A new angel

There is a new angel in Heaven today. A family friend lost their 3 year old son to cancer today. I can not begin to understand how something like this happens to a sweet little boy or to his family who is left to go on without him. I am thankful that Ben is not in pain anymore and that he is in a better place. I know he'll be watching down on his baby brother and family from now on. As a mother of toddlers, I simply don't have the words to express my sadness for Jeff & Carin. My prayers will remain constant for the Towne & Bushnell families.

I'm going to go hug my children tightly now. I'm thankful that I can.

Merry Christmas!

After 33 years of wishing for a White Christmas, we finally had one this year and I'm over it! I don't get what the big deal is! We came close last year as it snowed for a few hours later in the day on Christmas and I remember in 1996 or so it dumped snow the day after Christmas. But this year was one for the record books!

At the high we had a little over a foot of snow on the ground and we still have about 7-8" out there. It snowed again today making that about 7 of the past 8 days with snow. This is unheard of here in Seattle and the driving conditions can prove it. Things were finally getting back to normal today although our streets still aren't plowed up here at the top of our big hill.

We were getting nervous that we wouldn't be able to spend Christmas with our families but luckily we were able to make it out and shuttle Mimi & Bumpa around. Christmas Eve we went to the St. Thomas children's service. It just wasn't the same without my uber-talented cousin Dent playing the organ. The kids did great though and we made it thru the entire service. Then we went up the street to Nana & Bumpa's for appetizers and Wii. We had to head home early to get ready for Santa!

In the morning, Ragen actually slept until 7:30 which is a Christmas miracle for those of you who know what an early riser he is. We all headed downstairs and the kids flipped at their Santa gifts. It was so joyous to see the smiles and belly laughs when they were so excited about things like coloring books just as much as the big stuff. Nana & Bumpa came for breakfast and more gifts and then we enjoyed some quiet time. We were afraid we might not make it to Mimi & Bumpa's for dinner because Jeremy was in bed most of the day with the flu. But he rallied and we made it so we had another round of gifts over at their house. By the end of dinnr, we were all exhausted and the kids were coming off their sugar high. It was time to head home.

We had a challenging Christmas season this year with the snow and alot of fun activities/parties were canceled due to the weather. But, we've had alot of fun at home together as a family and are so grateful that we were able to see our relatives for Christmas. We definitely missed Uncle Mark this year and hope to see him very soon!!!

I don't think I'll ever dream of a white Christmas again

The Kiefer & Davidson families

Leaving milk & cookies

Santa was here!

Mommy & her kiddos

Ragen's "excited" face

Maggie feeding her potty baby

He's making a list, checking it twice...

I'm finally getting around to posting the pictures from our visit with Santa. I've never been so up-to-date on different projects. I guess being stuck at home for this long pays off!

Poor Maggie was surprised by Santa when he walked in because we were in a private room upstairs at Nordstrom. She didn't calm down until he went to "feed the reindeer" (and then he snuck in behind them for a photo).

The photographer sent us this pic but I called asking for them to send me the screaming shot. While this is cute, it doesn't quite tell the story of the day. Plus, we had a "Santa behind" shot last year.

"Gingy could live there"

Jeremy's parents brought over gingerbread house kits (genious invention!) and so we all sat down to make our creation. Instead of them each doing their own, we opted to collaborate together. Ragen wanted to follow the box exactly and Maggie prefered a more abstract approach. Although, you could have just put a bowl of frosting in front of Maggie and she would have been content. Later on, Ragen told me that Gingy (from Shrek) could live in our gingerbread house. Good thinking! Thanks for the fun, Nana & Bumpa!
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Not very far into it and Maggie is already snacking

Teamwork!

Nana & Bumpa overseeing the project

The end result!

A Country Christmas

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Farewell Iggy!

Today was our 3rd snow day in a row and we were going crazy! We ventured out to the mall to get a few Christmas gifts and let the kids play around inside. I was really surprised how busy it was. I guess the need for gifts outweighed the potential snow/ice. I have a few more gifts to get tomorrow and then we'll be hunkering down...assuming we get the 4-8" of snow and 40 mph sustained winds they are predicting!

