12/26/2010 Ryan loved her pillow chum so much....she took a nap with it the next day...poor thing.....all tuckered out from the excitement of Christmas day!  Ah, how cute!

12/25/2010  We went to Darren and Shannon's house in Seattle to celebrate Christmas with the Carlsen side of the family.   We had a great time as always!   We had a wonderful honey baked spiral ham, mashed potatoes, nummy green beans and lots of other great food.   Hmmmmm mmmm good!  We don't exchange presents with the adults but we do a gift exchange where we play a dice game that is really fun.  The idea is if you roll a 1 or a 6 you can steal a gift from someone else.  The game is played for 7 minutes.  Once the buzzer rings, you get the gift you have in your hands.  This year was a spectacular snowman platter that Linda had brought and I did have it for a short time in my lap, but Andrea stole it from me and then the buzzer went off!  Ugh!  I still got a wonderful canister filled with cookies.  Jeff ended up with Shamwow shammies and a gift card to Sports Authority.   The kids then opened their presents and loved everything!  Electronics (Wii and Xbox games) were  the thing this year, and of course Ryan got a giraffe pillow chum and called it Snoopy!  She loved it!  She put it on the ground and immediately laid on it and loved on it.  So much fun to be with family!   Merry Christmas everyone!

12/25/2010  We made it home around 11:35 pm and went right to bed.  We had to get to sleep so Santa could come and bring us some presents......I hope we were all good!   The kids woke up at 8 am so that wasn't too bad.   And guess what, Santa came to our house!  We got some great things this year....Kylie got a new pogo stick and Zach got a new gaming tower and a wii game.  Thanks Santa!

12/24/2010  Tara and Zack hosted the Christmas Eve celebration this year at their house in Marysville.  Tara had knee surgery Dec. 17th so was laid up with a huge knee brace and crutches.   We gave Tara a surprise hostess gift.  Haha!  We gave her back some old oatmeal cereal that Jeff and Tara have been trading back and forth for the past 20 years!  They surprise each other at different times of the year and we really got her this year!  Very funny!  We had a great time with a lot of family present.  It was Mom, Uncle Howard, Tami and Cory, Tina, Kurt and Kendra, Tanya, Jeff, Zach and Kylie, Tara, Zack and Delaney.  The kids loved their presents and Delaney LOVED her pillow chum!  That was the best gift ever!  We had great food, some great laughs and wonderful desserts.  We made it home around 11:35 pm that night, just in time before Santa hit our house - whew - Kylie was really worried!

12/21/2010 So 4 days after Jeff's injury, it was slightly better and not as swollen, but still painful.  He went to Urgent Care and an xray showed he had a chipped bone on his ankle.   He has to wear a walking boot for 2 weeks and then follow up after that.   He's gotten better every day, the swelling is down to almost nothing, but his ankle is very stiff and sore every morning.  He's a trooper!  Didn't miss any work either.  We'll have to wait and see what his follow up appt says and whether he can ease back into running or basketball.