Five Christmases.

Steven and I had the usual marathon of a Christmas this year. We kicked things off with dinner at my dad's house on Sunday the 23rd. He cooked a turkey and I made the gravy. I'm normally quite good at gravy making but he didn't tell me that he brined the turkey in salt water and the gravy was pretty much just turkey flavored salt sauce. Yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I tried to water it down and flour it down but I still didn't like it. We ate all kinds of goodies and Steven and I brought a growler of Jolly Roger Christmas Ale from the taproom. Dad had purchased another pumpkin tart from Whole Foods but it wasn't nearly as tasty as the one he bought at Thanksgiving. I have no idea what made that one so magical but it was fantastic! We exchanged gifts and then watched silly animal youtube videos late into the night.

Christmas Eve, our alarms went off a little earlier than I'd generally prefer while on break, and we were on our way to Steven's parents' house. We exchanged loads more gifts (Karen gave me all kinds of sprinkles and baking things and a JoAnns gift card and Steven received a really nice bag for his gear at work), ate lots more cookies, played 7 Wonders 2 or 3 or 4 times, and had lunch with some of Steven's extended family. Steven's mom always has their home all decked out and Christmassy and it's quite cozy and festive. She made some really good cookies too -- some super soft chocolate cookies that were sandwiched together with cream cheese frosting in the middle. Yum.

Christmas Eve evening we spent with Mom and the girls. We went to church together and Santa stopped by and filled our stockings while we were gone. We opened stockings and then enjoyed a lovely salmon dinner with rum slush and all kinds of cookies on the side (big surprise!). Mom made even more cookies including snickers bars, and turtle bars. She also made a super tasty salad. It's hard to get enough salad these days... We exchanged gifts after dinner, which was the part we had been waiting for all week!! Mom gave us all kinds of wonderful gifts including gift cards to Cirque du Soleil and Daniel's Broiler (Valentine's Day date!!), hot curlers for me, and a toolbox for Steven. But we gave her a little push out into the dating world. I mentioned to Mom a little while ago that we thought it was time for her to start dating and she mentioned a matchmaking service. We looked into it and decided to help her pay for the membership. We wrapped up a check with a little note of explanation that Steven, Mandie, Tara, and I signed and she was shocked!!! But not in a bad way. She was speechless and a bit timid but it seemed like a positive thing overall. Steven was pretty worried that we had done something wrong and he kept giving her hugs and rubbing her shoulders and saying "are you sure it's okay?" It was really sweet :) I love how excited he is for her and how eager he was to help her out with this. He is so generous and kind and it just melts my heart. The girls got us some really fun gifts too. Tara and Mom each gave me cookbooks, Tara gave me an apron, and Mandie gave us some stemless wineglasses and a bottle of wine. It was a really fun evening.

Tari got a new mask.

Mandie got a new scarf.

Charlie and Chessie got new harnesses (he normally would be squirming away from her but he's chewing on his new parrot toy that has been stuffed with catnip).

Christmas morning was relaxing -- just the two of us at home. We wore our Christmas onesies from last year and drank hot chocolate and opened all of our gifts one at a time. Steven got me a new apron, and a thermos, and a cookbook, and a tea pot and two tea cups, and a pocket knife (with pen and flashlight -- so practical!), and a really cool salad dressing mixer bottle thing. I made him a couple of blankets with firefighter fleece on one side and flannel on the other side. I thought this would be his favorite gift but he actually preferred his new game -- Timber Peak -- an extension of the zombie game we like to play. I think the best part of our morning was when we went out to breakfast. This is the 4th year of our Christmas breakfast tradition but I didn't realize that we hadn't actually done it on Christmas Day. I guess all of the other years it has been on the 23rd or 24th so when we got in the car to go to breakfast, we quickly realized that nothing was open. Until we drove by Plum Delicious. They definitely looked open and the paint on their window said they served breakfast, so we pulled in. I always thought that place was an Asian restaurant but apparently it's a family owned diner. Steven described it as a combination between Denny's, Shari's, and a Pancake House. The food was actually pretty good (corned beef hash and fried eggs for Steven and a waffle for me) but it was just amusing to us that we were in some random diner off of Sunset that sells their table top space as advertisement space and looks like an Asian restaurant from the outside. We were thoroughly entertained. The good part about the advertisements on top of the table was that we found out about a dance barn in Renton and I think we're actually going to check it out sometime :)

I'm wearing Steven's new apron :) I believe that was a gift from Danny.
Like my new earrings? Santa gave them to me.

