Christmas in Moses Lake

For Christmas this year, we flew to Washington to spend it with the Earls. All of Brad's siblings are on the same track, so we all got to be there together!

Here are pictures of Owen & Scarlet at church and me holding baby Rory. 12.18.16

I think Peggy had envisioned a different picture with some of the grandsons but this is the best we could do! Surprisingly, this picture shows off all of their personalities pretty well. Jude with the happy grin, Dean crying not wanting to take a picture, Owen sitting quietly but looking unamused, and mischievous Declan getting ready to jump. 12.18.16

Here are pictures of Owen watching the Christmas train go around the tracks and playing a game with grammy & some of his cousins. 12.18.16

The boys go to Big White
All of the boys left us to go skiing/snowboarding at Big White for a few days. That meant us girls got to stay behind with all of the kids. We're thinking they got the better end of the deal..

Owen in his elf shirt 12.20.16

Here are pictures of Owen & Dean playing together and Owen with the beloved bin of Easter eggs. You'll probably see his favorite "yellow egg" pop up in a few of the pictures 12.20.16

"Team Dance Christmas party" at Inca 12.22.16

Here are pictures of the boys playing air hockey (they loved this thing) and Dean & Owen in their matching shirts 12.22.16

Dean, Jude, Owen 12.23.16

I'm so excited for Owen to be a big brother. He was so gentle with all of his baby cousins and kept asking to hold baby Ridley on the couch. I love how big she looks sitting on top of him 12.23.16 & 12.24.16

Owen, Jude, Trevor, Declan, Brad & Asher playing with the train 12.23.16

Boys vs. Girls Heads Up competition! 12.23.16

Spoiler alert: girls won!

Christmas Eve! 12.24.16

Owen with dad and his beloved yellow egg on Christmas Eve 

Hiding from Santa!

Okay, this was probably one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Back story: when Brad and I first started dating, he had told me about his family's tradition of "hiding from Santa" every year growing up. This entailed David waking all of the kids up early Christmas morning to "hide from Santa." They would find their hiding spots the night before so when Christmas morning came, they knew exactly where to go. Then, Santa would arrive while they were all hiding and being quiet and put out some gifts for them. 

I remember Brad telling me about this when we were dating and I even wrote in my journal after our date one night how cool of a tradition I thought that was and how even if things didn't work out with "this guy" I wanted to have that tradition in my future family. Luckily for me, things worked out on both accounts :)

Here's a picture of us practicing where we would hide from Santa the next morning :)

Here are some pictures of us opening our matching Christmas jammies and sweatshirts! 

L to R: Courtney, baby Quinn, Curtis, Dean, me, Owen, Brad, Bryan, Kristy, Kacey, Ridley

Here's Owen & Brad opening up their new golf ornament.

Most of the grandkids in their matching pj's
L to R: Owen, Jude, Asher, Scarlet, Ridley, Declan, Rhode
Not pictured: Dean, Rory, Quinn

Close up of Owen & Jude. How cute is that? 

Individual family pictures! 
The Nielsen family & the Lacey family

Brad, Owen & me!

The Papenfuss family & the Marsh family

Kendall, Peggy, David, Bryan

The whole family plus Grandma Earl! 

Code Names tournament 
Code Names was definitely the most popular game during this trip, I can't wait to buy our own!

Christmas Morning! 12.25.16
Christmas morning was so nice. Hiding from Santa was seriously magical and went just about how we expected. Not terrible, not great. Owen didn't quite understand the concept of being quiet but he sure was excited to see Santa!

Owen loved opening presents and carrying around his penguin stocking filled with lots of candy. I think he enjoyed carrying it around more than he did eating the actual candy. (luckily Brad was there to help him with that part)

Family picture day! 12.26.16

The day after Christmas was family picture day! Here's an individual family shot Peggy took before we all braved the cold weather.

FAMILY PHOTOS!

Day after Christmas! 12.26.16
The day after Christmas, some of Brad's extended family and some friends came over for dinner and visiting. It was so nice to eat yummy food and see everyone! 

