seattle. It was a cloudy day, but the view was still great & the ride was lots of fun for everybody. We went with our friends Tiffany & Gerrit.

 

There is a rainbow over the city

 

We also went to Seattle Center

Bike

leaf hunt slideshow

favorite song

I was listening to some music last night and Zoe asked me what my favorite song is. I said maybe "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and I found it on xbox and played it for her. I asked her what her favorite song is and she said "Pink Panther." So I found the Henry Mancini classic and we listened to it about 12 times while she danced and laughed and pretended to be a pink panther.

dancing

 

trick or treat

On Monday Zoe got a big box in the mail from Nana Jo with this giant black tutu! We had a shirt and tights and I hot-glued some ears onto a headband, voila! Zoe was a black kitty last night. She had been a pirate at the haunted house and again on Sunday at a little friend's Halloween party. There were lots of kitties trick-or-treating, but none of them had tutus like this.

We are getting lots of rain so we went to the Alderwood Mall for some indoor candy-getting. We got there right when it started at 4pm and it was great. The parking lot was empty and so was the mall. And then the crowd showed up as we were leaving at 5 and the stores were out of candy and there was this huge crowd of people kind of shuffling along in a slow line from store to store. Our friend, Dana, and her daughter, Maddie, had met us at the mall and invited us to meet them at a church nearby for a candy/carnival thing so we did that next. At first it was okay, but then Zoe won a cake in a cakewalk and a stuffed animal in another game and was getting a bag full of candy and someone asked how long we had been members of the church and Pete and I became very uncomfortable as everyone told us how adorable Zoe is and how great their church is... so we got out of there. We came back home and the rain had mostly stopped and it was still pretty early so we went out into our neighborhood for proper trick-or-treating. A lot of houses had their lights off, and Zoe was too scared to approach the houses with really spooky decorations, but we still came home with more candy.

I made her candy bag.

Halloween