Next stop: Papa and Grammi's. It was a typical Parducci/Sodoma/Lentz Christmas -- more food than anyone should ever consume at one time, amazingly generous gifts that take 4+ hours to open, an incredibly entertaining game (or 5 games) of Catch Phrase, and some truly great company. I think the most successful gifts were given to Danny. He was thrilled with the 4 bags of candy cane flavored pop rocks that my mom gave him and quickly consumed all of them, and was also surprisingly happy with the toilet plunger that Steven and I had wrapped up for him. Amanda had to be at the airport by 4:30 the next morning so she and Steven and I headed out early but I wish we hadn't! Apparently Papa and Grammi joined in the Catch Phrase fun later in the evening -- they never play with us! We really missed out. We'll have to get them to join in a little earlier next time.

We had a wonderful Christmas and we are so blessed to have had all of this time off together. We're looking forward to having Chad & Whitney here for the last couple nights of their vacation before Steven has to go back to work on Tuesday.

Holiday Happenings.

The fun Christmassy part of this month has gone by incredibly fast. This is another one of those years where I feel like I kind of missed out. I didn't get to watch all of my movies. I hardly had time to bake. My Christmas cards were unbelieveably late. And so on and so forth. There have been little pockets of holiday fun though. Heather and I went shopping a few weekends ago. We started the evening with dinner and drinks at McCormick's and finished just in time to enjoy Snowflake Lane. She had never experienced the fake snow, and stilt-walkers, and snowflake drummers, and free candy cane tootsie pops so it was fun to share that with her.

That same weekend I attended an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party all. by. my. self. Aren't I brave??? I kind of shocked myself. It was a night that Steven was working and I wouldn't normally go to something like that alone but we really want to be friends with the couple who hosted the party and I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to hang out with them.

The whole time I was thinking, Oh my goodness - I'm just not this much fun! They had a photo booth and everyone was taking crazy silly pictures and drinking a lot and I was a little out of my element but I think I did pretty well. I took a few shots (both from the whiskey bottle and in the photo booth) and tried not to be too much of a dud. I even won third place in the ugly sweater contest! And everyone loved my fudge. So overall it was a success.

3rd place! Not Uglier or Ugliest, just plain Ugly. (I actually kind of like my sweater but don't tell anyone I said that)

We had our Christmas party a couple of weeks ago and we had such a fabulous time!! It was perfect. There were only four couples (including us) and it was very comfortable and relaxed and entertaining. I had the genius idea to put frozen pomegranate seeds in the rum slush -- beautiful, crunchy, and tasty. I loved it.

I kept this party super low key and chose not to actually prep anything. I mostly just served chocolate, which is all you really need, right?

The gift exchange was a blast. I even got a sparkly red Justin Bieber ornament! Steven received some Sounders slippers and he wears them all over the house -- we had to fight for those. We finally lost the flip flop on a stick this year, but I think it went to a good home :) Rolf was pretty excited about it! Steven and I already have our white elephant gifts for next year, now I just have to make sure that I store them somewhere that I'll remember them.

Chad and Whitney are in town and we've already gotten to see them a few times. We met up with them and Scott & Chloe for drinks and games last Thursday. What a fun group of people! I was grumpy and tired after school and honestly didn't really want to go but, of course, it was a very enjoyable evening.

We spent the entire next day at the Mayers' house playing games and eating and drinking. Jeremy and Ronnie joined us for dinner and dessert and it was nice to see them too! They're moving to Utah next month so it looks like we'll have to plan a trip out there sometime in the nearish future.

I spent Saturday baking cookies with Mom and Tara while Steven played board games and ate sushi with Chad and Jeremy. We made snowball cookies, and English toffee, and cutout cookies, and coconut bonbons, and all kinds of yummy stuff. It was nice to catch up on the holiday baking and it is kind of fun to do it all in one go. Next year I have to help Mom clean up the kitchen -- I left it a complete disaster! Not sure how I managed to go the whole day without taking any pictures though...

