Ski School

Ragen had his first day of ski school today at the Summit at Snoqualmie. It was so fun to watch as he excitedly got dressed in all his new ski gear. Luckily he was perfectly dressed and said he wasn't too cold. It was a pretty terrible day up at the pass as it had snowed overnight but then rained this morning leaving a very icy mess. But the kids made the most of it and hopefully next week they'll have better conditions. He had fun and is looking forward to his next lesson.

Anxious to get started!

Ragen & Josie are in the same class

Davis Stryer is doing the same ski school too

Mommy's little skiier

All set & ready to go!
Skis on - mission accomplished

2010

What a fun way to end 2009! We were invited over to the Quinn's house for New Year's Eve with several other couples but it ended up being just us which was still so fun. Another couple stopped by for a cocktail and it was really fun to finally meet them. Our kids were spending the night at Mimi & Bumpa's so we had a kid-free New Years. This meant we might even stay up past 9:30!

Let me backtrack...the evening almost didn't happen. Maggie had had the 24 stomach flu 2 days before New Year's Eve and I'd had it the day before (the eve-eve as Chad & Ronni would say). We were both doing great all day so when I dropped them off at Mimi's for a sleepover, everyone was very excited. I left and came home to finish getting ready only to get a call from my mom that Maggie had thrown up all over the kitchen. HUH!?!? I called Liz (45 minutes before we were supposed to be there) and apologized profusely but I thought we'd have to cancel. I knew they'd probably gone to alot of effort and were serving steak and lobster so I felt terrible. The more I thought about poor Mags as I drove back to my parents to pick her up, the more I thought it was just too odd that she'd started throwing up again after being just fine all day. She hadn't slept well at all the night she was sick and then that day we'd had a playdate so she never napped. On top of that she ate tons of junk at the playdate so I started thinking maybe her already weak tummy couldn't handle it on top of being utterly exhausted. By the time I got there, she was literally doing twirls, calling herself a ballerina, and happy as could be. I talked my parents into letting her stay, called Liz (who thought I'd been messing with her the entire time) and quickly went home to change.

We had a fabulous dinner, drank champagne, and had fun conversations with dear friends. Thank you so much Liz and Brian for ringing in 2010 with us. We haven't made it to midnight in years!

The beautiful tablescape!

It was probably not the best idea to start taking pictures at 11:55pm with no lipstick on...

Post-Christmas Activities

Mark and his family were here for almost a week and we packed in as much family time as we could. Ragen and Maggie absolutely idolize Tiana & Elijah and what's so sweet is that I really think that the big kids love spending time with the little ones just as much. We had a wonderful visit with them all and I'm just disappointed I didn't seem to take many pictures of Mark & Melissa. :(

Enjoying the ice skating in Bellevue Park. We couldn't go last year because the tent collapsed in the snow storm.

It took him awhile, but Ragen finally got the hang of it. Tiana & Elijah took him around which saved Uncle Mark's back!

Jeremy, Mags, Ragen, Mark, Tiana & Elijah

Maggie LOVED the skating

Another holiday tradition - the Bellevue Botanical Gardens Christmas light display

Bumpa, Mark, Keri, Melissa, Elijah, Ragen, Maggie & Tiana

These displays amaze me each year

This was an indoor aquarium complete with fish, octopus and floating jellyfish

Merry Christmas!

We had such a wonderful Christmas morning watching the delight in our kids faces! They really are at fantastic ages and enjoyed the spirit of Christmas to the fullest. We opened up our own family presents as well as everything from Santa before the rest of the family came over. My parents and Mark, Melissa, Tiana & Elijah came over around 9am (and yes, we'd already finished our own stuff by that time). We decided to eat before attacking anymore gifts. On my mom's side, there is a very strong sense of tradition when it comes to Christmas morning breakfast. I decided that we're at my house this year and I'm doing things my way. So there! :) We had a wonderful egg casserole dish, a grapefruit/orange/pomegranate seed salad, homemade cinnamon rolls and drinks. It was perfectly delicious and our new tradition.