Unfortunately due to the snow & ice, we decided not to go to the Davidson family Christmas party tonight. We were so disappointed as it's a great time of year to see the giant extended crazy Davidson family. We weren't the only ones who couldn't make it but we were sad nonethess. The idea of hiking up Lakemont Blvd with 2 frozen kids (one of whom is in a walking boot!) just didn't sound fun.

One of the best parts of the Davidson party is the passing of Iggy. Iggy is an iguana that my Grandpa Bill shot in Guam in the early 1940's. He had it stuffed and for decades, it hung over the door of his office at their house. When our grandparents died, whoever got Iggy as an inheritance, decided it was only fair to share Iggy with the entire family. So, every Christmas Iggy gets passed from one cousin to another (and there are alot of us!).

Last year my cousin Brent and his wife Jane and the boys, Jack & Graham, sent Iggy to live with us. Getting Iggy is an honor as well as a curse. I say this lovingly but Iggy is darn ugly! It's a fun family tradition and the rules state that he needs to be prominently displayed all year round. This year Iggy became a part of our dinig room decor on top of our china hutch.

Each year, the presentations for the Iggy announcement have gotten more & more elaborate. One year my cousin Tyler actually brought in a LIVE iguana as one of Iggy's relatives (he was about 3 feet long!) Jeremy and I worked hard on our "year in photos" presentation. The premise was that Iggy was on the campaign trail as a lead advisor to Barack Obama. Instead, the family had to settle for a conference call where I announced Iggy's new residence in a rather anti-climatic fashion...He'll be going to live with my cousin Peter and his new wife Elisa at the Edgewater in Madison Park. Quite the homecoming for Iggy since the 1st time I had Iggy, he lived with me at the Edgewater. Ragen has been going around tonight saying that he's not giving Iggy to anyone new so we'll see how this goes.

It's with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Iggy. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out! :)

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Maggie playing with Iggy just after we learned he was coming to live with us last year

Iggy's last day in the Kiefer household

The snow finally came

Yesterday all of the western Washington school districts canceled school because of the threat of snow. You gotta love Seattleites and snow! Well, it never came so we wasted a school day for nothing. I was bummed because even though Ragen doesn't usually go to school Wednesdays, I was going to send him anyways so he could take his wonderful teachers their Christmas gifts...just in case the snow came Thursday or Friday. So, no school Wednesday...no gifts.


Then early this mornig we got dumped on! I was actually surprised at first that school was canceled again because even though we had about an inch of snow at 7am, we are on such a high hill that I figured nobody else had snow. Then around 8:30 it started snowing so hard and kept dumping and kept dumping. It didn't stop until about 6pm. I can't remember the last time it snowed for that long in Seattle. All in all, we ended up with about 7-8".


Jeremy had tried to venture downtown for work but wisely turned around and came home. He went straight to Starbucks to try and get some work done. I just don't understand why he can't concentrate with the kids & me running around the house yelling and playing all day?! I am not a very good snow driver but I like to practice so we visited daddy at Starbucks this morning for an outing. The rest of the day we played in the snow, watched movies, played dress up, and did some sledding. We managed to clean the house here & there too which was a bonus of being stuck.


Ragen was a pro at the sledding but Maggie didn't remember it from last year. She had a blast! If you're wondering, luckily she was just fine playing in the snow because her snow boots resembled her walking boot. There must have been enough distribution of the weight so the snow boot was supportive. Phew!! Try telling a 2 year old that she has to stay inside while her brother goes out to have fun with daddy!


School has already been canceled for tomorrow so we'll be back outside in the morning, I'm sure!