On Sunday we drove into Seattle together and I went to holiday tea with Mom, Grammi, and the girls, while Steven went with Scott to get a tattoo. We've been talking for a long time about getting ring tattoos under our wedding rings. Steven had to take his ring off a lot at work and when he's working out and when he goes climbing and he was really wanting the tattoo so he wouldn't have to worry about the ring so much, though I still insist that he wears it anyway... I know, how unreasonable! He decided that it would be best to get the tattoo over the Christmas break so that it has a couple of weeks to heal before he has to go back to work. It looks pretty cool. I want one too but also kind of not. I liked the idea of getting marriage tattoos together but now that he already has one, I honestly can't see myself going by myself to get one. So there's that.

Here's the only picture I took at tea.

Thankfully, my mom took a few.

Maybe next year Amanda and I should sit on the same side of the table...

Mom asked why I wasn't taking pictures of the food but I figured I didn't need to since the pictures would look exactly the same as the ones I've taken the past two years. The food was amazing, as always, and we had a really nice time. Steven picked me up after tea and we went with Scott & Chloe to the Jolly Roger Taproom in Ballard. It was a fun and relaxing interlude in our chaotic Christmas weekend. We really enjoy being around them.



This post is getting a bit long and I'm only halfway through the holiday happenings so I'll wrap this one up and put all of the family stuff in the next post.

Christmas Cougar.

This has been the longest short month of my life! I thought this week would never end and it was only four days!! Our school days this month have been somewhat lacking in teaching time. We had the holiday program and party last Friday and we had extra music rehearsals every school day leading up to that. There were some days, usually Wednesdays, where I only had my kids in the classroom for a total of 30 minutes and that time was usually spent on some kind of holiday project. My kids get so excited when they see "Activity" up on the schedule. A few weeks ago one of my students said, "Another activity?! We're definitely never bored in Mrs. Lentz's class!" I loved it :)

My biggest project this month was the bulletin board in the hallway. After my frantic last minute bulletin board creation for the month of October, I immediately started planning my bulletin board project for the month of December. I had the students write about what their "gift" to our school community would be this holiday season. We talked about how our good qualities and characteristics can help to improve our community so they wrote about gifts like generosity, respect, sense of humor, kindness, friendship etc. They did really well with the assignment -- I was so proud! Then I let each of them choose colors for the "gift" that I made for the background of their writing pieces. I cut and pasted all of that, laminated it, and then attached curly ribbon to the top. Oh, and then I remembered that our headmaster really likes it when the students' pictures are up on the bulletin board. I had already put way too much time and effort into this bulletin board but decided to take pictures of each of the students holding a wrapped gift and then used the pictures to make a gift tag to hang from each gift. We used our parent gift to help decorate the bulletin board (the students made swirly ball ornaments -- swirled acrylic paint inside glass balls) and I added a little garland and a strand of battery operated lights. Can you say "overachiever"? I'm starting to think it's a dirty word.

My classroom bulletin boards were a bit lacking because of all the creative energy that had been siphoned out of me and into the hallway bulletin board. For the board over the computer center I printed out large pictures of Christmas ornaments. The students cut and colored them and then wrote one of their favorite holiday memories on the back. My favorite part of this board was getting to plug the lights in every morning -- I loved having Christmas lights in my room!

The hanging bulletin boards were decorated with tissue paper wreaths. I remember making these in my 3rd grade class and really enjoying it. I was worried it would require a little too much patience from the kiddos but they all managed it just fine.

And here's our obnoxiously large school mascot -- scares the heck out of me from time to time when it's still dark out in the mornings. I was hoping he would get a little Christmas decoration and was quite pleased when I saw this ginormous hat get pulled out of storage.

And here's the salad I made for our potluck at school. I got the idea from an e-mail that Icon Grill sent out a while ago. They had a holiday wreath salad that was very pretty but I'm sure mine tasted better since I didn't use tomatoes to add red to my salad.

Remember how I work next to a zoo? They brought a reindeer down to greet our guests at the holiday program. Apparently last year lone of the reindeer was just a baby and they had him walk across the stage during the performance. I want to see a baby reindeer!!!

