Can't wait for break!

Amanda (14), Thomas (7), Emily (13)

Jack and I are, of course, just about to turn 29

Did you know that kids are out of school in just 1.5 days? Only one more morning of getting up and a school/work day, and then it's officially Christmas break. For two weeks!

these shortbread type cookies are soooo yummy with a cup of coffee

We are plugging away with prep for Christmas:

• tree is up
• lights are on house
• presents are taken care of
• some presents are wrapped
• candy canes are in the elf bowl
• attended the children's Christmas Play at church
• opening the doors of the advent box... each holds a slip of paper with an old testament prophecy about Christ that came true in the new testament AND candy!
• ipod is updated with new Christmas tunes

How do you get ready for Christmas? Do you have a favorite tradition or way to celebrate?

Decorated Christmas cookies

(go see Leanne's blog, chocolatechipsandsnickerdoodles.blogspot.com

for the recipe)

A close up of our tree at home

Me, Leanne and our beautiful Christmas Forest tree

"All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and Small"

"Who's that behind those Foster Grants"

Yikes. I hate heights. I love my husband for being on the roof so I don't have to!

Now there’s something you don’t hear every day…

I have spent the past couple of days decorating a Christmas tree with a couple of fun girlfriends. The tree is part of the Providence St. Peter Foundation’s Christmas Forest. Each year, volunteer designers put together a roomful of trees which are viewed by the public for about a week, then are auctioned off at a gala dinner event. Designing and putting the tree together is such fun!

This year while decorating, my team (Leanne and Ellen) and I noticed several great snippets of conversation that made us giggle. They really are things that a person doesn’t hear every day. For example:

“Oh, there’s another box of Eiffel Towers!”

“I still have a Blue-Footed Boobie.”

“We were going to do the urologist tree.”

“It’s beautiful when you squint your eyes!”

I’m voting for the one with the giraffe!

Priceless quotes. It’s probably a good thing that some of these aren’t heard every day!

Okay, for those of you who are interested in such things, you’ll be fascinated to know that I am doing this blog post with the assistance of Windows Live Writer. I’m trying this first without pictures. If all is a go, I’ll try it with pics!

Testing, testing... shall I return?

So, I guess I'm figuring out that each blog site holds its own frustrations. The key is to figure out which frustrations you can live with. With blogspot, picture size is limited and the page is always so narrow. I found a page that tells me how to widen the page, but do you think I can understand those techie code instructions?

On wordpress, pictures have to be uploaded one at a time, although they can take a pretty large image so no need to change the file size. Hmmmm. So now here I am, testing out blogspot again.

Trying a few pictures now...

Thomas getting ready to shoot the corn cob out of the shooter

Oh, really nice big pic of the kids at Emily's birthday party. Will my blog page cut of one side?

Lewis, the newest member of our family

Stop your whining, I'm starting to catch up

You thought it would never happen. You thought I didn't care. You thought I had abandoned blogging. Well none of the above are true! I am back to blogging, but to read what is going on in the life of the Arend clan, you'll now have to find me at my new blog site: http://www.runningarends.wordpress.com/

The format for organizing things is a little more what I want, so off I go to wordpress. Please come find me there!

v-a-c-a-tion (boom boom boom boom) in the summer time!

Warning: This post has a lot of pictures. The reason is this: I don't want to write out every thing! (ie: I'm a lazy blogger) As I looked over the pictures I had from this great week at Lake Entiat with our dear friends, the Carlsons, I decided that the time in Eastern Washington really boiled down to two things. 1) Fun 2) Food



Enjoy the pictures and tell me if there is anything wrong with a vacation revolving around fun and food!

Emily, Amanda and Thomas eating dessert! (food)

Emily and Thomas on the shore of the lake, waiting for a ride on the WaveRider (fun!)

Watching fireworks while eating homemade ice-cream (food and fun)



Putting a brownie on top of the homemade ice-cream (again, food and fun)

Sleeping in and having a late breakfast of clam fritters and

polishing off the ice-cream (hmmmm, food, but fun too)

Amanda on the WaveRunner with Brad (fun)

Beth making a deluxe drip castle (fun)

Preparing marshmallows for s'mores! (food)

Beth and Thomas (such a fun friendship!)

Eating the homemade ice-cream on the 4th of July (food)

Mighty women cleaning power (fun)

Soft taco night (food)

Tromping home from a day at the pool (exhausted fun)

Synchronized pool jumping (fun)

Eating waffles at Blueberry Hill (food AND fun!)

Cute sorbet for dessert (food)

A water-fight to cool off sweaty boys (fun)

Even though a single picture may represent a thousand words, I don't have enough
pictures here to tell the full story. You can go to Leanne's blog here to see
more!

Walking on Sunshine

Okay, well, it was really "walking IN sunshine". The afternoon was beautiful and I got done at work early so it was off to Tolmie State Park with the kids and dog for a couple of hours.

Thomas's sandy feet

Can you see Mount rainier?

Using huckleberries to play with the macro setting on my camera


Now I'm messing with the monochrome setting. Hmm...

Emily loves to pick the huckleberries...

She didn't realize how sour they are!

Thomas had to get his turn in!

Thomas's turn to walk Annie on the leash

First harvest

Earlier in the week, we ate the first catches from the garden! Admittedly, what came from the garden was small compared to what came from the store, but I was so excited to be able to harvest a little something from the beds. Carrots, zucchini and snow peas were the parts I grew. I mixed them in with some kielbassa, peppers, onions and broccoli from the store. Served on rice. Doesn't it look yummy?