After opening gifts, everyone went their seperate ways in hopes of getting a 2nd wind. It was so much fun to see Christmas through the eyes of tweens (beTWEEN childhood & teenagers) and to have Mark and his family here. My parents were in heaven to have us all together! Later in the afternoon we headed over to Jeremy's parents to do Christmas with his grandma and family. Later some dear old family friends joined us (they spend every Thanksgiving & Christmas with these families) for dinner. It was a full house but very fun to be around such tradition and all the laughter. After dinner we scooted out to head back over to my parents. Yet another Christmas celebration! This time was to be with my grandma after they'd all eaten dinner. It was a crazy day but we are grateful to have seen everyone in the family and spent quality time together. The kids crashed before leaving my parents neighborhood.

They're off!

Happiest. Boy. Ever.

Maggie with her "Princess Music Thing" that she asked Santa for

All 4 kids anxiously awaiting the gifts...It is so fun to see how close they have become.

We had to get Elijah a Husky shirt to start representing the Dawgs down in LA. He's a huge USC fan so we've got to bring him around. He even wore it a few times while up here but the bigger question is will he wear it in California?

Maggie's very special quilt that Grandma B (my grandma) made for her with fairies all over it. She absolutely adores it!

Twas the Night Before Christmas...

About 5 days before Christmas, we got a wonderful surprise...Mark, Melissa, Tiana & Elijah were coming up to Seattle for Christmas!! They were going to show up on Christmas Eve and REALLY surprise us but my mom was actually in-the-know (she'd just been down to LA to help with wedding plans a couple of weeks prior) and she was having a really hard time keeping the secret. Shocking, I know.

Christmas Eve was a fun family filled day. Each year, both Jeremy's family and mine get together after church since we all attend the same service at St. Thomas. I had already volunteered to have everyone here and now with Mark's family and Jeremy's sister/husband coming (they're normally elsewhere on Christmas Eve), we had a full house! My mom and Cheryl had kindly volunteered to cook dinner so that I wouldn't be too stressed as I was hosting Christmas morning here as well. I figured that if I wasn't preparing any food, I didn't really have to think much about anything at all. That proved problematic when my mom went to plate up the food and I realized we had nowhere to sit! How in the world were we going to eat soup on our laps!? So I ran upstairs, got the dining table leaf and pads, a green tablecloth and quickly set the table with my Spode Christmas dishes. Voila! Very festive!! My table only seats 8 and we had 10 adults so poor Jeremy was stuck on a kid chair from the playroom. He said it was pretty easy to shovel soup into his mouth at that height but eating salad like that was more challenging. We had a good laugh at his expense.

Before the kids could go to bed, we had a few holiday traditions to attend to. First we got them all dressed in their Christmas jammies. Finding matching ones this year proved difficult so we took what we could get. The kids laid out milk & cookies for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph. They excitedly went to bed without much prodding and daddy read the classic The Night Before Christmas. This is a special tradition for me as my dad read it to Mark & me until I was in college.

After everyone left, I started wrapping. I have never in my life left wrapping until Christmas Eve and I can honestly say I'll never do it again. Not only could I not sit back and enjoy a holiday movie, I was exhausted and didn't finish until 12:30am. Let's just say there will be some changes to the Christmas Eve traditions in the Kiefer household next year...

As busy as it was around here with our raging Wii competition and the kids playing hide & seek, it was really fun to have a houseful of family!

Mark, Skip, Gretchen, both Bumpas and Jeremy watch Elijah and Ragen battle it out at MarioKart

One of the few times Maggie actually looks at the camera - she's that excited

A case of the sillies

I love how both kids have thier "ba-ba's" here, are in their matching chairs, and are both sucking the appropriate digit for each :)

Santa came!!!

Rain or shine!!

It's become a Christmas tradition for our family and we weren't going to let a little rain get in they way! Between the huge party we had in mid-December and then all the hustle & bustle of getting ready for Christmas, there was literally 1 day that we could go and see Snowflake Lane this year and Jeremy wasn't even able to join us. :(

As we were driving towards the mall I was thinking "well, at least in the rain it won't be very crowded and it should be easy to park." Ummmm - wrong! Trying to get into the parking lot was proving to be such a nightmare that I even told the kids we'd probably end up missing the show anyways. Maggie sweetly reminded me to be patient (which literally caught my breath!) and just as I was pulling past the ticket pulling area (about to make a u-turn to go home), someone pulled out of one of the 6 parking spots right there on the ground level! She taught me such a valuable lesson in that moment!