Heather and I used the Holiday Program as an excuse to get our nails done. $25 mani-pedis -- and they looked great! We both got sparkly red and our fingers and toes were feeling very festive.

The Holiday Program was quite the production. The kids did really well. There were little goofs here and there and I forgot to close the curtains once and that was awkward and embarrassing -- I shrugged it off later by saying that a) my mom was in the audience and I didn't want her to feel like her kid was the only one not doing some cute little mess-up and b) I can't let the kids get all the laughs! But I was secretly really embarrassed and worried that the headmaster was going to say something to me. Mostly the day was just an excuse to get all fancy and dressed up.

Lucky for me, my mom even took pictures at the Holiday Program! Here I am singing the school song AND helping the children to all sway the same direction during the last song. Unfortunately, our music teacher was telling them to sway opposite of me... the whole point of me being there was so that she could keep her hands on the piano.

I went really easy on the kids this week. They're all super excited for the holiday break so I've tried to keep things light and fun. They brought me some nice gifts including a $50 gift card to the Triple Door and a St. John Signature fragrance perfume/lotion box gift. And, or course, lots of chocolate. Phew. I'm glad it's all done. We're nearly halfway through the year -- wahoo! I hope this break lasts forever.

Back in Business!

Welcome to the NEW blog! I know, the second one in the past week. I gave up on wordpress before I even gave it a real chance but I'm not sure why I tried to switch from blogger in the first place. It took me long enough to figure this website out. So, here it is, the new new blog, and I'm hoping it will serve me well for the next 3+ years just as the last one did.

I can't wait to get blogging again! I've missed it, terribly, and it has been stressing me out that I haven't been documenting my life on a regular basis. I'm not exactly sure what I feel I'll be missing out on if I don't do it but it just seems to be necessary.

I'm off to catch up on old blog posts! Happy reading!!

Love,
Steph

Christmas With The Piehlers.

Warm fuzzy happy holiday feelings. Steven and I got to help the Piehlers decorate for Christmas today. We felt so lucky to be part of such a special family day! They had an entire feast of crackers and cheese and cookies and peppermint white chocolate covered pretzels and eggnog and all sorts of yummy things. We ate and drank and watched Christmas movies and decorated the tree and visited with some of our favorite people. This is truly one of the most amazing families I have ever had the pleasure to be around. I don't know if I've ever wanted to be part of a family as desperately as I do this one. I love watching them interact with one another and even though I'm a little bit jealous (let's be honest here, I mean, who wouldn't want the Piehlers for inlaws??), it's so heartwarming to see the way that Sue and Mike have welcomed Annika and Ronnie into the family. I hope someday Steven and I have a loving and caring family that enjoys spending time together just like the Piehlers do. We want to be like them when we grow up.

Here are a few fun pictures that I borrowed from Jeremy:

So hard to keep the straight face.

The gang's all here!

I just love these people.

Tree Number Three.

I can't believe this is already our third Christmas together! We're so excited to be celebrating in our new home :) Steven and I aren't normally the type to decorate for Christmas a week before December but we decided to take advantage of the temporary sunshine and do our Christmas tree picking out while it wasn't raining. I'm so glad we did! The weather was perfect for our little adventure.

 

For our third Christmas tree we went to a farm in Issaquah to find and cut down the perfect one. The moment we arrived we were instantly overwhelmed. The parking lot was packed and there were people everywhere! I thought it was a little too crowded but everyone was so happy to be there, and there was Christmas music, and a bon fire, and free hot chocolate, so it was actually a pretty fun holiday experience.

Steven found the fire right away. I actually really liked this outdoor heater thing. I always love outdoor heater things and hope to find a reason to own a couple in the future. This one looked really cool and the metal on the outside didn't get hot so it's perfect for curious little fingers.

Steven's favorite trees are the tiered ones. He seems to like them better if there are a lot of branches bunched together and then just the bare trunk and then another bunch of branches... I told him I didn't think I would be able to love this particular tree.

Aren't we cute? (p.s. I found out this weekend that my husband is not a fan of my new straight-across-bangs so they won't be sticking around for much longer.)

Kisses. 

We didn't have anyone to take a picture of us carrying our tree so I took one myself.

This farm also had an old fire truck just hanging out so we took a few minutes to inspect it.