Sledding on a side street near our house

By this point, poor Mags was a popsicle

Ragen...the sliding snow-plow

Pristine and beautiful yet extremely inconvenient!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Maggie's 1st trip to Children's Hospital

We've had a frightening few days around here but all seems to be OK. On Sunday, Maggie just stopped walking. She was twirling around one minute and then she just sat down and wouldn't move. She has consistently pointed to the same spot on her foot as her "owie." She's had very non-Maggie-like behaviors (like crying for 2 hours at night about her owie). I was thinking she'd gotten into the habit of favoring it that night but in the morning, she'd wake up and have forgotten all about it. Not at all - she woke up sucking her thumb and holding onto her foot. We went to see the doctor at Pediatric Associates yesterday. Unfortunately our regular doctor wasn't in but we saw a rotating doctor. He did some x-rays and also got to see first hand how badly Maggie's foot hurt when she tried to take a step and fell to the floor in a heap with a scream. He told me if it wasn't better by tomorrow, to come back.

She woke up this morning and it still wasn't any better. I figured with the snow in the forecast, I'd rather get her in. Besides, no matter how hard I tried to remain level-headed, I was starting to freak out. I took her into the ER at Children's Hospital and from the moment we got there, they reassured me that I'd done the right thing. I had to chuckle as they first walked us in...I was able to remember back to my last visit to Children's and walking thru that hall. We took Ragen there when he was 11 months old because he had such a horrible flu and wasn't drinking or peeing. After staying with him in our room for hours, I was starting to feel like maybe his flu was contagious. I took off running for the bathroom but never made it. I puked right there in the hallway of the hospital. Not my finest moment.

Back to our current situation. They took new x-rays and also took some bloodwork. That was the thing I was most hoping they'd take a closer look at. I just wanted to hear that her levels looked normal and thankfully, all seems fine there. Poor little Mags was not at all happy when they put her IV in and I don't blame her. That was my most uncomfortable part of childbirth. They still don't know why she's not walking but they gave her a walking boot to try and help her stay used to walking on it. It took awhile to get her to try that first step but now she's cruzing as long as she has the boot on. Without it, she still crumbles to the floor.

They want her to go back to her primary care doctor tomorrow if she's still not using her foot so I'll keep you posted. I'm just so relieved to have some of my worst fears eliminated.

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As a side note to those of you who are following sweet little Ben Towne's battle with neuroblastoma, as you can imagine, I thought of him and his family often today at the hospital. When Maggie & I were waiting in a small room for the x-ray, Maggie crawled over to get a book. She picked one out of the pile and brought it to me. I went to go read it to her and right there inside the cover was a sticker saying "Donated in honor of Ben Towne." My heart skipped a beat and then I smiled. I couldn't believe that in this entire hospital, Maggie picked up a book honoring Ben. Maggie doesn't know it but before the story started, we said a little prayer for Ben. Such an amazing little boy touching people's lives when least expected.

Just after the IV was put in - you can't see the giant crocodile tear stuck on her cheek

Talking to daddy when he called to check-in
On the move again!

* Let it snow * Let it snow * Let it snow *

Last night we were at a super fun Christmas party hosted by Evan & Robin Wyman. They went all out and it was very chic! We were having alot of fun with our college friends and some of Jeremy's Lakeside buddies but we had to leave early thanks to the "Winter Blast 2008". It was snowing really hard at Evan's house on the lake in Seattle so we checked in with Jeremy's mom who was babysitting at our house. We're at the top of a very high hill and she told us that the snowplows had been going by all night and there were a couple of inches of snow. So we had to leave the party to head home. Luckily we made it just fine and we were happy to come home to a beautiful snowy scene.

The kids of course were thrilled to wake up this morning to a winter wonderland. Ragen listed off about 15 things that he was going to do once he got outside to play in the snow. We waited awhile though to hopefully allow it to warm up a bit (it really didn't) but some of the snow was melting so we headed out.

Ragen loved making snow angels and when we tried to tell Maggie how to do one, she had us both laughing so hard because when I told her "now move your arms up and down", she followed my directions and waved her arms in the air not the snow. She also loved eating the snow and everytime she took a mouthful, she'd say "ummm, snow, good" and then make a lip smacking sound.

I love living at the top of Lakemont because we tend to get snow more often than most. I'm holding out hope that we'll have a white Christmas!

Annual PC '93 Christmas Party

Last night my Gamma Phi pledge class came over for our 12th annual Christmas party. This was the biggest turnout we've had in years so it was such a blast laughing and telling stories about our college days (and post college days).