We found a spot in the rain and just hoped the time would go quickly. I couldn't believe how crowded it was up & down both sides of Bellevue Way. Apparently Snowflake Lane is a big enough deal to lots of other families as well. The kids loved the show and I loved how the rain stopped right as the drummers came out.

1st Annual K/R/Q/S Christmas party

It started out as a way to avoid having to buy too many Christmas gifts for the kids. Liz, Dee, Vanessa and I decided we'd have the kids draw names and do a little Christmas exchange. Then we figured it'd be a great idea to do it for ourselves too. Then Liz had a grand idea of having a cookie exchange. Then our gift exchange became a gift exchange/cookie exchange/dinner party. In the meantime, let's have the husbands draw names for a gift exchange too. Then we were all bringing a dish for the party plus some wine plus the 4 Christmas presents PLUS 6 dozen cookies? Craziness! So we ditched the cookie exhange idea and ended up with the 1st annual Kiefer/Reiff/Quinn/Strickland Christmas party at Liz & Brian's house!

The kids ate a quick dinner then scurried upstairs to play with the babysitter while we had cocktail hour. We brought them downstairs to exchange gifts and Liz had the idea to have each of the kids explain one thing they like about the person who's name they'd drawn. To watch these 5 year olds and 3 year olds tell something sweet about their friends was priceless! There were several "I like so and so because they play so nicely with me." The kids retreated back upstairs to play with their new toys and also decorate cookies (again - loving the babysitter!).

Now we could enjoy a fabulous dinner without any kids tattling or hitting or breathing wrong. After dinner, we did the adult gift exchange and decided to carry over the idea of saying something you admire about the person who's name you'd drawn. This was easy for us girls but it was fun to watch the guys a) get sensitive about each other and b) try to make it meaningful to the gift that their wife probably picked out! We laughed and cried and realized just how special it is that 4 couples came together by chance and have become such good friends.

It's too late now but for next year if you and your friends/family do a gift exchange where you draw names, you should definitely try out http://www.drawnames.com/. It was such an easy way to do it! The website has you set up who's involved and who can't buy for whom (is that even gramatically correct!?). So you could tell it that Ragen can't buy for Maggie, etc... We did 3 seperate draws (kids, moms, dads). Then it emails each person individually to let them know who they've drawn and keeps it all secret. The website even goes so far as to allow you to set up a wish list if you'd like.

Liz's beautifully set dinner table

The kids table

A first! All 7 kids smiling happily! L - R: Ragen, Reese, Grace, Josie, Maggie, Ella & Ellie

All 8 adults smiling too - another victory!

Things got silly as the night progressed...

Rob, Jeremy, Brian & Jeff posing with the gift Brian made for Rob (which is a picture "George" took in college of Jeremy & Brian and then had Rob & Jeff's pics added).

Jeff and the leather beer holster Jeremy gave him - it was a hit!

Celebrating Christmas at School

Life has become so politically correct and for the most part, I am all for most of the changes society has made. One thing that makes me sad is the lack of Christmas spirit in the classroom. When we were kids we had a full-on Christmas party and it was always my favorite time of the school year. I can appreciate the need for religious sensitivity but it would be nice if the kids could enjoy Christmas or any of the other holidays in the public schools.

Maggie goes to a christian preschool so Christmas is out in full force at Pilgrim. It's such a breath of fresh air to wish someone Merry Christmas and not panic for a split second that you've offended them. That's the last thing I want to do during such a fun time of year.

Maggie & her buddy Ellie are hard at work on their gingerbread houses

Maggie's masterpiece

The Christmas program at her school was a family affair

We were totally shocked Mags participated by singing proudly. She tends to get shy when the center of attention and to us that day, she was the COA!

I love how half the class is doing one hand motion and the other half is doing another hand motion

Ragen's school doesn't do a holiday party however the kindergarten classes do decorate gingerbread houses. It was a fun opportunity to go into the class to help out and see Ragen interacting with his buddies. Jeremy was even able to skip out of work to help out and Ragen was beaming to have his daddy there.

If all the kids grabbing for the candy doesn't spread swine flu, I don't know what will!

Giving each kid his/her own frosting bag might not have been the smartest...especially the kids who's parents couldn't come supervise. It was EVERYWHERE!

Ragen's masterpiece