One Last Post....

Still three hours left for me to post one more time in 2012 to make up for the past two weeks....

We had a whirlwind Christmas vacation, as we traveled over 1,200 miles in less than a week, as we had to make it back for a wedding on the 29th.  As always, it was nice to be with family for the holidays, and we were able to pull off a white Christmas for the girls!

We first celebrated Christmas with Kellen and his girlfriend before we left. Kellen was able to be with us in Oregon the weekend before Christmas, but he had to return home to work both Christmas Eve and Christmas.

The rock is what Josh wrapped to foil their gift guess. It really was a date night. Note the nerf gun on the couch that Elizabeth got Kellen and Josh.

In Portland we celebrated an evening with extended family, then more family time with a brunch the following morning. There were a total of five generations at the celebrations.

Bradyn, the newest addition with his personalized Christmas Tree name placer since he slept through dinner:)

 

 

 

One of her favorite gifts, stylish headphones.

Jaelyn made us this ceramic cupcake at school....yum:)

Christmas morn we were on the road early, as we knew there would be snow along the way. Our typical five hour journey took eight hours. The girls couldn't wait to play in the snow, and in fact, Josh and two cousins joined them until well after sundown Christmas night. The next day we celebrated yet another Christmas with Mike's family.

Cousins!

This favorite gift was from Mame....Jaelyn wanted a tumbling outfit too, even though she is not in gymnastics. They put on many shows for us. Kaia always played the coach. It was very sweet.

A large percentage of the less than 48 hours we were here were spent playing in the snow!

We capped off the trip by celebrating Kaia's eighth "Gotcha Day" with our family, by going out to Chinese dinner with good friends in Salem on our trip home. We have been friends with the Whitehursts for nearly 25 years now, since our early days in the Navy. Hard to believe how time flies.

Whew, lots of distractions, but I finished the post with 1.5 hours to spare!  Happy New Year! Tomorrow, Jaelyn's birthday.

Big Day!

So it was a big day for the Crebbin household. First off, Kaia made her debut with the Island Flyer's, as Leaps & Bounds had a Christmas recital today. Kaia's the youngest on the team by two years, yet held her own. I was really proud of her not succumbing to nerves.  She has her first competition in January.


Throughout the day, Mike and Josh were texting me with Josh's progress at the Graham Morin Invitational Wrestling Tournament in Bellingham. Josh made it to the finals, where the girls and I were able to watch him take first place via the Internet! I asked Mike to send me a photo. Typical guy sent me this photo of Josh surrounded by another team's cheerleaders! Unfortunately it's grainy, but I thought everyone would get a kick out of it.

Cocoa's First Christmas...

Trust me, this photo session was not as calm as this picture leads one to believe! Cocoa was so excited to sniff every dog see Santa that I think one of my arms is longer than the other, due to all the pulling. I was surprised by what a calming affect Santa can have.

Just the opposite of Jaelyn's first Christmas with the family. Scrolling through photos recently I came across this one from 2006, after she had been with us about 6 months. She hated anyone in costume, and has only gotten over that in the last couple of years.

But even crying, isn't she adorable? Yeah, of course they all are:)

Like Father, Like Son...

John Fisken, a photographer from Oak Harbor Sports Report, sent me this picture today that he snapped of my boys at last night's wrestling meet. I think it is my new favorite of the two of them. I'll let the photo do the rest of the talking...

Another Letter...

This week Joshua earned another letter that he will wear proudly on his Letterman's jacket. However, this one was not for his prowess on the mat, but rather, a payoff for the hard work he has been doing in the classroom. Last year Joshua really got serious about his future as an architect, and turned it up in the classroom. To earn an academic letter you must have two consecutive semester's with a 3.5 or better. He did just that and more, and now he is continuing that success this year (and that's with three difficult AP classes).

And on the mat this season he is now 2-0! Last night's match is now archived at http://www.soundsportsnet.com/ (look for Mat cats chase away Mt. Vernon).  Next Thursday's meet is supposed to be live on the internet too. It's a double dual, so I believe it begins at 5:30 instead of 7:00.

Keep up the hard work Josh!

Holiday Blues...

No, I don't have the holiday blues; in fact, Christmas season is one of my favorite times of the year. However, not sure why, but I haven't been able to find the motivation to post lately. Not like I haven't had anything to post about. I guess at the end of the day when I plop sit down, I just can't find the energy. So after I catch you up to speed today, I am going to do my best to stay on top of things, despite the holiday hustle and bustle.

Speaking of holidays, here is my wonderful family patiently waiting for their long-awaited Turkey dinner. Aren't they the most precious group you've ever seen?

We did have a lot of fun family time and enjoyed a relaxing day. I did some cyber-shopping that night, and got a restful night's sleep!

The weekend of Thanksgiving we also got up our Christmas lights, but have slowly been adding more as our competitive nature comes out when the neighbors start decorating. This past weekend we put the tree up. If you followed the blog last year, you will remember the new tradition we were forced to begin when our favorite u-cut lot closed down. The up side to that is we were still able to get our tree on a blustery day without fighting the elements, as we were in and out in five minutes. And it all went for a great cause, helping an orphanage in Thailand! Kellen even joined us again, although he mainly handed out orders to his siblings rather than decorate the tree himself! As tradition calls, each child received an ornament representing something from this period of their life. Little did they know, but I had bought them all ornaments while we were at Disneyworld for Spring Break.  Kaia and Jaelyn got Princess ears, and the boys got Mickey. I had them personalized at Downtown Disney, and tucked them away when we got home. I almost forgot about them. Thank goodness I happened to come across them while wrapping some gifts:)

Here's the final product. I know you can't see it very well, but trust me, it looks great! And at least this family photo looks a bit more "normal" than the Thanksgiving one:)

I'm Back....

So after doing some investigating I have decided to suck it up and pay my $2+ a month to keep posting to my blog the same easy way I have been doing. I had considered following some multi-step free backdoor way someone else had posted steps to, but as I started following their instructions, I decided that sometimes it does not pay to be a tightwad. As the saying goes, time is money, so I saved myself the hassle and went for it. Perhaps I should put a paypal link on the sidebar to collect donations. Just kidding!

So now that I am back up and running, I will finish the post from Thanksgiving.  I started the writing and saved it, so not sure if it is going to appear before or after this post.  Thank you for reading all the way to the bottom of my rambling. Miss me?

Frustrated Blogger....

Please be patient with me as I figure out how to work around my frustrations with blogger.com.  Evidently they have decided to limit the amount of free photo space, so now want me to pay for it. It seems this is "suddenly" happening to many other bloggers too. I am going to investigate what others are doing before paying, as I am a cheapskate always looking for a bargain. I will be back with photos soon, either here, or at a new site. Stay tuned....