To say that I've been through alot with these girls is a gross understatement. We've done a ton of laughing, a lot of crying but most of all, we are always there to support each other. Our class has always been extremely close and we've prided ourselves on being unique in that we seemed to be one of the only classes in the UW greek system where we all got along, we (almost) all lived in the house our senior year, and we've remained dear friends as the time as passed.

We missed those of you who couldn't be with us!!

Our 1st Christmas together - December 1993 on the stairs at Gamma Phi

Candace (Uhler) Sokulski, Jessica (Neal) de Simas, Jenny (Spence) Schmitz, me, Julie (Skelton) DeCuire, Jodi Laiblin-Lyons, Courtney (Ptak) Tucker, Tammy (Hung) Heldridge, Ally (Rodgers) Tucker, Britt (Waldum) Fortney, Lisa (Sokulski) Giles, Steph (O'Malley) Hopp, Jen (Halfon) Headrick

2 new babies will be joining our crew this spring!

Snowflake Lane

We went to Snowflake Lane last night and the kids absolutely loved it. The key is to get there early so you can interact with the creepy toy soldiers walking on stilts (but they pass out candy cane lollipops), the snowman, the penguins, and the snow princess.

One piece of advice if you go - there seems to be a new feature this year - the girl who plays the cymbals. Well, make sure you don't stand near her. We were directly next to her and she reminded me of one of those monkeys who crashes the cymbals together. I swear she was chiming to a totally different song and it was really distracting.

Ragen asked to have his picture taken with everyone and of course Maggie was having none of it. The sweet girl dressed up as the snow princess came over to talk to Mags for about 5 minutes and by the end she had warmed up to the pretty girl and was even playing with her magic wand.

Jeremy and I happened to be walking across the skybridge the 1st night of Snowflake Lane (on our way to a movie). They had shut down Bellevue Way for a mini parade including fire trucks and the arrival of Santa. It only happens that Friday after Thanksgiving so we'll definitely be going to Snowflake Lane that night next year.

Keeping it festive

I love all the different events that take place in the Greater Puget Sound area during Christmas. There are so many things to take the kids to that I am trying to fit in a couple each week. I hope they're not sick of yuletide cheer by the 25th!

Last weekend we got our tree up and decorated. Each day the kids pick out their favorite ornament of the day. Ragen tends to love anything with red on it and Mags just seems to like Elmo over & over again.

Yesterday Mimi & I took the kids downtown so we could check out the Gingerbread Village at the Sheraton and go on the holiday carousel at Westlake Center. We thought the kids would love the gingerbread houses since it was a superhero theme but Ragen was really disappointed that there were no real heroes walking around. At 4 and 2, they just weren't as impressed with the edible creations as my mom & I were. Then we walked over to the carousel and it was a big day for miss Maggie - she went on the "neigh" (horse) for the first time ever! She is normally terrified of the horses on the carousel and always opts for the "car" which is the bench seat. Once we got her up on her blue horse she was excitede and wanted to go again & again. (I apologize for the photo quality - somehow a setting got changed and things were messed up all day).

Kicking off the holidays

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday and there are countless things I am grateful for...my loving husband, a kind-hearted son, a humorous daughter, the best extended family, dear friends, the freedoms we enjoy in this great country and those men & women who put their lives on the line everyday, and too many other things to list.

While I am very thankful, I am always ready to blow through Thanksgiving and get right to the day after because that marks the official start of "the holidays." Growing up, we ALWAYS drove to a Christmas tree farm the day after Thanksgiving to cut down our tree. Soon after, the tree and the decorations went up. Jeremy & I followed that tradition for a few years but now we've sold out and gone with the fake tree. However, we started our own family tradition of always going to the downtown Seattle Nordstrom the day after Thanksgiving to see Santa. The Macy's holiday parade is going on at the same time so it's fun to see it go by as we wait to see the big man.

