Mackenzie's Dolls

Mackenzie loves playing with her dolls. This Christmas we got her the American girl biddy twins. Grammy Dee and Grandpa got her the white doll furniture. She either plays dolls by herself, with Levi, or with her neighbor friend Juliana. Occasionally dad will play a little too... I'm not afraid to admit it. I will also admit that I'm not very good at it. Kenzie seems to always know what to do next with the little buggers.

Walmart Deal

Yesterday Josh had some money and we were at Walmart for the some post Christmas deals... Like wrapping paper and stuff. We were checking out the Legos and found the Exo-Force Mobile Devastator that was open with a little tape from a return and one side ripped open. On the Walmart site it says that the cost is $88.88. It's not even available to buy there. It is also stated as unavailable at the Lego site. Josh has really been interested in Exo-Force so I suggested that we bring it up to the counter and find out if they would give us a discount. I knew it was between $89.00 and $100.00 retail price. The lady at the counter said that she could discount it 10%. I asked her if she would get the manager to see if she would discount it more. When the manager came she also said 10%. I said that I was concerned that some pieces may be missing and I thought that it should be discounted for that possibility. She didn't budge. Then I suggested we ring it up and see what the price was. It came up as $49.99 on the register and then the manager said she would sell it for $25.00. Little did she know she may have had me at $50.00. Oh well Walmart... Roll back those prices. Josh got a great deal. He was all smiles.



I got a similar deal at a Walmart in Wyoming on our trip back from Colorado. It was for the Lego Basketball court and the top half of the box was ripped off. We got the whole court for under $5.00. It was over $50.00 normally and I was haggling for a percentage off and contemplating the purchase when she rang it up it was about $4.97 or something. She still took the percentage off that she promised without any prompting from me. I think we ended up paying 3 something.

I'm Dreaming of a white Christmas!

Well, Almost. The day after Christmas as we were eating breakfast Josh noticed that it was snowing. It was coming down really hard and even though the ground was very wet it still starting sticking after about 15 min. I thought it was going to stop, but it didn't. We got about 2-3 inches and had a ton of fun outside in it. It was Gabriel's first time in the snow and Levi loved the sledding.

Mom and Gabe look great out in the snow together.


I've always wanted to build an igloo, but either haven't had enough snow or it wasn't sticky enough. Today we had both. We I was little I remember my uncle pat building one at his place just outside of Sedro-Woolley. I think it was a place across the street from the river, but I'm not sure. If anyone has a picture of that igloo I'd love to see it. (Mom?)


Levi loved sledding he wanted to go over and over again. And every single time he had a huge smile on his face.

Sugar Cookies!

Here is a look at our sugar cookie frosting this year. We always make them on christmas eve and then leave some for "santa". We are doing christmas eve tonight and christmas tomorrow so we don't have to much crazyness all in one day. And I know it sounds like it, but we don't normally have them both on the same day. It's just that we are driving to Bellingham on the real Christmas morning. It looks like they are eating more than they are frosting. I think that proves they taste good.

Levi and Carmelo

Angel

Every year we let the kids take turns putting up the Angel. Josh put it up two years ago and MacKenzie was last year. This year Levi got his chance and next year will be Gabriel. What a rotation. It's like waiting for the next leap year. Not getting to do it for a few years may even make it more memorable. Anyway, it's a fun tradition.

Photoshop Fun

MacKenzie and I played around on photoshop until we found some cool pictures we liked. Here they are.

Allinson Castle

The teacher next door to me just got two large book carts for math books and I ran away with the boxes. Once we got them home, I started to find the castle in them with my box knife. I knew it was in there somewhere. Sure enough it turned into a castle and the kids have already gotten some good play time out of it. Joanna and the kids are just finishing up a unit on medieval times so it's perfect timing for a culminating project. The kids want to put on a play using the castle. We'll see if that's still on the books tomorrow. Levi only got to enjoy it for a short while before bed however he did say, "thanks, Dad." There still need to be some finishing touches. We'll have to add some strings for the drawbridge and some sort of roof for the two front bulging tower things.

Decorating our Tree

Our Little Reindeer

Here is Gabe in his Seahawks jacket from grandpa Cobb and his little Reindeer antlers from grandma Cathy. What a little dear.

Geocaching with Grandpa

Geocaching web site. We went on our first geocaching trip today. A teacher at my school let me borrow his old GPS unit. It was great. Grandpa was dropping Josh off from their trip to Chelan and so we took him along with us. We all had a great time. You can check the website above, but here's the basics. Geocaching is a 'treasure' hunting game. People hide a cache somewhere and then enter the latitude and longitude from their gps(global positioning system)online saying that there is a cache in the location. Then, someone sees that there is a cache in their area on the website, puts the coordinates into their gps and then tries to go and find it. The cache has things in it. Josh took an X-box game and Mackenzie took a little tiny stuffed animal. Josh left a stretchy frog and Mackenzie left a strawberry shortcake toy. I took a travel bug for diabetes tag that I record online that I took, and then I place it in another cache the next time I find one. It would be good fun for a college student I would think. Check out the site above and give it a try yourself.

Little Dimple Boy

We got Levi's allergy results the other day. He is alergic to Egg, Dairy, Peanuts and Cashews. We are suppose to still stay away from other tree nuts. He's been really healty for the past couple weeks. :).

Elf Yourself

I got an email from my mom where my Uncle Tom and his family had elfed themselves. So the kids wanted to elf themselves as well. Here they are. Click here and you can see them live. Thanks for the email mom. The kids thought this was great.