One of my favorite photos :)

Steven had the marvelous idea to do our tree with all white lights and only red ornaments this year. It looks beautiful!! We had to go buy white lights and a few red ornaments but we actually already had a lot of them. Target had some fun ornaments and Steven even picked up a Santa hat while we were there.

It was kind of sad not using all of the hand-me-down family ornaments and the few that I've collected for us over the last two years but Steven had a solution for that as well. His suggestion is that on the even numbered years we get a nice tree and decorate it all elegant and pretty like this, then on the odd numbered years we get a funky tiered tree and use the colored lights and all of the crazy mismatched ornaments. Could be fun, could be crazy. I guess we're going to find out. (A tiered tree?? Seriously???)

Taa-daah! And aren't the red curtains just fabulous with the tree! I love it!! It's just perfect for our new grown-up house.

Here are two of our new ornaments. The one on the left is from Molbaks and the "candle" one on the right is from Target. I like that the "candles" clip onto the top of the branches.

So there it is! And I'm glad that we got it early because now we just have that much longer to enjoy it. I can't wait until school's out and I can just lay on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate and look at the Christmas lights. Mmmmm, sounds so nice!



A Parducci Family Thanksgiving.

The very best kind if you ask me. It's an evening that I look forward to all year long! Steven and I had a nice relaxing day together. He was supposed to work at the climbing gym today but the class we was scheduled to teach was cancelled. I was SO HAPPY to hear that! Heather and I were off to Zumba bright and early and when I got home, I made breakfast for Steven and I. We made pies, and watched TV and just sort of laid around. He even managed to squeeze in a few minutes of Halo with the Piehler boys. We went up to my mom's late in the afternoon and played a couple of games before going over to Grammi's.

 

Look at these rolls! Aren't they perfect! I want to eat five of them right now.

And here's the turkey. Have I told you about my tradition? It's a pretty strange one. I love turkey and I especially like it straight from the oven and right off the bird. It's true. So a few years ago I learned how to make gravy so that I would be allowed to stand in the kitchen near the turkey. If you've ever been to a Parducci family dinner then you know how much Grammi likes to complain about how small her kitchen is and how she's constantly asking everyone to leave the kitchen so she can get things done, but as long as I'm stirring, I'm permitted to stay. So I have become the gravy maker and I stir with my left hand while picking at the turkey with my right hand. Am I seriously admitting this on a public blog? Apparently so. And then after a while my mom usually walks by and snags a finger full of turkey and then Uncle Barry comes in to carve the turkey and we both stand there and eat all of the little pieces that fall off. By the time it gets to dinner, I don't really need much turkey on my plate and am usually already somewhat full.

Oh, that's nice guys. They really didn't want to take a nice picture.

Our beautiful dining table with all of the crystal and the fancy silverware. It's getting more and more difficult to fit everyone around the dining table so we also had a "kids' table" set up in the front room. It's nice to all be able to eat in the same room even if we can't be at the same table.

A little pre-dinner cribbage lesson.

Dinner! Everything was so tasty! Even the dishes that aren't normally my favorite were absolutely fantastic. We had chocolate mousse pie and pecan pie for dessert and we played lots of Catch Phrase. My favorite moment of the night was when the Catch Phrase was passed to Uncle Barry and he just started to laugh and said "does anybody know who Hermoin Granger is?" I couldn't believe he completely missed the whole Harry Potter craze! Come on! He's usually pretty caught up on the pop culture stuff. I love my family. We had a wonderful holiday together.

I helped Grammi pick out her Christmas tree this morning. She was feeling a little stressed about getting her Christmas decorations up before they leave for Puerta Vallarta tomorrow morning so I went over there to help her out a little bit. Her house looks all nice and Christmassy and the tree is ready for Uncle Scott and I to decorate it sometime soon.

Mom and Tara and I braved the terrential downpour this afternoon to do a little Christmas shoping at at craft bazaar in Country Village. We got a couple of fun gifts and I finally found some vintage looking firefighter fabric to use for Steven's Christmas stocking. Now to find a perfect Christmas fabric for myself and then all I had to do is figure out how to make a stocking. I'm hoping it will be a fairly easy process.

We're off to have a second Thanksgiving dinner at Dad's tonight :)