For the 2nd year in a row, Santa has had to "go feed the reindeer" and then the kids sit in his chair only for him to sneak in behind for the photo. Poor little Maggie just gets super freaked out. My brother & I sat on Santa's lap into our 20's and my parents have every photo lining the hallway at Christmastime. My favorite picture is the one where Mark is about 2 and screaming. Unfortunately Maggie was so hysterical, she wouldn't even sit long enough to get a pic of her screaming on Santa's lap. Nevertheless, it's a fun tradition and definitely signals the start of the Christmas festivities.

So, if you're looking for me tomorrow, we'll be watching Christmas Vacation, putting up the tree and the decorations, and Jeremy will be out on the roof putting up the lights. Ragen seems to think that he's going to be up there helping. I just can't imagine where he got that idea...

August 2007 - Jeremy decided it'd be a good idea to put our 3 year old on the roof while he painted. I swear I didn't authorize this "fun."

Our President, Farack Obama

I've been getting a chuckle out of this little gem for the past week so I thought I'd share...a funny little election story.

Jeremy and I really haven't talked that much about the election or the candidates over the past few months. If we discussed it, it was always one of our date night conversations where we try really hard to talk about something other than the kids. So hard to do... Anyways, as we were watching the results roll in on election night, Ragen heard the word "Obama" and got super excited. He yelled "Hey that's Farack Obama and he's running for president. I want him to win." I quickly said oh you mean "Barack Obama" and he corrected me, "NO, F-F-F Farack Obama." Oh got it :) Obviously they had been talking about the election at preschool because the next comment he made was "He's against John McCain."

A few days later he heard the word "Obama" again and started talking about all the people in his class that voted for Farack Obama (him being one of them). Then he listed for me all the people in his class who voted for John McCain and how they were losers. Sorry McCain fans (Bumpa for sure!) he doesn't mean you're really a loser, just that you lost :)

Then tonight he saw my People magazine with Obama on the cover and once again excitedly said "There's Farack Obama again. He's our president now." Close enough. He followed that up with "He looks like Uncle Mark." Jeremy was hiding his laughter and asked why he thought that and Ragen's reply was "they both have dark hair."

I hope this is a perfect example of how the next generation is getting that much closer to being color blind since apparently Farack Obama and Uncle Mark were seperated at birth. :)

ROR!

Last week we were at Pediatric Associates (I know you moms know the place well!) for flu shots. Ragen decided to draw a lion on the chalkboard and it was a really good lion. Yesterday we had to go back for flu shots because Ragen was sick last week and couldn't get his. He went right back to his chalkboard and drew a full size lion. Complete with correct anatomy (notice the mane, whiskers, claws and tail?) and ROR (roar)! He was so proud of his drawing and it really makes me smile. He also got a pretty distinct haircut which he was also really proud of. Quite the day for my little man!

Halloween @ Gamma Phi

My college sorority has a great annual Halloween event where the alumni and their kids come back to trick-or-treat at each door within the house. This event is sort of a double-edged sword though. It's so fun to take the kids and I know they love it. I always think how fun it will be to see old college friends and catch up. However, everyone is chasing all these toddlers around so nobody gets to say much more than "Hi" and "Which kid(s) are yours?"

This was good practice for the real deal. Ragen figured out he basically had to yell "trick-or-treat" because the plastic mask covers his face. Maggie wouldn't say trick-or-treat but she said "thank you" (really more like "day doo") and picked up the concept quite quickly. Who wouldn't when you're raking in all that candy?! She was quite a hit being at the UW dressed up as a Husky cheerleader.

I remember this activity being sort of fun as a freshman and sort of a drag as a sophomore. But, now that I'm the one taking my kids back, I am so grateful to the girls for making such a special night for our kids.

Annual picture in front of the door

Annual picture at front door with Madison Tucker after annual dinner at Pallino

A handful of the kids who would stay still - Robbie Lentz, Callie Lentz, Maggie, Andy Graebner, Zach Fosseen, Annie Headrick, Jake Headrick, Sam Headrick, Max Giles, Cody Fosseen, JP Headrick, Ragen, Madison, Ellie Heldridge

Maggie is a huge trick-or-treating fan!

The 2 Husky cheerleaders - Maggie and Miller Fosseen

(who is just as sad about the football season as the rest of us!)