I have to say that I’m incredibly grateful to be married to such an awesome (and handsome) man who is now half way to 70! 
We had a nice birthday celebration with just the 6 of us.  We started the day off with a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and Orange Julius.  We spent most [...]

Posted on January 2nd, 2012 by Kathleen
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Here’s a little video share of our Christmas Eve Nativity.  It is by no means a well prepared and well executed Nativity, however, I thought it was worth sharing for those family members who weren’t able to be with us on Christmas Eve.Here’s last year for comparison.  I think we improved a little—no one was [...]

Posted on December 27th, 2011 by Kathleen
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Before:During:After:

Posted on December 26th, 2011 by Kathleen
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I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile.  As many of you know, we’ve taken Nicole in for some testing through the school district.
Nicole is an energetic, friendly, creative little girl.  She speaks clearly with good articulation and good sentence structure.  She likes things that most little girls her age seem to [...]

Posted on December 23rd, 2011 by Kathleen
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I told Charlotte that she could invite 6 friends to a birthday party.  She helped make the invitations by decorating them with crayon and cat stickers. When her guests arrived, we put homemade cat headbands on and painted their faces.  We had cat themed coloring pages/worksheets for everyone to do while we waited for all [...]

Posted on December 23rd, 2011 by Kathleen
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Here’s another catch-up post.  We went sledding on the Saturday between the girl’s birthdays (December 10th) with some friends. 
It rarely snows here in Seattle, and when it does, it doesn’t snow much–or at least that’s what I’ve heard.  I haven’t been here through a full winter yet, but it hasn’t snowed yet this winter.  [...]

Posted on December 21st, 2011 by Kathleen
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One of the most beautiful things is being outdoors in a heavy snowstorm where there’s no wind. It’s a frightening thing if there’s no home close to warm up in, but standing alone, it’s a beautiful and quiet thing. Voices and footsteps are muffled, and there’s a near perfect stillness in the air. I have [...]

Posted on December 21st, 2011 by Zach
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Charlotte’s birthday was on a school day this year which was just fine with her since she loves Kindergarten.  We made cat shaped cookies for her class and decorated them to look like her cat (Jill).  Charlotte helped me frost them.  She started off her day with a special breakfast of sparkling apple-grape juice and [...]

Posted on December 21st, 2011 by Kathleen
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Some more Christmas thoughts in the same sort of stream-of-consciousness mode.
It’s been said often that Christmas is much more special with children around. I remember as a child that there was nothing in a year that caused me more excitement and anticipation than Christmas. I loved Christmas Eve most of all. That last anticipation, and [...]

Posted on December 19th, 2011 by Zach
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Charlotte turned 6 on the 14th.  I had so many things to do to get ready for her birthday and other things, that I had to post pone the post about her until now in favor of getting some sleep.
Charlotte likes to draw.  Her artwork makes a sharp contrast with what Isaac produces.  He always [...]

Posted on December 19th, 2011 by Kathleen
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Our family has celebrated Christmas in what seemed like tough circumstances the last couple of years. In 2009, we’d just moved to Tennessee and didn’t really know many people. We missed our families a lot. We’d just had a new baby and so we didn’t put a lot of effort into making the time special [...]

Posted on December 13th, 2011 by Zach
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With all the pictures and videos I took on Ila’s birthday, this post should be the next best thing to actually being able to celebrate Ila’s birthday with her!

Posted on December 9th, 2011 by Kathleen
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It’s wacky hair day at school today:One of the neighbor boys had some party poppers this morning, so Isaac added some color to his crazy hair on the way to the bus:

Posted on December 9th, 2011 by Kathleen
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Here are some fun recent videos of Ila:

One of her favorite activities is having me write her name:
She was making our little nativity figures play ring-around-the-roses, but when I got out my camera, she decided to play the game herself:

Posted on December 8th, 2011 by Kathleen
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My little Ila turns 2 tomorrow.  She was named after my beloved grandmother, Ila O’Bryant.  My grandma always seemed to just radiate love.  My little Ila is the same way to me.  Her siblings genuinely love her and enjoy being around her and she loves them too. There is some indescribable quality about her that [...]

Posted on December 8th, 2011 by Kathleen
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I just noticed the other day that the pictures from my phone were mysteriously on my computer.  This is good, because I have never taken the time to figure out how to get them from my phone to my computer (I know, I should be ashamed of myself).  Anyway, here are two that I took [...]

Posted on December 4th, 2011 by Kathleen
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This is Eustace:This is a Eustace colored bunny that we saw at the pet store:Here is a Eustace cow:The kids love finding animals that look like Eustace.  I can’t remember a long drive that we have taken where we haven’t found a whole pasture full of Eustace Cows.  We call him our cow-colored cat and [...]

Posted on December 3rd, 2011 by Kathleen
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Instead of an all inclusive detailed retelling of our day/weekend, I decided to just post a few pictures and comments on our Thanksgiving this year.
This is the Thanksgiving pie we made.  We covered the top with cut outs of things we were thankful for that I also had cookie cutters in the shape of.  The [...]

Posted on November 27th, 2011 by Kathleen
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It’s never a bad time to count your blessings, but today is a great day to do it. Things may change tomorrow, but even if they do, I’ll be glad for all I’ve been blessed with today.
And I do mean blessed. I know some people think it’s just luck or genius that determines our place [...]

Posted on November 24th, 2011 by Zach
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My mom came to visit last week.  I can’t tell you how eagerly I anticipated our visit since the last time I saw her was at the airport when we moved to Seattle.  Unfortunately, all 4 of my kids developed colds just before she arrived and I was just starting to get a cold.  Within [...]

Posted on November 17th, 2011 by Kathleen
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