3-on-3 tournament 12.28.16

Some of us went to watch the 3-on-3 tournament that Brad and Bryan played in. Owen loved watching dadda play basketball and he and Declan gave him a congratulatory hug after their win :)

Champions! 

We got "Cosmo'd" 12.28.16

One night someone rang Peggy & David's doorbell and dropped off this Cosmo cut out on the porch with some treats. The sign said that we had to take a picture with everyone in the house at the time (Peggy ended up just taking one of some of the grandkids) and drop Cosmo off to someone else's house with a treat. Then, you were supposed to post on Facebook and tag who you thought dropped it off. I thought it was such a fun and clever idea! 

Bump picture! 12.29.16

26 weeks

A few days after Christmas, most of Brad's siblings and their families traveled back home so there weren't very many of us left. We were sad to see everyone go but once our group was smaller we went out for lots of good food and fun activities! 

Playing with cousin Declan 12.29.16 & 12.31.16

Hanging out in one of their favorite spots, the "book nook" and wearing their matching knight sweatshirts from Kristy! 

Leavenworth 12.29.16
One of the things we got to do was drive to Leavenworth to walk around and look at all of the cool shops and eat food. It was snowing while we were there and the look of the village made it feel like we were in an entirely different country! Owen was sad in the first picture because he wanted to stay in the shop with the huge singing reindeer. 

Here we are eating a delicious soft pretzel and cheese. Most of had our mouths full for this picture. 

This is what Owen's hair looked like when we took his hat off at dinner :)

L to R: me, Owen, Brad, Kristy, Declan, Bryan, Kendall 

Escape room! 12.30.16
The four remaining girls decided it would be fun to do a girls outing one night as well. We left the boys at home to babysit but didn't feel too bad about it since they left us for 4 days to ski.

We escaped with 12 minutes to spare but the room we did was a bit creepy. I'm talking live-people come in and scare you creepy. At one point, a guy with a creepy mask came right up to Peggy's face without her noticing and she got so mad that she yelled "Don't do that!!" right in his face.

I think I'll be sticking to the non-creepy escape rooms from now on!

L to R: me, Kristy, Peggy, Kendall 

Melting Pot

After the escape room, we got to celebrate Kristy's 7-year anniversary at Melting Pot. It was just too bad Trevor had already gone home. We were probably better company anyway...right? 

After dinner we walked around the mall and took a picture in front of this giant Christmas tree. This thing was huge! 

New Years Eve 12.31.16

Here's Owen all dressed and ready to go out to dinner for New Year's Eve. 

Michael's on the Lake

Here we are out to dinner on New Year's Eve. All of the food was delicious!

L to R: Owen, me, Kendall, David, Peggy, Kristy

Also pictured: Brad's torso and a quarter of Declan's face 

Mike & Allie's
After dinner, we left the kids with grammy & grandpa and went over to Mike & Allie Earl's house to ring in the new year. We played games and ate lots of food!

On New Year's day, it was time to start making our way home. Kristy and Declan joined us on the drive back to Seattle where we flew home the next morning. 1.1.17

Our flight home was pretty uneventful except for the whole water bottle snafu. Warning: Camelback water bottles explode when opened on airplanes. 

Owen wanted a drink of water so Brad opened his water bottle which proceeded to squirt everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I think Brad was so surprised/shocked at what was happening it took about 5 seconds for him to shut it again. By that time, his entire face and hair were soaked, the water had squirted all the way up to the ceiling of the plane and hit everyone within a few feet of us. (Including the girl who had given me a dirty look when we first boarded the plane when Owen was playing with her seat tray.) 

And that's when my laughing attack began. I'm not kidding, looking over at Brad's dripping and shocked face put me into hysterics. I'd gain some control and then just start losing it all over again. Tears were streaming down my face I was laughing so hard. In fact, sitting here writing about it has me snorting all over again. This is one of those moments I wish I wore a GoPro on my head that was constantly recording. I did manage to apologize to the people within ear shot by saying, "so sorry, our water bottle exploded" because they looked pretty ticked when hit by the mysterious liquid. 

Once landed, we avoided all eye contact and booked it off the plane. It's so nice to be home but man, we miss Moses Lake already!!